Server rules (Updated 31st January 2012)

This is the master list for all the rules we have on all our servers. We want all players to have fun on our servers and we have many extras to make being on our servers enjoyable. We have these rules in place to ensure that everyone can have fun, not to stop you having fun. We try to be as fair as possible but we do have to limit what players can do. The reasons for these rules are explained below, so if you don’t agree with them after reading the reason then I suggest you find some different servers to play on.
Otherwise if you have any questions then feel free to post a question here or contact one of the admins privately.

Admins and Moderators are Gods
Or near enough. Whatever an admin or moderator says, goes. If an admin or moderator tells you to stop fighting in a certain area then you move somewhere else. If an admin or moderator does something like swap your team, disarms you, freezes you or moves you to a jail, it is for a reason. Don’t argue with it.
Current Admins
These are the current GmodTech Admins. Clicking the blue ‘Add as friend’ button will open your steam and send an invite to them to add them to your friend list. Do this so that if you need one of us you can contact us ASAP!

Current Moderators
We also have Moderators who are mini-admins. They can jail, swap players teams and even kick players, as well as some other admin only commands. While Moderators can’t ban or unban players, if they call one of the admins and ask for a player to be banned then we will. They can be identified in-game by their olive tags and name. Our current moderators are:

For a list of the donaters, click here

Botfarm and Factoryrules

  • We do not allow random killing on our achievement servers. We define random killing as attempting to kill any other player, whether they have God/Buddha/uber/powerplay mode or not, when they do no want you to. Just because a player is unable to die does not mean you’re allowed to get away with trying – they probably don’t want to be pestered by other people while they do what they are doing.
  • We also do not allow players to prevent any other player from getting achievements, whether it be by swapping the team/class of the bot they are using, opening the water pit, pushing the player or their bot into something like a tele-trap, or away from something like a dispenser while they gather healing points. This also includes locking all the bot room doors so that the rooms are left empty, or using noclip to open locked doors while others are using a room.
  • We allow people to duel each other provided it doesn’t interrupt other players achievement farming. If you’re an Engineer, then use your wrangler to stop the Sentry from firing on other players. If you’re a Pyro, don’t spam Mouse1 in case you ignite other players. Just use your common sense! If you want to duel, a good location is the football (soccer) field on Botfarm or the duelling fields on Factory. They are out of the way from others there and were put the specifically so that we can tell who is duelling and who isn’t, as well as keeping duelists and farmers separate.
  • If you are being attacked by another player then tell us either by messaging us though steam, using the in-game !help command or as a last resort the !report command. Admins can put them in jails, or kick/ban them. Moderators can jail players or kick them if needed. If there isn’t an admin or donater online, then find some place where the offending player can’t bother you and use the commands mentioned above. The bot rooms on both Botfarm and Factory have lockable doors for a reason!
  • Any player caught disturbing other players by random killing or otherwise will be given a warning (usually by jailing) and be kicked or even banned if they continue. Bans are usually an hour, but can be longer depending on any previous bans or what exactly the player was doing.

Surfserver rules

  • On our surf server we do not allow players to tunnel-camp, this being when any player waits somewhere for another player to come though a teleporter and ambush them. We will often simply kill the offending player and let play continue, but if a player keep camping the same spots then we will kick them.
  • Some players follow a ‘No Kill’ truce in the Music rooms of various surf maps. This ‘rule’ is not set by us and we do not enforce it! This is simply something some of our regular players started doing and agreed to by themselves. We will not kick players for breaking this rule as its not an official rule.
  • Some of the maps we use have cap-able points at the end of the course which skilled players can reach. However lots of players will complain when other players cap the point. While we wont ever kick or ban a player for capping the point (to be fair if a player is skilled enough to reach the end of a surf map then it seems unfair to ‘punish’ them for skill), we ask that players avoid doing to keep everyone happy.

Micspam, language & insulting

  • Micspam is allowed on all our servers to a certain level (even some of the admins do it). Try to keep it funny/in good taste and it shouldn’t be a problem. Just don’t play your micspam over other players when they are talking or if they are playing their micspam first.
  • If however you don’t like what you hear you can mute players from your menu screen. The button is a small one located on the ‘Start playing’ button, with a ear logo. If though, enough people are annoyed by someone’s micspam they may get muted on the server. We don’t want to hear every single noise people make!
  • Another thing no one want to hear is hate speech. Everyone has a right to their point of view, but that does not mean that you have the right to insult other players because they like or dislike something you disagree with. We never ban players for what they believe (about anything), but we will ban if players if they start causing offence to others.

The ‘English only’ rule

  • While English is the common language on our servers, we are not an “English only” server. While our MOTD’s say “This is an English server, please speak English here”, we know that not everyone can speak English so it’s unfair to expect everyone to use a language they don’t know or understand, and so we are happy for any player to talk in what ever language they like. However we may still use translated messages to let players know they are on an English server and that the common language is English.
  • Werewolf and WhosAsking also designed the Achievement_Factory map to be as language friendly as possible, using pictures to help players understand what the various thing in their map do, including a Translation Room on the second level above the jail.
  • Werewolf also has a thread looking for players to translate a short message into various languages. If you want to help out, check out the thread here
  • Many of these translations are used in our Message of the Day pages in Factory and Botfarm. Any language we have available can be displayed simply by clicking the appropriate flag icon on the page.

