Admin Theory #
We as admins are here to protect our community and foster a welcoming, friendly environment for good games. We should be aiming to use the least intervention necessary to accomplish that goal. That will vary situation to situation but we trust all our admins to use their best judgement in the moment.
All admin calls in-game stand. If a player wishes to discuss a ruling at length, they are welcome to take the discussion to a ticket in our discord. If there is disagreement between admins, it should only take place within private admin channels, whether in-game or Discord. Admins arguing in public channels leads to confusion and often further escalation among players and will not be tolerated.
We should always be holding ourselves to at least as high a standard as we expect from the blueberries. An offence being against an admin or member is not a reason to escalate, and a negative comment against our community doesn’t call for intervention.
The rules below are not exhaustive. Squad is a game with a lot of moving parts, roles, and rules. Instead of trying to list every rule possible we have set standards for players to uphold. If there is concern that seems to fall outside of the rules it can be discussed in the appropriate channels.
Unnamed Server Rules: https://theunnamedcorp.com/index.php/rules/
Offworld License Policy: https://www.joinsquad.com/server-licensing-and-administration-policies
Squad CoC: https://www.joinsquad.com/code-of-conduct
Evidence Standards and Storage #
Evidence should not only prove that something happened, it should prove that what happened also broke server rules. As most of us know, not all situations in Squad are cut and dry. We have to do our best to be reasonably confident in the narrative, especially before bans are sent. Otherwise we risk banning players for accidents or poor gameplay instead of ill intent.
Good evidence should show context around the event, so we can be confident in ruling out accidents and misunderstandings.
Evidence must be uploaded with every ban. Medal, Streamable, or any links that may expire are not permitted to be used for evidence. If the clip is too big, ask someone with Nitro to download and post the clip in the evidence channel or upload it directly to Battlemetrics with a note in the thread you’ve done so.
Evidence allows us to look back in an hour, or a year and be confident and accountable in the actions we’ve taken. We all make mistakes. Strong evidence and documentation habits help us minimize and fix them, and ensure that we are fair to our community.
Community Ban List (CBL) and Guardian Bans #
We export certain bans to shared lists. Severe conduct violations (racism, etc) go to the CBL. Cheating bans are mirrored across 98+ organizations by SG. It is especially important that any shared bans have strong evidence as we will be called to account for them.
Server Rules #
Below is a breakdown of each server rule and some guidance on how different situations may be approached. As always, admin discretion is allowed and encouraged.
Rule 0: Community Health #
Per Offworld’s License policy, all servers are allowed to remove players for the health of their community without explicit evidence the player has broken rules on their server. These bans are usually used for players that have been reported by other servers for extremely disruptive actions and have been preemptively banned from Unnamed Services. Admin action against players for in-game actions should never fall under this rule and any community health bans must be well documented and approved by a member of leadership.
Rule 1: Abusive Behavior #
Behavior that falls under this rule is a hard line on our services. Any language, actions, or behavior that crosses this line should be documented and promptly confronted. This includes, but is not limited to racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, and transphobia; harassment and bullying; hate speech and Nazism.
Rule 2: Conduct #
Rule 2 is for conduct violations that call for a less harsh response than those under rule 1, but should still be addressed.
Political Activism is not allowed in the server. It is not necessary to action every political reference in a username or the like; it just isn’t worth our time to worry about. At the same time, the server is not the place for advocacy, extended political discussion, or use of political themes to provoke responses. When in doubt, best to talk it over or let it be.
As a general rule, we should be looking to action political references that clearly cross over into breaking other rules, such as trolling, expressing hate, or advocating violence.
In-game channels are for gameplay discussion only. Players are expected to respect all the players on the server. In-game chat is never the best place to try to handle an issue. If a player has a serious grievance it is best practice to encourage them to make a ticket in discord to discuss the issue. As The Unnamed does not distinguish admins from members via tags it’s best discussions happen in a space where they can be sure the person they are talking to is an admin. If the issues are severe you can direct them to ask to speak to a senior admin.
This should only be enforced in relatively extreme cases, when things are getting out of hand. A bit of off-topic chatter isn’t a concern.
All players should strive for competitive, fun matches. While we do have an auto-balancing system in place, admins are encouraged to make manual adjustments if needed. The commands for manually moving players can be found in the Admin Chat Commands page. When manually balancing small changes usually make the biggest impact. Swapping one very good squad with one poor performing Squad can easily balance out the server. It is best practice to try to move UNN players first but ensure we are not leaning too heavily on any one group for balancing. Being swapped to the losing team every time you are winning can quickly become tiresome to a group and lead to them no longer wanting to play on our server.
