PPlank

23
Feb
2019

Backpacks – Why we don’t have them

UPDATE: The Backpacks plugin is now stable and has been installed on all GameKeeper Rust servers as of 12th February 2021. Yaaay!

So there’s been a question that continually pops up in chat and discord. It’s always been far more common on the PvE server, however, we do get asked across the network. So I’ll clear a few things up and save us time answering the question time and time again.

It’s buggy, it’s as simple as that. Back in the original days of GameKeeper, we had the plugin running and at that time the backpack used a satchel charge model. More often than not, the satchel charge that was always stuck to your back even though it wasn’t lit, had a very unpredictable fuse and would blow you up. We couldn’t let it go on like that so had to remove the plugin. Then when we opened the PvE server and had lots of players asking for the plugin, we said “sure, it can’t hurt” so we gave it another go. It wasn’t using a satchel charge anymore and so the previous problem we had was no longer an issue. We were hopeful that the plugin would work fine. But no, we then got a lot more complaints telling us loot was going missing. Keys were no longer working with the lock it came from and the list went on. So yet again, we removed it and vowed never to have the plugin back on the servers until the other day when legleg really wanted to add it back. But I’ll show you the exact reason we put a stop to his desires.

Below is a number of links to the Backpacks uMod help page.

The first one, posted just three days ago. Click here. Items are still getting lost.

This second one just a week old. Click here. Backpacks flying off players backs. So items getting lost.

I’ll just post those two. Click here if you wish to look through the rest of the posts.

This is the final time I’m going to say it, backpacks aren’t coming back to GameKeeper servers unless they are added into the game by FacePunch.

Posted by PPlank in Rust Servers
30
Mar
2018

Rust CCTV and Player Bounties

At one point or another, you’ve been sat inside your base hearing foot steps and asking yourself “Is that a horse or a human” Your heart has started to pound, you think this is going to be the end for you. Then ten minutes later, just as you’re on the verge of a heart attack, you realise it was neither a horse or human, just a damn deer.
Here at GameKeeper we care about our players, the last thing we want is someone to have a heart attack at their keyboards. So I present to you,  security cameras.

To get started with the security cameras, here are the commands.

/sc ~ Displays the help menu for the security cameras.

/sc add ~ Will let you deploy a security camera somewhere on a building block. You must have a CCTV camera in your hand to do so.

/sc remove ~ Remove the camera that you’re looking at.

/sc name <name> ~ Give your camera a name so you can identify it.

I’ve been kind enough to grant access to these plugins to all VIP levels, so that includes the free vip level. They’ll get 1 camera, then the donator ranks will get 3, 4 and 5 respectivly.

 

Now to view and control the cameras, you’ll need the RustNet laptop.

/rustnet ~ Brings up the help terminal with instructions on use.

/terminal add ~ Activate the terminal placement tool. You must have a laptop in your hand to do so.

/terminal remove ~ Remove a existing terminal.

 

You can use the RustNet terminal for the security cameras. But it can also control the bounty system.
You’ll now be able to place a bounty on your enemy for a price, then who ever kills the player with the bounty gets a reward. Cool eh?

In the above example, you can set a RP as the bounty reward on the chosen target. You’re also able to use items as a reward.

Then once you’ve killed the victim, you can claim your reward from the laptop.

 

Have fun spying on your next bounty victim 😉

 

-Zilch

 

Posted by PPlank in General
15
Mar
2018

PvP Server Changes

One thing me and PPlank have talked about for a while is, VIP kits. They’re overpowered and essentially making the server pay to win. Nor did they make any sense between the ranks. But the kits are just the start of it.
As of today, I’m going to start my focus on how to gain more players, then how to keep them. Due to the big clans and VIP players with all their resources, they’re crushing… no, obliterating is a better word for it all the new player. What this doesn’t do, is give them a chance to establish themselves. They come on the server for a day, log off for the night and wake up to nothing left. After that they have no reason to stay on the server, some do, but most will go over to another server.

So what have I done to try and change this?

Firstly, the VIP kits as I talked about above. They’ve had a huge balance out. No longer do you get the 10k ammo stacks in the VIP+++ weekly kit. Some players took the smart route with that kit, they’d take the majority of that ammo and recycle it for gunpowder to make C4. Then they’d be instantly able to crush the server after a wipe. So it was pay to win. You’ve had to put no effort in to take the items from players that have tried their best. Here are the new kits below;

VIP+ Daily

VIP+ Weekly

VIP+ Once

VIP++ Daily

VIP++ Weekly

VIP++ Once

VIP+++ Daily

VIP+++ Weekly

VIP+++ Once

There will be a link at the bottom of this post for your comments, I’d really love to hear them.

The second change I’ve made is the charcoal stacks. We tried this once before at it was liked by a few people, but also hated by others. But the small charcoal stacks are now back. Just not as small this time. They’re are now set at 15k, this will make charcoal a lot more precious and will hopefully slow down raiding a little bit. Sometimes Admin bases will have 500k stacks, make the most of those.

Warps too have gone back to what they had been in the past, you can no longer warp to each monument and get around the map as fast. What you can do is warp to North, East, South or West. Now you’ll have to be smart with your /sethomes like you’ve done on every other server. We just had to be different didn’t we, pfft 😉
Along with this change, the /grt command is now gone. I want to see if there’s a difference, so it might come back at some point.

Now for one of my favorites, Offline Raiding, or now the lack of. Gone are the days of the constant offline raiding. Now you’ll still be able to offline raid, but it’ll be way harder as damage you’re able to deal is now different. For example, if a player goes offline, after 10 minutes a timer will start. Within the first 2 hours, you’ll only be able to do 20% of the normal damage to a base. After 3 hours, you’ll be able to do 35%. I’ll list the values below. After 18 hours, everyone will be able to raid that base with the normal health. It might seem a bit long. But it’s to give people enough time to go to bed, get up again and go to work, school or whatever.
The reason I’ve chosen to try and stop the offline raiding is as I stated above, players come on, get raided while they’re offline and leave. That leaves all of us with a dead server after a few days. Then it’s no fun for anyone, so then the players who’ve not been raided then leave too. So hopefully with this change we’ll see a few more numbers on the server like we used too.
The damage percentages are as follows;

  • 1-3hrs, 20%
  • 3-6hrs, 35%
  • 6-12hrs, 50%
  • 12-18hrs 80%
  • After 18hrs, 100%

We’ve also joined the raid block club. Now I know this is one thing that online raiders hate with a passion. They start raiding a base when the players are online and as soon as they get near the loot, the players getting raided go and TP the loot out of the base. Some people say “Tough shit!” I say it’s unfair and we should have added raid block a very long time ago.
So if you’re getting raided, or in a gunfight, you’ll no longer be able to vanish into thin air with your gear. May the best man win.

You’ll now get two hours when you first join the server to establish yourself. You’ll not be able to PvP (If you try, you’ll lose five minutes from your protection) and you’ll not be able to be killed by other players. This two hours is for you to farm up some resources, build a base and get yourself established. You can end your protection at any time with /sp end

Another thing that has changed back to what it used to be is the foundation health. More information about that can be found here – https://gamekeeper.io/foundation-raiding-is-on/

 

These are the changes that have gone in with this wipe, but there will be more coming. Like I said above, I’d love to hear your thoughts on these changes. They might not stay, but there’s only one way to find out if they work.
Please tell me what you think on the forums here – https://gamekeeper.io/community/threads/pvp-server-changes.133/

Posted by PPlank in Rust Servers
23
Jan
2018

Raided Island Base

All I’ll say is you can’t build bases like this and not expect to be easily raided.

Noteworthy things to bear in mind (below) when base building that I’ve mentioned in the video.

o Autoturrets can be destroyed with 2 incendiary rockets.
o Avoid building rectangular, open bases. That is noob behaviour.
o Don’t get overconfident (cocky).
o You must honeycomb and make use of triangle foundations.
o Doors EVERYWHERE – make your base expensive to raid.
o Hide your Tool Cupboards – don’t make it obvious where they are.
o A raider can jump on the other player’s shoulders to get up a single level.
o Make sure you use 1.5x and 2x height levels. If you have building privileges you can put twig ladders down to get that little higher to reach your ladder hatches.
o Hide your best loot in small stashes. I keep saying this, no-one but the best players listen.

Some things I didn’t mention in the video.

o Don’t build all your bases together. You’re just making it easy (and an attractive target) and there’s no need to do so with the use of /home.
o Use bear traps. After they’ve triggered, they reset after 20 minutes (I think it’s 20) on GK servers. That means you can hurt them on the way in and hurt them on the way out too.
o Use at least double layered high stone walls, and build into shallows to stop raiders from having an easy time.

-PPlank

Posted by PPlank in General, Rust Servers
23
Dec
2017

Good Players and Whiners

Just a quick post to answer something that comes up from time to time from usually newbie Rust players. I personally consider a newbie as someone who has less than 1,000 hours – but let’s be generous and say 800.

Every so often we’ll see something in console chat that goes a little like this.

“Shit server, pay to win.”

In my experience as a Rust player who used to play on modded servers before I set up GameKeeper, that has NEVER been relevant.  In fact, when we knew that there were players on a server who had more than us, they became instant targets.  So we’d lay low and make enough explosives to do a bit of “light raiding.”

We’d do things like build a couple of small raid bases near to a big base, put some sleeping bags in and then take it in turns to run up to their doors naked (if no turrets) and “knock-knock-knock” until someone came out and killed us.  Rinse and repeat.  Then after a while we’d know whose base it was and how many were living there. 😉

Do that a few times around the map and soon enough you know where all the big bases are and who lives in them.  And then it starts.

Before long you’ve relieved the rich of their M249s and ammo stashes.  We always tried NOT to kill the sleepers though as we didn’t want them to know who’d emptied their pockets.

It’s fun.  It’s Rust.

Eventually I donated and became a VIP+ and we found that was usually enough to get us started up fast right after a wipe – this was in the original BP system days when it was a mad frenzy of all your clan learning how to make all the weapons.  Later I donated again up to VIP+++ levels simply because I wanted to say thank you to the server admin.

But at no point did I ever feel it was “pay to win.”  That’s whiner talk.

Posted by PPlank in Rust Servers
08
Dec
2017

New 36 Hour Raiding Ban

What’s one thing that would make the GameKeeper servers even better? Thinking back on comments, I would have to say more players. For the last six or so months we have been talking about different ways to achieve this and I think we finally have the right solution.

We have added a plugin that will give new players a grace period. What this means is they will be unraidable for the first 36 hours they are on the server. New players will also be stopped from raiding within the first 36 hours to make it fair for everyone.

We think this is the best way to go about it all. The reason being this, more experienced players come on the PvP servers, they farm like crazy for a few hours then raid all the smaller bases that they can. The smaller bases are usually built by more inexperienced players who are still trying to learn the game and don’t want to play on the PvE server. So then they login and find they have been crushed after a day or less. After this they don’t see a reason to stick around and go to a new server leaving us with a low population. So the main idea of it all is, the experienced players who want to raid can’t just come on, raid and scare new players away. They’ll be the ones leaving and everyone else will be happy. Well, that’s how it goes in our heads.

To check if a player’s grace period is over, you can walk up to their base and enter /checknew into chat. If it’s not over you will be given the time until it is.

Usually the servers wipe around 10pm GMT on the first Thursday of the month. So that would make them raidable late Saturday morning. Giving you the rest of the weekend to raid.

We really hope this works the way we want it to.

– The Admins

Posted by PPlank in Rust Servers
07
Dec
2017

The RP Store – Good News Bad News

Zilch and I have been having discussions for the last 2 weeks about the /s Rewards Points store.

We know there are exploits, and we know there aren’t enough items for sale or to sell.  So on top of everything else we have going on (there’s a LOT of under the cover things happening right now), we’re going to take some time out to completely redo the store.  We have to warn you that it’s a real PITA to work on it due to the overly complicated way the developer implemented it – it really needs a re-write to make it easier to work quantities and prices out.

We’re going to need at least a shared spreadsheet to hack it all out and make any sense of it.

So we’ve decided to take all the /s stores offline for 1 week (at least – it might take a little longer) while we sort it all out.  Starting with the wipe tonight.

With any luck we’ll get it all done in the next few days and it will be back online NEXT Thursday 14th December.  We’re very sorry, but it’s just something that REALLY needs to be done.

Good News – we’re fixing the /s store.
Bad News – we’re taking it offline until it’s done.

You can leave thoughts and comments about this on the forum here.

https://gamekeeper.io/community/threads/open-for-comments-on-the-s-reward-points-store.111/

-PPlank

Posted by PPlank in Rust Servers
07
Dec
2017

Rust Building 3.0

Here:-

https://www.rustafied.com/updates/2017/12/5/building-30-what-you-need-to-know

Lots of interesting things going on with half height walls etc, but probably of most interest to base builders are the Tool Cupboard (TC) changes.

Two statements are of interest here.

#1 – Only 1 tool cupboard per building.

“Buildings are now defined by any foundation that snaps with another, and any blocks connected to said foundations.”

#2 – Privilege radius based on blocks, not cupboards.

