I'm starting up a self-hosted Eco server and am going through the setup and configuration process. I'm considering mods that should have been at the game from the start, or at least have native support for these features like DiscordLink. What are other mods that don't significantly alter gameplay that you would recommend for any and all servers?
External link →I don't run it on my server and were doing fine player-wise.
There no solution really, just bandaids. So many things need to be rebalanced due to knock-on effects, but raising craft cost of bricks is definitely one of them. Bricks are already outcompeting lumber as T2 material and big shovel makes it so even more.
Granted though, I've only played on servers with the mod 3 times, but I saw about what I expected. I just wish there were better tools for digging in vanilla.
We consider the excavator and the skid steer to be these tools. Big Shovel was once part of vanilla, but didn't provide the experience we wanted people to have while at the same time feeling especially unnatural in comparison to other AoE tools we introduced later and still have.
Big Shovel impacts the economy massively and removes the intended feeling and restrictions on terraforming early game. But I do understand that some people don't like the effect of tediousness it can have, even if intended, so that's what mods are for anyway. I just personally don't play with any mods that make life easier either and see servers doing well without that as well.
In no case I would consider it a "Must Have" mod - for me that's what is on the Official Servers: Nid's admin tools and your great Chronicler. Discord Link has proven great as well at least for WT, but for data protection concerns we're not deploying it to other official servers yet, but we'd do if there ever was an opt-out feature. (Which might very well already be there, I haven't had a lot of time to check lately)
The skid and excavator are late game features that don't arrive until most terraforming work is already done.
DL doesn't have any opt-in or out yet. I've been pretty fed up with how shitty Discord behaves towards bot devs and busy trying to handle how unstable their service is with the little energy I have for working on it.
Guess experiences there might be different. Even on WT those are available in week 2 and at a good point in time where most notable terraforming stuff is happening, as intended. (Terraforming is supposed to be a late-game thing, though I can understand when people count roads to it, which I don't) On vanilla servers there seems to be a tendency to them either becoming available much earlier due to people pushing for progress or them not becoming available at all, depending on activity on the server. That's only my experiences mostly from official servers and ones that I visit irregularly, though.
Skid steer is late game tech as it depends on industry. There's no getting away from that. If you get skid early, then you have progressed to late game fast.
My point is that T2 tech offers nothing for terraforming and there is a big need there. T1 Is fine with the shovel and T3 is fine with skid, but T2 doesn't have anything, while at T2 miners consistently have lvl6 perks to make that go faster, so they are also already covered.
The big hurdle is of course the dependency between terraforming and economy. So I don't have any good solutions or I would have modded something in.
Not wanting to get away from that at all - but late game is where most of the terraforming stuff happens on the servers I monitor and where it also should happen based on our idea. Great example was WT's queens tribute cycle with the monument, in my opinion. Best cycle we ever had as I think. Great progress, big stuff focused from mid-week 2 onwards to the later weeks. General intention is that the earlier the technology, the faster you get over it, ending in the longest play time in the full technology - balanced out to actually work, which is hard on non-concept servers, no doubt. (But that's where everything part of "Eco Infinite" is focused on - making it interesting to play once you are done with the technology race, which is indeed a major problem to solve.)
And absolutely, that is fast late-game progress, but unfortunately something that happens regularly on populated vanilla servers without specific concepts. It tends to be mostly either that or the total opposite, I only rarely see an official server cycle that is well balanced - which works best on concepted servers where people like you and me try to make a unique game experience. It's always hard to find a balance for vanilla games as we can hardly know how many people will play, how long they will play and what their play is focused on.
Do you have an idea what could serve as T2 terraforming option that isn't as simple as a shovel with bag of holding capabilities even when sticking it right down into the ground? I guess some kind of steam based vehicle would be an option for that.
Generally we do want to extend the playtime on Eco servers though, this problem seems to stem more from the fact that this is currently not the case and some people hence see stuff 'coming too late'. Our goal isn't to fix that though, but to fix the sentiment itself that anything would be 'too late'.
No great ones. But we already allow for stacks on the shovel when lifting from a stockpile, so maybe adding line based AOE to the shovel tier upgrades so that the iron shovel for example can lift two blocks if the same type if they are in a row? Would require the hammer UI to switch modes though.
Another idea was to set up the wheelbarrow to use iron in the recipe and make it so that it can only hold shoveled blocks and not allow mixed types while making it hold more and enabling it to traverse up 1-block inclines. Also quite a bit of work.
So no quick & easy solution. I'm mostly backing the need for SOMETHING to help terraforming in midgame. I also think I'm either case the economy needs to be rebalanced for the addition of anything that helps digging, so it's hard to solve in mods alone.
I do like the second idea a lot, gonna ask colleagues what they think.
Limited line-based AoE for shovels also seems to preserve the wish for a somewhat natural feeling as well, both nice ideas, thanks :)
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