I think use of the Auto-Farm plugin could potentially give the US Scourge server a much needed boost to performance. Currently, most of the fresh water areas are plagued by huge mega farms that are absolutely tanking both server and client performance. Without raiding to keep the balance in check, this type of building becomes cancerous to the server.
My solution would be to use auto-farm. They are a single placeable planter, with a built in sprinkler (and i believe server configurable heater/light). They come with industrial storage adapters built in, so players can hook them up to their automation systems and can even be set up to make clones. Yes, that means that players can have their farms running 24/7. Thus, to counter that, the server could limit the number of them per player to 4 or 5 or whatever admins feel is appropriate, and disable vanilla planters entirely. This means that the players interested in farming, can still have their large farming operations in essentially a 2x2 or 3x3 base instead of 40x40, which would significantly reduce the number of entities the server has to track.
Obviously, this will initially be unpopular with some of the more prolific farmers. But, I think this would be good for overall server health, and longevity of the player base.