“Building privilege is now based on the building blocks instead of exact radius around the cupboard. That means the placement of the cupboard inside the building has no impact on that structures exact build privilege area. Rather, the building itself defines the radius of build privilege”

My initial conclusion from these two statements:-

It seems that with clever honeycombing and a single TC placed anywhere within your base, you can protect all of it.  In theory (we won’t know until the update hits tonight) you could build an 8 storey building with a single TC at the top inside a honeycomb and protect your entire base.  ONLY IF they’ve also changed the way the TC influence spreads down (a single block I believe) and as they’ve said nothing about that, again we won’t know until the update hits.

Also, if I’ve read it correctly, they don’t seem to have put a limit as to how big your base is either (have I missed that?), it seems to be a case of because “Buildings are now defined by any foundation that snaps with another, and any blocks connected to said foundations.”  So as long as you’re using building blocks like foundation steps to go up and down hills, then IN THEORY (at the moment) you could build one massive base all over the side of a mountain and protect it all with a single TC tucked away somewhere.

Then the raiders would have to find it to get anywhere.

However…  It might not be all one-sided in favour of the base builder.  It may also be a case of raiders being able to “orphan” parts of a low sprawling base by blowing out foundations in certain areas and disconnecting some of the foundations from the TC.  They would know as they would suddenly be able to build in the orphaned area.  If this is possible, the raider could then begin to work out the general area where your TC is located.

One things for certain, either it’s all going to get really interesting and breathe some life into base building… or it’s a complete cock up with some of this stuff working and some not.

We’ll know in the next day or so.  What’s your money on?

-PPlank

Posted by PPlank in Rust Servers
27
Nov
2017

Banning Clan LShot from GameKeeper

UPDATE 24th Jan 2018: Screenshots from Discord at the end of this post.

Here’s the thing. As admins, we don’t want to ban ANYONE. We’ve only ever had to ban 26 people, and FOUR of those were last night when we banned Clan LShot.

(Once we ban, it’s permanent. No appeals process. It would be a waste of our time.)

We want players to join one of the servers we’ve spent a LOT of time setting up, and then enjoy themselves.

We’ve set up some reasonable rules, the main one being to protect us admins from time wasters. And when I said we’ve spent a lot of time setting up the servers, I mean HUNDREDS of hours. And it’s ongoing. We never stop. So we don’t have time for any bullshit.

“Oh help me admin. I’m pathetic and I can’t help myself.”

That kind of thing. This game is hardcore. It’s Rust. You’re going to continuously get your arse handed to you on PvP. If the main PvP server is too much, we’ve set up a smaller (and so far quieter) PvP2 server, and also a PvE server with PvP zones at monuments for those that like to mainly build.

The PvE server is the best of both worlds. You get to build (mostly) in peace and you get to learn the game mechanics if you’re new. You don’t get raided. Then when you want a bit of action, you visit one of the monuments and shoot bots and other players. It can be a lot of fun. I prefer PvP myself, but I also finally get it with PvE too – at least the way we’ve done it.

The rest of the server rules are there to protect ALL players on the servers and to add a bit of civility to everything.

And that’s all good and fine until you get toxics join. Arrogant bastards. They don’t read the rules. Or they don’t think they apply to them. Or they think they’re not very good rules and ignore them.

We can spot the toxics almost right away – sometimes even from comments in the console when we’re not even actually IN the game. (Yeah, always watching.) Up until now we’ve given them a chance and told them to read the rules and given them a bit of slack.

Clan LShot are the last players we do that for.

Because here’s something even more interesting.

When we ban the toxics (remember we don’t want to ban ANYONE), we get donations. It’s like the other players want to reward us for keeping the servers clean.

So that’s what we’re going to do now. We see a toxic, we ban them. No hesitation.

Here’s a short video explaining why Clan LShot were banned.

 

UPDATE 24th Jan 2018:

So this just happened.  Why are people like this?  All I can think is they were hoping we’d bite and then they’d have something on us.  The thing is, we take what we do seriously and we’re not scumbags.

And the DM to me.

 

Posted by PPlank in Rust Servers
24
Nov
2017

Rust Half Height Walls

Coming soon to Rust are the long overdue half height walls.  Why FacePunch do a lot of things is beyond me, but when they removed the half height floor block months ago was a real puzzler as it immediately limited and removed a lot of cool base designs.

But with introduction of half height walls, you can now make your own half height floor blocks.  Expect some clever (read: “sneaky”) base designs again.

From Rust dev blog 187:-

Building 3.0
André Straubmeier

This week I pretty much completed the new building system. I started by allowing foundations to snap to each other at a vertical offset of half a wall. Then I added half height walls that can be used to even out that offset on the higher floors. With half height walls and a floor you can of course also construct your own half height block – if you’re still nostalgic for this long removed building block type.

 

Posted by PPlank in Rust Servers