Going Back To Monthly?

Several people have asked about going back to Monthly wipe. This could be doable, but there might be some issues to address. The biggest reason we wanted to go to bi-weekly was to reduce server load towards the end of the month. Maintaining server FPS to reduce any lag/rubber banding is our biggest goal behind the scenes. Let’s face it, no one likes lag. You can have a server with 100s of events, but no one would play it if they can’t even move.

A few months back, we moved to the fastest host (processor wise) we could find while staying inside our budget. Remember, we don’t take in any funding other than occasional donations. Starting out, we didn’t want to be a pay-to-win server with VIP packages and multi-tiered players. So most funding comes out of our own pockets every month. But even with the access to better processors and more memory, Rust is still Rust. As the server grows each wipe, more load is added. More furnaces cooking sulfur, more conveyors moving that sulfur around, more sensors turning lights on and off, etc. Basically anything that moves or changes something (even just turning things on and off) creates a load.

We do have certain things we can do when the load gets high such as removing animal AI. We also added restrictions on turrets as their scanning for targets creates load. These have helped a lot, but moving to bi-weekly was by far the biggest help on performance. Of course, nothing is perfect because…well…Rust is Rust.

That brings us to the following issues regarding going back to Monthly:

  1. Going back to monthly may require restrictions on things like furnaces, conveyors, autocrafters, etc. This could be lowering the number of allowed placements, slowing the speed at which they process items, or a combination of both.
  2. Removing some Quality of Life plugins. Example: Removing the /up and /down commands and relying solely on /bgrade.
  3. Smaller maps/less monuments. Smaller maps generate less NPCs (scientists and animals). NPCs do create load as well, even though most tend to “sleep” until a player is near. So smaller maps may be needed.

Since this is a community, we are asking for your input on this. Should we look at going back to monthly but face possible extra restrictions, or stay bi-weekly? All input is welcome. Please respond on our Discord channel #monthly-wipe-feedback. We will also be conducting a poll for voting on this later.