Problems that may occur in Futurecraft

This is just a thread to collect all the problems people have found with various concepts for Futurecraft so that the devs can see what they are and solve them.

For example: Trading.
A problem with trading in Futurecraft is that all the servers are going to have exactly the same resources. Because of the way Minecraft is coded, once you get a large server, then the amount of resources are going to be almost exactly equal to other large servers. Trading will just not be profitable.

Also, what can stop server owners tweaking the spawn rates of resources in their servers to make their members immensely wealthy? If I owned a server I could turn the spawn rate of diamonds waaaaaaaay up and become really rich!
What Tiel says to this problem:

Spoiler:

So there we go! Yet more problems!

After compiling all problems and solutions thought up below I have come up with the following:
For the mod, the whole notion of a Minecraft world will be changed so that instead of an infinite overworld and nether and a small End; the world will consist of around 10 planets, each of which consists of a planet type . The planets are very large and are one of possibly hundreds of planet types. These could range from rocky to desert to ocean to jungle to gas (You can't walk on it!. Very rarely you get planets with varied terrain and these are the valuable ones. The Nether is effectively changed into a planet type, with no need for a portal - only a spaceship!
Each planet type can have unique animals and minerals and this is what keeps trade running.
(Not finished, will edit in later).

If you've thought of other problems, please post them below.

So pessimistic... Where do we post the solutions?

Desdenova wrote:

So pessimistic... Where do we post the solutions?

Well, someone's got to do it...
If you think of a solution just post it here. That way everyone can see it and/or improve on it.

Futurecraft isn't Minecraft. The second one isn't a problem because people aren't going to have anywhere near that much control over their servers, and the first one doesn't necessarily have to work like that. There's no reason every server should have the same resources.

Puffin4Tom wrote:

This is just a thread to collect all the problems people have found with various concepts for Futurecraft so that the devs can see what they are and solve them.

For example: Trading.
A problem with trading in Futurecraft is that all the servers are going to have exactly the same resources. Because of the way Minecraft is coded, once you get a large server, then the amount of resources are going to be almost exactly equal to other large servers. Trading will just not be profitable.

Also, what can stop server owners tweaking the spawn rates of resources in their servers to make their members immensely wealthy? If I owned a server I could turn the spawn rate of diamonds waaaaaaaay up and become really rich!

If you've thought of other problems, please post them below.

The idea is to obfuscate the server itself to the point that it just isn't worthwhile to attempt modding the mod, or at least do regular integrity checks to make sure unendorsed addons aren't being used to mischievous ends.

A problem that's come up time and time again is the matter of moderation. Mackeroth wants his whole egotistic Futurecraft empire setup, others would rather individual server owners act as cogs in the machines, while still others would prefer a cloud based approach where owners have as little control over what they host as possible to prevent rampaging badmins.

Another is faction retention vs dessication. It's pretty much a given at this point that something like the most popular plugin in the realm of Minecraft multiplayer must be integrated within the mod itself if it's going to be incompatible with things like Bukkit or Canary, yet you run into the same problems of uber factions that are either underpopulated and weak or overly powerful, and tiny ones that exist just for a couple of friends that never show up again. If people are successful, what keeps them in balance with the rest of the galaxy? What's to prevent some sole entity from encompassing the entirety of the game universe? It's not like a singular server where you can just wipe the slate clean on a whim...

And that brings up yet another problem - longevity. I have to go right now so will edit it in later.

Last_Jedi_Standing wrote:

Futurecraft isn't Minecraft. The second one isn't a problem because people aren't going to have anywhere near that much control over their servers, and the first one doesn't necessarily have to work like that. There's no reason every server should have the same resources.

e: neither of those are confirmed.

Tiel+ wrote:

Last_Jedi_Standing wrote:

Futurecraft isn't Minecraft. The second one isn't a problem because people aren't going to have anywhere near that much control over their servers, and the first one doesn't necessarily have to work like that. There's no reason every server should have the same resources.

e: neither of those are confirmed.

Nothing's bloody confirmed. We've been screaming into a hole for the past two years, Tiel. This entire forum represents the best guess we have about what it's going to look like.

