Rust Servers

All Rust servers now have much more scrap than they did before. I've gone through each container and doubled the amount, and added scrap to some containers where it wasn't there at all before. Even all scientist types now carry scrap, and heavy scientists carry double the amount of scrap of the regular scientists. So, apart from barrels and crates, it's now possible to farm scientists and zombies etc for their scrap.

Please note that it is always a random amount of scrap that can be found in every container, but the minimum and maximum amounts have been doubled. Sometimes you will find the minimum, sometimes the maximum.

At some point, scrap will be exchangeable for RP (Reward Points) in the /s store, and then you can use the RP to purchase in game items like guns, blueprints and other useful stuff. That will take a lot of balancing to get right, so don't chase me about it as there's a lot of simpler changes I'd like to make first.  😉

I've made the first of many changes coming to the servers by increasing the number of level ups from 25 to 100 and decreased the amount of XP loss when you die from 50% to 10%. This means it will take slightly longer to achieve maximum rank on anything, but if you die, you don't lose massive amounts of the ranks that you've worked for. The suggestion was made by Meteostorm and I think this is a good change for everybody as it rewards players who stay on the servers for longer and doesn't punish them as harshly on death.

As a reminder we use four of the levelling up methods:-

Mining - Gathering all types of ore
Woodcutting - Chopping wood, cactus
Skinning - Gathering animal products
Aquire - Collecting wood, mineral drops, plants

You'll notice that Crafting isn't included in the level up system purely because it doesn't work with any other plugins that modify crafting. (It used to, but it doesn't any more.) I've always used another crafting plugin to slow down the production of C4, explosive bullets etc so that new players to the server don't get immediately raided off the server by players who have been on there a while and driven away. On modded servers like GameKeeper it's extremely easy to get resources like sulfur once you find a sulfur spot and place a quarry on it, so I had to come up with some method of restricting explosive production.

As a side-effect the crafting for simple items such as a Tool Cupboard can be reduced from 60 seconds to 3. I was considering making everything else instacraft as I know that's what many players like but I'm a bit torn as I feel it makes the game a little bit boring to have everything handed to you on a plate. Currently most things only take a second or two as I've set the crafting speeds to 5% of vanilla, which means the longest duration of crafting (e.g. high towers) drops from 180 seconds to only 9.

Next Thursday 28th January we're moving IP addresses and ports. I'm just not getting enough donations to warrant a dedicated server (in Germany via Hetzner) and the 100+euros each month that it costs. That service has been cancelled and terminates on the 2nd Feb.

Instead, I'm moving to 3 different game panel type hosts which are quite a lot cheaper for some reason, but I lose the substantial benefit (to me) of a Windows server to run Rust on (and a few other game servers). Swings and roundabouts. People who have been around for a while will have noticed that the server slots have already been reduced to 47 in preparation for this.

You will have also realised from reading the above that there are currently 5 Rust servers and I'm moving to 3, so what servers are going? Duo and either NoRules or Clans server, I havent for sure decided yet, but it will probably be NoRules. None of those 3 servers get much interest any more.

That means we will be left with the ever popular PvE server, the Solo server (which has a hard core of regulars) and a PvP server. All servers are currently located in Germany, but I'm moving them to the UK where I live. From personal experience, if you're a euro player you won't notice any difference in gameplay whatsoever.

I will lease the new servers on Tuesday 26th, configure them, and then on Thursday 28th we'll have a short period of close down (an hour or two at most) while I migrate the game saves to the new servers and do any tweaks I find need doing.

When this happens you will likely have to use F1 and connect to the new servers manually. Once they're in your history, you can favourite them within Rust. I'll also provide direct Steam links on the Rust server page together with links to the new Rust maps on PlayRust.io.

It hasn't missed my attention that since I moved to the Hetzner server in March 2020 it marked the fall off of donations. I'm hoping that by moving back to UK servers I'll see the player base increase and also the number of donations. If after 3-4 months there have been no increase in donations then it might be time to shut up shop, or at least mothball everything. It's been a blast, but I can't afford to keep paying for the servers out of my own pocket.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

-PPlank