Sure, there's something about the 3025 era where things are rare, but at the same time I don't care to be forced to play in that mode beyond that era. I like the idea of the factions having a serious military, not a whole lance defending a moderately important planet, exageration sure..but not by much.
What I liked was the post 3050 era where they had warships that were active, warships coming online. More mechs being pumped out, more designs with better gear. In addition to that having bigger and better vehicles and fighters. A world should not hinge upon the success of a single mech and I don't care who is in it, it should not come down to that unless all you have is a banjo playing old timer sitting on his front porch watching the space corn grow while his old dog waits for the end of that dreadful "music".
In an era where there is next to nothing the game is stuck in a corner as there is no fight that is going to really mean much, nothing that is going to be big and epic. A lance on lance fight would be increasingly important, but it would not increase the devestation. Instead worlds would be traded upon a whimper of a fight.
What seems to be a problem is that some people want to play small games, which is fine. They might want to read about small fights that took place in the game world, thats also fine. The problem is that if BT blasts itself into a corner it does to negative things:
1. It sticks the game in a rinse, repeat cycle of the same old same old.
2. It removes the possibility of ever reinforcing aerotech/battlespace/whatever its called where there are warships floating around and being used.
There is definitely room for smaller battles in a game world where there are actual armies. Not every action is going to be on the invasion level. There are still going to be recon, harassment, and spec ops stuff to do. The more targets the defenders need to cover, the more spread out they are going to be, the less likely they are going to clump up in one area. They will have to spread out to try and defend what they can. If you drop a company onto a planet that has 3 companies defending it but you have 3 important cities, a starport, a factory, important people, and a base or two with their own targets such as store houses and such, those 3 companies are going to have to split up until they know exactly where you are going. If they know with 100% accuracy that you are going to target 1 with everything, then you kinda screwed yourself and deserve to be hammered. Of course you can remove the player and just make a scenario suggesting someone better did something smarter, so here play this scenario where a lance is attacking an ammo dump to help reduce the build up of faction Z in hopes of delaying what appears to be a likely planetary invasion.
The players and writers are both going to have a lot more wiggle room in a large scale environment. It allows for all playstyles without having to cripple the storyline and the wants of other players.
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