Regarding pumpkins: I haven't been hitting the regular map too terribly hard during the event, to the point where I wasn't even scouting for oil much until recently. That all changed once I looked at the pumpkin total. I'm closing in on 20K pumpkins, so they're going to be a bigger factor than we initially expected. If you do mid-level tiles while you're waiting for your casualties from the event map to repair you can bring in a lot.

But yeah, this is still going to suck for those who don't have time to play every 2-3 hours...I've even resorted to no-lifing it with timers to wake me up when repairs will be complete, and that's not going to be for everyone.