This is going to be a little bit more than just a "Fun and Respect" mission statement. I've tried to elaborate on a couple of actual "visions" for what the community could look like. I would expect there would be at least a few people who hate and who would like each individual vision. There probably are infinite variations or completely distinct visions, but these are ones I stole from other people or came up with that I think would fit the FC context.

1. Pure War Sim (i.e. ultra competitive)
Lore-ish: In a true war, squads are aligned based on talents. Not everyone can be a SEAL. The leaders of the armies are allowed to make strategic decisions to win at all costs.
For Us: No restrictions on squad stacking. No support for lower skilled squads. The winner is the winner and that is the army that should be victorious. If one army just has all of the good people, that army should be stomping on the other army.

2. Friendly Role Playing (i.e. non-competitive)
Lore-ish: Think about the people who go out an re-enact Civil war battles and what not. That culture doesn't have to deal with skill balance of conflict. Everybody is equal and both sides are more or less balanced.
For Us: The winner and the loser are not significant. People don't have strong affiliations with an army, but instead have affiliations for the war-sim as a whole. Everybody on battle night is divided equally to make the numbers/skill matchup for a neutral playing field balance.

3. Matchmaking War Training (i.e. matchmaking war simulation)
Lore-ish: Halo 4 did the Spartan 4 thing where there is a context for the matches that everybody is in some sort of training program. There are restrictions on what type of behaviors and balances are permitted to keep the simulation fair.
For Us: Matches are designed to be competitive in the scope that people are playing to win, but the context in which they play to win is inherently balanced by rules and guidelines. Matchmaking sometimes takes a long time and not everybody plays the same amount of games because not everybody matches well with other parties. People can still play with their friends and choose who they play with, but they are subject to the system to determine who they actually play against to ensure some minimal standard of fairness.

4. Singles Instance Wars (i.e. re-drafting/re-allignment during peacetime)
Lore-ish: Each individual war is considered a distinct scenario. There is no carry over between wars. Think about how you could be simulating a war in Europe and then the American Civil war. The factions are inherently different.
For Us: The beginning of each war there is "balancing" (probably a player draft) where players are assigned to a faction for the duration of the war. They build an army and train in that faction in a competitive structure with minimal restrictions on how the players can be aligned within a specific army. No matter how balanced or imbalanced the previous war was, when everything is done a new re-balancing is conducted before the next war.

5. Competitive Balance (i.e. maximize the balance at all costs)
Lore-ish: Individuals going into matchmaking without a party. (This actually doesn't really exist well in real life)
For Us: The beginning of each war there is a "balancing." In addition, there are strict guidelines imposed about how the squads and teams can be formed throughout the war. New recruits or returning non-drafted members have strict guidelines about where they can join the system. The goal is that every match will be as equally started as possible.

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Quote Originally Posted by Jam Cliché View Post
I'm not talking about what FC did then. I'm talking about how it saw itself.
We're probably not going to get a good picture of that. Memories about what FC stood for are most certainly corrupted by Nostalgia and the general lack of people who are still around and active from all that time ago.

But your point makes more sense with that clarification.