Players should actively attempt to contribute to the team effort. This is not a rule we should be actively enforcing; it is on the books for extreme cases and to encourage better behaviour. We are not a PTFO server.
Rule 3: Gameplay #
When admining players’ gameplay regardless of the situation, there are a few key things to think about.
1. Are the player’s actions malicious or are they simply poor gameplay?
2. Will stepping in as an admin make the situation better?
3. What is the outcome should I step in?
Oftentimes, gameplay issues will sort themselves out via command chat or other player’s pressure. As noted before, we as admins are here to step in only when the players are being disruptive to the team by breaking server rules. Poor gameplay does not usually fall under our jobs as admins. Players will make mistakes and bad plays will happen; that is part of Squad. This includes helicopter crashes from experienced pilots, putting down bad FOBs, or running armor into marked infantry. Unless there is significant reason to believe there is ill intent behind these actions, you as an admin should never action a player for playing badly. The only exception to this rule is when a player is attempting to fly a helicopter and clearly does not know how.
Intentional teamkilling is not allowed. We should be reasonably sure of the player’s intent before actioning. Intent can be determined through patterns, complaints, or context. We all know accidents happen or there is a small amount of goofing off between friends. Oftentimes, apologies may happen via voice chat when stopping to type in chat may not be feasible. We need to ensure we are actioning fairly and not giving ourselves any passes that we would not be giving to a community player.
Do not create a squad you do not intend to lead, all SLs must have a mic and use it in English. If you see a squad that clearly has no SL during staging/has been squad baited, best practice is usually to disband it and allow those players to find a squad that does before rollout. Squad leaders without a kit will be handled by an automatic trigger though Battlemetrics and generally won’t need much admin intervention. SLs without a mic can be mic checked via command or local before being removed. It’s not unheard of for an SL to not respond to their squad if command is loud or for them to have stepped away for a moment during staging. Remember, removing an SL usually means that the squad will be leaderless unless there is someone willing to take over. Ideally this is a last resort.
Ghosting, Teaming, or Stream Sniping are strictly prohibited. While there are many different levels of this, anything beyond sharing tickets in chat is likely to be met with a ban. Before any action is taken, we need to be very sure we have evidence to back up the accusation.
Cheating, Hacking, and Exploiting are strictly prohibited. For exploiting, focus on players actively abusing the exploit. Remember that many can be triggered accidently.
Rule 4: Squads and Assets #
Name Claim rules are cut and dry. These are in place to ensure the game runs as smoothly as possible. When handling claim or SL issues, especially during staging, it’s better to move quickly so as to not disrupt the rollout. Once the claim is confirmed, if there are extended issues where players will not give up an asset they do not have claim after a warning it is best to kick the offending players.
If the asset has left main and not being returned, allowing them to get to a safe location or in a spot that is easily recoverable before being kicked is the best play. Again these issues should be handled quickly if there is clear indication that the players are not going to return the asset. Allowing claim issues to escalate can lead to players intentionally wasting the asset and severely hurting the team.
Claimed assets should be used in a timely manner. This rule is on the books for extreme circumstances only. This is more of a reminder to crews to get their assets rolling and not a rule we should be looking to enforce. If we need to enforce it, squads should be reminded their claim is available and some grace given as long as they are attempting to return for the claim.
Rule 5: Main Camping #
Our version of main camping is very cut and dry and has zero basis in player intent. There is a line, and if player’s cross the line they may be removed from the server. A visual example is available here. There are however a couple of scenarios where players may run into some confusion.
FOBs or Objectives Close to the Line: If the active point is close to the main camping line, the fob radius rule is out of play. Players that place habs close to their own main are also giving up any safety they may have had from the main camping rules.
Indirect Fire: Indirect fire vehicles should always be firing from outside of the main camping fob radius and are thus fair game to be hunted and engaged. If they are not, this is a reportable admin issue and not one that players should be entering the main camping radius to remedy whenever possible. There is some grace allowed for smaller maps like Narva but for larger maps where the arty vics need to push far from the main to fire on active points, those hunting it should not be entering the main zone to kill them.
Rule 6: Seeding #
Do not do anything that may harm the health of the seed. Seeding enforcement should focus on extreme bad actors or anyone that is damaging the health of the seed. Generally allowing players to have fun during seeding is the ideal. If players are having fun, they are more likely to stick around and seed the server. On the flipside of that, if something is causing players to not have fun or leave, that is the time to step in. Examples might be spawn camping, team killing, or excessive building on point.
