The Government's ban court system required 66% yes votes in a case to convict the defendant, which was lowered in 2023 to 51% (referred to as "50+1").

While the idea of the change itself was liked, there was controversy over how it had been handled. It was "implemented without a vote and then retroactively applied to a trial that was already finished, bypassing due process and banning the defendant after the trial was already concluded", which "caused a significant number of players to leave".

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A minor edit (on 19th Oct 2023) to the team invite article resulted in it being hidden, as an automatic message explained: "This topic has been automatically flagged for containing potentially harmful content and has been hidden as a result."

The same thing had been happening in Sept 2023 on the Gmod archive, leaving one post invisible for over 100 days. In exchanges with Steam support, I was led to believe that this issue would only last 2 days, so it wasn't clear why the issue could go on for 100 days, and why the error messages said nothing about manual intervention.

Steam support was contacted over the ongoing issue, with a response explaining that the "content was hidden by Steam's Automated Content Check system pending a review by Steam Moderation Staff" and that the "check is usually quick but can take up to a couple of days in rare cases depending on the data load or even get stuck, but I have gone ahead and cleared the check for you."

It's still not clear whether the "temporarily hidden - awaiting analysis" issue and the "hidden as a result - for containing potentially harmful content" issue both require manual review and are both at risk of getting stuck.

It seems that in every case so far, if an article was stuck like this for more than the typical 20 seconds, and I didn't contact Steam support, it remained invisible to the public indefinitely, which is an issue that only started noticeably happening to the archives in Sept 2023.

The team invite post got stuck again after an edit on 20th Oct, so I waited until the 26th Oct before resorting to contacting Steam again. A speedy reply came in less than 52 minutes - again I was told that "It can sometimes take a day or two for our system to review your content due to the data load" ignoring the fact (which I pointed out) that it had been 6 days. The issue got far worse in 2024.

An article was written about the issue on the main Archive group:
https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/groups/tarchives/discussions/0/7091547412716394487/

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This word cloud was produced on 19th Oct 2023 out of the 6,900 words from 23 articles written about the Government on the archive at the time.

https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3054406063

Government graphs

Word clouds

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Players were somewhat friendly during the Garry's Mod Stranded days, but this friendly culture seemed to be protected by rules prohibiting violence, which were not used in Rust Legacy. Game updates leaning towards competitive gameplay resulted in a bloodthirsty culture that motivated players to join freshly wiped servers to fight in the emergent arms race, involving frequent raiding.

There are still friendly players, but the friendly interactions may now be fleeting. Project R.A.D.A.R. found that when roaming the map "you'll get shot everywhere you go even if you were chatty and unarmed". Most friendly interactions seem to be with neighbours, as it's awkward to have an opponent on the doorstep of your base, so players are motivated to be on friendly terms with players in the base nearest to them, although it's still common for neighbours to see eachother as the nearest threat (resulting in conflict).

Players that are friendly enough with eachother may become allies, or join together as a group, perhaps forming a village, and placing some expectation that they won't be betrayed, which would motivate revenge. There's a significant advantage to forming a group, as opposed to playing alone, so there's motivation for friendships to grow. Some of the most friendly players are the ones that build creative structures (sometimes called "roleplayers").

In some fighting games there are rules against making a truce with any of the opposing sides. Similarly in Rust, on servers that limit the scale of teams (such as solo/duo/trio servers) it may be against the rules to be "friendly" with neighbours, as the friendliness may be interpreted as the players being friends (part of the same group), although an admin should find evidence of direct co-operation if they wished to convict a player of exceeding the group limit.

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A typical Rust server doesn't have rules prohibiting conflict. The Rust playerbase largely enjoys raiding, and expects violence such as raiding, so they often raid their closest neighbours out of anticipation that their neighbour would otherwise raid them first (unless they had become friendly or made an alliance). So conflict in Rust generally happens for no other reason than proximity.

Anchor point

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- Raiding

Raiding may be motivated by the competitive drive to advance in the arms race, because breaking into an opponent's base to steal their loot can result in the capture of items and resources that make the raiders more powerful (described as a profitable raid). Even if the raid wasn't profitable, it may still be beneficial to the raiders to eliminate a local adversary.

