Not only is their squad power far above mine, there are THREE top 500 players.  I solo queued by the way.

They definitely need to fix matchmaking system. It's so messed up ;⁠)

Hi! Thanks a lot for sharing your experience with us, it will help us a lot to improve the Matchmaking. For now, you may try to reconfigure your Hangar by picking Mechs and Weapons more within a single Grade. It might help as the Matchmaking system is aimed to pick players with approximately same Hangar power but as you can see, sometimes it gets confused 

You are probably not in as bad shape there as you might think. I'm at 5800 SP and I have to fight 9k and 10k people all the time. Most of the time it's not an issue.

I notice this morning that I am being matched at times against people who are as low as 1900 and 3k for example just now two battles in row. I feel so bad I stop killing them and just kill bots. I hope they didn't get frustrated and quit.

There should probably be a plus and minus range for match making that doesn't exceed a 1k delta maybe? I don't know but this version is not working all the time very well. 

Top 500 only refers to their activity level, not ability or wins. It varies but many of them aren't that good. I realize it might make more of an impact with low SP hangars but generally a reasonable opponent match will be within 1k of your hangar strength.

Hi, where would I find more info about the grades?  I tried removing some mechs to lower my squad power and then got placed against even higher squad power players.  All my mechs and weapons are either 3 or 4-star (the only exception being Disc Launcher 8s since I got them 5-star), I would have thought that would have evened out the grade.

I do not recommend listening to CrystalDrew. If you have your mech hangar all one rarity, you still get BOTs with higher level gear/implants and you'll be gimped on top of that. If you have a win percentage over 50%, you're simply going to get put against players higher SP. I have 4 different accounts and can promise you that the average differential in SP only gets worse.

I've been hearing whipers about this over 50% win rate. 

Is win rate factored into matchmaking? If so why would that factor if it's about weapon and mech power?

Devs?

I bet you are right, that win percentage must factor into things.

I really noticed this happening since the rarity mech/weapon update.  I would lose more matches, then when I looked, the SP on the enemy team were much higher.  I swear, that update made Mortars and Javs so unbelievably annoying!  Helix Racks too.   Most mechs have literally no way to counter it once you've been locked onto.  :(

If you have time, could take a look at this post?  I listed all the mechs/weapons that I have, along with their rank/levels.

https://plarium.com/forum/en/mech-arena/702_game-discussion/1435016_what-to-upgrade/

I have over 8000 a-coins I can spend (been saving for a while), and no idea what is best to upgrade.  Too many options.  Most of my weapons and mechs are still only 3-star.

I do know for sure that I am going to 4-star the EM Rifle 16 and 12 with 2500 of those 8k a-coins.

Appreciate any feedback!

Gotta be honest, javs and mortars aren't hard to evade. If you put yourself in a wide and open space you are probably just going to have to bite the bullet. This was easy for a while until I started playing in the tournaments.

I don't get the matching algorithm though. I have paid about 6 dollars for random stuff and I get matched against a maxed out gatecrasher with upgraded missile racks (hitting me for 50-55k+ hp per magazine). My weapons do 20k max (if is a clear shot). Doesn't quite seem fair.

I gave advice based on my experience only, and it worked for me. You may have seen that I'm trying to share screenshots of my gaming experience when it comes to facts, so it's not the case when I'm trying to embellish the current state of affairs somehow, and it really works for me, that's why I gave such kind of recommendation. Besides, it was mentioned, "It might help," and then I explained why it might work, I'm not saying that's approach is 100% foolproof as I know that the Matchmaking doesn't calibrate properly sometimes.

Talking about Matchmaking, we are working on its improvements right now