As far as the rule changes go, there is no way to make the SCS 'fair' in the way people want. It has to be done in a timely manner and that time constraint forces rules which can give funky results. This is the same as many sports, the penalty shootout in football being the classic example of this. I've played in timed out matches or close to timed out matches where I'd have felt hard done by with all of the rule changes proposed. First kill, last kill, it is all the same to me, although anything is better than a coin toss. If someone wants to go back and watch past casts of the SCS and statistically analyse them to determine which rule change is least unfair, great. From a personal perspective I prefer first kill because it gives me a measure of control knowing if I have to fight or not, but that is just a subjective preference and not a reason to keep the rule. If the majority of participants want last kill I'm fine with that also.
I feel bad for the Brotherducks because they did have the upper hand, but I think they have a few mistaken impressions about what happened at the end of the match, so I will try to clear those up.
First, given the way the Brotherducks were flying (and to an extent had to fly given their galleon load out) we were well aware where they were with 4 minutes remaining. We could easily have avoided that final engagement and flown up to their spawns side of the canyons and played patty cake till the timer ran down and no one would have been any the wiser, it would have just looked like teams playing ring-a-ring-a-roses in canyons again. We didn't do that because we wanted to try for a straight win. If the last kill rule had been in effect we'd have moved into the centre of the canyons, shot at the galleon a couple of times and then just sat in there forcing the Brotherducks to brawl us. The only reason we attacked the Brotherducks on our spawn was we had the upper hand from the first kill rule. A more cheap team could avoid the engagement entirely, why risk it when you have a damaged mobula and have the last kill advantage?
As far as the final 2v1 engagement I'd point out that we delayed spawning our mobula by about 20 seconds until the Brotherducks were the other side of the canyons so they couldn't just turn around and blow the crap out of it. The structure of that engagement was entirely determined by the last kill rule. Had the match not had a time limit the pyra would either have escaped (because neither Sammy nor Byron is stupid enough to chase an enemy ship, get separated and leave their galleons engines pointing at an enemy spawning with arts), or the fight would have been considerably more even.
My suspicion is that the Brotherducks would have managed to get a kill, probably on our mobula as it spawned back in, largely because of the high quality of the lumberjack gunning we had seen. If the Brotherducks had chased the pyra then our mob would have had 30-40 seconds of free shots on the galleon, probably resulting in two 1v1 fights, slight advantage to the Brotherducks because the pyra would have to recover from running away and the galleon could tank if things went south. If they had let the pyra go and forced us to spawn I think they would have killed our mob. However, if you think the match was a forgone conclusion then we very much disagree.
I felt both teams fought well, and the Brotherducks almost pulled off a great come back of which they can be proud. I also think if there is going to be a serious discussion about rule changes it should be done dispassionately, analytically, and not on the basis of recent subjective experience. If someone wants to do a serious study of the past SCSs, come up with a reasonable assay for 'likely victor', apply it to a decent subset of past draws and then determine which rule is superior then subject to reading their report for any major flaws they will have my support whatever rule they side with.
