Because I inherently have a biased opinion on the matter, I will give nothing but food for thought and a comparison.
The only other time this brawl where half points have been given were to Paratus' R2 Space trooper task. Which was not submitted by the deadline, but was accepted because they had something done, it just hadn't been submitted via the appropriate methods.
Alternatively, the 2 submissions that have received 0 points due to being illegal were Paratus R1 Space trooper, and GN R2 Captain Task.
Now while you could argue that yes, this task is also a clear violation of the rules, you could also argue that a submission past the deadline is also a clear violation.
Furthermore, you could argue that Paratus submitted what they had without further editing, and while this is valid, depending on how you look at it, GFY task had been changed without anything beyond taking out words.
Looking at it differently, I believe once, someone had asked about illegal submissions a few wars back based on word count. Unless the submission was blatantly over 1000 words, like 1500 or something, then sure it would be completely barred off. But a submission that was just over would be taken with a penalty and nothing much else.
A submission that can fit the word count purely by taking out words and changing nothing about the story, nor the flavour of the text, then would it not fall under the first category?
Basically though, submissions that are illegal are taken on a case by case basis and are not determined based on "which rules we are allowed to break" or whatever. Though j guess all we can do is leave it to the BMs now
