Editing Rules and punishments (section)

=== Cleaning up ===
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'''"Cleaning up"''' means attacking a faction immediately after it has finished fighting someone else, while it is still low on gear, potions and health. It is the most argued-about behaviour in HCF and has no settled answer.

==== The case against ====
* It produces a fight decided before it starts, which the community generally regards as low-quality.
* It discourages factions from engaging each other at all, since the winner expects to be picked off afterwards.
* It rewards passivity — waiting out a fight — over the willingness to take one.
* A faction that only cleans up is widely dismissed as having no real record of its own.

==== The case for ====
* HCF has no round structure and no neutral ground. Timing is part of the game, and choosing when to engage is a legitimate skill.
* No server rule prohibits it, and unenforceable conventions are not rules.
* Maintaining fighting strength across consecutive engagements is itself a demonstrated ability rather than an unfair advantage.

==== The Nightmare precedent ====
The argument most often cited in favour is a run during '''[[HCTeams Map 12|HCTeams Map 12]]''', in which '''[[Nightmare (faction)|Nightmare]]''' made two factions raidable one after the other without refilling on gear in between. The run is documented in [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqQpI46lRu8 Layer's video of the map].

Supporters treat this as proof that back-to-back fighting rewards genuine skill: a faction able to win two engagements on depleted supplies was not exploiting weakness so much as demonstrating that it could operate under the same disadvantage it was accused of imposing on others. Opponents counter that a single exceptional run does not establish a norm, and that the argument is applied selectively by factions who could not repeat it.
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