1.

Rules as Intended
Rules are meant to be used as intended not as written, rules lawyering is not appreciated.
Hosts/Staff have final say on the intention of rules.

2. Host Judgement
If the Host of the game deems it appropriate they can ignore/overwrite any rule in the Ruleset.
Not every situation can be accounted for in a Ruleset.

3. No Fanatical Purifiers, Exterminators, Devouring Swarms or Terravores

The reason for this is fairly obvious as they greatly reduce the viability of Roleplay
interaction between players.

4. When creating a nation, be creative

Stellaris is the only Paradox game that allows you to have a truly unique and random scenario
between every single game we play, and as such avoid playing as nations that are copy cats
from fictional or historical empires, and for god's sake, don’t make a meme empire.
We also will not allow people to use randomly generated names for their species, empire
name, homeworld and home system, try to be more creative with them, and for those who
have difficulties there are some great sources of inspiration and/or help in this matter.

5. Restrictions on the Human portrait

The Human portrait will be limited to one use per game and will require prior host approval.
A lot of issues are caused by this portrait, as it is the only portrait with a firmly established
“canon” and “history”, and although this can be altered, the portrait often appears multiple
times in our games which causes much lore and player conflict.

6. Player Vs Player Wars

The first war in which players fight one another is not an automatic take over. Instead you are
only allowed to take 25% of the enemies territory in the first war. No cheesing either where
you take distant planets/systems to cut their nation in half, make sure it is something that
makes sense when choosing post-war borders and punishments. You are also not allowed to
seize a player's capital region during the 1st conflict.
Do not aim to completely destroy your enemy at the conclusion of a war, of course if you are
the victor you may take your spoils but be reasonable.

When you are declaring a war and want to abduct pops, you may only abduct a maximum
25% of the pops on any planet, unless that planet has 7 pops or under, then you may take as
many as you want.
I also heavily encourage players to vassalize players instead of destroying them as this can
lead to some quality roleplay of nations trying to break free and regain their glory. As such
when you lose a war, do not give up, the game is not over. You have just been given a
treasure trove of new RP possibilities.

Also, when I say vassalize, I mean VASSALIZE! I do not want to see you make
protectorates just for the bonuses, if I see you do this, you’re out.

When declaring a war against a player, you must make it clear that you will be doing so in a
diplo post where they are pinged, you must also wait one in-game year before declaring the
 war. Make sure to add the in-game date of when you post it, so that all parties know when the
war will begin.

7. A.I. Vs Player Wars

Players when fighting AI's can take all territories from the A.I. that they are allowed to via the
war score.

I encourage all of you to not go out and just conquer AI nations without a solid RP reason, I
even encourage you to protect AI nations when it makes sense for your empire to do.

8. Early Game Warfare

Please refrain from early game wars as they are typically fairly gamey and can really ruin
players' experiences. I will not place an actual allotted time for when these wars are allowed,
as I trust you people can determine for yourself when would be fair. I advise you to not
misuse my trust.

9. Naming Leaders, Solar Systems, Planets, Empires etc.

Under no circumstances are players allowed to name any of the above inappropriately, which
also means no memeing.

10. Roleplaying In Diplomacy

An overwhelming majority of our games roleplay is conducted through the Stellaris
diplomacy channels. This roleplaying is not only encouraged, it is also required to participate
in our games and players who fail to post in diplomacy when announcing major diplomatic
events will have said events retracted.

11. Roleplaying in Voice Chat (And Not Roleplaying In Voice Chat)

Under no circumstances are players expected to stay in Roleplay within Voice Chat during
the entire session however the general rule is that when a player approaches you in Roleplay
you must immediately go into a roleplay tone and anything you say will be treated as in game
roleplay. Players who fail to roleplay in Voice Chat will typically be given a warning and may
even be kicked out.

12. Creating Federations

Establishing a Federation within our games is something that is typically the achievement of
an incredible series of roleplay and diplomacy… typically that is. Federation’s must under all
requirements make sense and be properly roleplayed. Nations that join/create a federation
must have a background of diplomacy posts between the two nations to justify the Federation
and the type of Federation they make must make sense between the two of them.

13. Avoid The Typical Federation Snowball Effect

Typically when a Federation is formed it ends up encompassing a fourth of the Galaxy this
leads to another Federation immediately popping up to counterbalance this Federation and
within thirty minutes we end up being in a scenario where 80% of the galaxy is in a
 Federation. This leads to a massive decrease in diplomatic possibility, roleplay possibilities
and most of all. Ensures A Boring Game.

14. Do Not Pre-Plan Alliances etc.

Under no circumstances should your first interaction with a nation you encounter be
“Hey man we should set up a Federation as soon as possible”, another thing we want to avoid
is the creation of a massive Federation within 30 seconds where six players join said
Federations.

Joining a Federation in a Roleplay sense means that you are allowing a superior governmental
body to directly influence your nation's laws, politics and freedoms and is never something to
be taken lightly especially as even if you are allies with a state it does not mean you need to
establish a Federation.

15. Federation Sizes

Federations, assuming the game is roughly 20-30 players, can be no larger than 4-5 players.
Be certain to always ask the host beforehand what the limit is in your game.

16. Metagaming Part 1

Stellaris is without a doubt the easiest Paradox game to metagame in, in fact if you are a good
meta gamer you know exactly what to do at every step of the game and what this leads to is
by the year 2300 you are ten steps ahead of every single player, if this is the kind of
performance you plan to do during the games, get out.
We do not want in any situation a game where a player who is skilled at the game ends up
being overwhelming to other players just because they know how to exploit the game's
mechanics. This goes against the main purpose of our games. Roleplay.

