Player Guide/Penalties

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VRS runs an automated penalty point system to discourage team-killing and careless flying around friendlies. Hitting or killing your own side earns points. Nothing happens to you until your total crosses a threshold, points fade on their own over time, and the player you wronged can always wave it off. The goal is to deter griefing, not to punish honest accidents.

How points are earned

Penalty points are assigned when you damage or destroy a friendly. Killing a human teammate costs the most; brushing an AI wingtip costs the least.

Incident	Against a human	Against AI
Killing a team member	30	18
Killing a team member in a collision	20	12
Friendly fire (hitting a team member)	12	8
Colliding with a team member	5	1

Two things smooth out the raw numbers:

Grouped events -- everything that happens within about a minute counts as a single event, so one messy gun run or CBU drop doesn't stack into a huge total.
Flight-hours weighting -- the bot scales your points by how long you've flown on VRS servers, so brand-new arrivals are held to a tighter standard than regulars:

Total flight time	Points multiplier
New (under 3 hours)	1.4x
3+ hours	1x (as listed above)
10+ hours	0.7x

So a brand-new pilot who kills a human teammate picks up about 42 points (30 x 1.4), while a 10-hour regular picks up about 21 (30 x 0.7) for the same incident.

What happens at each level

Points	Consequence
Under 100	Nothing automated -- the points are recorded, but you keep flying.
100	You're moved to spectators.
500	3-day temporary ban.

There's a delay between the incident and any action -- this is the window your victim has to forgive you (see below).

Checking your points

Type -penalty in the in-game chat at any time to see your current total. This always works, no matter how many points you have.

The bot will not nag you about points on its own until you're actually near a consequence -- you'll only get an unsolicited "you have N penalty points" message once you've reached the spectator threshold. Below that, the points are quietly accruing and decaying in the background; use -penalty if you want to check.

Points fade over time

Penalty points decay on their own, so an old mistake doesn't follow you forever:

After 3 days, about a quarter of the points are gone.
After 30 days, only about a quarter remain.
After 60 days, they're cleared completely.

Forgiveness

If someone hits or kills you, you have 15 minutes to type -forgive in the in-game chat. This cancels the pending penalty for that incident before any action triggers and wipes the related events. Use it for honest accidents -- a wingman who clipped you on the taxiway doesn't need to eat a move-to-spec for it.