....that sounds LIke Deathwalker, whose special ability is "re-animate"

It could be deathwalker, but SP droppers (tankers) also do this quite often. If they lose their main "tank" mech in FFA, they suicide the others to revive the "tank" mech. You're right that it reduces the kill score, but in FFA tankers can have up to 30, 40, or even more kills. So a deficit of 4 becomes immaterial.

In normal FFA rules, getting killed should force a respawn with a fresh mech, and the only way someone gets the “same mech twice”  is if they voluntarily self-destruct before dying which obviously wouldn’t apply at the very beginning of a game, and it shouldn’t happen instantly after you kill them. 

I reported a complaint similar to this to a customer support person thru email. They told me there has been a glitch where you can bypass the revive timer. So because it is something that the game does allow, they do not consider it a cheat. And they are ok with it since they have done nothing to fix this glitch. Compared to almost all other games, this is the only game I have seen that allows "legal" cheats. And no matter how many times you complain, they don't seem to understand basic game play and why they are cheats. I think everyone involved with this game has never found a game they were good at, so they allow all sorts of legal cheats to they themselves can finally win it a game. 

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