The Government moved to the newly wiped US Rustinity 2x monthly large vanilla server on 7th Sept 2023 and built a large village on the north-east coast of the map. The southern border of the village was flush against the north-eastern edge of the Giant Excavator Pit. Multiple bandit groups attempted to wall-off the Excavator, which sparked the conflict when the wall projects reached the Government village. The Government fended off all four attacks, which all involved the bandits basing their attacks from a stone tower. The war started on the same day that the Government arrived on the server, but British Summer Time is used in this article, so the story starts just after midnight on the second day.

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It was common for bandits to fire at the Government villagers from the Excavator, and for the villagers to fire back. A few minutes into 8th Sept, rockets were fired at the Government's community building, killing a horse. The rockets had been fired by bandits from the Excavator that soon skirmished into the village by 0400, and they then built a tall stone tower.

The Gov's communication was scattered across different voice channels, and many of the village bases were further north-east (with little view of the battlefield). Work was still being done by villagers to get up to speed so soon into the wipe, but despite these issues, the bandit tower was quickly captured, and had disappeared by the next day. The enemy group had alteast 7 members online (and reportedly "more than 30" in total), and the Government probably matched their numbers. The battle had lasted atleast around an hour.

Atleast 9 bandits then tried to wall off the Excavator on 9th Sept, which included building a new stone tower on a rock (near the site of the original tower), resuming the war by 0100. Blocking the path of the wall was a Government building called Blockhouse 54, which the bandits had lost a rifle to, and attacked with explosives. The rifle was fired back at the bandits until the ammunition was spent (inflicting many casualties), and when the defender was busy eating, the bandits raided it to recapture the (now well-worn) rifle in what they called a "loot inspection."

The building was quickly patched up, and the enemy lost a minicopter in a crash. They had a second minicopter, which the Government captured and rammed into the enemy. The bandits also had a van and an attack chopper, but it's not documented if they were also destroyed during this battle. The bandits were angry at having been shot from the village buildings, but hypocritically they were the ones that started firing at the villagers from a tower. Around 15 Government members were online later in the battle; the bandits asked for a ceasefire, and retreated after it was denied - abandoning their new tower which had several sentry guns (which the Government quickly captured). The battle had lasted two and half hours.

On the 10th Sept at 0130 the bandits attacked the village with a minicopter and an attack chopper, damaging Blockhouse 54 again. By 0600 there had been a skirmish at the Excavator. By 1730 the third battle had started properly, with the bandits making a push to capture a stone tower (which ironically had been built on the same spot as the original tower from the first battle, leading to a belief that these battles were fought over the same tower). The bandits sent a van into the village during the assault, but still suffered casualties taking the tower.

The van briefly retreated which gave them a moment to repair it, before the driver parked it by their fallen comrades against the base of the tower. The van was destroyed there as the Government largely took control of battle, appearing to outnumber the enemy. The Gov had around 11 members online, while the bandits only appeared to commit around 5 at any one time. Blockhouse 54 was broken into again, but the attackers were quickly trapped and eliminated. The tower was also fully recaptured by villagers, but firefights continued until 2120, making this battle a particularly long one at 4 hours.

The break between the third and fourth battles was barely more than 3 hours. By 0040 on Sept 11th the bandits had landed a pair of choppers in the village and built a sheet metal tower. There were only a few villagers online (the Europeans (suffering a heatwave) were either exhausted or had gone to bed as it was about 1am), so the "20-man" of bandits (attacking at a more comfortable 8pm in their timezone) initially had fire suppression, but were slow in their attempts at raiding the village buildings.

They may have been slowed down because they underestimated Blockhouse 54 (which was still partially made of wood, but had evolved to cheaply withstand raids after 54 wipes). They got shot at from it, and smashed the wooden windowroom with rockets, grenades, and molotovs to silence it (even occupying the upper floors), but it was easily patched up to resume fire four times, although their last attempt to hit the Blockhouse was far heavier, so food cans ended up being melted down so that the metal could be used for repairs on the ground floor (which was partly sheet metal).

Each time the bandits changed target they were breaking cover (risking losing fire suppression against the village), meanwhile more villagers were coming online to wear down and ultimately repel the invasion. One bandit hid inside the village art gallery. The bandits had one or two scrap choppers and four attack choppers; debris of destroyed choppers littered the village as the Government fired rockets at them. The Gov were firing rockets on foot and also from one of their own attack choppers.

The bandits lost control of their tower, and things went quiet for a moment. Two hours after the start of the battle, the bandits arrived again and made a final charge towards the tower, which was absorbed by the Government villagers (now having captured "rows of guns" from the bandits, and had 15 members online). The server crashed with a rollback of several minutes, so both sides raced to get back into the server to replay the final charge, which was won again by the Government.

The battle ran on for a 3rd hour as the bandits used explosives on a pyramid base, but this didn't appear to be a serious raid. While the enemy group were described as a "20-man" during the battle, I think there were closer to 10 online at any one time.

By 11th Sept, the Government had "wiped out" local opposition (as far as 4 grids around the village). On 12th Sept the bandits fired rockets at the village on foot and also from two chopper attacks, losing one chopper. Around 14th Sept there was a glitch attack against the village where "over 300 rockets" were fired without the sound of explosions, but the enemy made no profit in the attack, and took some losses towards the end of it. These battles were minor in comparison to the length of firefights during the first four days of the war, as the bandits had largely avoided open confrontations after the fall of the fourth tower.

The bandits had consisted of two groups that had allied (after previously fighting eachother), although not all of the battles involved both groups attacking the Government at the same time. The Government retained control of their village (and by extension, the nearby Excavator). After the war, the bandit alliance broke down as conflict between them resurfaced. Two of the bandits made a social visit to the village on 13th Sept where they and village members hung out by the UFO Gallery and reminisced about some of the battles. On 14th Sept the Government built a wall around the village, although it wasn't clear who had control of each gate along the Excavator wall that the bandits had hastily built in the earlier days (a snaking mixture of wood and stone walls).

The Government villagers had been resilient through the difficulties of those first few days - dealing with frequent server crashes and rollbacks, and working out the kinks of the clan table update which confusingly existed alongside the team system (and didn't even show teammates as teammates unless they were at fairly close range), and meanwhile fighting off convicted cheaters (60% of the members of one bandit group had anti-cheat convictions). The Gov village was often outgunned, as "we lost tier 2 kits to [the bandits], but gained tier 3 kits from them." Some captured guns were worn out so heavily during the war that the President stepped in to help with repairs. It was noted that not all the Government votes for which server to play on for Sept had been for a 2x server, but so many members committed to the wipe that the group saw activity levels rise by over 50% since recent wipes.

This article is similar to the Rust News article of the same name, published on the same day (24th September 2023). The article resulted in Rust News being accused of publishing propaganda, which was refuted in Nov 2023.

Skimming (unpublished) recordings of the battles, the number of recorded rockets fired are noted below, and in brackets are the estimated number of rockets fired.

• First battle 1 / (~12)
  
• Second battle 0 / (~20)
  
• Third battle 5 / (~8)
  
• Fourth battle 18 / (~61)

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