Boy it has been a long night.
Ratt, thanks for your "help", but you are not helping.
Tried and I talked in the MA tonight, nice talk, got a lot of things straightened out. Good to meet you Tried.
So most of this is for those that read this thread.
We DO NOT switch squads from side to side every event. Never have, not possible, never been a "rule". If we did then it would always be the same set of squads facing each other in every event, that would get old.
We do our best to move squads around so they do not see the same side more than 3 times in a row. we TRY to keep it to two times in a row. If a squad sees the same side 4 times in a row (and says something about it) they will most likely be moved.
There is four things that we are trying to balance in side assignments
1. Numbers of pilots on each side.
2. Keep squads from seeing the same side too many times in a row.
3. Moving the squads around so the same groups of squads are not always facing each other.
4. Making sure that each side has a good mix of small, medium, and large squads.
Your squad request is just that, a request. This last week, I think 3 squads requested Axis. Guess what, they got their request. Does this mean your request is meaningless? NO, we look at them and do what we can.
I know that a lot of the newer squads, and some of the older ones, don't know how tricky this process is. But the same method has been used FOR YEARS. It has seemed to work pretty well over the long haul.
If you watch you will see that the older squads only say something about side assignments when they see the same side for a fourth time. and when that happens we will almost always fix it.