Because the OneGrid server was getting hardly any interest from players despite the very cool custom maps that were being used in a 4-week cycle, it’s now been taken offline, probably permanently. The resources it was using on the server hardware will now be available to the other servers.
The Rust Servers page has been updated to reflect this.
That is all.
I’ve had reports (you can see them in Discord #bugs) about sudden FPS drops on the servers. I’ve not experienced this myself, and I have a now modest (by today’s standards) GTX 970 with most of the settings on high and I run Rust at 1600×900 in a Window. I do that because it allows me to do adminny things between that window and the two monitors I use, one of which is an ultrawide screen. I typically get 80-90 FPS.
Last night while roaming the maps on the different servers looking for anything that may be causing FPS drops or lag spikes, I found two locations on PvE #1 with several thousand entities. The more entities there are, the harder the server has to work to maintain them, causing FPS drops and lag spikes.
The reason for these massive amounts of entities were because one player had walled off an island using regular foundations and then building 2 and 3 walls high. And then another location where the player had done the same thing to mark out his territory. In retaliation at being squeezed out of a space they were occupying, a neighbour had done the same thing to protect his own space. The result was thousands of visible entities on the server that didn’t need to be there. As I said previously more entities means more FPS drops and more lag spikes as the server has to serve the location and type of each entity when players get near those areas. It’s really bad when those entities are out in the open in the form of paths and walls and are visible to other players. Inside a base it’s not so bad as they get culled in the rendering process.
You may not even see what’s causing it, but suddenly you’ll see an FPS drop or lag spike in the form of rubber banding, where you keep moving back to the same location as you try to run forward. Because of some sluggishness on the servers previously (towards the end of wipe), I’ve had no choice but to re-add the AutoPurge plugin to all the servers and it’s on a 5-day “no connection” purge. VIP players don’t get affected by this.
As the PvE servers have additional plugins that make them PvE, there’s no need to mark out your territory by doing extensive foundation builds like this. Just place down a TC every so often to protect your space and that will do the trick.
Quarries don’t need partitioning off in compounds on PvE. They are protected by the QuarryManager plugin which prevents other players opening or start/stopping them. If you think that isn’t working properly, let me know and I’ll take a look. If you *must* partition off your space, use high stone walls as that’s what they’re intended for.
I removed the two locations with thousands of foundation and base wall entities. If I see any more I will be removing them without refunding any resources.
Finally, yes I am a little bit annoyed at the first player as I have already had a discussion with him in a previous wipe about causing massive FPS drops with around a hundred flashing red lights on the inside and outside his base. You only had to look in the general direction of it to get an FPS drop. But it seems he hasn’t learned and I am now very close to a ban as to me it seems like he’s done this deliberately to stress the server. I totally understand why the second player felt he had to protect his space with the same tactics, but this is all a little bit ridiculous now isn’t it?
New rule. No More MASSIVE Bases with thousands of unnecessary visible entities or anything that would cause stress on the server or to other players. From now on, when I see them, I will remove them, loot and all.
As part of the recycling system overhaul, I’ve added a plugin that allows the customisation of recyclable items and their output. For starters I’ve added the ability to recycle HQM down to metal frags, and metal frags down to scrap.
The exchange rate is 1,000 HQM will recycle down to approx 4,500 metal frags. The metal frags will then recycle down to approx 135 scrap. (Scrap is valuable and is like a second currency next to Reward Points.) This sounds expensive, but players who have had the foresight to set up quarries will often end up with a surplus of HQM and metal frags after they’ve built their base.
In addition, I’ve made changes to the /remove tool exchange rate so that now it won’t cost you anything to remove building blocks, and in fact you’ll get something back. (Admission: I always thought it worked that way, and I’m sure it used to, but at some point in the past it was changed to cost players more materials than they received. Now changed.)
I have also previously installed a plugin that lets you exchange scrap for reward points (RP) in any vending machine. Use the /s store to sell your scrap. In case you didn’t know, RP on GameKeeper servers always gets carried over to the next wipe. Ooh!
That means that right before a wipe you can scrap all your surplus materials and convert it into RP so you’re all ready for the next wipe. Given that you now get something back for using /remove to remove building blocks, you can now dismantle your base right before wipe, run it through the recycler to get scrap and then convert it all to RP at a vending machine. Muhahaha.
Is that cool or what? Yeah I know it is. See how I’m always thinking of you?
For all the farmers on the GameKeeper servers, there’s a new item you can use so that you no longer need water catchers or to set up shop by a lake or river.
/pump
With this command you can craft a submersible pump that will give you fresh water wherever you are on the map including at sea in a water base. Hook it into your sprinkler system and you get to easily water your plants.
Following the reported bugs with the previous recycler plugin where loot was disappearing, I checked and it looks like the dev has abandoned it, so I purchased another one.
The new command for VIPs to spawn a recycler into your inventory is /redeemrecycler but I’ve created an alias so you can also continue to use /craftrec. You also now get 3 recyclers. Yay!
