Removing TC would make the player counter only go lower, as there are plenty of people that don't do much else except TC.
In 1st and 2nd session TC was rather symbolic, sometimes a decoy for a fight. Back then, you had almost unlimited scouting abilities, as:
- without relog timer, you could relog through all of your 1 lvl bluesuit scouts placed in each northern town and see whether a group of players is standing there,
- with "broken" tracking feature, you knew who is standing on worldmap upon leaving the town (the list of those standing over the town appeared), so you knew that something is going on,
- instead of TC timer, town was taken immediately after bringing a group to the town's mayor and speaking to him
So basically, all it took to see whether there is some action or not, was launching the pipboy and optionally relogging through your scouts which took less than one minute. As there were plenty of players in the game, there were lots of fights in the evenings. That's how we did to get some action and it worked well; for several weeks there were battles in BH, Redding, Klamath, Den and especially in Modoc, without TC rewards (it was not worth of it) or timer or capture zone. Actually, all that you were getting from taking the town was a secured locker (I remember Orphans using it in Den for trading), fancy pipboy message and some share from players trading (mostly shit). Many newbies were going to northern towns, as there were lots of people joining the game; they would come back later if they got killed, sometimes to fight back.
Town control wouldn't do any good to the game if it was removed completely, but surely it could use many improvements.
