Mal_s

Though of death when I saw this:

An in my case immediately dies to a head shot.

You do what you have too.  A lot of server operators are struggling with this release.  I don't think they did much QA this release.  You are not alone in this struggle.  Its even worse for most modded servers.

Another option would be to give known players the ability to vote to kick new players:

http://oxidemod.org/plugins/votekick.2511/

I'm picturing Dirty coming up the back side and using the lip to block the turrets on top, twigging up one floor and through three walls and in.  It will not slow someone like Dirty down.  Honestly the state of bases in Rust is they will quickly fall to an offline raider who knows what they are doing.  It seems for smaller players lots of out the way bases with loot scatter across them all might be a better strategy than all your eggs in one basket.  You will lose some, but it will grind through offline raiders resources more, and given they are small they will not waste resources for what may or may not be worth it.  But I could be reading the state of offline raiding wrong.  Unless you can actively defend 24 by 7 no base is safe for long.  The bigger the base, the more you try to secure it, the higher the odds some bigger fish will come visit when you are not home.

Death would need to implement a chat system and a mod like this one:

http://oxidemod.org/plugins/betterchat-mute.2272/

It is rough with no admin on to have to endure trolls. I am sorry you having to listen to this.

Once you go modded, Vanilla is kinda dull other than as a challenge.  I'd have to drag Fyre back kicking and screaming.  I mentioned playing there a bit and got the look.  I want to play a little on it, but mainly to nudge folks to the modded server.  My plan on modded is to put some road houses near the spawn in points and full road houses near the roads to help them get a good start.  But that would be post wipe.  I'd just potter on Vanilla when I can.  Fyre will have classes at night two days a week so I am a free man those nights.

I remember Syn reading me the riot act on how my base was an accident waiting to happen.  I could have been a star in the how not to Rust video.  I don't think there was anything safe about my house.  I now understand why all the pretty buildings are empty.  They aren't safe to live in, but are fun to build.  It would be lovely in PVE to have windows and not worry.  But right now it is bunker or bust.

I wonder what percent of new players are doing PVE to practice for PVP?  I had my friend and his crew play on modded to practice for PVP, so I know it is not uncommon.  They came to the modded as it was quicker to get geared up and make a base.  But they are not typical players and understood the implications of differences server types.   PVP players on PVE are transient, most will move on quickly, other than to test base designs and heli strategies.  I guess I am keen to make PVE sticky to build a community that stays around, rather than a half-way house to PVP.  But it depends on what your strategy is in terms of path you are trying steer players to.

How Rust does the server list is geared towards playing their game, their way.  For PVP that makes some sense in that is is consistent, but for PVE, not so much.  

Differentiation is the key to attracting and retaining players regardless of server type.   The trick is to get new folks to check the modded tab in the client.  Your set up for PVE modded is one of the better mixes.  Easy but not too easy, and not obnoxious.  I was on one server that literally had an ad every two minutes.  They did however have gift for time played geared for expected level of the new player at that point.  Kind of like kits over time to lead folks along.  that seemed novel.

There are a lot of servers with quests, stores, reward programs etc.  Each a different mix of these.  I would love true PVE to block base looting, no-twig to block twigging, and looting of sleepers and corpse to steam friends.  Some servers set resource stack size to 10K which is a boon to building and marathon foraging.  Quests look interesting but I have not tried them.  I look at my history once I am home to see if I can find some samples of different set ups.  When I find interesting ones I slap it on the home server to see how it works.  There are literally hundreds of Oxide mods out there.  The challenge is to keep the server stable when adding these as they do not all play nice together.  Nothing like a log file full of exceptions...  the challenge of running these servers, adding features, keeping the lights on and being an admin... Does death ever get to sleep?

You have done well to get the mix you have.

Sorry.  I did not realize it was on Vanilla.

You might want to consider this mod to block twigging on the PVE server:

http://oxidemod.org/plugins/building-blocker.2456/

That could prove interesting.

The current map is stark and savage, but that is by design.  It definitely changes the dynamics of a procedurally generated map.

I look forward to the poll.

I think adjusting the clock on pvp from 8-8 to 12-12 might provide some more complexity to PVP in that there is some chance of night encounters. 

It might be good to change up the seed at least a little each wipe.  So the layout does not get predictable.  This is especially true for the PVP map.

The PVP map seems to be missing features of the PVE map (at least what I been able to find) in terms of mines, caves, grass... places to hide.  there is literally no place to hide which is rough as a duo team.  Honestly everyone lives in each others pockets it is so tight.

One more related idea, add spawn heli to the store....

Thanks to Fyre for the title idea.

Perhaps have a Heli event where a pack of 2-6 spawn and roam the map.  It could be like a Friday night event for all the big game hunters.  Or occasionally spawn one and then 3 minutes later another Heli to give folks a surprise.  Okay the Heli is gone.... whoops.

With Heli-control it would be easy enough on the modded server.  Not certain about the Pure server.

Loving the modded server.  the community is currently small, but some great folks.

We got every single drop with time to forage around while they dropped.  thank you for adjusting the drop height.

We use the copy and paste mod from Oxide on our LAN server to work with Fortify.  I suspect in a multi-user server the potential for issues and abuse might not be prudent.

Honestly using a tool like Rust Server Manager quickly and easily set up a local sever to try things out.  As long as you have enough RAM and it is one or two user it should be fine, but not very social.  That is what keeps folks coming back to hosted server, people.