Last_Jedi_Standing wrote:

Tiel+ wrote:

Last_Jedi_Standing wrote:

Futurecraft isn't Minecraft. The second one isn't a problem because people aren't going to have anywhere near that much control over their servers, and the first one doesn't necessarily have to work like that. There's no reason every server should have the same resources.

e: neither of those are confirmed.

Nothing's bloody confirmed. We've been screaming into a hole for the past two years, Tiel. This entire forum represents the best guess we have about what it's going to look like.

Certainly. You stated it as fact, however.

Tiel+ wrote:

Puffin4Tom wrote:

This is just a thread to collect all the problems people have found with various concepts for Futurecraft so that the devs can see what they are and solve them.

For example: Trading.
A problem with trading in Futurecraft is that all the servers are going to have exactly the same resources. Because of the way Minecraft is coded, once you get a large server, then the amount of resources are going to be almost exactly equal to other large servers. Trading will just not be profitable.

Also, what can stop server owners tweaking the spawn rates of resources in their servers to make their members immensely wealthy? If I owned a server I could turn the spawn rate of diamonds waaaaaaaay up and become really rich!

If you've thought of other problems, please post them below.

The idea is to obfuscate the server itself to the point that it just isn't worthwhile to attempt modding the mod, or at least do regular integrity checks to make sure unendorsed addons aren't being used to mischievous ends.

A problem that's come up time and time again is the matter of moderation. Mackeroth wants his whole egotistic Futurecraft empire setup, others would rather individual server owners act as cogs in the machines, while still others would prefer a cloud based approach where owners have as little control over what they host as possible to prevent rampaging badmins.

Another is faction retention vs dessication. It's pretty much a given at this point that something like the most popular plugin in the realm of Minecraft multiplayer must be integrated within the mod itself if it's going to be incompatible with things like Bukkit or Canary, yet you run into the same problems of uber factions that are either underpopulated and weak or overly powerful, and tiny ones that exist just for a couple of friends that never show up again. If people are successful, what keeps them in balance with the rest of the galaxy? What's to prevent some sole entity from encompassing the entirety of the game universe? It's not like a singular server where you can just wipe the slate clean on a whim...

And that brings up yet another problem - longevity. I have to go right now so will edit it in later.

Last_Jedi_Standing wrote:

Futurecraft isn't Minecraft. The second one isn't a problem because people aren't going to have anywhere near that much control over their servers, and the first one doesn't necessarily have to work like that. There's no reason every server should have the same resources.

e: neither of those are confirmed.

Wait... Don't we want superfactions? I mean, that would be pretty neat, having factions that span multiple servers, you eventually get actual, game-generated lore, huge wars, insurrections, revolutions...

Systems should have different resources, then people would have a reason to venture into other servers and wage organized war, set up defense networks, etc. I think a multiverse has been suggested, where you have groups instead of one conglomerate with a huge amount of servers. Then the resources could be regulated per system. There could be some with larger amounts of rare resources than the others.

That could also work with mobs. Let's say that there's one habitable/life-supporting planet in each server/system, maybe 50 servers in a cluster/group/whatever. We could make enough unique mobs for each planet to have a unique combination of wildlife. They don't even have to be very different, perhaps just resized or retextured.

We could also have a planet's mob types dependent on the kind of resources available. A planet with more/rarer resources could have more dangerous mobs. If we include something like Arrakis with an end-game rare substance, then we could populate it with giant sandworms and hostile NPCs.

Superfactions are all powerful, we don't want people to be all powerful and we don't want to wpie out factions either couse it is unfair, if they got to it they deserve it yet it doesn't mean they are allowed to break it for others, best solution is not to let them come to this state in the first place.

Iv121 wrote:

Superfactions are all powerful, we don't want people to be all powerful and we don't want to wpie out factions either couse it is unfair, if they got to it they deserve it yet it doesn't mean they are allowed to break it for others, best solution is not to let them come to this state in the first place.

As far as I know, the "superfactions" would be as limited - if not more - than a normal faction. They're larger = more supply needs (less'n you want soldiers starving or fighting with wood swords), more diciplinary requirements, and it's harder to move around.

