@ BobDoleReigns
Hello!
You've put in a lot here and definitely thank you for the specific use cases (which I'll get to in a second.)
The major reason that spectator swapping existed was we used to not have a system swap option. So if we didn't have the spectator swap you would have to stay there. It was basically a bug that we let become a feature because we didn't build a better tool until later. With ship and slot swapping in game though we wanted to remove something that is OFTEN abused for making balance worse and stomping. You are right sometimes people use it for noble ends, but that is not always the case, but hopefully those people will use slot and ship swap for the same end.
1.) You can use ship or slot swap, all it adds is one of those players agreeing to swap, which if the lobby was full already you'd have to anyways.
2.) If this is the case, yes, or use custom game to instantly join a lobby
3.) If there's a slot on his team open, you can simply rejoin on him and it should choose his team (in order, his ship, his team, other team.) If that's not the case then its a bug.
4.) Again, ship and slot swap are there.
5.) Oddly specific situation. You could swap yourself or one of your friends over with the swap slot feature or add the new player as a friend, quit the lobby and join on him.
6.) Yup, sometimes you're going to play the other color.
7.) Or he adds someone on the other side as a friend and joins on them after leaving the lobby. Thus saving Johnny from his apparently lonely and depressing life he didn't make it through.
8.) And that's your right. You are free to think that we have ruined the game for closing a loophole, that you may have used well, but was being abused by many players. And if spectator swapping was all that kept us from being a "piece of shit," then I apologize, we believed, as I listed above, the way to still have a use case for those situations, but if there's any I missed. Please let me know.
