Eco Dev Tracker

Random fact: The amount of servers has notably decreased (~ 50%) since the introduction of the requirement to authenticate servers already. This was an expected and not unwelcomed side-effect, though we have no desire to actively bring down the amount of servers - Eco as a framework game lives from the fact that people offer different experiences and that is also the typical reason for having different servers and communities. A big amount of the remaining servers isn't actually very active and the rest tends to have notable differences - smaller and bigger ones in how they want their server to run.

Something server admins had been talking about Pre-Update 10 was to facilitate "Server Merges" where the respective governmental setup would be done as a federation on the new server. That doesn't allow different configurations / mods, but is something admins can do if they think the same as you.

There is the setting "TimeOfDayScale" in EcoSim.eco, but I don't think that is actually used in code, so I fear that is not possible currently - the daytime is solely cosmetic and can be different for different players until synced.

The configured time to hit is counting from the start of the map, not from the creation of the meteor.

There is no configuration for that, if you wanted to change either labour or calorie requirements you would need to mod every single item that has it.

The commands do not change the meteor time permanently, you need to adjust the time in the config and restart the server. The commands are QA commands and only work for the running session.

As long as the server is configured to create a meteor it will respawn on a reboot when it wasn't destroyed by lasers but any other means.

Neither, I bought it for the government mechanics before I joined the team, which I'd think is "Building a society (framework)".

There is no config file to change the stack sizes of singular items, only one for all of them in Difficulty.eco called "StackSizeMultiplier". To change stack sizes of singular items you would need to mod the respective game files, for example Clay.cs and all Crushed.cs.

Players shouldn't scatter, that is the direct opposite of how the settlement system works (it's literally built to prevent that type of lone wolf scattering) and only detrimental due to long trading ranges - it always turns out annoying in the end.

As for the sizes, rough estimates:
Coop: < 20 active / unique
Small: < 50 active / < 100 unique
Medium: < 150 active / < 500 unique
Large: > 150 active / > 500 unique
Very large: > 250 active / > 1000 unique

Well, I already noted that we are going to introduce some changes that may help with your desire in regard to pollution, just keep in mind the scaling will be artifical and hence never working as well as recommended settings.

We ultimately have no statistical data that would back up any relevant issues with overcrowding, hence there is not much more I could offer to this discussion when it comes to that. I also have no personal experience as administrator of private and official servers nor as player with what you mentioned, I couldn't remember a single situation of overcrowding on recommended settings that would block a bunch of people to do something. The only (unfortunately quite frequent) cases I know is griefers that purposefully surround you and people that drop their homestead somewhere you wanted a road or something else but quit quickly, which is both inconvenient but happens on worlds of any size and can be resolved by the admin or a town government, the latter yo...

Overcrowding is one of the challenges to solve with the governance systems. If players do not want to deal with a specific challenge, then of course admins can make changes as they deem fit for their audience. And it is pretty easy to solve as the problem isn't that big, especially since the spawning UI distributes players around.

But I personally find it a bit weird to remove multiple challenges purposefully for the audience and then complain the challenge isn't there.

Ecologic challenge comes from density, so does overcrowding. Both in the end are ecologic problems.

//EDIT: The assumption that official servers would get more late joiners unfortunately is wrong. In the opposite they suffer a typical "switch to the next official server on next friday" syndrome, so are even more affected by the hard drop after the starting week than most community servers. This results precisely in a big amount starting out and then the dropoff hits heavy, as your example was...

Depending on client and server hardware power you can even go beyond that, we just don't offer support for it, as it working great cannot be guaranteed by us and the gameplay notably changes from the intended when using sizes bigger than the recommendations we have depending on player count.

That is not a problem either, but intended. See the official servers, space constraints and managing space are part of the intended gameplay. There is still enough space for all that you mentioned when using the recommended sizes as per the criteria I noted.

Actually the official servers fit pretty exactly into the player count and development you mentioned on a average cycle and additionally ban unclaiming of property for inactivity when the user isn't fully abandoned (either 5 or 7 days, not sure currently) in the rules, yet there is still plenty of space left, which shows there is no necessity for bigger sizes with a bit of space management - they use 1km² with default world generation.

Maybe you refer to some specific server - I don't know too many servers that have cycles where there is a "first couple of weeks", which hints at a long-term server. Experience there may differ, as those tend to naturally focus on core players after a while and to my experience of...

That is no problem, the server size recommendations are based on the amount of active players in the second week, respectively whatever the typical point for the respective server is when the bunch people that didn't continue playing after the start is became inactive.

If you are refering to housing objects that require electricity, you do not need to have a generator on the residential deed - the most common approach is a local or even global electricity grid from power plants in multiplayer, otherwise producing it on the separate industrial deed and transferring it over works as well.

We don't support sizes exceeding 2,56 km², if you still want a map with that size, you need to create it with the dedicated server instead of through the client.

It's unfortunately not uncommon for Eco to be flagged by some antivirus software after an update for a while, it's a false positive.

My Windows Defender is not triggering like yours and VirusTotal also looks fine: https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/db508018185bb1d8c71d7935feac671b1fb10b07dbe385b48655132dae8ec04b/detection

Should be fixed in 11.1.5.

There isn't too much difference anymore since the discounted multi-packages are no longer offered, licenses on either Steam or SLG can be linked to the respective other. If you purchase on our website we voluntarily provide a slightly better refund option of 14 days with no matter the amount of time played (compared to 2 hours on Steam for most countries) - but only if the account was not yet linked to Steam. (As we can't easily revoke Steam licenses)

The CO2 offset of plants is the factor we're going to make flexible based on world size to have a better representation even with over-sized worlds, also removing the cap to allow players to actually have impact by adding new plant life to the ecosystem, having a different means than pollution restrictions to address issues. Additionally all animals are supposed to actually remove plants from the world as part of their diet, which they currently don't do - so basically make sure that your fields are fenced in or there might be some losses, especially if there is no natural plant sources left. Without any food around, the animals will die, though.

Basing it on active player counts is unfortunately neither simple to do to begin with nor easy to balance, so that's not something we're planning. It would also partially remove player agency in pollution, if adjustments were simply made based on how many players are around instead of players actually being the cause of issues tha...

And that's no surprise given what I already noted.