FAF Code of Conduct
Welcome to the Forged Alliance Forever community! By joining us, you are helping to keep our favorite RTS alive and thriving more than a decade after its launch. Please take a moment to review the following rules and guidelines to make sure that being part of our community remains a pleasant experience for everyone.
By accessing FAF services, you agree to the rules outlined here. This Code of Conduct is supplemental to the FAF Terms of Service. Users who do not follow these rules may receive penalties, limiting their access to FAF services. Additional contribution guidelines exist for those considering contributing to FAF.
Moderation team, ban appeals, and processes
The moderation team actively moderates the FAF environment. They judge rule violations and decide on appropriate penalties. This includes the game itself, as well as all official FAF channels of communication, such as the FAF client, the FAF forums, and the official FAF Discord server. Moderation decisions may be appealed through the appeal system.
More information on report processing, ban reasons, appeals, and report-related FAQs can be found on the FAF Moderation page.
Reporting Code of Conduct violations
The moderation team relies on reports from community members to enforce the Code of Conduct.
- In-game — Reports can be created using the “Moderation reports” option in the top-right of the client. Such reports will generally only be accepted from players who participated in that particular game.
- Forum posts — The individual posts can be directly reported using the ‘report post’ button.
- FAF Discord server — you may choose to ping the moderation team directly, or you may create a moderation ticket and link to the offending message.
We encourage reporting disrespectful or unfair behavior. Submitted reports are expected to be truthful, intentionally submitting false reports will result in penalties to your account.
Contents
Common rules summarized
Section 1: General rules and responsibilities
Section 2: In-Game conduct
Section 3: Communication
Section 4: Account Management
Section 5: FAF content development (Mods and Maps)
Common rules summarized
This is a summary of the most commonly breached rules. More details on these and other rules are in the relevant sections.
- You are accountable for your own actions.
- Do not insult or harass other users. Treat other players with respect.
- Report offenses, rather than taking revenge.
- Do not self-destruct or "CTRL+K" your base.
- Mass extractor slots and reclaim cannot be ‘reserved’ for a particular player.
- Do not intentionally leave games prematurely (see detailed rules for further details and exceptions).
- Do not make multiple accounts or share your account with others.
Section 1: General rules and responsibilities
FAF as a community cannot work without respect, fairness, and accountability. By participating, you agree to follow the rules that maintain and contribute to that community. It is important to remember that this is a shared space where everyone should feel welcome and encouraged to play.
FAF regulations
- ToS — By using FAF services, you agree to the Terms of Service and are responsible for your actions, behavior, and communications.
- Moderation actions — FAF reserves the right to take action on posts or accounts without prior warning or notice. This includes but is not limited to deleting, locking, or moving forum posts. The moderation team has full authority and discretion to determine violations and apply appropriate sanctions based on the specific circumstances of each case. Moderators retain the discretion to act on behavior not explicitly prohibited by these rules if it significantly deviates from what a reasonable person would consider appropriate.
General rules
- Privacy — Do not invade others’ privacy.
- Illegal acts — Do not use FAF services to violate any laws.
- Assisting rule violations — Do not assist others in breaking FAF rules. This includes making cheats, exploits, or uploading maps that unfairly benefit one team.
- Harming FAF — Do not undertake any actions or communications that are harmful to FAF (this includes the FAF client, any FAF related service, FAF infrastructure or its community).
- Questions — If you are unsure if something is against the FAF Code of Conduct, contact the moderation team.
Responsibilities
- Personal accountability — Each user is accountable for their own actions.
- Independent penalties — Penalties are determined individually for each user involved in rule violations.
- No revenge — Taking revenge against another user, like griefing them back or responding to verbal abuse with more abuse, is not allowed and will lead to penalties for all parties involved. We encourage you to keep playing as best as you can, and to report the player after the game. If the player’s behavior makes it impossible to continue, you can leave the game and report the issue instead.
Section 2: In-Game conduct
FAF is at its best when every user comes to compete in and contribute to a fun experience. For the game to be enjoyable, fairness is key — this means a community free from cheating, misuse of game mechanics, harassment, and any behavior that prevents others from having a good time.
For competitive games, playing to win doesn’t have to mean following fixed strategies; experimenting is valid if you support your team and try to win. This respect should extend to other players as well — even if their playstyle differs from yours, focus on teamwork and the shared goal of victory.
Teamplay and Fairness:
- Friendly fire — Do not reclaim allied units or purposefully fire on allies.
- Controlling behavior — Do not force teammates to play in a certain way. Constructive feedback is great if it's asked for, but ordering people around is not acceptable.
- Teammates — Treat your teammates as they would wish to be treated.
- Sharing resources — Resources such as reclaim and mass extractors do not have to be shared evenly, but be open to sharing them fairly with your team.
- There are no reserved mass extractor slots or reclaim. Teammates taking available resources does not constitute as griefing.
- Game pausing - If another player pauses the game and requests a short break, allow it briefly, but don't feel obliged to wait too long. Abusing pauses to gain an in-game advantage is not allowed.
