When I'm searching for a match as a crew member, but only pilots are needed at that moment, matchmaker pops up a message that goes something like: "Switch to pilot and play faster", meaning that I could get a spot immediately if I decided to be a pilot instead of a crew member.
It would be great if we had a similar function for gunners and engineers. Recently, I've found it increasingly difficult to get a good match as a gunner, because whenever I search for matches as a gunner, matchmaker keeps throwing me onto ships which already have one (or two, in some cases). Then I usually leave the match, because nobody likes a second gunner, and I try searching for a new one with matchmaker. Usually, what happens is that matchmaker throws me into the very same lobby again, quite often in the last second so that I do not even have time to leave anymore.
Instead of that, it would be great if matchmaker informed me that there are no gunner spots available, but I could play immediately if I switched to engineer. This would save me the frustration of joining a 2-gunner ship in the last second of the lobby time, and it would also save the frustration of trying and re-trying to join matches as a gunner. It would also inform new players about ideal ship/crew member arrangements so they would not think that 2 or 3 gunners are an effective and working build on, let's say, a squid. Thos who still wish to play as second gunners would have a chance to switch back once they arrived at the lobby, but they would at least be aware of the possible disadvantage of being a second gunner.
Right now searching for a match as a gunner is so risky that I often think it would be best to start searching as an engineer even if I don't want to play engineer at all. I realize that with the small playerbase it is difficult to fill ships with engineers, let alone find a match for each gunner (usually only 4 gunners per match are needed, or even less, as we tend to play 2v2s more often than 3v3s), but in my opinion an AI engineer is still better than 2 or 3 gunners on a ship. Not to mention that second/third gunners won't have much fun either if their ship is not successful and both the captain and their team is unhappy about their presence.
