Standings & Season Structure
How the platform works. League rules are in the rulebook.
Your team's place in the table comes from match results only. Each match is a single game on a Vietnam map, where teams earn points by margin of victory, break ties in a fixed order, and finish the season in two playoff brackets. Standings, player leaderboards, and team pages have separate tabs for Exhibitions, Regular Season, and Postseason—defaulting to the active stage—and exhibition records never carry over into regular season or postseason standings.
What does a full season look like?
Every team plays through the entire season, from exhibitions through the regular season and into one of two playoff brackets.
Standings Points Scale
How decisively you win determines how many points you earn: 5 points for a 5–0 win, 4 for a 4–1 win, 3 for a 3–2 win, 2 for an odd-team regular season bye, and 0 for any loss.
| Result / Sector Score | Standings Points | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 5–0 Win | 5 | Full sweep victory |
| 4–1 Win | 4 | Decisive victory |
| 3–2 Win | 3 | Close margin victory |
| Odd-Team Bye | 2 | Regular season rotational bye, 0 sector differential |
| Any Loss (2–3, 1–4, 0–5) | 0 | Zero points awarded for defeat |
Tiebreakers and Brackets
When teams are tied on points, standings order is decided by the priority list below. Kills never break ties.
| Priority | Tiebreaker Criteria | How It Breaks Ties |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Points | Total standings points earned in that stage |
| 2 | Head-to-head | Winner of head-to-head match; total sectors in 1–1 rematch splits |
| 3 | Sector differential | Total sectors won minus total sectors lost across all rounds |
| 4 | Strength of schedule | Average Roster Strength of all opponents faced in that stage |
| 5 | Roster strength | Average FEET of top 49 rated rostered players who played at least one rated match |
| 6 | Team tag | Alphabetical order by team tag (final fallback) |
Head-to-head: If two tied teams played each other, the winner ranks higher. If they played twice and split 1–1, the team with more total sectors across those two games ranks higher. When three or more teams are tied, head-to-head only applies if every tied team played every other tied team and produced a clear, non-circular order; otherwise the tie moves to sector differential.
Roster Strength: The average FEET rating of a team's top 49 rated players who have played at least one confirmed match. Unrated players who have not played do not count, so adding inactive recruits never changes Roster Strength. A team with no rated players defaults to 50. (See how FEET works on the FEET & STINK page.)
How it's calculated: Bracket split & seeding byes
For a league of teams, the Championship Bracket takes the top seeds, and the Challenger Bracket takes the remaining teams (including the extra team when is odd). When a bracket size is not a power of two (such as 5, 6, or 7 teams), the highest seeds receive first-round byes into the semifinals.
How are Round 1 pairings decided?
Your Round 1 regular season opponent is based purely on Roster Strength entering Round 1, not your exhibition win-loss record or who you played in exhibitions.
Before Round 1 kicks off, all teams sit at 0 points and are ordered from highest to lowest Roster Strength (the average FEET of each team's top 49 rated players). Teams are then paired straight down the list: #1 plays #2, #3 plays #4, #5 plays #6, and so on.
Exhibition matchups, exhibition byes, and exhibition home/away sides never carry over into the regular season. Two teams that met in an exhibition can still be paired in Round 1 if they sit next to each other in Roster Strength.
How it's calculated: Round 1 pairing example
10-Team League (ordered by Roster Strength):
Rank #1 vs Rank #2 · Rank #3 vs Rank #4
Rank #5 vs Rank #6 · Rank #7 vs Rank #8
Rank #9 vs Rank #10
If two teams have the exact same Roster Strength before Round 1, they are ordered alphabetically by team tag. In an odd-team league, the lowest-ranked team receives the Round 1 bye.
How do byes work in odd-team seasons?
When a season has an odd number of teams, one team sits out each regular season round and receives 2 standings points, a win in the standings table, 0 sector differential, and no rating change.
No repeat byes: No team can sit out a second time during the regular season until every team has had a bye. Exhibition byes are tracked separately (worth 0 exhibition points) and do not count toward regular season bye rotation.
Round 1 and final round: In Round 1, the bye goes to the lowest-ranked team by Roster Strength. In the final regular season round, the bye goes to an eligible team in the lower half of the table that is already out of Championship play-in contention, so playoff spots are decided on the field.
How it's calculated: 9-team Round 1 bye example
9-Team Field in Round 1:
Rank #1 vs Rank #2 · Rank #3 vs Rank #4 · Rank #5 vs Rank #6 · Rank #7 vs Rank #8
Rank #9 receives the Round 1 bye (2 points, 0 sector differential) and cannot receive another regular season bye until the other 8 teams have each sat out once.
Why do rematches happen late in the season?
You will not play the same opponent two rounds in a row, and only regular season games count as prior meetings. Late in the regular season, however, you may rematch a team you played several rounds earlier if you are both competing near the same spot in the standings.
In a 6-round season, teams near the top or bottom of the table eventually run out of nearby opponents they have not played yet. Allowing a rematch after several rounds have passed keeps contenders playing teams of similar strength instead of forcing lopsided games across a wide standings gap.
How does the play-in work, and can a lower seed leapfrog?
The play-in gives the top bubble team(s) in the Challenger half one shot to take the final Championship Bracket spot(s). Teams locked above or below the play-in bubble never move.
Depending on the season format (1 or 2 play-in games), either the two teams on the cutline play one match, or the four bubble teams play two matches. Winners claim the last Championship seeds and losers take the top Challenger seeds.
How it's calculated: Single & dual play-in seeding examples
Single play-in example (10-team league):
The table splits after seed #5. Seeds 1–4 lock into the Championship Bracket and seeds 7–10 lock into the Challenger Bracket. Seeds #5 and #6 play one game:
• If #5 wins: #5 keeps the #5 Championship seed; #6 takes the #6 Challenger seed (1–5 | 6–10).
• If #6 wins: #6 takes the #5 Championship seed; #5 drops to the #6 Challenger seed (1–4, 6 | 5, 7–10).
Dual play-in example (16-team league):
The table splits after seed #8. Seeds 1–6 and 11–16 lock in place. The four bubble teams play #7 vs #10 and #8 vs #9. The two winners take Championship seeds #7 and #8 (ordered by their regular season finish), and the two losers take Challenger seeds #9 and #10 (also ordered by their regular season finish).
How the pairing system balances rank and rematches
Each regular season round, the pairing system matches teams as close together in the standings as possible while penalizing repeat matchups from earlier regular season rounds. Because points scale with sector margin (5, 4, 3, 2, or 0), teams separate into 10 possible point totals after just two rounds—3 times more separation than simple win/loss scoring—so teams face opponents at their own level by Round 3.
How it's calculated: Pairing cost & rematch penalty formulas
Each regular season round minimizes total squared standings rank distance plus a rematch penalty across all pairs:
The rematch penalty depends on how many regular season rounds () have passed since the two teams last played: