I think this might be a new record for the longest staff meeting.
Hey everyone – after a break in July to celebrate our 7th anniversary, we had a GSM this weekend with lots of interesting topics. Here’s what we discussed and decided. If you want to relive the experience (in which we argued about things from the parking lot of a Jim’s Storage), you can do so on Frumple’s channel here or MBS here.
Staff changes
First, as many of you know, administrator godzilltrain and moderator Just_robinho have both stepped down from the ranks of staff as of this GSM to pursue new career aspirations. Both of them have done great things for the community during their combined 3,023 days (that’s over 8 years) of service, and they will be missed dearly. Robin has assumed the rank of Governor for the city of Marblegate, caretaker responsibilities for which have been distributed among several folks. Godz has assumed the rank of Premier for the city of Segville, which is immune from involuntary transfers.
We do have some promotions to announce as well:
- megascatterbomb has been promoted to the rank of Administrator, and has taken over management of the city rank promotion process from Godz. We are happy to award the title of City Ranks Coordinator to Mega in light of these responsibilities. We can neither confirm nor deny that a secret Administrative Staff Meeting may or may not have occurred at some point approximately around August 4, but Mega was promoted on the 4th (or 5th, depending on time zones).
- Vickiposa has passed her trial moderator period and has been promoted to full Moderator.
- Our newest trial moderator, as of the GSM, is Echohue.
Congratulations to all three! Mega and Echo will be learning their new roles and tools over the coming weeks, and we’re excited to see what new things they will bring to the community as a part of the staff team.
Changes in administration
Administrators held an ASM back in July, at which we announced some upcoming changes in server administration that will be rolled out gradually over the coming months.
- At a future ASM, a Head Administrator will be appointed, who will have the authority to make decisions on Frumple’s behalf and will assist in general operations. Most admins are going through major transition phases in their real lives at the moment (think moving to a new city, starting a new job, etc), and we want to make sure everyone has a chance to settle down before committing to anything.
- Frumple will retain veto authority on all decisions, will retain final sign-off on appointment of administrators, and will still be involved in major operational and financial decisions, but will be less involved in day-to-day management of the server and its community.
- I (chiefbozx) will be expanding on the role of Staff Meetings Coordinator, and I will be coordinating more aspects of GSMs and ASMs, beginning at the September GSM.
- We will be setting up a new server machine, codenamed Zeta, towards the end of the year. We are still considering some options on how to approach this upgrade, and will announce details once they are finalized.
- Yoshi will be taking on additional responsibilities as Events Coordinator.
- All admins will be equally responsible for handling emails, member applications, and file uploads, and all staff members will be responsible for handling staff emails and voting on Senator and Governor candidate cities.
As an aside, the operating costs of 2019 and 2018 have now been paid in full by the community. Thank you so much for your support!
Transport rule changes
We argued about these for a while.
The following rule changes will take effect immediately:
- SEAPLANES: The availability of seaplane bases is being expanded. Specifically:
- Seaplane bases no longer count against airspace allocations. This means seaplane bases can be built independently of the 7,500 block (Senator) or 50% (Governor) airspace allocation of your city.
- Seaplane bases can be built on any of the 30 numbered lakes without staff permission. If you want to build a seaplane base on a different body of water, please submit a GSM proposal. Artificial lakes will be very difficult to get approved.
- Seaplanes are only allowed to travel to other seaplane bases. No crossover is permitted between seaplanes and traditional airports, though hybrid airports serving both types of planes at separate gates are still allowed. (Thank you to everyone who pointed out that amphibious planes exist during the meeting.)
- Seaplanes are now permitted at lower ranks – towns ranked as low as [Councillor] can now accept seaplanes in addition to helicopters.
- Seaplanes are not restricted in size (please don’t abuse this or else we will invent a restriction later), but bases are restricted in the number of permitted gates. The limits are 1 gate at Councillor, 3 gates at Mayor, 5 gates at Senator, and 10 gates at Governor.
- Decorative seaplanes are still permitted anywhere, as long as they don’t have warps and are clearly not for commercial service.
- There are no rules prohibiting flights from one seaplane base on one side of a lake to a different seaplane base on the other side of the same lake, however these may be economically impractical.
- Seaplanes are not permitted on the Old World.
- BUSES: We are officially clarifying that buses are not required to be present at each stop along their route. This is common in local bus routes within a city and has been allowed unofficially for a while, but never formalized.
