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When selecting assault or conquest as the mission type, the resulting teams vary signifigantly. While this is obvious any time you play a mission, playing the same type over and over reveals patterns.
When playing only Assault mode, the teams are signifigantly heavier, often with 3-5 assaults and the rest randomly split between heavies, mediums and lights. Assaults are more likely to be "boats" or 'Mechs that stack a single variety of weapons, and non-assault mechs tend to die more quickly. Statistically, the team with the heavier overall weightclass typically wins, unless a team attempts to cap and fails, in which that team typically loses, even if it is a single light capper. That one shocked me a bit as I saw it repeatedly, but isn't too surprising overall, as weight being present affects the outcome of head-on fights for obvious reasons.
When playing Conquest only mode, teams have a tendency to be more evenly dispersed between all four weight tiers, with an emphasis on heavies and sometimes mediums. Assaults tend to be more ballanced, with noticeably fewer "boats" and noticeably more streaks, LLs, LPLs and MLs. Players in conquest are more willing to break off from fights, and less willing to camp. Typically, the first players to die are players who are alone, or using sub-par chassis. (Such as DRG or AWS variants, which require greater pilot skill and are not good for new players.)
Conclusion: With exceptions, the heavier the Mech the pilot prefers, the more likely the pilot is to prefer straightforward combat involving less movement and strategy, with an emphasis on large-alpha builds and blob teams. Those "boaters" who prefer to select their gametypes generally prefer Assault to Conquest.
The lighter the variants the pilot prefers, the more likely they are to use balanced builds and win matches with strategy rather than blunt force, dividing weapons among 2-4 types and generally being willing to take ammo-bearing weapons over PPCs. Players who do not choose boats primarily and also prefer to select mission types generally select Conquest.
If you dislike boats and matches that are outside of BT canon weights, play Conquest. If all you want to do is slug it out and use heavy machinery to put holes in things, play Assault.
Edited by TheFlyingScotsman, 09 June 2013 - 10:12 AM.