Raiders might pick a base to raid on the assumption that it contains suflur, which could be used to raid additional bases (or take sulfur away from a threatening opponent). A decaying base might be raided because it would be a cheap target, with the raid ensuring that the raiders are the first ones into the base (as opposed to waiting for it to decay). Another motivation might be revenge, perhaps against a previous teammate that became a traitor. In some cases, revenge raiding may be an over-reaction, as the target base might be relatively harmless (but still expensive to break into, especially to foundy wipe).

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The concept of a "night" on a server (when the playerbase is asleep) is based on the idea that the playerbase joined a server because it was geographically near them (often in the same country) which provides the player with a relatively low ping, and a shared language and gameplay culture with admins and other players. So this "native" playerbase (mostly in the same timezone) generally sleep at the same time.

Some groups that enjoy the advantage of offline raiding deliberately join a server in a distant country so that they can routinely conduct raids while the playerbase are asleep (which reduces the risk of active defenders and counter-raiders). The disadvantages to a group doing this include a high ping, language barriers with server staff, it not being exciting, the risk of getting raided when they themselves have to sleep, and the risk of the server widely turning against them because antipodal offlining is fairly obvious and unpopular. This issue might even harm the game, as some players leave the game due to how common "offlining" became - one player stated that they "Stopped playing after like a month due to a mixture of getting a bit bored and getting raided while I was asleep."

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This article describes what commonly happens to the loot of a raided base.

If the toolcupboard was destroyed, then spare building parts left in boxes like doors or a toocupboard may be placed to take over the building. Unused deployable items like barricades or external walls may be used as cover during firefights, occasionally being placed to help defend against potential counter-raiders. If many external wall pieces are captured then they are often taken to be used later in building a compound wall.

If there was too much loot to carry in one trip, then the remaining loot would be at risk of being stolen by counter-raiders while the original raiders were busy banking the first trip (if the breach wasn't sealed). Potentially the raiders could break into the tool cupboard room and replace it to take over the building with a door of their own, which would keep the loot secure, but might be pointlessly expensive. It would also take longer and be more complicated to divide the loot from multiple trips. So it's common for raiders to only make one trip, and fill their inventory with only the highest-value items, perhaps dumping the remaining loot on the ground to despawn it so that no opponents could retrieve it later.

Items that have the highest value (that are stolen most often) include sulfur and explosives (which can be used to raid further bases). High quality metal and scrap are often taken, along with crude oil and low grade fuel. Guns are generally taken or despawned (if only to prevent the enemy from using them). Cloth can be valuable, along with other general resources such as wood, stone, and metal fragments.

Metal ore is sometimes ignored because it would have to be run through a furnace to be useful. Medical items are often taken, with the exception of bandages which are cheap and take up a relatively high amount of inventory space.

Perhaps out of sportsmanship, tools are generally left in a base, which allow the raided players to use them to gather resources to recover from the raid - only the best tools tend to be taken (jackhammers and chainsaws).

Components are taken fairly often (particularly ones relating to rockets or C4, like pipes and tech trash). Melee weapons are sometimes left behind, as are items of clothing (unless they are high level armor pieces).

Items left behind most often include resources that are easily gathered or have little utility like bones and charcoal. Diving gear is often abandoned, especially if the base is far inland. A raided base is often looted further by players snooping around to pick the base clean, perhaps looting the oil from lamps and wood from campfires.

If the tool cupboard was unlocked or missing then a looter might even craft a hammer to pick up deployables to use or recycle them, often taking high level workbenches and batteries, and sometimes taking furnaces and large boxes. Lower value parts such as cheap electricals, windows, and rugs might be left to decay. Deployables are often left behind because picking them up reduces their durability (which reduces their value).

In The Government, loot is often divided up at the end of a raid, with the suppliers of the boom getting first pick, before the other participants take a share.

