Read moreGovernments take time to get going. I don't always have the time on day 1, then by day 2 I'm surrounded.
They aren't purposely removing the pollution challenge. That's the one they want. Overcrowding isn't a fun challenge, it just blocks people from land, preventing them from playing the game. That's why people here are saying that having a separate config would be ideal.
With pollution, you aren't really prevented, you just have to be patient and slow things down, or plan things out so that during certain times of the day you're running half your machines. While that's going on, there's other stuff to do like building roads. I've seen a few servers where pollution became an issue, even on a large map, and it really was a fun challenge to overcome.
I think land management could potentially be a more fun mechanic if not for how populations tend to boom and then dwindle. But that isn't something you can really make a config for.
Overall, I think th...
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...
Read moreTo an extent, sure. But overcrowding can be a thing, too. When no one can do anything and they leave because of it, server owners tend to use bigger maps.
It's basically a choice between losing the challenge of pollution, or losing your entire population. And as you've already noticed, most people would rather give up the pollution challenge.
I never mentioned a specific server, this is something I see on a lot of servers. There are some that get like 10 players and then die, but there are several that get a huge crowd, then it dies down, then if you're lucky a few people will join in the late game. You don't see the same issues on official servers because you're always right there on the front page of the worlds page, so you tend to get more late game joiners. For most server owners, retention is a lot more important than it is on the official servers.
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...
Read moreI always use a 4KM map (200x200) and it always works great BTW.
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.
But then you have 200 people squeezed into a medium map for the first couple of weeks. Most servers use large maps out of necessity. Otherwise there aren't enough trees to chop, and not enough land to mine under.
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...
Read moremostly the server having chosen a fitting world size for the audience.
Trouble is, it's pretty typical for a server to get 200 players over the first few days, and then end up with 15 actives in the late game.
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.
How are you supposed to power your house?
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)
In my humble opinion, the default setting should be that pollution is based on the active player count. That is easier said than done, but I think it would reflect better what people want, like in the questionnaire.
Currently CO2 offset is based on the amount of trees in the world. It could still be part of the calculation to make it appear more real but the amount of active players would much better represent the challenge that you are facing in the game. Just my two cents.
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...
Read more42/55 people seem to agree that pollution isn't hard enough via the vote.
And that's no surprise given what I already noted.
Would you mind linking to this on the wiki? I can't find it, and am curious what the settings should be for about a dozen players.
https://wiki.play.eco/en/Server_Configuration#Change_World_Size
12 players is still coop, so default size.
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