Spork/Guidelines

Stage 1
Team-Captains visit the Spork/Challenge Board to sign up their team.

Again, this is only provisional. Only the Team-Captain is not authorized to place your team on the board. Due to past conflicts about jostling for position, slots are randomly selected. S/He may alter this team's sign-up whenever they wish, many teams use the Challenge Board with their teams to sign up who will play. Inform your Team-Captain of your preferences, your favorite servers, and consider ping, stability, and general conditions. The cut off for the Challenge Board sign-up of teams is 00.00am GMT on the wednesday before the event. This time gap allows for the servers and team positions to be drawn randomly and decided. In addition, This will allow time for admin to copy out the provisional bracket list, and allows all players to know who they are expected to play and where well before time. The most important thing for players to do is elect a Team-Captain who you can trust, who listens to everyone in the team, who is capable of communicating with other team-captains, and can follow the procedure to the letter on the night. You may also wish to elect a stand-in in-case the Team-Captain can't make it.

Stage 2
Team-Captains register at irc.freenode.net Armagetron at 6:30 pm gmt, then teams play the best of 3 matches.

Before the first round, all Team-Captains should familiarise themselves with IRC using one of the web interfaces such as PJIRC or Mibbit. Useful instructions include /nick  and /join #arma-ladle. Team-Captains should inform their teams before the day of who they are playing and where. In addition the Team-Captains should confirm with their own players to insure they will have a squad to compete with.

The Final is at 9pm GMT, Semis are at 8.15pm GMT, Quarters are at 7.30pm GMT, Opening Round is at 6.45pm GMT, and previous rounds every 45mins for as many rounds as required. The Challenge Board has the details of who and where players should be assembled, in case there are problems with IRC chatrooms, or players need to take a leak, etc. Do not listen to random people appearing and changing plans suddenly. Stick to the script -- it has taken a season of preparation to write it...

Administration will record results on the brackets as they come in. The server selection must be followed. Thease will be updated as soon as the resaults come in. This must ultimately be resolved by the Team-Captains involved.

On the games on some servers, team management is available; designated team captains can choose to lock their teams themselves so no random people can join, can then invite their players without hoping the admin does an ALLOW_TEAM_CHANGE_PLAYER command in time, and substitute players can already participate in team chat. More on that here.

Stage 3
Winners are celebrated, participants are congratulated, and game-analysis, results and feedback are welcomed!

Hurrah! Well done! Feedback is welcome to improve the system for the next time. Reports on game play, video's, etc, also invests more value in the game.

Guidelines
The following guidelines for all players may prove useful:


 * During the event, do not listen to anyone external to your team; rely on your Team-captain for information as to who you are playing and where.
 * Regarding ping, make sure your team-captain is aware of your server preference when s/he enters your team in the Challenge Board.
 * Regarding imbalanced teams... anything less than a full of team of 8 is your problem... an obliging opponent may reduce their numbers if they wish...
 * If opponents don't turn up on time, they forfeit, unless again a team wishes to delay the start... though this causes problems for subsequent timing...
 * Regarding new players turning up: server admins can make their server private, lock it once all players are in, or kick new players immediately

If you wish to discuss any of the stages, add to the guidelines or contribute to the rules, please click on the discussion tab above.