Swap ships if it makes the game more balanced

[nanoduckling]

Sometimes matchmaking does a decent enough job only for ship swaps to completely kneecap its efforts. Would it be possible to allow ship swapping in a game if the matchmaking system thinks it will make the game more even? Another option would be an 'optimize lobby' request which reshuffles the ships to make it as competitive as possible according to the matchmaking system (say requiring an okay from all captains for it to happen). By allowing it only when matchmaking says the match will be improve you prevent the abuse of the feature that likely resulted in its removal.

Why I would like this feature
The other day matchmaking dropped me with a nice, communicative but relatively novice captain (~100 games) facing off against an experienced captain (>1000 games) and another nice, but novice captain. Crews were generally comparable to their captains in terms of experience. We lost 5-4 but it was fun and the other experienced captain seem to like their ally. Teams co-ordinated, every ship got killed at least once, it was a tense even game. Gold star for the matchmaking system.

The next game saw myself and the other experienced captain facing off against the two novices due to ship swaps. The result was entirely predictable (a great novice captain will still usually get beaten by a bad experienced captain), even though we crippled our ships with ineffective builds it was never going to be fair and it wasn't really fun. The inexperienced captains lost most of their crews during / after the match and it wasn't a good game for anyone. Both myself and my ally for this match would have gladly offered to swap slots to make the game more even but couldn't because this option no longer exists.

[Omniraptor]

It's still possible. As a captain, you have to click on an enemy captain and click swap ship in the menu, and then the other captain has to agree. Then your ships switch teams, crew included.

[Caprontos]

I was going to make a similar suggestion, change "Swap lobby" out for "Rebalanced lobby" so it makes an effort to maintain lobby balance with any switching it does.. To avoid stuff like your example.

But what I couldn't figure out is how do you factor in 50% of the people leaving as soon as your back in the lobby... after it already did swaps.. Sure you maintained the balance of the last game.. but you lose it right away.. This happens a lot from what I've seen.

If you swap auto right before a lobby starts, that would just make people angry.. Cause often times you try to plan your ship based on your ally.. and you can't do that if you don't know who your ally is..

If you make swap happen when enough people are in the lobby, but give time for people to do stuff... Then you increase lobby time which Muse doesn't seem they want to do..

If you have it as a post -player opt for - thing, I actually think it would be underused..  but maybe not and could be an answer..

[nanoduckling]

As Omniraptor said this feature is now back in so problem solved.