The MiA OC games are very slick - the thing is, they aren't doing anything illegal, but exploiting two inbuilt factors:
1) They have better co-ordination
Any coherent clan or fleet or group of players on the same wavelength knows there are times when being able to call for help, request a scout, or call out torp walls on voice are huge advantages. You see this in some All Welcome games when clanmates for little groups that cover each other and fight off a greater number/weight of less coordinated ships.
2) Op Convoy games are long, losers get no to mediocre exp, so people quit if things are going badly after the first round. More exp-hungry people are worse, they quit if things go bad in the first 5 minutes, or they realize the game is balanced, and therefore, exp will not likely exceed 2-3k
These people are in it for the exp, so when the face MiA, and MiA spirits away the first two boxes in 6 minutes, they leave. I've seen high level players do this (Witchemania among others). They leave, and suddenly their team is down a CL2/CA. MiA proceeds to continue walking all over them for the rest of the round.
By round 2, they're down a bunch of ships, now even those who aren't wanton exp whores aren't having too much fun, outnumbered, no prospect of scoring, and maybe even getting spawn-killed to boot.
By the end of round 2, the players on the winning team are resorting to bribing the few remaining ships on the other side to stick through round 3. If they retreat, the winners still get good exp. But if the remaining ships stay, the winning team can hustle crates unimpeded for the remainder of the game, racking up obscene exp. One way to guaruntee this is for some trustworthy clan members to take turns playing on the other side.
The clearest exploit of this tendency is to make a long game (3 X 20, 5 X 15)... if people get trashed in the first round or two, they won't stick around for another 40+ minutes. I never retreat from 30 minute or 45 minute games, but a game that long gives me pause.
so.... Team B are MiA, first 15 minutes are well played, hard fought, and completely pwn Team A. By the third period, Team A consists of 2 MiA players and some stubborn players or n00bs who don't know what's going on. Cue 3 periods of all-out crate running.
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A clan doesn't even have to be involved, it just makes it easier to coordinate. Oftentimes, this cycle happens by itself. I was in one 3 x 20 minute game where we were balanced, but thanks to crashes, quitters, and a well played first 10 minutes, Alpha was down to 1 afk DD and 1 DDX who decided to humour us and stay. We ran a full 10 crates in round 2, and 7 or 8 in round 1 and 3 netting 17k exp.
And all it takes to get that much exp is to play well for 10 minutes and scare off most of the opposing team.
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