every time and of the entities in the network changes "in combat" (quotes to not confuse with "combat" state, or "fighting" state, neither are official names 😛 ) state whole network support is recalculated, so to your example 🤔 not sure I get it correctly so few:
8 entities supporting 1 entity with cap of 5, and one of the 8 entities enter combat, means there are 2 entities that can get support and 7 that provide support. so it will be spitted 4 / 3
another way I can read your example is:
there is 8 entities total and 1 is "in combat" receiving 5 support (meaning 2 supports are unused in the network), when another entity enters combat there will be 2 "in combat" and 6 providing support so each of them will get 3 support (unless the second entity does not have cap lower than that, but I think currently only Sun Reaver have cap lower than 3, but he does not provide any support)