17. Metagaming Part 2

Metagaming is a continuous issue in our games and when players metagame it ruins the
roleplay experience for the entire player base as such we are cracking down on metagaming to
ensure a balanced and enjoyable game. As such if we are in a situation where a minority of
players end up being overwhelming to the rest of the playerbase said players will be expected
to scale things back and failure to do so will lead to warnings and if unresponsive being
kicked.

This under no circumstances means that you cannot be good at the game and it also does not
mean that if you are the strongest nation in the game you have to be on no more than Superior
footing towards the weakest players.

It more so means that we not only want to but we need to avoid situations where a single
player or a small group of players are overwhelmingly more powerful than the rest of the
player base, when this happens it greatly discourages the weaker players to play as it is no
longer about roleplaying it is just about competition.

In conclusion. Do not metagame. Do not do actions that are going to make you OP later in the
game. Every action you do should be about roleplay.
And if you decide to make yourself crazy OP then we will not miss you in our sessions.
18. Metagaming Part III Roleplay Above Everything Else
Please for the enjoyment of the entire player base and to avoid giving the Moderator’s a
terrible headache just avoid overpowered strategies and if you notice you are becoming way
too powerful just tone it down a bit. There is no need at all to win. In fact losing is perfectly
fine sometimes.

19. Tech Balance

The strongest 2 players in terms of tech are expected to keep relative balance with the 2-3
people below them (in tech). This will be measured with the victory screen’s tech score to
keep it fair, accurate, and so all players can keep track of how ahead they are. As a baseline,
the strongest player can only be around 500 points ahead of the lowest that they compare
themselves to. This is a general rule and will be up for the host to interpretation at any given
point/time ingame, and will change between the early and late game. Basically, don’t
become totally overwhelming to the rest of the galaxy.

20. Restrictions on Origins

Players must ask the host for permission to use the origin they chose (ask in PMs), apart from
Prosperous Unification, Mechanist, Syncretic Evolution, Life Seeded, Post-Apocalyptic, and
Remnant. Those do not require prior approval. Do note that if an origin gets chosen too often,
a host may choose to restrict it. Additionally any Origins which spawn AI are banned.

21. Restrictions On Certain Events/Origins etc.

If a player chooses to do the Hegemon/Common Ground Origins we do not tolerate under any
circumstances players leaving the Federation and destroying the starting Federation members
and conquering them. Yes I know they have valuable planets. Yes I know it will make you
OP. It makes utterly no sense and the earliest you can leave the Federation is 2300 and only
for good reason. (exceptions can be made if the Federation members are all players)

Little known tip, Void Dwellers get a modifier that gives them 0% habitability on planets.
Another little known tip is through some memeing you can genetically modify this to go away
and remove the debuff. A little known tip is this will get you removed.
As I have stated throughout this entire ruleset any type of circumnavigating the rules or the
game mechanics will lead to an instant removal under serious cases.

22. The Galactic Community

During votes which appear to be close or controversial we will allow a five minute pause for
both sides to state their cases in a roleplay sense as this is a pinnacle point of Roleplay in
Stellaris. These discussions will occur shortly before the deadline of the vote.
Typically each side should decide on 1 speaker for simplicity.

23. Galactic Community: Diplomatic Weight Imbalance

This sort of goes towards the previous rule about metagaming but currently there are a whole
lot of ways to get ridiculous amounts of Diplomatic Weight within the Galactic Community
that is sadly very very overpowered and troublesome as it can lead to one state dominating the
Community. If you have created a nation that is specifically built to be powerful within the
Galactic Community make sure the power is understandable. Please also avoid abusing the
fleet power/diplomatic weight modifier.
 24. Be Diplomatically Understanding
If someone is (maybe it's you!) investing heavily in improving relations with another country
and is sending their envoys out to make you happy and is giving you gifts and so on, take this
into consideration! If they are doing all of this extensively, a cooling of relations makes sense
and saying ‘’oh well I used to hate’’ you is no longer acceptable. I am not saying that if there
is a solid RP reason to dislike a nation such as they stole a valuable border province you
should immediately forget about this when they improve relations, but do keep it in mind as if
you have great relations you should be willing to forget about previous rivalries or at least not
be so willing to go to war about them.

25. Have Fun, Keep In Mind Other Players Fun & Please Roleplay
Our server is not one for competitive games or for showing off your skills. We are all here to
roleplay in character and to enjoy a fun galactic roleplay game so please keep in mind that
metagaming, exploits, breaking the rules, bullying etc. ruins the experience not only for
yourself but it ruins it for others. So please follow these rules to a T and please make sure to
put your heart and soul into our Roleplay games because Stellaris allows for some of the most
incredible roleplay experiences you can get, so let's utilize that and enjoy ourselves!

26. Bullying, Losing Your Nerve, Insults etc.

Our games can get fairly intense but please never make things personal and never lose your
nerve in the event of an argument getting heated whether you are involved in it or you are a
spectator please contact a Moderator or Official Host and they will help resolve the situation.

27. Ship spamming.

Once you have the capability of producing more than one type of ships, please refrain from
making fleets composed of one single ship type (Corvette spam, Battleship spam, etc.)

28. Open Diplomacy.

All diplomacy (negotiations, talks, agreements, etc.) shall be done in the diplo channels of the
game or in the game’s VCs during the sessions. You cannot negotiate anything in private
messages or in any other channel than the diplomacy channel. If you are found to have broken
this rule you will be kicked from the game.

Thank you all for reading our now five page set of rules!
We hope to see you in our games!