To me (and a lot of the EU ONS community) ONS was about battles up to 8on8. But mainly less players (6on6 or even 3on3 sometimes).
The good maps for that had sizes of Torlan and Dawn (RedPlanet was much too big for example).
And it was purely about connecting nodes*, such as CTF is purely about flags (XMP for example is a different gametype because it adds the "power"-element).
If that was kept for ONS in UT3 then WAR could have been the gametype with the huuuge maps that connect to each other, AS-like-objectives, Orbs, ressource and power management as it was said when it still was named Conquest.
*) see here for how I had like the maps and nodes in UT 3: http://forums.beyondunreal.com/showpost.php?p=2112804&postcount=13
Personally I'm not a fan of the Conquest idea, but that's another matter.
Your input is interesting, as I've always thought of WAR as the smaller, more compact of the two, whereas maps like IslandHop and Severance hallmarked ONS for me, but shows what I know as far as what was wanted.
I think I'd rather go the AS/XMP route with WAR than the Conquest route, mainly because the sheer scale of Conquest doesn't really feel like UT to me, but if WAR could maintain some of the ONS-esque gameplay tactics, while stepping away from the nodes themselves, using resources points and defensive platforms, vehicle factories, bridges (and controlling these things directly, as opposed to doing so via nodes, using control panels and locked doors and touch plates and other AS-esque methods,) instead, then we have an opportunity to really differentiate the two, wherein ONS could become the sporting approach, focused solely on the more abstract idea of nodes and cores...
The idea, then, would be not to necessarily make WAR maps so big (the size of multiple Torlans placed end to end and requiring streaming to move across, as was proposed at one point) but to make them, maybe Severance sized at the most, but be connected by basically snippets of AS maps instead. You have to hijack a defensive platform to secure a laser wall to defend your base, which requires hacking a door panel, overcoming the player(s) guarding it, if any, then hacking the defensive system itself. Challengers can either blow the door with the shaped charge (or something similar) or hack it and maintain it in one piece. So, there can be these stations around, which don't necessarily have to take up much more space than a powernode and its surrounding defenses, but offer a slightly different gameplay style to capture, and offer up the need for a mild resource-management system to maintain, retaining the ONS feeling of spreading out and taking parts of the map, wherein the enemy might control the defesive points, but if they have no energy to run them, it won't matter... I think that might live-up to what many may have been expecting from WAR, and keep it separate from ONS, thus allowing the two to co-exist in a way that casual gamers could differentiate them relatively easily.
Then ONS could be re-done focusing on its specific nature...
