Rules Explained: The Intent Behind the Rules

The rules page is the authoritative version — short, numbered, enforceable. This guide is the companion conversation: why those rules exist and how they’re read in the situations players actually ask about. Where anything here seems to differ from the rules page, the rules page wins.

One framing to carry with you: our enforcement is built on intent, context, and history (Rule 0 and the Discord “common sense” rule). Admins aren’t hunting for technical fouls; they’re protecting the match. Most of the explanations below are just that sentence applied to specifics.

“Main camping is intent-based, not distance-based” — what?

Other servers draw a circle around main base: outside it fine, inside it banned. Circles are easy to enforce and easy to abuse — camp one meter outside, or get punished for a fight that legitimately rolled toward main.

Rule 9 asks a different question: what were you doing?

• Parked in the treeline watching main’s exit road, waiting for vehicles to leave? Camping. Prohibited, regardless of distance.
• Mining the routes vehicles must take out of main? Same.
• You engaged a BTR two grid squares away and chased it as it fled toward main? Legitimate pursuit — but the moment it reaches main protection, you break off.
• Firing mortars from beside your own main? You’ve made main a firebase, so it loses its protection while you do.

The intent standard means edge cases get judged by admins. That’s a feature: it protects the new pilot lifting off from main and the attacker whose fight honestly drifted there.

Squad baiting and the SL requirements

Rule 5 requires SLs to have a working mic, speak English, run the SL kit, and actually lead. “Squad baiting” — creating a squad with no intention of leading it, usually to grab a vehicle or a kit — is kickable.

Why so firm? Because eight people joined that squad on the promise the name implies. A silent SL strands them in a leaderless squad while every real squad fills up. If you don’t want to lead, that’s completely fine — most people don’t, most nights — just join a squad instead of creating one.

Locking rules: why 4 for infantry, 2 for armor?

Rule 6: infantry squads can’t lock below 4 members; armor squads may lock at 2 crewmen; specialist vehicle squads may run solo where appropriate.

The tension being balanced: locked one-man “squads” hoard kits and vehicles and shrink the team’s real fighting strength — but a tank crew of two who’ve played together for years is a legitimate unit that a random third can genuinely break. So: infantry (where more bodies always help) locks high, armor (where crew cohesion is the asset) locks low.

The one-minute rule for unassigned players exists for the same reason — 90 unassigned players is a mob, not a team.

Vehicle claims: “first come, first serve” in practice

Rule 7. No claims boards, no name-reservations. If your crew is in the vehicle with the right kits, it’s yours.

• Naming your squad “TANK” is a signal, and most regulars will respect it as a courtesy — but it is not a rule, and admins won’t enforce it.
• The two-crewman requirement for crew-locked vehicles isn’t ceremony: a solo BTR can’t spot, shoot, and drive at once, so it dies cheap and takes team tickets with it. (5-ticket vehicles are exempt — losing one solo is an acceptable experiment.)
• MBTs requiring an SL aboard puts the team’s most expensive asset on the command net, where it can actually be coordinated.

The streaming rule

Rule 3 welcomes streamers with two conditions: map covered, 10-minute delay. This isn’t distrust of streamers — it’s that a live, uncovered stream is a wallhack anyone in the audience can exploit against the 49 other people on your team. The delay makes stream sniping useless while costing the streamer nothing.

Seeding rules: why so strict about a casual mode?

The seeding rules read like they’re protecting something fragile because they are. At 10v10, one mortar FOB or one squad hunting spawn radios ends the entire evening for forty future players — the seed collapses and the server stays empty. Mid-fights only, no emplacements, no FOB hunting: every clause removes a way one squad can accidentally kill the server’s whole night. The seeding guide covers the culture side.

“Will I get banned for an accidental teamkill?”

No. Rule 4 explicitly expects accidents — the standard is acknowledge them. Type “sorry, my bad” and carry on. What draws action is the pattern: intentional TKs, revenge TKs, “accidents” that keep happening to the same victim. Intent, context, history.

When you disagree with a call

It happens — intent-based rules mean human judgment, and humans miss. Don’t relitigate it in all-chat mid-match; it derails the game and never changes the outcome. Instead, use the player support pathway: reports and appeals get reviewed by people with logs, replays where available, and the time to look properly. The same page covers what to include to make review fast.