Ladle-13/Guidelines

Stage 1
Team-Captains visit the Ladle/Challenge Board to establish provisional playoffs.

Again, this is only provisional. Only the Team-Captain is authorised to place your team on the board. S/He may alter this whenever they wish, and this may mean some jostling since placement not only determines who your team goes up against in the first and subsequent rounds, but also which servers you will be playing in. Inform your Team-Captain of your preferences, your favourite servers, and consider ping, stability, and general conditions. The cut off for the provisional placement of teams is 00.00am GMT on the day of the event. 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 Armagetron at 7pm 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 Joda's web interface or Wrtlprnft's interface or Durka's IRC Applet. Useful instructions include /nick  and /join #arma-ladle. Last minute alterations to brackets should be decided upon, and once confirmed, all players can view the brackets on the wiki at the Challenge Board. Team-Captains return to their teams and confirm who they are playing and where.

The Final is at 9pm GMT, Semi's at 8.15pm GMT, Quarter's at 7.30pm 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 month of preparation to write it...

Administration will record results on the brackets as they come in. The brackets should be followed, unless Team-Captains have legitimate reason to alter the course of progress. The only thing to be decided, if there is any question, is the server. When approaching the final, teams will rightly wish to play on servers which favour them. This must ultimately be resolved by the Team-Captains involved.

On the games on Z-Man's Ladle Frotress, 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:
 * Only Team-captains should alter the provisional play-offs in the Challenge Room. A spot switching has to be in agreement between both teams interested.
 * 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.