PPlank

03
Feb
2024

PvE Rules Change

Following a question in Discord, it raised an issue that I’ve long been uncomfortable with on the PvE servers.

Originally the intent of the PvP zones was so that players would get some shooty action in designated areas. So that you can’t wander into a PvP zone by mistake, there are big grey domes over them and you get a warning you’re entering a PvP area, and then again when you leave.

All good to start with.

Then we started getting complaints about players taking other players loot, or killing them in order to get their loot. e.g. at the Launch Site which is a PvP zone, there’s the roaming Bradley. Players were killing the Bradley and then being killed by other players so that the agressive player could get the loot. And we got complaints about it. Then we had the same type of complaints on the Oil Rigs, and also when Helicopters were killed, and Supply Drops were looted.

Supply drops were particularly annoying as we’d get someone throw 50+ Supply Signals in the open and then go waily waily when other players ran in to loot the drops. Keep it manageable. Either drop them in your base surrounded by high stone walls, or go build a temporary compound somewhere else, throw your Signals and then quickly take your loot and lock it up. If you build an airdrop compound in a PvP zone such as at the launch site, then you can defend yourself if anyone tries to grab your drops. Bang bang, they’re dead. You can teleport between your airdrop compound and your main base by setting a /home in each one.

Just do a few Signals at a time…

We also got also complaints when players left doors open or their roof unsecured, or didn’t put locks on their chests, and someone else wandered in and took all their stuff. That should never have been an admin problem.

Players need to look after their own stuff.

Because it all took me on the back foot, I said yeah okay, no doing that any more. But I’ve never been happy with that decision. It wasn’t my original intent and made a mockery of even having PvP zones. I wanted to make players happy, but those players who asked for those changes are long since gone.

The PvE servers are NOT role play servers.

So we’re going back to roots.

This is what it says in the rules now when you do /info or /rules while in-game.

PLAYER BEWARE

o If you’re in a PvP zone, then other players can loot your kills or even
kill you if they want to. This applies to the Bradley, Cargoship, etc.

o If you leave doors open or your roof unprotected and someone raids you,
then that’s a shame, but it’s your problem not the admins.

o If you throw supply signals in an unprotected area and someone steals them
then that’s too bad, you need to protect yourself.

o If you take down a heli and someone steals your loot, that’s life.

Okay?

So you are now required to take more care of your stuff. Other players are going to take advantage of you and the admins aren’t going to take your side – unless there is a case we haven’t thought of yet and then we’ll make a decision and possibly incorporate it into the rules.

But there will be no more hand holding from the admins where PvP zones are concerned.

-PPlank

Posted by PPlank in General, Rust Servers
01
Feb
2024

Solo Server Closing

As FacePunch release more and more updates, and really nice plugins are released and added to the servers, there’s a price to be paid in terms of resource usage.

With this in mind, I’m closing the Solo server effective today 1st February.

If you’re one of the few players that use the Solo server, I apologise and I ask you to move to the Duo or Clans server. You wouldn’t think so, but the Clans server is the quietest and as I write this, it’s empty. The Duo server tends to attract more hard core 2-man (or woman) teams that will raid you without a second thought. So my advice is for you to move to the Clans server. Make some friends. Protect yourself.

Closing Solo will give back about 12GB in RAM which is a good thing as the hardware has been running at its capacity of 64GB. And this will release more CPU for the other servers too of course.

Now I’m not saying this is the only closure. I may (I probably will) close either Duo or Clans at mid-monthly wipe. My thoughts are to close Duo, but there has been some discussion amongst us admins as to which will stay and which will go.

Now I know nobody likes change. I hate it. When I worked in a corporate environment one of my many managers tried to tell us we should embrace change. No. No way. It was always forced on us and caused us problems until we integrated the changes into our workflow.

Having said that, change is inevitable. FacePunch keep making changes, and it’s the additional resource usage from those changes that have forced this change on our servers. Plugins get bigger, and they’re not always well optimised but are good to have.

So the benefits to the players is you will hopefully have a better experience on the servers, and the benefits to us admins is that it will be one (or possibly two) less servers to worry about. And also hopefully, you’ll see this as a win-win for both sides.

-PPlank

Posted by PPlank in General, Rust Servers
01
Sep
2023

Skill Up Everybody and Everything

I’ve added a new plugin to all servers which will give you perks/buffs as you raise your skill on your server of choice. It was suggested by fellow admin Xyte and we both think it will be a cool addition.

The plugin adds a character progression system in the form of a leveling and skill tree system. You can gain xp by cutting trees, mining rocks, killing NPCs etc, and you’re rewarded with skill points when you level up. These points can be used to unlock perks and buffs across a number of different skill trees.

At this time I’m not going to remove Zlevels (yet) but if there’s overlap then I will take Zlevels off and we’ll just use the new plugin. Also, if we find that one of the perks is a bit OP or just sadly lacking then let us know and we’ll look at changing things as it’s currently running with default settings.

This new plugin has:-

103 unique buff types across 119 skill nodes
12 unique skill trees
65+ sources of xp

Have fun and let us know how it’s working out for you. The main command is /st which opens the skill tree menu.

There are other commands, but I need to work out which ones are for players to use and which ones are admin only as it’s not very clear on the plugin page. 🙄 When I know, I’ll update this page.

Posted by PPlank in General, Rust Servers, Server Updates
29
Aug
2023

Modded TugBoats

Rust TugBoats are now available to purchase at harbours, fishing villages and the ferry terminal, all from vendors specifically placed there to do so.

A number of benefits / features have been added to Rust TugBoats, for starters they should now travel at twice the speed they did before, woohoo! You can also place deployables (things) in other parts of the TugBoat, which means you can do things like add planters and electric water purifiers or water catchers to water them. Electrical items like the purifiers and boomboxes will run while the engine is switched on.

There’s a full list of whitelisted items you can place on your TugBoat at the end of this post.

Other lovely features are:-

The driver check has been disabled so your TugBoat won’t auto stop when you’re not steering it.
You can set your TugBoat into autonav so that it travels along the cargo ship path.
Tugboats can now be seen from 300m away, so they’re much more visible.
You can rotate placed entities by hitting them with a hammer. 😉
You can add autoturrets and samsites.
You can teleport your tugboat to you. (This may be removed.)
Your minicopter will lock and latch to your tugboat when you land on it.
You can set a /home on your tugboat.
As mentioned above, electrical items like electric furnaces, ceiling lights and the water system all work.

You can also use Torpedoes and Water Mines. Yeah… 😉

Pressing the reload key (default R) will fire a torpedo that you must have in your inventory.
Pressing the crouch key (default CTRL) will drop a mine using inner tubes and C4 from your inventory.

If any of these features are proven to be being exploited, such as teleporting your tugboat to yourself while base raiding, they will be removed, or optionally I will give you a 24 hour ban and then permanently remove your ability to use that feature. So behave.

/tughelp – Shows a list of commands you can use
/tugfind – Marks your tugboats on the map
/autonav – enables/disables auto nav function
/tugtome – Teleports tugboat to you

Whitelisted Placeable Items

“autoturret”,
“samsite”,
“water.catcher.small”,
“barricade.concrete”,
“composter”,
“sign.pole.banner.large”,
“small.oil.refinery”,
“trap.landmine”,
“trap.bear”,
“searchlight”,
“guntrap”,
“flameturret”,
“planter.small”,
“woodcross”,
“rustige_egg_a”,
“rustige_egg_b”,
“rustige_egg_c”,
“rustige_egg_d”,
“rustige_egg_e”,
“rustige_egg_f”,
“electric.flasherlight”,
“electric.furnace”,
“electric.sprinkler”,
“smallcandles”,
“strobelight”,
“discofloor”,
“fogmachine”,
“cursedcauldron”,
“coffin.storage”,
“largecandles”,
“snowmachine”,
“spookyspeaker”,
“boombox”,
“electric.heater”,
“electric.sirenlight”,
“electric.simplelight”,
“target.reactive”,
“industrial.wall.light.green”,
“industrial.wall.light.red”,
“industrial.wall.light”,
“planter.large”,
“scarecrow”,
“mailbox”,
“wall.graveyard.fence”,
“fireplace.stone”,
“powered.water.purifier”,
“ceilinglight”

 

Posted by PPlank in General, Rust Servers, Server Updates
06
Apr
2023

Server Changes 6th April 2023

Apart from some plugin updates such as RaidableBases and Backpacks, there have been a few changes that make sense to me.

o QuarryLevels has been removed from all servers. This is because there are bugs in the plugin and it isn’t working properly. Most importantly the dev (Death) is no longer maintaining the plugin and there are lots of unanswered support questions. This is the second paid plugin to my knowledge that the dev has abandoned (Hotbars is now looked after by another dev – RaulMaintained), so no more purchases from Death. Worse is the fact that he’s the main man on the CodeFling website, so he’s setting a bad example there for all the other devs.

o GlobalStorage (Enderchests) has been removed from the PvP servers due to complaints about them being used to store loot permanently which isn’t what they were intended for. They will remain on PvE. For PvP servers, don’t forget you can still use small stashes hidden on another part of the map.

o MonumentLock has been added to the PvE servers. This is intended to lock event monuments such as the Oil Rigs so that other players can’t steal your loot once you’ve started the event, which has been one of the complaints on PvE servers for a while now. (Some people just don’t read the rules.)

You need to understand that this plugin will need some configuration and I’m sure I’ll need to make some changes to it as I don’t think it’s going to work exactly as I hope right out of the box. I could be wrong.

Some features are:-

– A monument locks to the first player (and team) who loots, shoots, hacks or swipes, granting them total access.
– A locked monument may prevent other players from looting and/or card reader access (configurable).
– Unauthorized players cannot do damage to players or NPCs, nor can they loot their bodies (configurable).
– Unauthorized players cannot hack locked crates within a monument’s bounds. (configurable)

You can read the full feature set here:-

https://codefling.com/plugins/monument-lock

-PPlank

Posted by PPlank in General, Rust Servers, Server Updates
06
Mar
2023

Raid Protection Changes

As of today at 12:35 GMT, Offline Raid Protection has been decreased from 100% to 95%, and the time before protection starts has been increased from 10 minutes to 15 minutes.

What this decrease to 95% protection means to you is that it’s possible to progressively damage a base which consumes scrap from the Tool Cupboard. When all the scrap is gone, then the base is fully raidable.

If necessary I’ll reduce it further to 90%, but first let’s see if 95% is okay.

Posted by PPlank in Rust Servers, Server Updates
19
Feb
2023

BackPacks Plugin Upgrade

The BackPacks plugin has just had a series of upgrades over the last month with the most recent adding a couple of very useful features. This update is now active on all GameKeeper servers.

Now when you open your backpack, you’ll see two new buttons. The first cycles between “Gather: Off”, “Gather: All”, and “Gather: Existing”. This means anything you pick up can be automatically placed into your BackPack. Very useful when gathering wood and stone etc. “Existing” means only items or resources that you have already placed in your BackPack will be moved there automatically.

The second button does the opposite and allows resource to be taken directly from your BackPack when building for example. This button toggles between “Retrieve: Off” and “Retrieve: On”. Super useful when doing large builds because you won’t have to keep going back to your resource chest to top up on stone, HQM etc.

If you want to bind your BackPack to a key, then my suggestion is to bind it to the 7 key as the icon is in the same row as your hotbar. It makes sense to me anyway.

To bind a key, press F1 => Console, then type:-

bind 7 backpack.open

Close the console with F1 and you’re done.