If superfactions are knights in heavy armor, small factions are ninjas by comparison.

Why wouldn't we want factions to wipe out other factions? When a server enters the network it should accept the possibility that it could become overpowered and integrated into a different faction.

MercurySteam wrote:

Why wouldn't we want factions to wipe out other factions? When a server enters the network it should accept the possibility that it could become overpowered and integrated into a different faction.

The problems with other factions taking over your server is that the serer owner will just rage quit the serververse and start a new server somewhere else. People don't want to be defeated.

That's bitchy and childish of them in that case, Tom. Such people shouldn't be server owners. I agree with everything cats said up there. except for the multiverse. I'm completely pro server cluster.

Desdenova wrote:

That's bitchy and childish of them in that case, Tom. Such people shouldn't be server owners. I agree with everything cats said up there. except for the multiverse. I'm completely pro server cluster.

That's the problem. Server owners ARE often bitchy and childish (seeing as they are often children then this is logical!).
There would be no way to stop such people becoming server owners unless you have one person in charge of every server using the mod - presumably a mod developer and just by looking at all the arguments and insults between the moderators and devs on this forum alone you can tell that that would not work.
I can't personally think of a solution.

How about some kind of selective server owner process? Having some child do that would give me chills either way...

EDIT: Or wait, actually. How about making it just a donation for keeping a server alive? They wouldn't own it then, they'd be just its benefactors. Also, we'd have much better uptimes.
EDIT2: Ah, yes, and worlds older than a few months could be backuped or something to not let everything get lost. For people who want to donate, then, those backuped worlds would be selectable once their expiration date has been exceeded, to revive and continue them! There'd sure be some deals worth and possible making with one or more server providers once we're far enough...

EDIT3: The more I think about this the more I like it...

If you got the server owners to spare ...

Well, if you think about the size requirements for a server, then we probably wouldn't need any kind of owner selection process. Servers will need quite a large amount of RAM and space just to run FC, and maybe we put a 100 player slot minimum. You probably aren't going to get a server that size then just delete the entire thing when things don't go your way. It could also be set so that an owner can't put his server back on the network after deleting. Monitoring each server really wouldn't be that difficult, either. There probably wouldn't be that many, and if we use separate networks of just a few servers, it could be even easier.

MercurySteam wrote:

Well, if you think about the size requirements for a server, then we probably wouldn't need any kind of owner selection process. Servers will need quite a large amount of RAM and space just to run FC, and maybe we put a 100 player slot minimum. You probably aren't going to get a server that size then just delete the entire thing when things don't go your way. It could also be set so that an owner can't put his server back on the network after deleting. Monitoring each server really wouldn't be that difficult, either. There probably wouldn't be that many, and if we use separate networks of just a few servers, it could be even easier.

A 100 slot minimum isn't going to change much. I could host a 400 slot server on a netbook and none would be the wiser until that actually starts to fill up. At the same time, though, discriminating against smaller setups isn't going to get anyone anywhere - there still stands to be some gain from using them seeing as no big server owner is going to gamble their entire community on an untested total conversion initially.

I'm still an advocate of each server being a solar system and owners hosting as many planets as their hardware allows. So a small 512mb setup might only have a single moon in their 'zone', but a larger 3gb one might have a respectable star system within theirs that can be accessed. Travel would be contingent on the existence of a physical gate within a zone...here, let me draw you a picture



Sector administrators would simply be trusted individuals appointed by or composed of members of the development team responsible for overseeing a collection of zones. They would be expected to review each of them regularly to make sure things aren't going fowl.

Minecraft's authentication system should be tapped into...that is to say, no cracked Futurecraft zones; those that inevitably do won't be able to connect to the FMS. Server files should be something applied for in a professional manner, with a valid Minecraft user account necessary to be considered. If a host is found to be in severe error, the IP on their application will be blacklisted from further connections to the FMS. Note that revocation of hosting privileges does not necessarily constitute banning from the entire Futurecraft multiverse, but I can see them going hand in hand quite often.