- Helping enemy team - Do not maliciously seek to help the enemy team by sharing match-relevant information of a teammate to the enemy (for example, this might include telling the enemy team that a teammate is building a nuke launcher)
Commit to Competition
- Leaving games: Don’t leave in the first 5 minutes, and don’t frequently* leave games.
- Using the recall function, or leaving an abandoned game (for example, multiple players disconnecting together, or the players on both teams agree to restart the game), is permitted.
- In share until death games, if possible, try instead to transfer units to a teammate and move somewhere safe before going AFK. If going AFK is not possible, make sure you minimize friendly fire from your ACU explosion before you leave the game.
- *As a rough guideline, the mod team will typically consider someone being reported for 3+ games in a week by teammates as 'frequently' leaving games
- Forced surrender — Do not try to force teammates to give up if they’re still playing to win.
- CTRL-K — Do not self-destruct, also known as or "CTRL-K", your base or significant quantities of units.
Cheating, exploits, and griefing:
- Rating manipulation — Do not engage in rating manipulation, such as intentionally losing or forfeiting games early to lower your rating, or having someone else forfeit a game to boost your rating.
- Ruining games — Do not deliberately ruin games by abusing game mechanics, such as continuously pausing the game or spamming pings.
- Third party software — Do not use UI mods, macros, or autoclickers that provide unfair advantages.
- In case you are uncertain if any of these are allowed, contact the moderation team.
- Disruption — Do not intentionally disrupt games or FAF services. The moderation team will assess the context and impact of such actions, examples of which include deliberately slowing the game or breaking lobbies.
- Exploits — Abusing any exploit, including but not limited to those listed on this list of known exploits, will result in penalties. Report any exploits to the moderation team.
- Assisting others in using exploits or failing to report players exploiting a game you are participating in may result in penalties.
Section 3: Communication
When engaging in any form of communication in the FAF environment, you are responsible for your words and how you express them. Offensive, hateful, or vulgar language is not permitted, and we moderate this strictly.
Respectful Behavior:
- Insults — Do not insult or harass other users based on such things as sexual orientation, gender, race, culture, religion, or nationality.
- Lies and hatred — Do not communicate material that is knowingly false, defamatory, inaccurate, abusive, hateful, harassing, or derogatory.
- Respect — Be respectful towards fellow users in all communication channels (forum, chat, voice, Discord).
- Threats — Threats or harassment toward other users are unacceptable, regardless of the specific language used.
Privacy:
- Doxing — Do not leak the personal information of other users.
- Your info — For your protection, it is recommended that you do not send any personal identifiable information about yourself in your messages.
Content Guidelines:
- Spam — Do not spam, whether it be pings or messages, or post material that lowers the quality of the communication medium.
- Illegal content — Do not discuss drugs, pornography, or similar content.
- Piracy — Do not distribute or provide links to pirated/copyrighted content.
- Adverts — Do not advertise goods and services, and commercially oriented material that is not a part of the FAF community or services.
- Safe For Work — All names, content, and communications (including usernames and lobby titles) must be appropriate for a work environment.
Language:
- English — While quick questions or brief conversations in languages other than English are allowed, conversations in the FAF Discord Server and the main IRC channel (#Aeolus) should be in English.
- Discussing bans — Discussing specific moderation actions in public is not permitted. Such discussions include arguing that a ban is unfair or that a specific offense should have been allowed due to specific circumstances. Please see the FAF Moderation page for more information on how to discuss or appeal an action by the moderation team.
- Discussing moderation — Discussing general moderation actions or the FAF Code of Conduct is allowed. Such discussions include proposed changes to the Code of Conduct or discussing the actions of the moderation team as a whole.
Political Discussions:
- Political discussions are only allowed in the designated Discord politics channel.
Section 4: Account Management
Your FAF account represents your identity within the community, and you should take care to maintain its integrity. This means keeping your account information accurate and secure, as well as adhering to guidelines regarding account creation and management. Attempts to manipulate, evade bans, or otherwise misuse accounts will be met with penalties.
Single Account Use:
- Account sharing — Do not share your account with others.
- Multiple accounts — Users may only create one account. Creating multiple accounts (e.g. for smurfing or evading bans) is not allowed.
Ban Evasion:
- Ban evasion — Do not attempt to circumvent bans or restrictions on your account. Bans on one account may extend to all accounts associated with your device(s) for the same length of time.
- Account manipulation — Do not alter or falsify account details to evade detection or moderation.
Usernames
- Impersonation — Do not choose a username that impersonates other users or is visually identical to other usernames.
- Unreadable names — Do not abuse similar or indistinguishable characters. For example, names such as ‘|lI|I|I|I|||’ are not allowed.
- Family friendly — Names should comply with the rules on communicating in FAF (e.g. names should be ‘family appropriate’).
- Renames — Usernames may be changed once every 3 months.
Account linking:
- Linking — Each FAF account must be linked to a Steam or GOG account that owns a valid copy of Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance.
Section 5: FAF content development (Mods and Maps)
The FAF community values creativity, and players who make new maps and mods help keep the game fresh and alive. When sharing your work, make sure to respect others by following copyright rules and getting permission if needed. We encourage you to come up with new ideas, but copying or changing someone else's work without their permission and/or adhering to the provided license takes away from the community's hard work.
General:
