Results 1 to 9 of 9
  1. #1

    Animal Rules Change?

    Hello, _DT here. Today I would like to propose an idea, we increase the number of animals allowed in a town to 15 adults. This insures enough space for a town to have 3 sheep, 3 cows, 3 pigs, 3 wolves, and 3 chickens, or a variance of those numbers. I also feel that bears should be excluded from the limitation, as they are so hard to tame and cannot be bred. To prevent a spike in server lag caused by this strain I see a couple of options, but feel free to suggest others if you can think of any.
    1) lower the number of farm plots/berry bushes to 512 blocks (2 chunks)
    2) only allow towns to have 8 animals until a town member has been active for 4 days of play time. This shows dedication to the server, and should hopefully prevent people from getting this number of animals, quitting tfc, and leaving a these extra animals.

    I would love to hear from the community on this, and I hope we can work something out!

  2. #2
    Moderator Elbe97's Avatar
    Join Date
    Apr 2015
    Location
    Prague, Czech Republic
    Posts
    261
    Hello all,
    I'd like to add few ideas to this post. Especially, I'd like to point out a problem or two which might be arising along with this suggestion.

    Ad bears:
    Why? The reason for those animal limitations is the server load, i.e. reduction in entity bump (both block-entity and entity-entity) direction calculations which the server must (randomly!) process. That's why the 16×16 pens, each animal alone. Bears are no different, only worse - they move swiftly and uncontrollably -> heavier load if unlimited/excluded.

    The only animal which is excluded as whole are wolves IIRC, they can be made sit and do not stand up on their own if properly tamed (no need for pens).

    Ad increasing animal limits to 15 adults:
    Might be good for larger towns with enough claims, though unnecessarily big limit for small towns. Imagine, a single-player town, 16 claims in total, 15 will be taken by animal pens (if aligned properly!). Then it's just one chunk left for everything else.

    Yeah, I admit, people usually play in groups of two or three, make nations, join them, don't have access to all animals to fill up their slots. Still those factors are not mandatory and people are not usually aware of many of them or simply avoid them (joining a nation, recruiting strangers).

    Besides, the 8-adult rules gives you opportunity to maintain good supply of milk, wool and meat - look:
    • 4 cows - 1 bull, 3 females -> able to breed (if I want to wait 2 years for beef), 3.000mB milk each day (1× 160oz cheese each 3 days)
    • 2 sheep - a pair for breeding (3 months gestation time, usually twins, easy meat)
    • 2 slots left to anything you wish - a pair of chicken, horses/donkeys, pigs...

    Though, I'd sacrifice 1 plot of farmland for say 2 animal slots, that'd be acceptable for me.

    Ad your 2) point:
    This idea is nice, though tracking player time is always tricky and needs somebody to watch it closely. (If we automatically admit that this can't be watched by a plugin or code since it's about entity count).

    I'd avoid segregating towns/players into groups based off playtime, the t-12h timer for starting a town is already enough to show dedication. If we need such limitations, let's do it by resident count - less than 5 residents, reduced animal slots.

    Generally, I'd like to say I like your suggestion in some aspects, though I am personally fine with the current situation.
    I have another suggestion to make regarding town limitations but I am waiting it out for the right time

    Thanks for discussion,
    have a nice day everyone,
    Elborax
    Last edited by Elbe97; 7th August 2017 at 11:26.
    My common IGNs: Elbe97 / Elborax / Elbor

    THe FouR HoRSeMeN oF THe aPoCaLYPSe:

  3. #3
    Thanks for weighing in Elbe, I see your point with bears, but again, I really feel that since they are so rare now, and so hard to tame, that very few people would ever get one. If wolves are excluded, I think I could see an increase of 3 or 4 in exchange for a crop plot working out just fine.
    -Hoping to hear more feedback, _DT

  4. #4
    1. It needs to be easy to follow, even with the simple rules there are now, people still do not follow them like they should. This also makes checking it easier, it can already take a good amount of time to check people's stuff, it's no fun checking stuff and asking people to follow the rules.
    2. These rules were hashed out quite extensively behind the scenes and in public.
    3. There would need to be info changed on the server and boards, informing people who return, etc, it is not as easy as pushing a button.
    Last edited by Rainnmannx; 8th August 2017 at 13:57.

  5. #5
    Understood. I spoke briefly with J the other day and he told me to take it to the forums. I feel like we wouldnt have to inform returning players, as they would probably figure it out, the signs can be changed relatively hassle-free. Having read the replies so far, it sounds like the consensus is that a flat rate is easiest, so here's my new proposal for public consideration:

    12 adults per town
    Wolves don't count (to a reasonable extent, ie. if a town has 35 wolves a member they should be told to cull the herd)
    Any more than one bear counts towards the number (first is free, but any after that count)
    2 chunks of farm land per town
    6 fruit trees

    _DT
    Last edited by _DragonTamer; 8th August 2017 at 05:04.

