I am in the former group, and I am bummed about not having invasions anymore (I might have mentioned that moaned about it a few times already). Personally, I feel that the tissue sampling should have been nerfed down heavily; but I suppose Frontier wanted to avoid the same whining we got when the war started ("it is too hard!", "we can't win!").
I think that's two separate balance issues, though they look pretty similar:
1) Sampling is - when min-maxed, at least - massively overpowered compared with other activities. The correct nerf for it is probably including something like "one sample per Thargoid" (which keeps it potentially viable as an interesting supplement at the cost of direct combat effectiveness in a CZ or other scenario) rather than just a raw numbers tweak, though.
2) The system targets as a whole have been dropped to the point where the human side makes net gains of about 40 systems a week, and will keep doing so until all the Maelstroms are compressed to the heavily diminishing returns stage. They'd presumably have done that regardless of sampling - they'd started on it well before systematic harvesting was a thing, after all - and would presumably have done it considerably more if sampling wasn't so effective - and
that's the bit that's really taking out the Invasions.
From my perspective, if there are "alternative approaches" or more efficient machanics, those players who want to "win" will always devise a way to what I would describe as cheesing it, and the "winners" will always outcheese the other group. This isn't unique to the war; look at all the best-start-billionaire-in-a-day guides, it's the same thing. It's the old outcome orientated vs. enjoying the ride issue.
On a per-system basis, certainly - but a lot of what's going on at the strategic level is also about thinking about how to target the moves
as a war rather than just fighting in random systems and hoping. That's outcome-oriented, sure, but it's also a lot of fun for people who like that sort of planning; take the possibility of that away, and they might as well just set aside a bunch of systems as a permanent "Thargoid War nature reserve" where people can fight their AX CZs and other scenarios each week with no effect on the wider galaxy.
Nerf sampling into the ground and take the whining about the unwinnable war like a champ.
I suspect the biggest balance problem isn't so much about whether the exact balance of the war is winnable or unwinnable (on the scale of the bubble, even the original Thargoid pace would have taken decades to win, there was nothing wrong with that in itself) but on the whole "your punishment for ingenuity is" issue.
If any clever tactic or strategy on the human side is responded to with a "sorry, you can't do that" from Frontier to keep the overall balance within parameters, then there's not much point trying to figure them out. Equally, if they just go for a "set it going and let player actions do what they will" approach (which I'm sure they'd prefer), the inevitable result is something like now where weaknesses in the Thargoid strategy (and to a growing extent, the ability to do things that no Thargoid strategy could counter; if Taranis has just 3 choices for Alerts it doesn't matter how many Alerts it can place at maximum or what its strategy for choosing is) lock down the war too much.
. The more orchestrated nature of a CZ would still be my preference though, but I'll give that a go.