When you place your first recycler, you may see a “ghost box” underneath it. In tests if you pick up the recycler with a wooden hammer and MIDDLE click your mouse to pick it up, and then re-place it down again, the box disappears. Subsequent recyclers don’t seem to suffer from this “ghost box” happening. I’ve also noticed that if you teleport somewhere and then go back again, or run a good distance from your base and then return, the ghost box also disappears.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Enjoy.
There’s a new command in town and it’s called /raidme.
What this does is set a bunch of NPCs attacking your base. They will raid it in several waves with C4 and satchel explosives until they destroy your Tool Cupboard, or get killed by you in the process. So if you kill the first wave, then after a few seconds another wave will start the next attack where the other raiders left off. Because they’re bots, they know where your TC is and will head straight for it.
You have to buy the raids using scrap (for now), but this may change to support RP at some point. You can call in one raid every hour, and just like Raidable Bases there’re five different levels of raiders – easy, medium, hard, expert, and nightmare. You start a raid by doing:-
/raidme buy easy
and scrap will be consumed from your inventory. You can also just do:-
/raidme buy
to see how much each difficulty level costs. It’s cheap for now, but the costs will go up when I get the chance to sit down and review the settings.
I first tried it on easy by myself in a small stone and wood base and the raid was over in less than 30 seconds. Remember – they know where your TC is.
I see this as particularly useful on PvE, but there’s also a usage case on PvP too where you’ve built a base and want to test it out before you go offline. In both cases, it’s good fun. 😉
I’ve decided to introduce voting for the servers on some of the Rust server sites. I’ve always been against this as waste of time with no good reason for that other than gut feel, but what the hell I’m going to give it a go. Maybe it will bring a few more players in, which is what other players have said to me that they want. Who knows?
What I need help with is the kind of rewards I can give to you as a thank you for voting. This is what I and Anonium have come up with so far (mostly Anonium).
How it works is on each of the server sites you log in via Steam each day (it takes seconds) and vote for the GameKeeper server you’re playing on. Back on the server you type /claim and get your rewards which could be one or all of the above. Better than that, the *more* you vote, the better the rewards become, so for example one single vote might get you 50RP, but after a few days of voting on three different voting sites and you may be up to 500RP per day (or more) and any kits etc. that are included just for a few seconds out of your day.
What I need help with is the kind of rewards and a rewards scale. If I do it myself or with Anonium’s help then it’s likely we’ll miss something that could be really good. So put your thinking caps on and come up with a set of rewards (and maybe a scale with more voting too) and post it in Discord #suggestions.
Thanks. 🙂
Effective immediately, quarries and Pumpjacks have been reduced in cost in the /s store from 2,500 RP down to 1,000 RP. You can also find them in hackable crates, but they’re a quite rare find.
You can exchange 10 scrap for 1 RP at any vending machine.
That is all.
There’s been a fairly big update to our Pipes plugin which includes a number of fixes and enhancements, with the most notable for me being the Recyclers support. Now a pipe will put content into the top of the Recycler and another pipe will take it from the bottom. Wow!
Placeable Recyclers are obtainable by crafting (/craftrec command) if you’re at least a VIP+, or you can find them in some loot, I think either in airdrops or in hackable crates. One or both of those. Anyway…
This means you can place a Recycler in your base with a pipe or series of pipes running from a box outside an outer wall or High Stone Wall as a feed into the Recycler, using the pipes AutoStart feature. Then, tucked in your base you can have a series of pipes set with filters to extract the items from your Recycler and sorted into the relevant boxes in your loot rooms. Which means… while you’re out and about hitting barrels etc, you can just run up to your base, drop the items to be recycled into your box outside and go looking for more. When you get back, it’s all been recycled and sorted.
Maybe it’s just me, but I geek over this sort of thing. 🙄
In case you’re new to pipes, you just do /p in chat, select your wooden hammer, hit your first container then run to your second container and hit that too. Now a pipe will appear that will move items placed in the first container to the second container. If you hit the pipe with your wooden hammer a UI will open where you can set filters, upgrade the pipe (if you’re a VIP), set autostart if you’re moving things into a machine, and change flow direction. And some other stuff. It’s fairly intuitive.
You can create pipes in between most containers, and that includes quarries, pumpjacks, furnaces, etc. And now with Recycler support too.
Finally, here’s a list of additional pipes commands:-
Have fun!
Someone questioned vehicles decaying, specifically Minicopters and Scrap Helicopters – I can’t find the question now, so maybe it happened in-game and not Discord. I *thought* vehicles didn’t decay when under cover of a building but I might have been wrong about that, OR it’s another bit of FacePunch weirdness after this last couple of updates. I don’t know. Anyway…
I’ve now added a plugin that removes decay from all vehicles (including Skidoos and similar) as long as they’re within Tool Cupboard range. That should solve that problem but note they’ll still decay while out in the wild or if they get knocked about a bit, so have a wooden hammer ready to give them a good bashing to repair them.
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