cevkiv

I'm downloading netbeans. Since TFC uses the PlayerAPI mod, it should be simple enough to implement. Let me see what I can do -- I'm a C programmer, not a Java one, but I know enough about OOP to cobble this together, hopefully.

What about simply using a widget that autobans someone for a period of time on death? Assuming you can find one that works with vanilla SMP, doesn't interfere with TFC, and lets you specify what deaths get bans.

If I had to deal with some griefer knob, the last thing I'd want to do is have to take even more time to hunt them down, hit them, and drag them off caveman-style. One command, done and done, no further effort needed.

Also, it should automute them. If you could take away all input ability entirely that would be even better. Or make their screen shake uncontrollably. Anything that makes them uncomfortable and even nauseous would be great. I don't suppose making their game uninstall itself is an option...

Or we could just keep on banning and have more time to play and let Bioxx add actual useful features.

Maybe you aren't paying attention, but this is a thread to discuss a specific aspect of features discussed in the Sticky which is for the discussion of things to add in the next beta phase. A thread which was started by Bioxx.

[...] Illuminati, [...]

I got here as fast as I could, what's up?

A 20 dollar server from KBG Servers with a maximum capacity of 20 players will "comfortably" hold about 10 players running TFC. Basically, goto https://www.kbgservers.com/minecraft-read-more/, pick a server level, and divide it's maximum users allowed by two, and that's roughly how many people it will hold before it starts to lag and stutter

I suggest a simple teleport-to-jail-location instead of a a drag-unconcious-body-to-jail option for the following reasons:

• Easier to code.
• Harder to abuse.

It has been mentioned that a benefit of the dragging mechanic is that friends of the criminal could intervene to save them. Well, if the criminal has friends who are close enough to interfere with the process of them being dragged to jail, then they're probably attacking the town/griefing along with the person being KO'd, which means that they would be better suited attacking the person who is trying to KO their friend with the baton. In other words, if you're attacking a town/griefing in a group, it makes more sense to have one person doing the work and another person watching their back -- kind of like how "intelligent" criminals do it in real life.

As to removing the ability to bring up the debug menu to see X and Z coordinates, I'll just be blunt and say that is a very stupid idea. Some people are too stupid to be able to follow simple directions like "go north from spawn". And I'm not exaggerating. I have played Minecraft with people who do not have the basic knowledge to discern cardinal directions based upon the path of the sun (and in Minecraft, the moon) through the sky. Furthermore, spawn seems to be more of an area than a specific point. I'm also not sure if you always face the same way when you spawn. I, personally, use Rei's, and for two reasons, neither of which is a capability of in-game maps. The first reason is I am very neurotic about how I lay out buildings and walls. I prefer to lay out walls along the lines of chunks, or parallel to the lines of a chunk, and as far as I'm aware, neither the in-game maps nor the debug screen can tell me where chunk edges are. I also like to be able to "see" the shape of what I'm building, and Rei's Minimap, zoomed in, suffices to give me a good idea of what I'm building. I can see the ratio of length to width of a building without having to stop and count blocks. The second reason I use Rei's is to keep track of the location of things, such as ore deposits, clay deposits, or other things of interest. To those who call this "cheating", it's not I could not do myself with a piece of paper and a pencil. Using Rei's, I don't have to waste a piece of paper to keep track of these things.

The Debug screen is useful for more than simply coordinates. Sometimes I like to know things like framerate, memory usage, etc, etc.

How about just hitting someone from behind?

I think if gunpowder is removed as a drop from creepers, that it should be possible to make black powder, and use it to form a crude explosive.

Why lock the thread? I think there's always time for further discussion. At the very least I could repost my wall of text, modified by what we've discussed here.

nah, pistons will be used, but not til much later game

I really would like to see building a town require a lot more thought and planning than simply, "I craft a Hearth/Town Stone and plop it down."

You'd want to search around for a good source of minerals, and, as I wrote above, depending upon the agriculture changes, a good source of water.

Furthermore, the defensibility of the area in question should be a concern. I think the best town might be one built underground, Dwarf Fortress style. I can't remember if it's possible to build a piston in TFC without exploiting lava and water mechanics, but I really, really, really would like to create a Dwarf Fortress underneath a mountain with a concealed entrance. Then we would dig deeply, and greedily, without fear of discovery. Or, in being discovered, the knowledge that we have a whole farking mountain above us the invaders have to go through.

Also, I'd just like to point something out:

The easiest kind of wall to make would be made out of wood.

It would be the quickest to build, and the easiest to reinforce, as it doesn't require the creation of a pickax to set up a wood wall.

However, a wood wall would be very susceptible to fire. Even a reinforced wood wall. Mainly because the fire should spread. A town with a wood wall and wood structures would require some sort of well or other water source that could be used to put out fires.

There might be the need for the addition of some sort of infinite finite water generation in the form of natural springs: If the water is removed from the spring, it will refill to a default level after a certain period of time. This would make picking a location for a town more believable/realistic, as a good source of water was a consideration for settling in an area, and, depending on how the agriculture changes are made, might be necessary for the large-scale farming a town would need.

You could craft some sort of accelerant. Maybe an oil, out of olives.

The Baton is a blunt weapon, and blunt weapons are good at bypassing armor. All the armor in TFC that you can craft (and in vanilla Minecraft) is plate. Plate provides excellent protection against slashing and hacking, moderate protection against piercing and thrusting weapons, and very little protection against bludgeoning weapons. Weapons designed to kill people wearing plate are either blunt weapons that rely on the force of the impact being transmitted through the armor to cause disorientation, or on the force of the impact itself deforming the plate it hits.

If you look at weapons specifically designed to deal with people who wear plate, they fall into one of two categorys:

I'm going to hit you so hard it doesn't matter that you're wearing plate, the sheer force of the impact will cause damage anyway, or

I'm going to hit you with a weapon designed to puncture the plate itself.

Let me tell you from personal experience, wearing a helmet does indeed reduce the damage one will sustain from getting hit in the head, particularly for a very well made, padded helmet. However, I have been knocked unconscious more than once, even while wearing a well designed, constructed, and padded helmet, simply from the sheer force of the blow being too much for my body to take. Someone with a baseball bat and a moderate amount of strength hitting you upside the head, even wearing a helmet, can knock your ass out faster than you can say, "Shit oh dear".

Using a baton would help to bypass much of the protection offered by plate armor, and if you're wearing leather armor you might as well not even be wearing armor. It shouldn't deal as much damage as sword would to an unarmored person, but I think it should deal a fixed amount of damage to people in armor, regardless of what kind or quality of armor they're wearing. When using a blunt weapon on a person wearing plate, you're rarely relying on the ability to actually deform the armor itself (although, having had a helm stuck on my head before after a particularly hard hit, it can happen), as most people are simply not strong enough to deform 1/16th to 1/8th inch thick steel or iron, but most people are still strong enough to just KO someone with a well placed hit to the head.

Hell, you don't even have to get hit in the head. A good blow to the back, even through armor, can disable you long enough for someone to finish you off.

The point of this rambling is that this is, once again, meant to deter the casual griefer, who generally will not be wearing any sort of armor or have any sort of decent weapon. Someone who simply logs onto the server and tries to do as much damage as possible in as short a period of time as possible. A casual griefer, attacking a city, will be confronted by people who are wearing armor. Someone with a baton and armor against the casual griefer should be in no danger themselves. However, against someone from another city which has decided to declare war, or from some bandit raiding party, who will both have weapons and armor, a single individual with a baton may not suffice. The person with the baton may need to take the attacker by surprise, and get in a hit or two before the raider can switch from pickax or siege tool to sword and retaliate. Against a ready opponent with sword and armor, while the person with the baton will be dealing a constant amount of damage no matter what armor is being worn, it will be less than the amount of damage that a sword should deal against a similarly equipped opponent. To repeat, an unarmed and unarmored griefer should stand no chance against a person in, say, copper armor with a baton, but someone with a copper sword and copper armor should be able to dispatch someone with a baton and copper armor. Or someone with an iron sword and iron armor should be able to dispatch someone with a baton and iron armor. You either need more than one person with a baton to overcome an individual who has similar resources, or to take them by surprise, or to attack them with some other weapon and try to get the finishing blow with the baton.

Sigh.

Ideally, you would only be able to use a baton on someone who had done something criminal in a town. If they've tried to grief your town, what's wrong with beating the shit out of them?

It's Mr. vK. CE is my first and middle name. And yes, as long as it is out of my earshot, you can make them listen to all the Justin Bieber you want.

Reached my like quota, but I approve of this.

Quota?

I didn't see this mentioned (I might have missed it) but I would strongly suggest there being a sort of "warm up" period after war is declared. Probably a day or two, simply to allow all members of the involved factions to become informed of the situation. It would be really shitty to declare war on another faction when all those faction members are offline and just go over there and knock all their shit down.

And by sit, I mean they can log in and out all they want, they will still be in prison until they are let out by another player. So, basically, they will eventually realise they're not going to be instantly let out and will either log off, or try to organize a jailbreak with their friends.

Also, I should note that I would replace handcuffs with batons. That is, there would be no handcuffs at all, just batons. If you can beat a criminal to "death" with a baton, they get teleported to prison.

Also, it's not a "temporary ban". It's prison. They will quite literally sit in there until another player lets them out. So, in other words, the other players whose property was violated would determine the length of the ban. And the criminal's friends, if they have any, could shorten the ban by busting them out.

Also, for people talking about "not knowing where you are when you get teleported to jail" there's this wonderful button. I think it's F3 on the keyboard. You should check it out some time.

Your average griefer has a very short attention span, and if they log into a server and find that they can't immediately, and with no effort on their part, just start breaking shit and lighting shit on fire and stealing people's stuff, they leave.

You wouldn't be "randomly" teleported. You would only be able to arrest people within the confines of, or in very close proximity to, a town, and you would be jailed inside of that town. You could tell someone where you are to come free you.

And creating a town is something that should be very hard for an individual to do by themselves. With the way Ore Generation has changed lately, it would take a single individual a very large amount of time to progress to the point where they could create a town by themselves.

As to the lock picks, the whole point behind them is that they give a reward to players who expend time and energy in making the tool, and they are not 100% effective. There has to be some balance between security and freedom, and the main idea behind the security part is not to stop all Player versus Player interaction, but to deter casual griefing. A locked chest deters casual griefing, but does not deter someone who puts time and energy into griefing in the form of getting the materials required to create a lock pick.

Here's the link to the post I wrote. I'm not gonna copy and paste it and post it again.

I love that ! I also like the idea of the batons since it gives criminals a chance to escape (which fits with my preference for RP style servers), yet makes it easy to catch them too.

It also allows for what every online game should aspire to, which is self moderation by the playerbase.

Self-moderation is what I would love to see. I don't think we need a lot of mechanics, or even a few complicated mechanics, to get all the desired functionality we want. If designed right, minimal mechanics will naturally lead to the desired behavior.