SLG-Dennis

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.

https://wiki.play.eco/en/Server_Configuration#Change_World_Size

12 players is still coop, so default size.

And how often did you play on a server with a world size that supported the player count and that did nothing against the problem? E.g. comparable to the official servers, not going beyond 1km² if there isn't at least more than hundred people, staying on 0.52 km² if its notable less than 50?

Also, it's kinda not the goal of Eco to have the world flood - data for official servers suggests the occurance is of a frequency as we expect it. We are not however responsible for the configuration of other servers - it's understandable and fully fine if those value other needs higher, but it has never been a secret or unknown that the world capacity needs to fit for pollution to pose any threat.

That's exactly what I was saying - you are likely playing a server that isn't using fitting configuration for their player count. We've been constantly repeating and it's noted on the wiki that the ecologic part of Eco only works when the capacity of the world for handling pollution is in balance with the player count, e.g. mostly the server having chosen a fitting world size for the audience.

That unfortunately is not the case for many servers, as many communities value a higher space higher and opt for large servers despite lower player numbers. When the world size is selected fittingly for the player count pollution absolutely does play a role without anyone needing to pollute on purpose. That is well visible on many of the official server cycles, multiple per year ending in a flooded world. White Tiger requires laws to restrict pollution levels, otherwise it would drown just as well - it's a constant heated topic there, as the measures that tend to be taken are restrict...

The question is a bit odd as it seems to be missing context, as pollution is already a core challenge with real consequences and can be handled with systems like courts and laws when servers use the correct settings for their player amount, which barely any do.

I nontheless voted "Yes! - Make pollution a core challenge with real consequences." as the next minor Update happens to contain changes to those mechanics making them harder and trying to automatically adjust some things when servers were not configured correctly for the player count.