Players teaming up together have a competitive advantage over individuals and smaller groups, with the largest groups being the most likely to dominate areas of the map (and potentially the entire map in some cases). Players are motivated to create or join groups then, because the culture of the game is highly competitive. Even players that weren't aggressive may still want to be part of a team for protection. Although the larger the group gets, the more chaotic it becomes - resulting in higher rates of friendly-fire (FF) as teammates increasingly mistake their comrades for opponents, especially during merge raids.

One early attempt to prevent accidental FF involved voice communication on Teamspeak 3 or Ventrilo (Discord was commonly used in later years). This sometimes caused accidental FF when not enough voice communication was being done (but was expected). This might only happen in certain situations - some players expect the shooter to be the one to identify whether their target is a teammate or an opponent, while other players expect the target (perhaps a teammate advancing during a battle) to be the one to communicate their position and appearance. Ideally, both styles of communication could overlap to help avoid FF. In many cases, even if communication is done, teammates filter such calls out, so emphasis may need to be placed on important calls, such as shouting "I'm the Hazzy running in!" rather than speaking it calmly.

A part of early communication was the jump check, where members of a team were supposed to jump if one of them said "jump check" - if any players didn't jump then they would get shot. It could be a slow method to avoid FF, and an annoying one if a bloodthirsty teammate kept calling jump checks to shoot players that weren't a threat. It wasn't even foolproof, as players often jump around, resulting in crouch-checks being called instead (which weren't much better because teammates sometimes instinctively responded with a jump).

Team members wearing the same armor (and often the same cosmetics) as a uniform can help reduce FF. Although it takes some effort to arrange, and opposing players might (confusingly) wear the same sets of armor if they capture it.

The team system was introduced in July 2018, which displayed a teammate's name in green text above their head, and was limited (by default) to 8 members. This system helped identify teammates at close range, but may have reduced potential immersion (making the game feel more like a competition than a realistic experience). At long range the system may be a disadvantage, because it doesn't show the text at a distance, leading to friendly fire because players treated any character without the text as an opponent (which could be an issue particularly in large firefights that cover a wide area).

The team system's size limit made it practically useless for larger teams. An unspoken rule in The Government (one of the larger groups) is that a member may only fire at a player if the member was in the team system (to avoid members of the team system suffering friendly fire), but this heavily limited the number of members that could fight (and didn't prevent friendly fire against members that weren't able to join the team system when it was full, especially if jump-checks weren't called).

The clan table was a fairly late addition to Rust (considering that prior updates had driven the game's culture to become a competitive team-game long before the table's introduction in 2023). It increased the size of the team system to 32 members, but confusingly, it existed alongside the team system, leading to accidental civil war in large groups, as one half of a group might expect that the team system was being used, and would exchange fire with the other half that used the clan system (which in turn were expecting that the clan system was being used). It also caused a general increase of FF because players relied on it so heavily that they seemed to become lazier at doing teamwork - such as abandoning the jump-check system entirely.

Even a team system of 32 members wasn't sufficient for large groups, as they often had more than 32 members joining the server through each day, meaning they had to constantly kick members off the system to add more. Getting on to the system could be an issue in itself, because it required an active member to be ready to manage the invites. Another disadvantage of the clan table is that it wasn't readily craftable, making it useless for teams that had just arrived on a server where they had nothing (and critically needed teamwork to get established as a team). Over-reliance on team systems was similarly an issue in WW3RP.

While most teamkills are accidental, a minority of them are deliberate, which seem to be motivated out of boredom, and is considered as a disrespectful thing to do. The Government has a rule against deliberate teamkilling, which would result in teamkillers being sent to a ban court, although it might only be treated as a serious issue if there were a high number of incidents. The context of deliberate teamkills makes them obvious, as they happen outside of firefights. Blatant teamkilling erodes teamwork - because why would a player want to help a teammate that deliberately teamkilled them?

Accidental teamkilling can also erode teamwork, as the incompetence of constant teamkilling can be frustrating, and eventually feels disrespectful if no steps are taken to try to prevent the issue, especially if incidents involve theft. There's a toxic element to friendly fire - in one group where I reported a high rate of FF to the founder, they more or less told me to shout at the teamkillers. This doesn't seem like an ideal solution as the game is played for fun; having to shout at teammates isn't enjoyable.

See also
Pointlessly anti-social killing

Rates of FF can easily rise exponentially as a group grows in scale, which seems to create a growth ceiling. If Facepunch did implement an unlimited team system to solve the issue, then massive groups may grow and disrupt the culture of the game, further harming the experience for smaller groups and solos. So there's speculation that Facepunch don't want to take it upon themselves to solve the FF issue when it might create an even more glaring issue.

Jump check
Overlapping communication
Team system
Team uniforms

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