Richard and Jub both bring up valid points against the Hide-and-Seek Squid. Not only are VIP's marked but Hide-and-Seek Squids where barely used in Sac's VIP.
@Dementio
I played that Sac VIP gamemode once, mostly I avoided it because it was too late at night. On my first time I was met with a VIP Goldfish hiding on the other side of Firnfeld. While we were 3v2, those two enemy zerg rushing ships managed to do just a little bit of damage with every rush and in the end managed to win by killing our VIP 4 times, without their VIP showing up once. The score was ~375:~175. Yes, we almost won Crazy King with only kills, because the VIP was hiding. The second match, the VIP pilot on the enemy team was the same, but flew a Junker and actually tried to support his allies from >1km with double Merc, and won that game too, but this time by actually staying together with his team.
I remember this match because that pilot got a lot of flak during and after the match for Hide-And-Seek and as you said that pilot didn't fly it again. It was an unfortunate match, I'll give you that but you can't fault someone, who also had never played VIP, for trying a Hide-And-Seek build...it seemed like it could of worked which was most likely why it was taken but realized it wasn't a great option which is why the second match was not a Hide-And-Seek build. Not only has Muse ran situation for how the game more itself plays but also how it plays on 2v2, 3v3, and 4v4 along with which maps it works well on so that they can find the maps that it will be most enjoyable on.
@Richard
A new mechanic that I would advise would be allowing teams to vote on their VIP ship, which would then be moved to the top slot.
I have some additional ideas that stem from Alliance that may be applied to discourage the running and hiding. One is to use the team buff mechanic. In Alliance, if you kill an enemy escape pod, you gain permanent engine or gun buffs. In VIP, if your VIP kills the escort ships, it could have the same effect. This would encourage the VIP to stay in combat to gain key buffs without the addition of the sometimes confusing Sweep rule.
I think for practicality reasons having the top ship VIP would be simpler seeing as there is already a timer for players to vote on maps. To add a timer for player to vote on a VIP or even without a timer added, just having them required to vote, maybe a little too much...cause then you get into what happens if they don't vote or if they don't agree then they may have half a team thinking ship x is going to be the VIP but the other half the team may think ship y is going to be it then when the ship does get selected time will be added by captains to try to figure out strategy, etc. So overall, I think keeping it as the top ship is most practical but there is always the option for swap ship requests for teams who decide on a different ship to be their VIP while in lobby. In addition, I love this idea with the Alliance feature!!!! I would exclude engine buffs since players are already concerned about squids being too fast to catch but other than that things like hull, armor, ammo buffs for VIP on VIP kills is a great way to keep them inclined to stay in battle. I hope you have sent this to the devs as an idea.
If you have concerns or suggestions contact Muse and let them know what they are. We all have been in this community long enough that we know, eventually, the devs listens to input and they do try hard to make everyone happy so don't kill a forum post that other wise could be positive with excitement for skirmish love with negative speculation. We wanted the devs to give skirmish love...they are so give them positive constructive feedback.
@Helios BE EXCITED!!!! Skirmish gets new content!!! #SkirmishLove
