Rules

Rule 0. Admins (not Mentors or Mods) retain the authority to ignore the enforcement of specific rules at their discretion when they feel it is in the best interest of the current round, the server, or the player base at large. However, they are fully accountable for their actions when they exercise this privilege.
Rule 0.1 Rules are enforced as intended. Every example of rule break cannot be defined as written, therefore, enforcement of the rules is subject to staff interpretation of the rule's intention.

Roleplay - Colonial Marines is intended to be a Medium Roleplay server. Treat your character as a separate entity from you, the player. Your character's actions, feelings, and knowledge in-game should be based solely on the character's experiences and not your own as the player. Each round is a fresh start with no knowledge of the previous one carrying over. You as a player might know where a hidden stash of weapons is located from the last round, but your character does not. Acting upon knowledge your character does not have is metagaming (see: No metagaming or metacommunication rule below). This rule may be ignored in some game modes such as Whiskey Outpost and other “Survival”-type maps that pit escaping marines against waves of enemies.
- Marines - You start off knowing only about things that are human.
- Survivors - You are given a short story each round to help guide what you know. Use this at your discretion. Your character could be glad of rescue and willing to offer this information, or they could be fearful of anything that moves as a result of it.
- Aliens - You don’t know where hosts might show up or go to defend. You only know one thing - the Queen’s will must be done.
Don’t be a dick - Harassment, racism, bigotry, homophobia, exploiting bugs, cheating, hacking, and just plain being an asshole. Giving out plot spoilers to any media with malicious intent is not allowed, but general discussion of plot that contains spoilers about media released 1 year ago or longer is fine.
No griefing - Griefing is the intent of one player wanting to cause grief or annoyance to other players or to the server without any roleplay reason. If Staff believes that the player’s intent is to grief then action will be taken whether or not it actually was the player’s intent. Any damage to the station or players caused by griefing can be repaired at an Admin's discretion. If you are being griefed, don’t retaliate - Adminhelp it. You’ll get healed. Griefing a griefer is still griefing, and the combat logs you’re generating make it harder for Staff to prove who the real griefer is.
- End of Round Grief (EORG) is fighting and generating any combat logs with friendly players after the round ends and is an immediate 3-hour ban without warning. Exceptions are between normal enemies, such as marine and aliens, marines and Russian attack teams, etc.
No powergaming - Powergaming includes performing actions outside your assigned job or chosen character’s abilities. Your skills or RP background prior to the round do not matter - a standard marine with "a brother in Engineering" does not know how to hack an airlock.
- NOT Powergaming:
  - The Acting Commander/Executive Officer setting up the ship's engines if there are no Maintenance Techs and no Chief Engineer to do it. The CO/XO would realistically have at least some knowledge of the engine that runs their ship. Also, it is crucial to the success of the marine team, so gameplay trumps realism here.
No metagaming or metacommunication - Acting upon knowledge your character does not have or communicating information about the current round, including but not limited to private discussions, chat rooms, and/or voice chats during the game. If you want to talk to other CM players about CM or just in general, we have an official Discord, but keep the discussion about past rounds and never about the current one.
- Examples:
  - Welding vents before seeing the aliens use them or before they've boarded the ship.
  - Building defenses on the ship before a hostile force is en route.
  - "Ramboing" - Chasing down aliens immediately after first contact directly to their hive.
- Examples that are NOT Metagaming:
  - Aliens slashing powered devices such as APCs, cameras, and lights.
English only
No advertising - Don’t post byond:// links to other servers purely for the sake of advertising. However, if the link’s purpose is anything else, such as informational (“Can someone post Baystation’s Byond IP?”) or interesting (“Some guy just made a bomb that blew a 100-tile hole in the station [link to server]”), that’s fine.
No Erotic Role Play (ERP), erotic content, or 18+ sexual content - Roleplay intended to elicit a sexual response from the receiver(s), including but not limited to writing stories (WGW) or posting links to adult content. This is not to be confused with distasteful but acceptable marine bravado such as scratching your crotch or cup-checking. However, these actions could still be susceptible to Marine Law.
