See this is why I think people are generally suspicious of you and your proposals. You seem less interested in finding ways to make your own victory meaningful for you, and more interested in ensuring that someone else's loss is meaningful for them.
Hit point inflation is a whole other discussion and for the record yeah the shield booster nerf absolutely should have happened (also feedback and reverb cascade should have stayed "OP" as originally implemented and we should have had the gimbal tracking arc tied to sensor grade as well).
BUT, I feel like your main interest in all of this is because you want more people to have their ships blown up, and what is more you want them to be sad about it.
It's really common for people to try and absolve combat loggers by saying things like "if they retreated, you should consider that a win," and I don't really agree with that as a general principle, but in an objectives-oriented contest (like say a CZ tug-o-war), this is absolutely how you should look at it. We don't need more penalties for losing, we need more meaningful rewards for winning. The primary cost of losing should be that you didn't get to win. The primary reason for sticking it out in a fight all the way to the bitter end is because the benefit of winning is SO TEMPTING that you'll keep at it for as long as you still think you *might* be able to turn things around. The problem, right now, is that almost nothing in the game rewards winning in a way that overshadows the penalty for losing, so people have an incentive to always flee (by any means necessary) when things don't go their way.
I don't need new players in harmless sidewinders to be trapped in a CZ for 15 minutes. They WONT be trapped for 15 minutes anyway - they'll be blown up in 15 seconds and then they'll be gone, exactly as if they had been allowed to leave on their own. The only people you WANT to stay in a CZ are the ones who at least THINK they can hang for a while in the first place. Give players a sense of investment in the outcome of an instance, and they'll be reluctant to leave at the first sign of trouble. Right now, you could have a wing of 2 players working a CZ, and if a single opposing brave CMDR in a vulture showed up, there is a decent chance the wing of 2 would just flee rather than deal with the potential threat. If on the other hand they had already achieved Objective #1 (thus enabling them to earn Combat Bonds), and were 75% of the way to achieving Objective #2 (which would double the Combat Bond payout and move the needle on the BGS), they would almost certainly stick it out. And whatever happens after that, whether the vulture flees immediately, or they fight it out and win, or lose, or eventually are driven out by that lone Vulture, OR EVEN IF THEY COMBAT LOG; the experience and its outcome would have meaningful repercussions for everyone.
FORCING players to stay in a CZ on the other had, doesn't do anything. It just ensures that ill equipped ships die 100% of the time when they drop into a situation they can't handle. Which is boring for the superior ships and either annoying or devastating for the inexperienced pilot.