Sprays, swears and porn

  • While we are thinking about language, try and keep your language clean. We all are guilty of the odd occasional swear word but spamming the chat box or voice chat will get you gagged/muted. If your being really offensive to others we will kick or even ban.
  • Sprays are much the same, we all like funny ones but there are kids who play on our servers, so avoid the really adult stuff. Porn sprays are a definite no including the cartoon kind. We have a spray tracer plugin so we always know which spray belongs to which player. We understand that if we ask you to change your spray that the change wont take affect until after you rejoin the server, but that does not mean you may continue spraying an offensive picture. Doing so may result in you being kicked or banned.
  • Believe it or not we still have to follow the laws around such things on the server, and while I very much doubt any one would ever get in any trouble for a simple porn spray, not everyone wants to join and find the picture from certain websites sprayed on the wall.

Ban Policy

  • As a general rule, all players have 3 chances before being permanently banned. Generally the first 2 bans are for 1 hour each, the 3rd ban is 1 day with the 4th ban being permanent. Occasionally we ban people for longer periods if they are using donater powers to exploit others or if a player rejoins as soon as a prior ban has been lifted and continue what they were doing before. However all our admins are different and they may decide that longer or shorter bans are more appropriate. In each case it is up to them to decide what they think is the fair punishment.
  • When players join a server, the admins see a message (hidden from other players) that alerts them that a connecting player has previous bans and how many they have. This means that if you have been banned at least once, we will know to keep an eye on you while you are on the server. We can also check any player for existing bans from within the game.
  • Bans apply to all of our servers. So for example if you were to get banned from Factory for an hour, you would also be banned from Botfarm, Surf and VSH as well.
  • Very few things result in instant permanent bans, those things being Hacking (we also report any player caught doing this to Steam and present our console logs where we can as evidence) and players who join and immediately start causing trouble with hate speech, racism, homophobia or anything else like that.
  • Nearly all players have to right to protest a ban if they think the ban was unfair. You can do this using the ‘Appeal a Ban’ button at the top of our homepage, or by clicking this link here. Where possible we will make sure a different Admin to the one that banned review a protest. For example if Werewolf banned a player and that player sent in a protest, Werewolf would not respond to the protest. Instead of the other admins would look at the protest and decide whether they think the ban was fair or not, though they may talk to the Werewolf to check both sides of the story. There is no guarantee that a protest will be accepted and the ban lifted because the reviewing admin may agree with the original ban.
  • It is important that you include your Steam ID when you do this so we can find your ban in the database. All our bans are Steam ID based so even when players change their name we can still see their bans. We also record players IP addresses as a backup measure. The only players we do not accept ban protests from are those who have protested a permanent ban and had it lifted, only to get permanently banned again. If this were to happen any protest from that player will be ignored.

Some tips for donaters
The following is a basic guide to some do’s and don’t's that we’d ask all player to follow but these mostly apply to those with donater status. These are not rules, more like being a guide to not accidentally annoying others.

Giving out powers. – Your powers are yours to use as you please and are intended at the most part to help you get achievements.
Do: Give player powers if they need them for an achievement, particularly if you are helping them. They need to kill you quicker? Let them have crits. Just remember to remove the powers afterwards. If they start abusing those powers, take them away and call an admin.
Don’t: Give every player who asks a power. After all, you paid for those powers and your now giving this person powers for free! That’s unfair on you. As well as that, as soon as you have given one player god mode, they all ask you for it. Trust me, you do not want every player spamming you with “I can haz god plz?!”

‘Admining’ – If there isn’t a admin online at all (not in game or on steam) and you are confronted with a player breaking the server rules, there’s a good way to deal with them and a bad way.
Do: We get new players join everyday (particually F2P players) and some of them will think our achievement servers are deathmatch servers. By attacking them back, you are actually confirm this in their mind, and they continue trying to attack you and others. If on the other hand you stand there and take it, it confuses them because they don’t understand why no one is fighting them back.
Instead try and tell them the rules of the server (tell them to say “!motd”), or bring them to an empty bot room. If they are on blue, encourage them to join Red as they will be able to use more of the maps. If they keep ignoring you, use the !bring command to put them in one of the jails. I know that they will be able to escape because donaters can’t set another players spawn, but you can at least bring them to somewhere where they can see the rules!
You can also use the !help command to call an admin though the chat, or if an admin does not respond (we can’t be on the console 24/7) then use the !report command which will send all the admins an email. But please remember to provide their SteamID.
Don’t: Attack players back or defend other players. If someone attacks you or another player, don’t try to stop them by attacking them back because as I said before, doing so mean they think it’s OK to do that. Because you stand out as being different from a normal player you will get more attention with a lot of them thinking your an admin. If they call you admin, don’t claim to be. Tell them you are a donater with some admin powers. One thing we especially do not like you doing is saying you will kick or ban them. The admins and moderators decide if and when to kick or ban players, not you.

The !bring command
Do: If you need to move a bot, find one that no one is using!
Don’t: If you move a bot, remember to put it back! They may respawn where we set them, but only when you kill them! As for players, its better to use the !goto command to go to them rather than constantly bringing them. It can be annoying when someone keeps moving you because you can’t do anything about it.

Have an admin on steam
Do: I speak for all the admins when I say we don’t mind you adding us. If you need help then having at least one of us on your friends list means you always have someone to contact if or when you do. The more of us you add, then the better chance you have at catching one of us when we are online. The links to add all the admins is at the top of this page!
Don’t: If we aren’t online, please don’t rage at us for not being online when you happened to need us. We are all humans who have other responsibilities – Snaggle, Werewolf, WhosAsking and Travis all have real, actual jobs!

Some Links
Here are some handy links you can use to report players or view our ban list.

If you have any questions, post them below.

[GmT] Werewolf [UK] On December - 14 - 2011

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