And speaking of bans, as noted in the diagram, hosts should be able to exile players from their zone. You're going to say this is open to abuse, I agree, but consider that the aforementioned screening process should eliminate the baddies, and even then all a player need do is connect to another instance and report them to the sector admin. Mass bans will likely result in immediate review and ousting of those that would abuse their power. However, a reputation system should also be used - if a linked Minecraft account accrues so many exiles in a certain period of time they'll be automatically banned from the entire multiverse for a period of one day, upon which a sector administrator can look at the ban and either consolidate it into a longer punishment, or overturn it entirely should they feel the player in question was banned in error on multiple occasions.

Hosts would get a cool name, and the ability to bestow substantially-less-but-still-awesome names to players registered with their zone; this is for the sake of donor rewards and the like. They aren't able to do anything else...in a perfect world they'd get an installer to name their planets and specify how many they want (and thus the player limit), but ideally it has to be really difficult for them to do anything other than tamper with said variables. Terrain alteration should be out of the question.

Gates basically enable traffic, but may or may not be traps set up by players within a zone. Some may also be better defended with automatic cannons and the like where others are more or less an invitation to pirates; the idea is to give the player as much freedom as possible.

Factions could also be restricted to five registrations per zone, but I'm not sure how hot you guys are on that. It seems like 'resistance' groups would function just fine given the dedication, and five would mean that every single one would have to be substantial in their own right. Factions could have a 'standard' given to them on creation that, if destroyed, will open a slot in the zone for the creation of another. But again, this is more of my personal opinion on the matter.

Tiel+ wrote:

MercurySteam wrote:

Well, if you think about the size requirements for a server, then we probably wouldn't need any kind of owner selection process. Servers will need quite a large amount of RAM and space just to run FC, and maybe we put a 100 player slot minimum. You probably aren't going to get a server that size then just delete the entire thing when things don't go your way. It could also be set so that an owner can't put his server back on the network after deleting. Monitoring each server really wouldn't be that difficult, either. There probably wouldn't be that many, and if we use separate networks of just a few servers, it could be even easier.

A 100 slot minimum isn't going to change much. I could host a 400 slot server on a netbook and none would be the wiser until that actually starts to fill up. At the same time, though, discriminating against smaller setups isn't going to get anyone anywhere - there still stands to be some gain from using them seeing as no big server owner is going to gamble their entire community on an untested total conversion initially.

Initially, yes, we probably aren't going to have large servers, but later, servers need to be able to hold hundreds of players and dozens of ships. As we go, we can add more server groups with larger requirements and a larger number of servers.

Quote :

I'm still an advocate of each server being a solar system and owners hosting as many planets as their hardware allows. So a small 512mb setup might only have a single moon in their 'zone', but a larger 3gb one might have a respectable star system within theirs that can be accessed. Travel would be contingent on the existence of a physical gate within a zone...here, let me draw you a picture

A variation in number of planets, size, resources, asteroid fields, moons, etc. would be nice. Servers linked with each other should have similar abilities, though, so that a fleet that can operate just fine in one server doesn't crash another.

Quote :

snip

Sector administrators would simply be trusted individuals appointed by or composed of members of the development team responsible for overseeing a collection of zones. They would be expected to review each of them regularly to make sure things aren't going fowl.

Minecraft's authentication system should be tapped into...that is to say, no cracked Futurecraft zones; those that inevitably do won't be able to connect to the FMS. Server files should be something applied for in a professional manner, with a valid Minecraft user account necessary to be considered. If a host is found to be in severe error, the IP on their application will be blacklisted from further connections to the FMS. Note that revocation of hosting privileges does not necessarily constitute banning from the entire Futurecraft multiverse, but I can see them going hand in hand quite often.

Uh...

Quote :

And speaking of bans, as noted in the diagram, hosts should be able to exile players from their zone. You're going to say this is open to abuse, I agree, but consider that the aforementioned screening process should eliminate the baddies, and even then all a player need do is connect to another instance and report them to the sector admin. Mass bans will likely result in immediate review and ousting of those that would abuse their power. However, a reputation system should also be used - if a linked Minecraft account accrues so many exiles in a certain period of time they'll be automatically banned from the entire multiverse for a period of one day, upon which a sector administrator can look at the ban and either consolidate it into a longer punishment, or overturn it entirely should they feel the player in question was banned in error on multiple occasions.