Raid leaders generally prompt the division of the bounty. Raid participants that don't get a share of the loot may lose motivation at the idea of joining further raids by the leader(s) regardless if they wanted items or not - being excluded from a share of the booty is considered disrespectful.

Loot Goblins might be shouted at (or threatened with being shot) for looting when they should be guarding against counter-raiders.

Raid profit

Main index
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It's common for Rust players to use voice communication programs, because 80% of the players play in teams, and voice communication is critical for teamwork, particularly in preventing friendly fire (by methods such as calling for jump checks) if the team system becomes full.

Early programs used for voice communcation included Ventrilo and Teamspeak 3 which often involved channels managed by large clans, but then Discord became popular in 2016 which impacted group sizes because it enabled small groups of players to freely create voice channels.

One of the limiting factors in group sizes is due to the chaos (and conflict) that emerges when a large number of people are in a voice channel at the same time, resulting in little opportunity for each member to have their voice heard, which erodes a sense of interactivity. Some groups have rules against playing music or singing, and may enforce push-to-talk to prevent the transmission of constant background noise from each member (which otherwise makes it difficult to listen for footsteps in-game, which can be an important thing to listen out for during raids). Large groups may struggle to attract new members if their voice channel is too chaotic. Muting individual members is an awkward solution, because it stifles (potentially important) communication.

An alternative method of communication is the text channel which can be changed to team-only (when in a team system) by (I believe) pressing TAB when you have the chat system open. Although the messages may easily be missed by teammates.

Muting vs banning

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In the Garry's Mod Stranded (survival) gamemode, players progressed from a stone workbench, to a copper workbench, and then to an iron workbench (among other research fixtures). Later, Rust was released, which (after some updates) continued this progression system with a level 1 workbench (which enabled the creation of primitive tools and weaponry), and the level 2 workbench (for improved tools and weapons), then finally the level 3 workbench (being used to craft the most powerful tools and "end game" weapons).

The motivation to progress in Gmod Stranded was a fun journey to create a base, grow plants, improve your character, and (on servers that had petmod) keep a pet. Guns were not a large part of the experience on Stranded, as players were not allowed to start wars without sufficient reason, and sometimes weren't even allowed to shoot at players that were attempting to invade their base.

The motivation to progress in Rust is far more bloodthirsty, as it's critical to have good weaponry to successfully defend a base against a raid, and many players and groups want good weaponry to conduct raids (and arm themselves when roaming and gathering resources).

In the early days of Rust, it was common for servers to depopulate after 12 hours, which seemed to be because the arms race had been won by that point - it was useless trying to fight a group that was 12 hours ahead of you because they had better armor and guns, and could probably afford to raid your base, so nobody joined the server unless it was freshly wiped. One player commented "Being 1-2 hours late to a wipe is disasterous."

Even players that had been on a server since the start of a wipe might want to leave if they feel they are too far behind in the arms race, which is especially the case if they've been raided (or feel that a raid is imminent).

Updates including the tiered workbench system, and the requirement of components (which had to be found at landmarks) to craft weaponry, and the requirement of researching items may have all helped slow the arms race down, which resulted in servers depopulating at a slower rate, but some servers didn't reset research when they wiped. Despite these factors slowing the arms race, groups often managed (through teamwork) to reach the higher end of the weaponry set of blueprints within the first day (if not within a few hours). For example - when The Government's Nov 2022 wipe saw the group battling their neighbours, I believe both sides had rocket launchers within the first few hours of the wipe (rocket launchers belonged to the highest tier of weaponry).

While scrap is often seen as the item that's critical to research because it's required for the research itself and is an ingredient in crafting workbenches, practically any item can aid the advancement of the arms race because they can often be sold in vending machines for scrap. This is why it can be helpful for teammates quitting a wipe to hand over their loot to a primitive teammate, even if it wasn't scrap.

The arms race is more or less continued even after the level 3 workbench is complete, as players continue to look for competitive advantages by improving the strength of their walls or increasing the size of their base, and stocking healing items, armor, weapons, and ammunition. The faction that has the biggest stockpile of rockets might be considered as leading the arms race.

Progression
Blueprint research
Level 3 workbench speedrun

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