Yep, you both had good ideas!
It's true, the server settings and maps aren't perfect for a low amount of players. We already thought about improving the settings in some way that every player can play till the counter reaches 0:00 or the flag goes down. But there are a few problems:
Wolfpack maps are rather bigger, the spawn points are in safe areas usually very close to the flag to prevent defenders from losing a life by spawning into a group of attackers and to make it possible to defend the last room (like on helms deep).
Thus the 'waiting+walking time' of the attackers often exceeds the 'waiting+walking time' of the defenders. The defenders still have a time advantage when they defend the flag but an attacker rather won't have to fight the same defender twice before the flag is down. The attackers also have to wait 15 seconds before they can attack the near ladder or gatehouse again (where are no spawnpoints for the defenders).
In the beginning the defenders have a general advantage behind the walls with their full team strength including a full amount of archers. They need to thin out slowly. In a normal round with balanced teams the first defender is running out of lives after 5-6 minutes (if he gets always killed after 30 seconds...) but the majority of defenders lose their last life in the second half of the round especially during the last 1-4 minutes depending on the success of the attacking team ofc.
If the defenders got more lives it would be almost like giving unlimited and even a losing defending team could defend the last room with the flag much too easy, especially if there are 60+ players. The same problem would appear if we set a global amount of lives for the defenders. Beside the new kind of suicide-teamkillers imagine a round with a successful defending team that can keep up its full strength during the whole round.
Would look like this:
To let the settings of the second round depend on the results of the first round wouldn't work since the first round has always been different. Many players need to load the map first, need to choose a faction, some even wait a minute before they finally decide which class they want to play while others spawn in time. The walls are taken very early and the doors are weaker than usual since their strength is influenced by the amount of players at round start.
Ofc these settings aren't perfect for a lower amount of players. Another rotation with smaller maps and/or different spawn points would be needed and the amount of lives and even the spawn time could be changed and adapted to the maps and to different amounts of players. We'd need a way to change server settings and the map rotation automatically without having to restart the server. And the sad thing is we already had made the first big step just two days before the last patch kicked in. WSE was outdated and lots of our work was destroyed. Most server features don't work anymore and projects like "changing server settings without restart" got 'successfully' suspended.
I will get revenge in your server (