Something something bicameral banning? I think that, if a server owner/admin wants to ban someone, they should only be able to put out a bounty or something like that on the player's head, so that it will be a kind of shoot-on-sight for all police NPC and automated defense stuff. Network admins/ops should be the only ones to actually ban people.

Quote :

Hosts would get a cool name, and the ability to bestow substantially-less-but-still-awesome names to players registered with their zone; this is for the sake of donor rewards and the like. They aren't able to do anything else...in a perfect world they'd get an installer to name their planets and specify how many they want (and thus the player limit), but ideally it has to be really difficult for them to do anything other than tamper with said variables. Terrain alteration should be out of the question.

We could make server hosts automatic generals/admirals, something like that, but we can fuss over faction mechanics later, I suppose.

Quote :

Gates basically enable traffic, but may or may not be traps set up by players within a zone. Some may also be better defended with automatic cannons and the like where others are more or less an invitation to pirates; the idea is to give the player as much freedom as possible.

I never liked the idea of gates being the sole method of FTL/getting from server to server.
A zone is a server, right?

Quote :

Factions could also be restricted to five registrations per zone, but I'm not sure how hot you guys are on that. It seems like 'resistance' groups would function just fine given the dedication, and five would mean that every single one would have to be substantial in their own right. Factions could have a 'standard' given to them on creation that, if destroyed, will open a slot in the zone for the creation of another. But again, this is more of my personal opinion on the matter.

I think it'd be best for a server to have one main/beginning faction controlled by the admin or someone appointed by the admin, and for players to have the ability to leave that faction and create another. A limit on the number of factions would make it cleaner.

MercurySteam wrote:

Tiel+ wrote:

MercurySteam wrote:

Well, if you think about the size requirements for a server, then we probably wouldn't need any kind of owner selection process. Servers will need quite a large amount of RAM and space just to run FC, and maybe we put a 100 player slot minimum. You probably aren't going to get a server that size then just delete the entire thing when things don't go your way. It could also be set so that an owner can't put his server back on the network after deleting. Monitoring each server really wouldn't be that difficult, either. There probably wouldn't be that many, and if we use separate networks of just a few servers, it could be even easier.

A 100 slot minimum isn't going to change much. I could host a 400 slot server on a netbook and none would be the wiser until that actually starts to fill up. At the same time, though, discriminating against smaller setups isn't going to get anyone anywhere - there still stands to be some gain from using them seeing as no big server owner is going to gamble their entire community on an untested total conversion initially.

Initially, yes, we probably aren't going to have large servers, but later, servers need to be able to hold hundreds of players and dozens of ships. As we go, we can add more server groups with larger requirements and a larger number of servers.

Quote :

I'm still an advocate of each server being a solar system and owners hosting as many planets as their hardware allows. So a small 512mb setup might only have a single moon in their 'zone', but a larger 3gb one might have a respectable star system within theirs that can be accessed. Travel would be contingent on the existence of a physical gate within a zone...here, let me draw you a picture

A variation in number of planets, size, resources, asteroid fields, moons, etc. would be nice. Servers linked with each other should have similar abilities, though, so that a fleet that can operate just fine in one server doesn't crash another.

Quote :

snip

Sector administrators would simply be trusted individuals appointed by or composed of members of the development team responsible for overseeing a collection of zones. They would be expected to review each of them regularly to make sure things aren't going fowl.

Minecraft's authentication system should be tapped into...that is to say, no cracked Futurecraft zones; those that inevitably do won't be able to connect to the FMS. Server files should be something applied for in a professional manner, with a valid Minecraft user account necessary to be considered. If a host is found to be in severe error, the IP on their application will be blacklisted from further connections to the FMS. Note that revocation of hosting privileges does not necessarily constitute banning from the entire Futurecraft multiverse, but I can see them going hand in hand quite often.

Uh...

