Fleeting can still mess up the matchmaking

Hello Devs,

A couple of months ago I posted a lot of fleeting battles where the matchmaking was very unbalanced, due to the fact that fleeting messes up the matchmaking. But it still happens, if I fleet myself with my mk4 and the other has a mk5, then the battle will be like:

Friends 4x m5 - 1x mk4

Unfriends 4x mk5 - 1x mk6

But is also happens that it is much worse:

 

I wouldn't fleet with someone around my infamy level that had a ship that was 2 levels ahead of me....obviously they aren't that great

 

When you press ‘Battle’ in a fleet, you will see a little message that says ‘Fleet battles might take longer to start’. This is because they can be harder to balance.

Unfortunately, sometimes matchmaking is unable to find you a balanced game at all, because there aren’t enough players. When this happens, it will expand its search parameters, and look for an ‘almost’ balanced game. If it still can’t find anything it will expand its parameters again.

Sometimes, this means you will end up with a game that isn’t as well balanced as you (or anyone) would like. But that’s not necessary a problem with matchmaking, it might just be that there aren’t enough players around when you pressed battle, so you end up with an unusual game that matchmaking would ‘prefer’ not to give you.

 

It is hard, because I am afraid to fleet with certain people now myself. Because we lose more then when I play alone. Whereas fleeting should be more fun, than playing on your own. It does not always mess up the matchmaking, but a mk4 and a mk5, will almost always yield a stronger team for the Unfriends and a mk3 and mk5 even more.

 

It's not hard, as op's eg., the game could give him x3 mk5s & 1 mk6 to balance MKs but it did not.

 

Because that would probably be exploitable. If you’re a mk6, then you can’t expect to get easier matchups just by fleeting with a mk4. That’s why matchmaking counts both ships as being the same as the top ship. If you choose to fleet with someone much weaker, then it’s kind of on you that your games are hard.

In the above case matchmaking doesn’t see the mk4 as a mk4. It sees it as a mk6, like the top ship. So you’ve actually got:

3xMk6 and 2xMk4 versus 1xMk6 and 4xMk5

Which is 26 versus 26.

 

Fleet battles are always hard, always. MM thinks you have strategic advantage as you're in fleet rather than random player about whom you know nothing like their weapons, play style etc.
I generally never fleet.

 

What determines the order of the ships on each team before the match? Seems like infamy to me. And what happens if an mk2 and mk5 fleet, but the mk2 is the top ship?