No ban evading / multi-keying - Logging in with different accounts at different times, logging in with another account because you died (or were banned), or logging into two separate accounts at the same time.
No IC in OOC or vise-versa - Keep In Character (IC) communication in character and Out Of Character (OOC) communication out of character. Don't use (( or )) to communicate OOC. Use LOOC to talk locally or OOC to talk globally. You may use LOOC to talk someone through something if they ask for help.
Suicide, rage-quitting, and logging off - If you are a marine and need to leave the game, go to Cryo on the ship and put yourself in a cryotube. This will release your job slot and allow another player to join with your job. If you are unable to get to cryo, send an Adminhelp to staff. If you are the Queen, Adminhelp to let staff know. If you leave without cryo’ing yourself or informing staff you risk a job ban, especially if your job is an important one.
Character names - Use a reasonable, unique, lore-friendly character name. One-word nicknames are allowed inside the name (e.g. Derek 'Double-D' Donahue, Jane 'Crusher' Sanchez). Ranked, titled, honorific, offensive, famous and/or pop-culture names are not allowed (e.g. Dr John Smith, Barack Obama, Lt John Doe, Adolf Hitler). Also, avoid lore-based names like Weyland, Bishop, Ripley, etc.
Battlefield Execution - Whitelisted Commanders are allowed to instantly kill any player at any time except for the Chief MP if they feel that player is a threat to the mission. A command announcement of the situation and reason must then be made. The Commander cannot be immediately arrested or retaliated against for this action, but players concerned that the CO has been compromised can send a fax to High Command requesting the CO's arrest. Excessive or poorly-reasoned battlefield executions (such as BEing MPs over a valid arrest) may end with the Commander being removed from the whitelist.
Military Police - The Chief MP must never be responsible for Minor Crimes or Major Crimes, but can choose to ignore Minor Crimes done by other players.
Mutiny -
- A mutiny must be Adminhelped by a chosen "leader" of the mutiny. The Adminhelp must contain A) the reason for the mutiny and B) the names of mutineers. This Adminhelped mutiny cannot be denied and is only for log-keeping.
- A mutiny must have at least 5 members. MPs are not allowed to mutiny.
- Only the Acting Commander can be mutinied against for their actions, decisions, or inaction. Mutinies done for the purpose of taking command in order to punish someone else are forbidden.
- The Acting Commander must be given a chance to stand down peacefully.
- Perma-killing is forbidden (decapitating, hiding defibs, etc).
- Attacking neutral, uninvolved, or surrendered personnel is forbidden.
- Everyone on both sides receives medical treatment after it’s over. Interfering in medical treatment of either side is forbidden unless a whitelisted Commander opts to battlefield execute the mutineers.
Lethal Force - Do not attack another player without a legitimate, explainable roleplay reason that could be applied in a similar, real-life scenario. A fist fight does not suddenly escalate into a gun fight. Even if you are justified, you are still susceptible to Marine Law.
ID Cards - These should only be taken for a roleplay reason, such as from a dead XO to call for help on a computer in the ship’s bridge. If you take an ID or find one from a living player (or a dead player that has since been revived), you should make every attempt to return it unless your character has a good reason not to.
Relationships - Marriages/weddings between players is forbidden.
Act like your given role - We’ve all seen the movies or played the games.
- Aliens are not friendly. They have no free will, only the will of their Queen. They want to grow the hive by capturing and keeping nested hosts safe, unless their Queen tells them otherwise.
- Predators are not pranksters. They watch and hunt honorable prey while following a Code of Honor.
- Synthetics are not Marines. They are eerily intelligent, curious, and adhere to their Synthetic Programing.
- Marines are not mentally unstable. They are of sound mind and body, trained for war. They would not want to self-harm. At least not until they are trapped and infected after seeing a fanged creature burst from a comrade’s chest.