Quote :

And speaking of bans, as noted in the diagram, hosts should be able to exile players from their zone. You're going to say this is open to abuse, I agree, but consider that the aforementioned screening process should eliminate the baddies, and even then all a player need do is connect to another instance and report them to the sector admin. Mass bans will likely result in immediate review and ousting of those that would abuse their power. However, a reputation system should also be used - if a linked Minecraft account accrues so many exiles in a certain period of time they'll be automatically banned from the entire multiverse for a period of one day, upon which a sector administrator can look at the ban and either consolidate it into a longer punishment, or overturn it entirely should they feel the player in question was banned in error on multiple occasions.

Something something bicameral banning? I think that, if a server owner/admin wants to ban someone, they should only be able to put out a bounty or something like that on the player's head, so that it will be a kind of shoot-on-sight for all police NPC and automated defense stuff. Network admins/ops should be the only ones to actually ban people.

Quote :

Hosts would get a cool name, and the ability to bestow substantially-less-but-still-awesome names to players registered with their zone; this is for the sake of donor rewards and the like. They aren't able to do anything else...in a perfect world they'd get an installer to name their planets and specify how many they want (and thus the player limit), but ideally it has to be really difficult for them to do anything other than tamper with said variables. Terrain alteration should be out of the question.

We could make server hosts automatic generals/admirals, something like that, but we can fuss over faction mechanics later, I suppose.

Quote :

Gates basically enable traffic, but may or may not be traps set up by players within a zone. Some may also be better defended with automatic cannons and the like where others are more or less an invitation to pirates; the idea is to give the player as much freedom as possible.

I never liked the idea of gates being the sole method of FTL/getting from server to server.
A zone is a server, right?

Quote :

Factions could also be restricted to five registrations per zone, but I'm not sure how hot you guys are on that. It seems like 'resistance' groups would function just fine given the dedication, and five would mean that every single one would have to be substantial in their own right. Factions could have a 'standard' given to them on creation that, if destroyed, will open a slot in the zone for the creation of another. But again, this is more of my personal opinion on the matter.

I think it'd be best for a server to have one main/beginning faction controlled by the admin or someone appointed by the admin, and for players to have the ability to leave that faction and create another. A limit on the number of factions would make it cleaner.

I'm in the middle of making cookies right now, so apologies in advance if any irritation at my back fucking hurting seeps through in my response.

a) Then FC dies on the spot. We don't have the capital to start our own server capable of hosting hundreds of players at a time.

Small servers come first, hosting their own small zones. As larger servers join, the zones they host can then be distributed across sectors as high intensity conflict areas where major fleet actions are to take place...actually, we might have to enforce some kind of ship limit on a per-zone basis. A small one might only be able to carry three, where a large one upwards of ten, and so forth. We direct anything bigger than a scuffle to the larger zones capable of handling it through that.

b) You're not thinking with zones. Think with zones. We don't have servers, we have zones. Hardware hosts one or more zones, which can contain anything from a single moon to a full fledged solar system. Those hexagons on my chart? Zones. Basically, what's inside a zone is what can be accessed by a player without reconnecting to another server via the gate system. Also, zones wouldn't be 'linked', persay; the construction of a gate basically means anyone can reconnect (travel) to your zone.

c) You're not understanding here. There are no owners. There are no admins. No OPs, no mods, no automated police or NPCs, none of that. There are hosts, there are sector admins. Sector admins are our systems side of things, hosts are merely what the name would imply. Hosts can 'permanently evict' a person from the zone that they're responsible for, nothing more, nothing less, however if a player accrues so many 'evictions' within a period of time they become subject to a one day ban that could become permanent upon review by a sector admin.

These evictions are not for petty stuff like grief or anything like that. They're for hacks and just generally being an awful excuse for a human being. I can understand your desire for RP stuff everywhere but you shouldn't have to jump through hoops to get rid of a rampant cheater.

d) Generals?

No, no ranks. A colored name, something like [HEY GUYS I'M ENABLING YOU TO PLAY RIGHT NOW] next to their name in comic sans or some osik. Outside of that a host shouldn't have anything else...the idea is to segregate gameplay and administrative duties as much as possible, hence why most of the power lies in sector admins rather than individual hosts (owners, if you haven't caught on). This way a host can certainly start a beginning faction if they want and be head of it without the typical problems lying with such a scheme.

e) A zone is the space hosted by a server in the futurecraft multiverse. It can contain anything from a single moon to a solar system. Have you read anything I've been saying or read my pretty chart?

