Competitive third person raycast-based gunfighting is Imperial Federation of Auraxis's original genre throughout the first 5 years of its existence.
Gun clans on ROBLOX are competitive groups that raid, defend, and scrimmage with other clans within the genre.
Warfare Department and the Dragonguard division handle the majority of IFA's clanning activities today.
Clans & Organizations
Genre Organizations
Gun Clan Community
The Gun Clan Community (GCC) is a Discord community hub server that allows members of all clans to talk about anything related to the genre and schedule events. The GCC is the main community hub of the genre, however its reach is tenuous and more than half of active gun clans aren't affiliated with it. The GCC releases monthly tier lists that rate all affiliated clans' performance each month in multiple categories. At the moment, IFA is unaffiliated with the GCC.
CCR/RCR
The gun clan genre is infested by cheaters who primarily use cheats such as ESP, aimlock/aim assist, and triggerbotting.
The Clan Cheater Registry and RCL Criminal Records servers keep track of cheaters within the community and provide API and modules to automatically notify you if a registered cheater has joined your game.
Cheaters are often determined from video evidence from the player's screen or screen emulator or the victim of a player's cheats. Accused cheaters can have a PC check performed on their computers by these services to prove their innocence.
Gunfighting
History
All clan gun systems are adapted from the original RCL gun system originally created by WIJ in 2012. For that reason, the genre also is referred to as "RCL-based gunfighting". RCL remains the defacto competitive gun for scrimmages and 1v1s in the current era.
Basics
The gunfighting used in ROBLOX gun clanning significantly differs from other competitive gun genres such as first-person/ACS, third-person over-the-shoulder (OTS), and other popular competitive games outside ROBLOX such as CSGO or Valorant.
The general rules taught in Warfare Department Combat Introduction Seminars include:
1. Use a third person free camera, where you can easily right click to move your camera without moving your character.
2. Never use shift-lock to shoot. You must move your mouse freely to track targets.
3. Keep checking your environment.
You can zoom out and pan/orbit your camera as much as you want. If you aren't looking at the enemy or shooting, you need to be surveying the battlefield and watching the enemy's movements and tactics. Being aware of your surroundings prevents you from walking into traps and fights you can't win. It also allows you to make callouts to help your team and give orders when you see an opportunity. Good callouts and proper voice communication is integral to any Warfare Department or clanning event.
Technology
Most gun clans use third person guns which use raycasts to verify line of sight between the player's head and the target. They then draw a visual ray (a part or a beam) to depict the shot fired. Note that hit detection occurs between the player character's head, not the gun's barrel. This eliminates wallshooting - shooting at enemies who can barely see your gun model.
The base code for many clan guns dates back to 2012 and RCL and has not improved much since ROBLOX added the client/server boundary.
ARC
IFA's ARC Raycasting Combat System (ARC) is our highly advanced version of clan guns included within Core Midnight and Core Daybreak for easy access at all IFA games.
Note that any over the shoulder guns at IFA games (manual targeting) are not ARC weapons and you shouldn't use clanning gunfighting strategies with OTS guns.
State of Clanning
Deterioration
The state of clanning is extremely poor in the current day, with many of the great superclans for beginners dying by 2016 or 2017.
The genre has shifted from more casual trainings, patrols with the occasional raid towards only favoring competitive raids and defenses as well as raid/defense simulations to prepare for them. The average activity of a 'good' clan has reduced drastically since clans shifted from casual open numbers battles, to static ratio bases, to competitive fairzones and scrimmages.
Until around 2020, there used to be hundreds of small clans in the genre and you could raid a different base each day. Today, the GCC Tier List only has around 10-15 or so active clans who most often compete at simple fairzones or bases every participant has fought at for years.
Clanner Behavior
Reluctance to Change
Clanners are uncharacteristically averse to change and often complain about any technology more innovative than tps rayguns (with the exact same hit detection system) and mediguns.
Clans that show unique gameplay qualities, unique ideas, or novel technologies, such as Republic of Aerius and WIJ, receive few raids due to the limited number of clanners who want to put in the effort to practice with new gameplay systems that every other clan doesn't already use. This has stymied innovation within the community.
Toxicism & Phobias
Clanners have become increasingly toxic and phobic towards almost everything, and often exhibit casual and overt racism, sexism, homophobia, etc. If you haven't been exposed to this behavior before, keep this in mind before scheduling events, posting, or discussing within the Gun Clan Community and affiliated genre Discords.
Cheating
Cheating in gun clanning is so rampant that three organizations were created to convict and log cheaters. Most types of cheating are injected into the ROBLOX Client using programs such as 'DX9'.
The most common forms of exploiting include:
- Aimlock: Mouse automatically tracks the target for the player. Most aimbots have a circular targeting reticle that defines the lock-on radius. 'Soft' aimlocks have aimlock settings toggled down enough to look legitimate. They have lower snapping speed and are therefore harder to catch via screen recording.
- ESP: ESP (extrasensory perception) is an exploit which shows the locations of enemy players in game, usually via injecting and adding to the player's GUI with an overlay. Most games, including IFA games and clanning facilities, include Team ESP, which allows you to see the location of your team's players. This is a game feature, not a cheat. Ingame moderation or administration systems may also include ESPs as defined by the game's developers.
- Triggerbot: An exploit that automatically clicks when an enemy player becomes visible in your cursor. This is often used to cheat on recon or sniper classes.
- HBE: Hitbox Expanding increases the size of enemy players' hitboxes locally on a player's client. Since raycast hit detection is done client-side, this allows the player to deal damage with shots that completely miss the enemy. HBE exploits are extremely easy to detect so they aren't extremely common today. Note that HBE is frequently confused with high latency (high ping), which frequently causes hits with shots that appear to miss your character.
Elitism
Elitism is the practice of only letting the highest performers participate in competitive events, to maximize the likelihood of event wins. Power clans, which are clans that specifically cater to elite players, often subscribe to this philosophy. Some clans are active enough that they can rally 20 or 30 players and only take the top 8 players who show up, leaving the others to sit at the rally place for 30 minutes while the raid leader decides who gets to participate.
Some other clans have a first-come-first-serve policy for events.
Although elitism makes sense to maximize win potential, it has caused a massive drain in the genre as as newer players are given less opportunities to play and will most likely leave without improving. This has caused the high skill barrier-to-entry of gun clans in general.
Please note that 'balancing' a team does not in itself constitute elitism, as playing a normals team against an elites team is fun for nobody involved.
IFA Elitism Policy
IFA's policy towards elitism is as follows:
IFA is anti-elitist by nature. We actively train newcomers into fighters and leaders competent enough to win defenses. We allow servicemembers to attend defenses as long as they have attended a defensive training before.
See the Warfare Elitism Policy page for more information on competitive Warfare Events.