How matchmaking works

Type these into chat, with a leading ?.

A note on notation: <like this> means a value you have to fill in (e.g. <queue> stands for an actual queue name like 4v4). [like this] means the value is optional and the command works with or without it. Don't type the brackets themselves.

Every queue is a particular format (like 2v2 or 4v4) at a particular tier. There are two tiers:

Typing ?play 4v4 queues you for the competitive 4v4 by default. Add a tier to switch: ?play casual 4v4. ?cancel takes you out of every queue you've joined.

You can sit in more than one queue at once. As soon as any one of them fills, it pulls you in and removes you from the others.

A party is a group of friends who queue together. Invite people with ?party alice,bob; they'll get a chat message and can reply with ?accept or ?decline. When anyone in the party hits ?play, the whole group goes into the queue together. Matchmaking will do its best to keep you grouped — ideally everyone gets pulled into the next match together — but if it can't put together a good-quality match with the party intact within a short window, it will split the party up rather than make everyone wait indefinitely.

You can only be in one party at a time. If you want to switch, leave your current party first. Invites from someone else won't work while you're already in a party — the inviter will see that you're busy.

Open vs. closed parties

Every new party starts as open. In an open party, anyone in the group can invite more people. Use ?partymode closed to switch to closed: only the leader can send invites from then on.

Anyone in an open party can switch it to closed; whoever does becomes the leader. Switching back to open from closed, on the other hand, can only be done by the current leader.

Tip: open parties are great when you're trying to gather a stack quickly and want everyone to pitch in. Closed parties are better once you've finalised the roster and don't want anyone else getting added.

What the engine checks

When your party tries to queue, every member needs to be free — nobody already in a match — and the party can't be bigger than the queue allows (no 5-stacks in 4v4). If any check fails, nobody from the party joins the queue.

Once a queue fills, the match moves through three stages:

You'll see one of these badges on every match card on the home page.

You're locked to whichever ship you're flying for the rest of your current life. The reason is mechanical: every ship change in Continuum hands you a fresh item count — effectively a free reload. Allowing mid-fight ship swaps would let you top up repels and rockets just by hitting a different ship key.

There are two times you can change ships:

On your last life in a limited-lives mode the post-death window doesn't open — you're knocked out at that point and there's no respawn to wait for.

A short break in the middle of a match — a quick spec, an arena hop, a brief disconnect — won't get you in trouble. Each player gets a grace window: time to come back before the system gives up on you.

You can pop in and out as much as you like as long as you're back before your grace window runs out. The way back in is ?return — it puts you straight onto your team's freq in the ship you were last flying, and you're straight back in Active.

What counts as abandoning?

You're considered to have abandoned only if you leave (or fail to return) while teammates were still able to play. That's the case the penalty is meant to discourage: walking out and sticking the rest of your team with the loss.

If you're the last viable player on your team and you spec out (or disconnect, or run out of lives), you don't pick up an abandonment penalty. There was nobody left to leave behind. Your team will forfeit the match — see forfeits — but the abandon flag isn't pinned on you personally.

Team-wide grace

There's also a team-wide grace window (about 10 seconds): if your whole team is out of the arena at the same time — for example, two simultaneous disconnects — the team has those 10 seconds to recover before the match is forfeited. This is short on purpose; the goal is to absorb a freak network blip, not to give a losing team a quiet way out.

Forfeiting and abandoning are different things. Forfeit is a team-level outcome: a team has nobody left to play and the match ends with the other team winning. Abandoning is a per-player flag aimed at people who left an active match and ditched their teammates — see the section above. The two often happen together but track separately.

Each game type has its own win condition. Most of the time they fall into one of these:

After every match, the engine looks over what happened and flags anyone who appears to have been griefing. A flag turns into a griefing penalty straight away, but it doesn't lock in immediately — there's a short window where the other players in the match can vote to clear it.

What gets flagged

Forgiveness

While a flag is pending, anyone else who played in that match can use ?forgive <player> to disagree. If enough forgiveness votes come in before the window closes, the penalty is wiped — useful when someone was flagged for an honest accident (a stray bomb, a bad disconnect) rather than actual griefing.

Anyone who played in the match can vote, except the player being flagged. One vote per person per penalty.

A penalty just means you can't queue for a while. If you try ?play while you've got one, it'll tell you when it ends. There are two kinds:

Penalties stack as you repeat them. Your first abandonment is 10 minutes; if you abandon again before 24 hours have passed, the next one is 20 minutes, then 40, and so on. Worse offenses (e.g. burning all your lives in 5 seconds) can multiply the time-out further.

The clock resets after a clean stretch. If you go 24 hours without another offence of the same kind, you're back to the starting time-out. Your two penalty types track separately — abandoning a match doesn't reset your griefing history, and vice versa.

Each game type has its own skill rating, tracked separately. Win matches against tougher opposition and your rating goes up; lose to weaker teams and it drops. The further apart you and your opponents were, the bigger the swing.

The Rating column on every scoreboard is a single number summarising how good the system thinks you are. New players start out with a low rating because the system isn't sure of their skill yet — as you play more matches, your rating settles into the level you actually play at, and individual matches stop swinging it as much.

Next to your rating you'll see a small (+N) or (-N) in green or red — that's how much the match in front of you moved your rating.

How big the swing is

Two things shape the size of that change beyond the simple win-or-loss:

• How decisive the result was. A blowout — the winners barely lost anyone, the losers couldn't put up a fight — moves ratings more than a nail-biter with the same final ranking. A close win is worth what a close win has always been worth; a stomp is worth more.
• How much you personally contributed. Within your team, how long you stayed alive and how many kills you got compared to your teammates pulls your individual swing in your favour. Carrying winners gain more. High-contribution losers lose less — the system attributes the loss more to whoever else on the team did less. The flip side is real too: coast on a teammate's hard carry and your gain is smaller; drag the team down and your rating drops further than theirs.

Both effects are bounded — they shape the swing, they don't replace the result. You won't lose rating from winning a match no matter how poorly you played, and you won't gain rating from losing one.

Only Completed and Abandoned matches change ratings. Cancelled matches don't count and don't appear on this site at all.