11 replies to this topic

[AedanCousland]

Are there factors that determine which Lance you're in in a game, and which position within the Lance you are in?

[Cloves]

The game is set up for there to be three mechs of each of the four weight classes. Alpha would have the lights and a medium, beta would be half medium, half heavy. Charlie would have the last heavy and the three assaults. Since we don’t have enough folks playing the various weights, largely do to game imbalances, this layout is relaxed, but you will see the lightest mechs in alpha and the heaviest in Charlie.

[AedanCousland]

Interesting, thank you. I wondered why I was always in Charlie Lance. What about your position within the Lance? Is that just random?

[Cloves]

As far as anyone can tell, yes.

[AedanCousland]

O.K. thanks for the info.

[Elizander]

If the queue gets really full of assaults sometimes you might see an assault in Alpha lance.

[Cloves]

You know an event is on when you find yourself first mech in bravo in a 90 ton lrmboat.

[Tier5 Kerensky]

AedanCousland, on 13 June 2018 - 07:09 AM, said:

Interesting, thank you. I wondered why I was always in Charlie Lance. What about your position within the Lance? Is that just random?

You don't have a position in your lance. You have all three of them.

To explain, how the lance is listed depends on where you look at it. Battlegrid map, "score list", and the lance screen on HUD all have different order. So it's more random than conventional random would be. Actually there's probably systamatic way in which they work, but random describes it best.

Spoiler

[TheCaptainJZ]

In the last listing, it's alphabetical, but based on ASCII chart position which sorts capital letters before lowercase letters. This is also the sorting used for the enemy player list at the pre-lobby screen to mask which players are assaults or lights and what lance they might be in.

[Cloves]

Cool, never thought of that. Guess it’s not random at all, I had thought it might be related to MM placement order ( which would be pretty damn random). Faith in science and logic restored, carry on!

[Vlad Striker]

Lances grouping ordered by max speed and weight class. So you can have fast medium and find yourself among light mechs. Cicada, Ice Ferret and so on.

[Koniving]

AedanCousland, on 13 June 2018 - 07:09 AM, said:

Interesting, thank you. I wondered why I was always in Charlie Lance. What about your position within the Lance? Is that just random?

Its "seemingly" random, though it changes at the end based on your match score.



Notice the lowest match score is at the bottom of each lance.



It used to exhibit this behavior during a match, too.


Starting position within a lance in 2014 was based on your ELO score.
When premade groups of 2 to 4 players were allowed in solo queue, Alpha lance was reserved for exclusively those groups or players with high ELO scores (which if you think of it like tiers, were players of supposedly higher tiers pulled into that match to make up for the inferior numbers in the grouped players or lack thereof compared to the group on the other side).

Currently there's no premade groups permitted in solo queue.