for the love of all things good, do not make it a "light" tycoon
if you are involving fighting in any form, "lights" doesn't make ANY sense. Tax dollars, budget money, bribes, ANYTHING makes more sense than LIGHTS.
Keep the machines.
Keep the pongs.
Keep the events.
Change the name.
And to address you're earlier statement:
beginning to lose the feel of good ol' genuine robloxian tycoonage.
What are you talking about? It would still be a tycoon. Each player controls 1-3 machines for income, each player buys and upgrades, each player still has the war aspect, but instead they are UNIFIED as a team. My tycoon spot may indeed be WITHIN your tycoon, yes. You might be in charge of the pavement and ramps for the base, but Im in charge of the tanks that drive on that pavement. Without you, the tanks can't leave, without me, you have no tanks.
It creates a goal, for everyone as a TEAM to work towards
If one person does not have a lot of money, and another person does, they use their extra money to purchase weapons and protect their teammate as they mine resource nodes outside the fort.
There is income
There is war
There are upgrades
There is a >GOAL<
Also, separate thought if you were to consider my suggestion:
each member within a team gets a special ability. If you own the fort walls, you can control the gates and you get a special key to access a howitzer room. If you own the towers on the corners of the fort, you get a high powered sniper. If you control the motor pool, you can spawn a tank (standard unit is an APC or a humvee), if you own the armory, you get better armor than everyone else (if you use gravity cat's military gear, for example)
If you're not gonna do this, I certainly will :L