BF2142 has the playerbase to play the bigger versions of maps.  FS has struggled for over a year to maintain a playercount which makes our smaller maps feel "full".  Most of the small versions of maps are also pretty lame too, so we're stuck only being able to play 3 or 4 maps out of all of them, and occasionally play one of the rubbish ones for some "Variation".  We have lots of maps, but few of them are actually fun to play frequently.

Vehicle maps all require large amounts of players. Half the vehicle maps are also unbalanced in some form another (tanks not being equal, terrain giving the advantage to one team). Space isn't fun with 4 players - the only space map I enjoy with small players is Yavin, which still causes crashes for a large amount of FS players.

That, and the people who play FS regularly are now really good, and most of us are sick of playing with the same people over and over. And it's no fun going "easy" (Going easy = REALLY EASY, and vets still end up winning without trying that hard) on the newbies.  FS is too different from what people are used to in the way the game works.  BF players try capping non-linked CPs, new players fail utterly in combat because our guns are fairly inaccurate until you learn how it's used properly.  By that time, they've usually already quit because of empty servers or they are sick of being owned.

FS has a lot of variety, but variety doesn't always mean good.  There is little in FS which has been properly designed for small playercounts, a trend that is continuing.   You've been gone for 10 months, in that 10 months we've basically been playing the same few maps (none from later versions than 1.2 I believe) almost over and over, injecting one of the worse ones into the rotation for a taste of something different, with basically the same people all the time. Even with such amazing gameplay, under these conditions, things get boring pretty quickly.

I've been playing on totally different maps recently which are more suitable for low numbers of players, and even though there are just a few of us at it. It is much more fun than sitting on a server playing Mos Espa fighting over the same areas we've been fighting at for over a year while sitting in hope that an Unknown will join the server and be decent.

Also, many of the clans that were playing First Strike have moved onto BF:BC2.  Much more fun than sitting on an empty server.

I do love this mod, and would love to see more people playing.  I feel I've done more than enough to try get more people playing though, so I'm not going to contribute much more to it without knowing there will actually be some decent results from trying.