[2019] Observations from a fresh account

I'll post this here as well to clarify how protected(novice) matchmaking works:

While in novice status (below 70 battles) — most of your battles will be in protected matchmaker (meaning only novices and bots in the battle, and amount of players should be equal in each team), but some might not, here's in which cases:

- If you've waited more than 65 seconds, normal MM is used (for example if you're the only novice in the queue — you won't get into battle with only bots on enemy team)
- If you're in division with a veteran (>= 70 battles) — normal matchmaker is used.
- If you're playing with tier V+ ship, normal MM is used
- If you've played 70 battles, normal MM is used

That's checked before each battle, so just because you got into normal matchmaker battle once shouldn't prevent you from being matched in novice matchmaker in subsequent attempts, as long as you're still below 70 battles. So avoid coop and using T5+ ships during that time, it's a good opportunity to accumulate extra resources and some achievements.

"So avoid coop and using T5+ ships during that time, it's a good opportunity to accumulate extra resources and some achievements."
The thing is - you get bots even in your random battles, and they give your more resources than co-op.

Yeah, like explained above during that protected period ~95% of battles in Random PvP mode effectively work as 90% "coop" because most of the teams are bots. BUT you get paid for those bots as if they were players and you can obtain achievements — i truly unique opportunity! And it gets wasted if you choose to play coop instead, no need to play it at all (except for unlocking Random battles) until you get out of protected matchmaker.

But why? They'd get into normal PvP battles sooner or later, no need to form false expectations about difficulty of the game. Yeah, if you want to cheese novice matchmaker to the max — you're free to exploit that, but it doesn't need to be the norm for the player experience.

The actual harmful confusion that some (the most observant) novices get is that game's online is so low that it's always supplemented with bots which is false. I have that explained in the FAQ, i tell then whenever it gets asked, but still think there should be a better way to handle that, maybe in a form of pop-up after N first battles. Need to consult the game's team on this :\ Some might enjoy easy victories, but dislike when difficulty curve suddenly goes up while others may decide it's too easy for their taste before getting out of novice matchmaker. Hard to think of a silver bullet for this.

No, so it's just a bit of advice for those making alt accounts. Or to encourage new player to continue. You don't really need to think too much about it, just create account and play PvP, that's all, since you're not a novice — you'll get High Caliber and Confederate often during those times, i did do when i made my alts.

Since Random mode won't be hard — novice won't have a reason to switch to coop, so it should work fine on itself, without understanding.