I... Hope you're kidding about the armed citizens thing.
And personally, i think OTA in general is in a bit of a frustrating spot for the people who play them because their very exsistance is overkill, and because of that, nobody wants to interact with them.
I honestly think that making them much more aggressive but either balanced like game accurate OTA instead of lore accurate OTA (only 1.5-2 times tougher then a CP but better weapons and tactics), or reducing their playercount as a whole to make them beatable is the best way to handle them.
But coming up with a system that lets a manageable amount of OTA assist CPs when they need it is the best compromise i could come up with.