  6. #6
    Moderator Elbe97's Avatar
    Join Date
    Apr 2015
    Location
    Prague, Czech Republic
    Posts
    261
    Quote Originally Posted by _DragonTamer View Post
    I feel like we wouldnt have to inform returning players, as they would probably figure it out, the signs can be changed relatively hassle-free.
    Still have to change the rule book, stuff listed in /rules, edit a bunch of signs at spawn, and maybe edit few NPCs and/or broadcasts. All of that to make it readable.

    Quote Originally Posted by _DragonTamer View Post
    12 adults per town
    Wolves don't count (to a reasonable extent, ie. if a town has 35 wolves a member they should be told to cull the herd)
    Any more than one bear counts towards the number (first is free, but any after that count)
    2 chunks of farm land per town
    6 fruit trees
    This brings more exceptions again, I agree with RX, let's keep it readable and easy to follow. OK, let's exclude wolves.
    Bears don't need a common exception, newbies don't need them and the experienced part of community can fit them in the limits I suppose.

    Your most recent suggestion sounds a bit unbalanced towards fruit trees. Makes it a bit tight to maintain a stable fruit supply, heard some people already complaining about the current limit, this would make it even worse. Then, there should be another exception to give all towns opportunity to reduce the count. How to deal with inactive towns? Cut their excess trees? Notify them and be prepared for questions from active people asking why their neighbor has more trees than them? Anyways, more work for staff.

    I think that your point was to make the rules less strict or say give people a freedom of choice. I am glad that someone started this discussion, maybe that gives us a head start to make this clear and possibly find a solution for the future (if there is any better than the current one).
    My common IGNs: Elbe97 / Elborax / Elbor

    THe FouR HoRSeMeN oF THe aPoCaLYPSe:

  7. #7
    Welcome to the mess that is: figuring out good rules

    Reducing farm land plots to allow for more animals? A lot of people will not like that. Not everybody wants to raise animals, and plot-wise they take up a lot of space for towns just starting.

    Excluding animals from the rule. Why make things more complex? Also, wolfs weren't addressed previously I think. Reason being that we didn't notice abuse with wolfs before where people would put a couple of dozen of them in a small pen. Players tend to have them sit somewhere quietly and all alone.

    What I'm missing is input on why we should raise the limit. Is it because people are going hungry? Because it's limiting their progress? Or is is simply because you want more stuff?

    Right now we don't often get a full server. So the limits might seem strict. But if 20 people were to join the server right now, you would notice lag. And then people start complaining and bothering me about it with PMs on the forum and whatnot. It's simply a limitation of having a populated server with towns that have a lot of stuff in them, players being allowed to teleport all over the place and a mod that's poorly optimized.

    Then again, I am working on making the Freebie server more appealing as some of you may have already noticed. Chances are this will bring in more players, at least for a while.

    There's another solution to the lag problem. Get faster server hardware. Right now we're running on a 14-core Intel Xeon processor. While it has many cores, the clock speed isn't very high. I've been looking at the new AMD Threadripper CPUs and am considering an upgrade. More threads and higher clock speeds. But... That would cost a lot of money, in the range of 1500 ~ 2000 Euro. So I'm not quite sure yet if that'll happen any time soon.

    Anyway, you may have noticed that I haven't actually said yes or no to anything. Please keep that in mind. I'm just trying to get a discussion going here and would like input from more people. So ask people on the server to chime in if you can

  8. #8
    My response? More input. We thrive on the suggestions we receive from our players. It might not seem like it, but just about everything that is suggested passes through the inner loop of staff in Behind the Scenes wondering if it's something viable, ridiculous, or worthy of change. I won't be adding my two cents on the current discussion just yet because I'm rather curious to see where this suggestion ends up.

    What I will say is we've had a pretty rigid set of rules for plants and animals for quite a long while now and I think that's partly because it's so hard to optimize and maintain a set of rules that are specifically made to protect the server rather than the players even though it has a trickle down effect that affects the player's experience whether they realize it or not.

  9. #9
    "This brings more exceptions again, I agree with RX, let's keep it readable and easy to follow. OK, let's exclude wolves.
    Bears don't need a common exception, newbies don't need them and the experienced part of community can fit them in the limits I suppose.

    Your most recent suggestion sounds a bit unbalanced towards fruit trees. Makes it a bit tight to maintain a stable fruit supply, heard some people already complaining about the current limit, this would make it even worse."

    Having spoken with Elbe I agree with him on all points. I think that though it makes the rules slightly more complex, not counting wolves can be easily notified, I'm thinking the rule would be changed to read something like this.

    "Towns may have 13 adult animals, babies are ok. Wolves do not count."

    In response to J, it's not so much that I need it, or other people need it, but it seems spartan. Personally, I would like to have 4 cows, 2 sheep, 2 pigs, 2 or 3 chickens, and a couple slots for bears or horses.

    I do hope we can continue working together on this!

    _DT

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •