You'll find that most of us agree on this standpoint of FW Battles being more like gentlemanly duels than an actual war.

I like the way this is coming together, but I still have a few reservations. It's the damn redzone that's the problem for me. It still makes the situation a little too polite, and doesn't allow for teams to take advantage of momentum and push forward while the enemy is still disorganized. I propose this as an alternate solution for the "hard redzone" this idea currently has: The Yellow Zone (Actual color open for debate)

As I said previously, the redzone should be delegated to the edge of the District. There shouldn't be anywhere on the map that one team can enter, but the other can't. So we add the Yellow Zone. The Yellow Zone indicates what areas the enemy team currently has control over. Friendly forces can still enter, and fight, inside the Yellow Zone as it would only indicate where the "Front Line" of the battle currently is. Commanders would only be able to deploy installations inside the areas that they actually control. This would then prevent Commanders from firing down friendly turrets behind enemy lines. Dropships, and characters with low profiles willing to go behind enemy lines and place drop uplinks, would become far more useful and effective than they currently are.

Objectives, once taken, would then open small pockets of "Friendly Territory" around them within a certain radius. Capture enough Objectives in that area, and that whole section of the map would then open up. This would allow for a player controlled, always shifting Front Line.

I was thinking more that you pay to fill the biomass holding tanks in a facility or MCC before going into a fight, similar to putting ammo in your cargohold in EVE. Having to worry about paying for biomass in a match would be very distracting and not very practical, but having to replenish your stores between battles provides, as you reinforced, another means of economic interaction between Dust and EVE.