Concerns about the hex system

[LoopbackZero]

Hey guys, I wanted to get your thoughts to make sure I wasn't alone. Looking at the 'hex' system and seeing how it works, I'm really worried about longevity of the game. You have this truly massive area to do battle in, but should the empires be balanced, you will only see a small fraction of it in a month's time. With the hex system, going behind enemy lines serves no net benefit so everyone will be locked onto this two hex wide front line. It will move slightly, but I can't see it moving anywhere near the safe zones of the map. So you have these vast pockets of map that barely get played because there's no benefit in going there.

Even worse, since the area really is massive, your faction is spread into smaller forces across this sprawling front line that the hex system creates. Also, there are (currently) three of these front lines! For example I'll use Miir's updated video with the TR faction at 3:22. Let's say this map represents the average of the three. There are 53 hex borders on that map for the TR. That's 159 total "front lines" for the three maps. With a server's limit of 666 players per faction (PC Gamer, April 2012, p.48), that's just over 4 players (4v4) at each adjacency. Even if the battle isn't perfectly spread out as calculated, you're still not getting anything massive without leaving huge holes in your defense. If everyone decided to play on the same cont, you would still be at 12v12 battles spread across that line.