-PPlank

Posted by PPlank in General, Rust Servers
19
Feb
2023

Sorting Upgrade

The sorting plugin – /qs command – has now been replaced with a much better sorting solution. This new plugin lets you set categories and optionally items for the container.

Now when you open a container You’ll see new UI bottom right where you can select categories to be sorted.

Once you’ve selected a category (or more), you can then even choose to select items within those categories.

Once selected, you can press the “This” button to have your selected items – in this example low grade fuel – to be dumped into the container.

If you set up all your containers to only accept certain items, then you can use the “Nearby” button while in your base and everything in your inventory will be dumped into the appropriate containers without even having to open them all. Very cool.

It also seems to work with the BackPacks plugin as a BackPack is a container, but I can’t think why you’d want to do that.

Happily the sorter also works perfectly with the multi-level container plugin, so each sub-container can also have its own settings. 😎

Thank you Höggi for the heads up about this plugin, I completely missed the point of it when it was released.

-PPlank

Posted by PPlank in General, Rust Servers
01
Dec
2022

Changes to Quarries and Pumpjacks

Effective from the FacePunch forced wipe of 1st December 2022, there are two changes being introduced that probably won’t affect most players.

This is has been done to reduce the huge amounts of resources being produced by *some* players in a very short time and causing the game to be unbalanced. I don’t think it will completely solve the problem and I may have to take further steps, but that’s for another day. I don’t think that even on a 5x or 10x server that it’s right that players should have MILLIONS of high quality metal, metal frags and sulfur within the first couple of days of a wipe.

The changes:-

1) You will now only be able to deploy 2 quarries and 1 pumpjack.

2) Quarries and pumpjacks will only operate while you’re online.

I’ll explain this in more detail.

For number 1 I think it’s fair to say most players won’t notice this limit as many people put down a couple of quarries and that’s enough, but some just can’t stop placing them down and the output gets a bit silly with them all running 24/7. If this change isn’t enough, I’ll reduce the number to 1 quarry per player. The good news in this is you can still upgrade your quarries and pumpjacks in the quarry/pumpjack interface by clicking the upgrade button. Each upgrade will consume a quarry or pumpjack from your inventory.

Which brings me onto number 2 where the quarries and pumpjacks will now just turn themselves off when you disconnect, and turn themselves back on again when you reconnect.

I know that some people won’t have read this post and it will be a surprise to them, but everyone will know soon enough that these changes mean a change in game strategy.

If you don’t already do it, then the first thing to do is to find good quarry locations that output most or all ores and upgrade them, and then finally build a base near those to protect them. Good use of pipes (/p command) to pipe out the ores as they’re created should get the resource into your bases, where you should have put plenty of scrap into your Tool Cupboard to stop players from offline raiding you. This means if your quarries and pumpjacks have built up an excess of resource while you’re online, when you disconnect and they turn themselves off, the remaining resource will be piped into your base where it’s safe.

Comments here or in Discord please.

Posted by PPlank in General, Rust Servers, Server Updates
28
Nov
2022

Possible Changes to GameKeeper Servers

I’ve been a little concerned this last few weeks that maybe I’ve made it a little too easy to gather resources due to quarries being a little bit over powered, and I’ve been looking for ways to fix this without removing personal quarries altogether and I’ve come up with a couple of changes that I’ll be testing.

The first is to put a limit on the amount of quarries and pumpjacks you can place down, and I’ll probably set that limit for both to two or even one per player. You can still upgrade those quarries and pumpjacks to make them perform better by using the upgrade button in the quarry interface.

The second is to make a change so that personal quarries and pumpjacks will only operate when you’re online. When you disconnect, they’ll turn off until you reconnect again. That will surely stop over production.

I think these changes are fair and a good idea to stop some of the ridiculous amounts of resource that some players have been creating. I will test this out tomorrow and if all is good it will be implemented this coming forced wipe on Thursday 1st December.

Comments here or in Discord please.

Posted by PPlank in General, Rust Servers, Server Updates