What is CTA?
CTA is a body of Armor Critical players that organize tournaments and keeps track of player tournament statistics. The CTA is affiliated with Armor Criticals administration. Although we are not considered part of Armor Criticals staff, we have been granted some administrative privileges to help moderate tournaments. The CTA staff is also known for helping referee leagues in the community such as Gladiators and the Spark Go League.

Mission Statement?
CTA plans to focus on community enrichment. We plan to be at the expense of the public, but at the same time, ensure that the CTA engine is a positive experience for all types of players.

Vision?
The CTA organization plans to not only hold tournaments for the Spark community but other activities, for example, mini-leagues and mega-tournaments.

History of CTA
CTA was first introduced by Turbo & Birdman in November of 2008. Turbo & Birdman started hosting tournaments together 2-3 times a month. Nothing was very organized, and they didn't have a site or even CTA forums so everything was pretty much done on the Spark-HQ forums. They were both surprised with the amount of players that wanted to participate in the tournaments. Around December, Birdman became preoccupied with extracurricular activities and soon became inactive. Turbo then started up SparkNebula with Tigerbite, who was also known as Prophet.

Prophet setup a nice website and with their own CTA forums. They both worked very well together, it was CTA's beginning, and they were hosting around a 5-10 tournaments a month. They were marketing CTA very well and mostly everyone in the community knew what CTA was about.

After a 6-8 month partnership with TigerBite, Turbo turned to a new partner, the post-o-matic ReaperCharlie. Charlie developed a website and with the help of Teddy, that had the first true scripted statistic spreadsheet.

In 2010 Turbo constructed the Board of Directors. The people involved were Fingers, Static, Halow & Turbo.
Fingers was a Spark Guide and had helped CTA an enormous amount. Aside from managing numerous tournaments, he also hosted the New Jersey server which was widely used. Fingers provided CTA and Spark with a ventrilo voice-chat client, which was highly recommended for all users as it increases the excitement of the tournaments. Halow developed a professional website and a script for statistics. He continued to amaze everyone with the statistics he introduced into CTA. Halow made the referees job easier by helping minimize errors. Static was one of the longest CTA staff members, it was astonishing how much Static accomplished on the back end. Static's primary job was to manage the daily operations and make sure the staff was more than capable of managing tournaments. Static also made sure that the CTA participants are abiding by the CTA rules on our website.

After Spark transitioned to Armor Critical, for an extended amount of time the CTA website and scripts that Halow worked on went missing. Anyone that was in a position of power for CTA had gone inactive. These were dark times for the game as the combined effect of the transition and absence of CTA had caused an ultimate low in activity on the game. This is when Cyro managed to get a hold of the CTA stat pulling script and built a new website from the ground up with help from Remag. CTA was approaching a new with the new Board of Directors, consisting of Cyro, Niveus and Benevolence.

As the Board was working diligently on getting the game active again, the domino effect they created, helped resurge Spark Guides and Administrators back to the game to help lead once again, one of them being Turbo. Turbo has always been passionate about CTA and after a couple weeks, requested to be part of the Board to help lead the team to success. At this time, cyro stepped down from the board to focus more on Spark coding. In his stead, DarkEvil assumed his position, who was a key contributor in CTA's success during the beginnings. The Board currently consists of Benevolence, DarkEvil, Turbo and Niveus.

These are the rules of the Certified Tournament Administration. If you have any questions regarding these rules, please contact the CTA Staff. This is your warning!

Section 1: Pre-Game Behavior

1.1 – You can only sign yourself up. You may not sign up for anyone else, or ask anyone else to sign up for you. The only reason a staff member should sign up a non-staff member is if two accounts are shared under the same IP. The only exception to this rule is if the Critical-HQ site goes down for any reason.

1.2 – Sign up with the name that you are currently on, in the Armor Critical lobby. This helps expedite the process of handing out the password to the right alias.

1.3 – By signing up for a CTA game, you have become committed to play. If you leave the game halfway or leave before the tournament starts, you will receive warnings, suspensions and long-term bans in that order if it occurs frequently. There are exceptions to this rule, for example, letting the referee know that you have to go prior to actually leaving.

1.4 – If you are not signed up, you cannot play. You may enter the server only after all signed-up players have already entered and have been assigned to a team. When the person who isn’t signed up joins the server, they will be a substitute player. Until every signed-up player is chosen to play, the subs will not be able to be picked. If the game fills up before any substitutes are picked, then the game will commence without substitutes. Substitutes may still be called upon to play if a signed-up player has to leave, lags out, or is kicked from the game by an administrator.

1.5 – While captains are picking teams, spectators will only speak in team-chat. If the spectator continue to cause a huge distraction for the game, a global mute will occur and will be lifted once teams are picked.

1.6 – Spectators are more than welcome. CTA’s purpose is to increase the entertainment sector of Armor Critical! When you enter the server, go to spectator mode and quickly state that you are a spectator. However, to reduce confusion, spectators may only join the server once the game has started. To obtain the password for the game, simply PM one of the referees running the game (a member with a CTA next to their name, who is spectating in the server). Spectator privileges may be denied at the discretion of the CTA Staff depending on how full the server is, or if a player has already been kicked from the game.

1.7 – If there are specific rules to the tournament, you are obligated to read the rules and follow them accordingly. Ignorance is not an excuse.

1.8 – If playing or spectating in a tournament, you must be open and available to all forms of communication by the CTA Official running the tournament, and should respond within reasonable time-frames when direction is given for the purpose of enforcing a rule or ensuring a smooth game. (More Specifically but not solely : CTA Official Running the Game Should not be Muted or Ignored)

Section 2: In-Game Behavior

2.1 – No cheating of any kind is allowed in CTA games. If any cheating is witnessed, the player will be subjected to the collective wrath of the Armor Critical Administrative Team, and suspension and/or bans may be dealt out from them.

2.2 – If the CTA staff decides your connection is unstable or game-altering, you may be asked to spectate, and must therefore do so.

2.3 – No verbal abuse (such as swearing, racial slurs, spamming etc) is permitted towards anyone in CTA games, including the CTA Staff. Anyone caught doing this will be subject to warnings, suspensions and bans at the discretion of the CTA Staff and/or the Armor Critical Administrative Team.

2.4 – Unlike what is common in most league games, restriction of chat to teamchat will not be enforced. However, if it gets out of hand, global/public mutes will be initiated.

2.5 – Once you are placed on a team, you must remain on that team unless the CTA official states otherwise. Switching teams will not be allowed.

2.6 – We have no tolerance to griefing as this is illegal in the Armor Critical TOS as well. Anyone that causes a problem to a player in the game such as sitting on someone’s ship, following them for annoyance etc will be removed from the game. 0% Tolerance.

Section 3: Post-Game Behavior

3.1 – No complaining or whining of any sort will be tolerated after a match in the main or help lobbies. Examples of this are complaining about teams, MRPs or statistics. The "cta" lobby has an exception to this rule.