[outsider]

Well the solutions can still be found in PS1.

The benefits of small outfits is that they could do things around the fringes of the big fights that would benefit their empires, without taking too many numbers away from the main conflict.

The incentive for waging the big fights was the dual xp system, CR xp was the carrot that rewarded the organisers of the fight and kept the fight going. The larger the fight, the bigger the CR xp. With only cert gain as the driver for conflict, large outfits see no reason to leave the steamrolling mindset, as there are no unique benefit in defending ( and if you can get greater cert gain in defending, like during the tech test, than they will stop attacking )

Once the larger outfits on every server have rewards that they can only get from defending bases, than they will want to manipulate the front lines to funnel the fights into big base defense scenarios to maximise those rewards ( instead of rolling out of the bases while the enemy is rolling in from the other side after the cap )

As per my previous post, once large outfits have unique unlockable benefits gained by staying and defending territory, than there is space for the small outfits to harrase on the fringes of the commited fight. Small outfits can't do anything meaningfull when the fight is: large outfit rolls in, caps, leaves.

The main element that is missing is the dual xp approach that offer distinct separate benefits. One for the player and the other one for the outfit.

To give small outfits purpose we have to fix large outfits first by giving the game a reason to defend. You can't use the same carrot, you have to use different carrots.

Say the upcoming Heavy battle tank is an outfit only unlock, the large outfit focuses on creating defense objectives to gain "outfit certs". Once the outfit buys HBT than the outfit members use their certs to upgrade it and personalise it. This gives the outfit reason to attack and reason to defend.

note: I know I am repeating myself in this post with elements from the last post. But I got no response from my previous post. Which means I must not have explained myself well enough. But I really think the dual xp system is a winner.