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.