PPlank

As the title says, we’ve now completely migrated Rust server #1 to a new faster, bigger, dedicated server. Just search for it in the in-game Rust browser or you can connect directly to it at 91.121.90.23:28015.

The PlayRust.io map is at http://playrust.io/map/?91.121.90.23:28015.

If you’re interested, the new hardware is a Xeon 3.4Ghz 4 core (8 threads), with 32GB Ram, plus 2x 120GB SSDs in RAID 1, and an additional 120GB SSD as storage, so there’s plenty of oomph in this for expansion. Running just a single server is taking up less than 4GB RAM and roughly 10% CPU. (Compare this to the 50% CPU of the old system.)

We’ll be migrating server #2 to this new hardware at the next dev wipe on the 6th April.

We’re also considering running a medieval server using only swords and crossbows and a 7 Days To Die server too as that’s pretty good fun (and scary, when you’re trapped in a tower block on swarm night.)

Whatever we do, we wouldn’t want to run the server at over 60% CPU, so we’ll be careful over how we go about it all.

We’ll keep you posted.

The “No Foundation Raiding” rule is now a thing of the past.  That’s because we’ve increased the Health Points (HP) of stone, metal and armoured foundations by a factor of 4 – nothing else in the game is affected, just foundations.  That means it will take you 4x as much C4 to remove a foundation block now, and is effectively the same as being able to blow the 4 walls that top a square foundation.

For example you’ll now see that armoured foundations have a health of 4000 out of 1000 (4000/1000), but nothing is perfect with a kludge like this.

We extended this out to foundation stairs and also to triangle foundations, and although the stairs might be overkill, we’ll see how it goes.  Of course, triangle foundations would only normally have three walls on them, so you might think we needed to only increase their health by 3 but we thought WTH and made them all 4x.

As I said, we’ll see how it goes, but for the time being foundation raiding IS allowed.

-PPlank

Effective immediately, we’ve made some changes to the Rust servers.

Rust server #1 is now on a weekly wipe cycle for the next 4-6 weeks as a trial. Rust server #2 is now on a monthly wipe cycle and will wipe on the first Thursday of the month in line with the Rust developers forced wipes.

The logic behind this is fairly straightforward.

Server #1 is the busier server. Not hugely busy yet, but we do get a higher player count and turnaround than we do on server #2. I was happy to see around 35 players on the other week. With a 2 week wipe cycle, #1 server always goes quiet in week 2. After the first 2-4 crazy days building and raiding, the newbies to Rust have done all the daft stuff we all did as newbies, been raided, and left the server (maybe even Rust) forever. The hardier players keep going, but week 2 is always a lot quieter than week 1.

So to keep the week 1 excitement up, I thought we’d trial a 1 week wipe cycle for a while to see how it goes. I’ve played on 1 week servers before I became a server owner, and I have to admit they’re a lot of fun. Everything is accelerated. More loot, faster building, more raiding and more gun battles.

Don’t get me wrong, it can be hard if you haven’t learned all the devious little tricks that long-term players do, and an accelerated cycle is enough to drive some people away. That’s why I’ve extended #2 server out to a full month wipe cycle for those people that prefer things to be a little quieter.

In line with this, the gather amount (trees, rocks, quarries) has been doubled on #1 and the loot has also been doubled too.

To make things more interesting on #1, us admins will be planting lootable bases around the map. We’ll mark them as loot bases, and the loot inside will be good. Once someone finds and loots them, we’ll remove them, and plant a replacement somewhere else. Cool eh?

And we’ll try a couple of other things too.

But first things first. I’m off to go edit the loot tables. 😉

-PPlank