Policy Guidelines for Scenario Rulesets

First, be aware that FCW is a standardized ruleset server. See here for more info.

Although FCW has standardized rules, we do NOT want every game to be the same. FCW encourages Gamemasters to explore an endless variety of unique game settings, maps, diplomatic, scenario, and team configurations.

FCW allows "breaking" the standardized rules in some cases, for the special case of custom **Scenario Rulesets**.

In order to create a more specialized type of scenario game, FCW will support "scenario rulesets." ***A scenario ruleset is based on a standardized "parent" ruleset***, but allows some changes that make it thematic to the environment the scenario is trying to achieve.

FCW cannot support custom rulesets. A scenario ruleset must attempt to adhere as much as reasonably possible to a standardized ruleset which is its "parent."

In general, a scenario ruleset might:

* Add a terrain type; remove one or two terrain types: (e.g., Arabian scenario, Arctic scenario, etc.)
* Add a unit; remove one or two units. (e.g., European colonization of western hemisphere, ancient Roman, ancient Mesopotamian scenarios, etc.)
* Replace one or two non-thematic units with a unit essentially the same, just re-named.
* Remove certain parts of the tech tree, to focus on a certain epoch in time.
* Alter tech costs to make the total bulb cost of the tech tree roughly even to a full tech tree. (Altering sciencebox preferred but not required.)
* Add one tech.
* Re-skin at most a few sprites which would clash with the theme of the scenario.
	+ Re-skins must:
		- Be of an aesthetic quality representative of FCW as a whole, in the opinion of others.
		- Have absolutely no potential for copyright issues, DMCA claims, authorship dramas, and so on.
		- General enough and re-usable enough that they could apply and be re-used in a maximum number of other custom scenarios. Try to make units as ethnically neutral, nationally neutral, and era-neutral as possible -- for maximum re-usability.
* Scenario rulesets are ***encouraged*** to experiment on one rule change not present in the parent ruleset, if:
	+ deemed especially helpful to the scenario
	+ deemed useful for evaluation of how it might improve MP2, to collect playtesting on the idea.

Note that even one of the above requires making a unique scenario ruleset ***and*** server knowledge and work rebuilding into the server. The more of these you do, the greater the work to incorporate them, sometimes exponentially. Be very conservative and ultra-minimalist in the changes, not wild and splurging! Find ways to get away with more by doing less. There are many processes to be abided and efforts involved, to get a ruleset incorporated into the server. Any scenario ruleset must be pre-approved by FCW leadership ***and*** have a sponsor both able and willing to assist on the server work to actualize it. This pertains to all phases from the first idea of it to the final approval. Have very careful respect for both the sponsor's efforts and for server performance/bandwidth/assets. The final reason for these rules is to lessen confusion to players. Most players need or want familiarity with the rules, and may already struggle to understand and master the standardized rules. The list of differences to re-learn for such a scenario shouldn't exceed 5, but is considered more appropriate and approvable if *fewer*. Scenario maker must provide an easily understandable and presentable short document of differences to the parent ruleset.

Examples of what is highly discouraged and not approved *(except perhaps under very justified and special exceptions)*:

* Changing the mechanics of the parent ruleset.
* Changing innate terrain properties (irrigation, mining, road time; terrain transformation properties; defense bonuses, terrain nativity, etc.)
* Adjusting values for buildings, units, movement, etc.
* Gratuitous or unneeded re-skinning of sprites: units, buildings, terrain, wonders, etc.

Finally, remember. This is a web-server. New rulesets require rebuilds. Sprites and assets go in caches. A sprite added to your scenario is a sprite every player of every ruleset has to load from a sprite sheet and affects everyone's performance. One should appreciate that these rules are unusually permissive and liberal, and burdensome to server maintainers. If you don't appreciate that and don't stay respectful of that, you are unlikely to find a willing sponsor. The greater Freeciv community has servers which encourage radically non-standard rulesets. Remember, native clients can plug in custom rulesets with custom mod-packs but only access normal features, whereas web clients can access a much greater range of freeciv-web features, but require involved and intricate configuration of server, web-server, and browser client.