But no, there's no other way. You could try to develop some algorithm to map out zones in a way that makes sense so the edges line up and you can move from one to another seamlessly, but outside of that very far-fetched proposition it's a pipe dream. Having gates is the only real feasible solution, with perhaps intra-sector FTL drives later on.

f) There are no admins. Now, if you're referring to the host, there's nothing stopping them from creating an initial faction when they get on. I agree with you on limited factions, but the problem with your idea lies in who approves the creation of factions...my proposal was it being the host, seeing as it's their zone that's going to ultimately be hampered as a result, but even without the whole starting faction deal it's possible a host might not welcome any competition. Yet the alternative is a dozen DICKDICKDICK factions by people who think it's funny...I dunno.

So what you're saying is that zones are servers, but we're not going to call them servers because it magically fixes things.

A. That's... almost exactly what I said, except if we do separate groups/networks of servers, we could put the high-performance ones together after we get enough of them.

B. Zones are servers, servers are zones. The terminology doesn't really have anything to do with it.

C, D, F. You're not understanding here. Owners don't disappear because they aren't convenient, they're still going to want to have some amount of power over their server. There are probably going to be NPCs, they've been discussed quite a bit, and defense is probably going to be one of their jobs. What you're referring to as "sector admins" I'm calling mods/Ops, and they're the only ones that should have the ability to actually ban someone from a server or "sector" group. Owners/server admins "hosts" should only have power over the main faction's NPCs.

A server would start out with a single faction set up and run by the server admin. This first faction would be the server's main faction, any others would be splinters. When a player joins a server, it joins the faction. Membership in the faction is passive, the player is just a citizen that can buy and sell off of the faction's market and things like that, unless it joins the faction's military. In the faction's military, which the host/admin sets up along with the main faction, players are organized with a rank system, are assigned to ships (or assigned ships and a crew if they're high-ranking), etc. It's 1:40 am and that paragraph is really shitty.

E. I wasn't talking about seamless transitions, I was talking about FTL drives.

Ok, so this is my compilation of the ideas from this thread - hopefully this will help the devs do their stuff.
In Futurecraft, the serververse is built around "zones". Each zone is run by one server. The size of these zones depends upon the server hardware. Massive servers can have a system with 10, maybe 20 planets. Tiny servers (P.C's and such) can have a single planet or maybe just an asteroid or two. (Maybe a way to analyse server's RAM and allocate them planets automatically?)
Tiel's Nice Picture:

For the actual planets, each one will be slightly different - randomly generated. For example, one planet type could be like the nether while others are like the overworld with lush plants and oceans, some are ice and rock and some are made of gas that you can't even walk on! Each planet type has different types of resources and this makes trade profitable and realistic. For example, gas planets are useful for providing fuel, ice planets provide water, and asteroids have rare minerals. (Maybe Futurecraft could be integrated with other ore mods to provide more ores).  
As for admins and such, each zone has the owner (who owns the server). If the zone owner wants then they can "lock" the server from the rest of the universe and have a whitelist of who's allowed in and out. They're allowed to create a faction for their zone.
Trusted people (Devs and forum moderators maybe) will oversee the whole universe. Anyone else who wants to make a faction must apply to them. (Maybe we can have a towny-like system for factions, where individual factions can unite with each other to create a large, united group.)
The Futurecraft Master Server controls travel between zones (achieved through "gates" or another thing like that). When it receives a request for travel to another zone it checks to see whether that person is allowed, whether their faction is allowed and whether their ship is allowed. If all three pass, then they are allowed through the gate and defences. If not then defences on the other side of the gate (the zone they're trying to get to) are alerted to the intruder's presence and can open fire. (Server owners decide which ships, people and factions are allowed past their defences.)
This means that if a gate is badly defended then they can get through anyway. However, if the person is not on the whitelist then the server won't show up as a travel option. This way, both people who want private games and those who want public games can use Futurecraft happily.
For ship identification purposes, each ship is assigned a serial number when it is constructed in a shipyard. If the ship is destroyed than it is re-allocated to a new ship. If you are the owner of a ship then you can remove its identification but this will automatically cause all gate defences to open fire.

