Who is talking of Awesomeme?
Are you even following?
"New Awesomia battles" is the topic, isn't it? are you following?
you're talking about balancing the regular FFs by changing the numbers of defenders/attackers? ok, even then it doesn't work for most worlds because you can increase the number of allowed attackers to 1000 if you want when they can't even fill a defense. if you want to talk about what to do in CO only, I guess that belongs to a different topic.
And no you can't lower the defense numbers when a medium/small fort already overfills.
and no, that's not what I suggested, not even remotely.
if I really have to spell everything, then I'll do it so we can start fresh
for Awesomia battles, if we want to have some kind of balance and equal odds of winning for both sides, in most worlds that have a low number of FFers and struggle to fill the battle even during the events, I suggest to lower the number of defenders (before the battle, of course). it can be done by checking the history and seeing how many players even join these battles. for example, if in World XYZ we today have 60 def vs. 40 att on average, try limiting the number of defenders to 45, attackers to 65 and announce that. this way players could check if a side is already full (we've seen that already, players asking in Saloon chat which side to join) and go to the other side.
adjust the numbers if needed after a few battles.
different worlds with different level of activity will need different numbers.
I think it's less damage if a few people don't get in a couple of times, than the status quo where CM dug battles are just a slaughterhouse that is over in 10 rounds.