Well guys, what do you think?

MercurySteam wrote:

So what you're saying is that zones are servers, but we're not going to call them servers because it magically fixes things.
B. Zones are servers, servers are zones. The terminology doesn't really have anything to do with it.

A zone is the space hosted. A server is the hardware hosting it. There is a difference.

MercurySteam wrote:

A. That's... almost exactly what I said, except if we do separate groups/networks of servers, we could put the high-performance ones together after we get enough of them.

That's silly. No, we want a high performance server in each sector. Putting them together in some uber sector just means the rest of the galaxy is going to be a lot less interesting and underpowered.

MercurySteam wrote:

C, D, F. You're not understanding here. Owners don't disappear because they aren't convenient, they're still going to want to have some amount of power over their server. There are probably going to be NPCs, they've been discussed quite a bit, and defense is probably going to be one of their jobs. What you're referring to as "sector admins" I'm calling mods/Ops, and they're the only ones that should have the ability to actually ban someone from a server or "sector" group. Owners/server admins "hosts" should only have power over the main faction's NPCs.

There have not been any conclusive discussions over how present NPCs will be, and what role they will play, but for the timebeing let's assume they're not even on the table. It'll be easier to accommodate them later than revise a scheme that won't work without them.

I don't see how at any point I've said owners won't disappear. They have a role to play as hosts, but anything more than that just opens everything up to abuse. Defense, for example - why would I even bother rallying the people in my server to oust the invaders when I could just turn the server off and lock everyone out for a time?

And for the love of god, just use the same terminology so this doesn't get confusing. That stubborn streak of yours isn't going to get us anywhere here.

MercurySteam wrote:

A server would start out with a single faction set up and run by the server admin. This first faction would be the server's main faction, any others would be splinters. When a player joins a server, it joins the faction. Membership in the faction is passive, the player is just a citizen that can buy and sell off of the faction's market and things like that, unless it joins the faction's military. In the faction's military, which the host/admin sets up along with the main faction, players are organized with a rank system, are assigned to ships (or assigned ships and a crew if they're high-ranking), etc. It's 1:40 am and that paragraph is really shitty.

I'm running on far less sleep than I should be, so sure, why not. Except military. Why is that necessary?

MercurySteam wrote:

E. I wasn't talking about seamless transitions, I was talking about FTL drives.

The thing with FTL drives is that they'd have to be strictly in-sector and incredibly expensive so as to not be overpowered. We want gates to at least have some strategic significance when it comes to defending.

I was doing some thinking though, and why couldn't we just have every zone be the same size? So arsln's homebuilt server would have the same amount of space as a huge one, but probably just a lot less populated with players and planets. It'd be a lot easier to map that out and enable transitions. But then again, that'd have to be a loading screen that could've otherwise been hidden in a gate jump cutscene, so not exactly seamless.

As I understood it, the FC mod itself would be hard-coded to limit server hosts/owners/whateverthehell's powers. Sure, they can manage players, ban, do whatever, but going creative and building BFS's isn't going to work.

Fleet Admiral Error wrote:

As I understood it, the FC mod itself would be hard-coded to limit server hosts/owners/whateverthehell's powers. Sure, they can manage players, ban, do whatever, but going creative and building BFS's isn't going to work.

That's a given, yes. What we're going back and forth about at present is just how big of a role they should play by default.

To reiterate my standpoint here, I'm in favor of just making the host a regular player (outside of setting up the server) with the advantage of being the first person in their zone. They'd also be able to ban people from the space that they host and possess a fancy name.

What I think cats is proposing, and forgive me if I'm making a strawman here, is that hosts should be some kind of commander or general in charge of a faction by default, with all the bells and whistles that would accompany the post.

My problem with this is that it's bad enough that they can participate freely in game with the ability to ban people from an entire zone, but while that can be checked by the bicameral system I think we're all in agreement with, having them as a permanent figure of power would exacerbate the associated issues to the point of making the whole system untenable.