- TRAMS: On the contrary, trams are treated like warp rail, and therefore are expected to have a vehicle at all stations they serve.
Additionally, we are phasing in a change in the number of destinations a single vehicle can serve. This will begin to be enforced after the September GSM, so companies have about 5 weeks to come into compliance. First, one quick definition:
- Destination: A “destination” served by a transit vehicle is any single vehicle, stop, station, or other port of call that can be reached by taking a single sign warp from the originating vehicle.
The new rule that will take effect in September is as follows:
- A single transit vehicle may allow players to travel to up to six (6) destinations through sign warps placed on its interior.
- Exception: Bus stops which do not have buses present may allow players to travel to up to two (2) destinations through sign warps placed at the bus stop. Bus stops must have a reasonable distance between them.
Some examples of how this rule is applied are as follows:
- A single bus stop can have up to two destinations. If a bus is present, this limit is increased to six (6) destinations, and the signs need to move to be inside the bus.
- A single aircraft parked at an airport gate can have up to six destinations. Different sections of the plane may have independent warps to the same destination without counting further against this limit (for example, a business class section can have warps to the business class section in the destination plane while separate warps are set up for the economy section; as long as these two warps go to the same destination plane, they only count as one destination).
- If a single aircraft is parked at an airport gate with warps to planes at two different gates at the same destination airport, that aircraft is using two destinations.
- Placing a warp sign in each car of a train only counts as one destination if they all go to the same train at the same station.
- Warp signs are not allowed on the outside of vehicles. Vehicles which cannot be entered by players cannot be used for transit service.
- Chains of warps that bring players sequentially from one station to the next along a route are allowed, as the destination of each vehicle is the next station along the line.
If you have questions, please ask – we are happy to help you evaluate your network and get it into compliance. Thank you for your cooperation.
Discord changes
- We’ve made some changes to the Discord #staff-emergency channel. It’s gone, and it has been replaced by #requests-to-staff, which you can use for asking us about things that don’t require in-game assistance (such as your Trustee endorsements or getting a password). You can ping @Staff if it’s an emergency (like if no staff are in game but someone is causing damage to the server). Don’t use this channel to ask for WorldEdits, dynmap renders, or block checks; please wait to ask for those until you and staff are in game. Do not ping @Staff in this channel if it’s not an emergency. Staff will ping admins in the staff channels if admins are specifically required.
- The #mature channel has been renamed to #serious, and the associated role has been removed. The channel is still marked as NSFW/18+ due to Discord’s Terms of Service, so please be mindful of this. Abuse of this channel could result in warnings or a kick from Discord.
- The #notifications channel can be used for all town promotions, but will not be used for offline payment confirmations or MRT station renames.
- Players will be asked to use their full or abbreviated Minecraft name in the main Discord. You’re free to use fancy text and add all sorts of shenanigans on your username in other servers, but please keep yourself easily identifiable on the main one.
Roads and Rails
- No MRT lines or extensions this time around.
- We considered a rule change that would allow underground rail lines to have an unlimited length between stations, but we decided against it.
- The B75 from A54 to Drayton, proposed by Thermacon, has been approved and re-numbered B38.
- hvt2011 has been granted permission to build a BluRail track under Curracha.
- MIKE24DUDE has been granted permission to build a Network South Central line under inactive towns on the way to Rochshire. A different extension in the vicinity of Evella is on hold for now.
- CodyHM has been granted permission to build the Southwald Line (not to be confused with Southwold, the MPO of Schillerton, Whiteley, Venceslo, and Zerez). We are encouraging Cody to connect to an existing Fred Rail corridor in the area.
- dragonbloon419 has been granted permission to build a PMWC line under the city of Snowtopic.
- The A245 from A30 to B246, proposed by AlphaDS, has been denied. We’d rather not see a huge tunnel under that bay as there is plenty of space nearby for an over-land route.
- For similar reasons, the A75 from New Bakersville to Heaven City, proposed by Fiork777, has been denied.
- The A746 Phase 2 from Janghwa to Birdhall, proposed by Lithium, has been approved on the condition that the road is underground in the mesa biome.
- A rail line from Endor (JS12) to Kanto, proposed by _Lego_, has been approved.
- The B56 “MeTromso Link” from Fort Yaxier to MeTromso, proposed by honzagame, has been approved. Please double check that this number is not in use elsewhere, as some records are suggesting that the number B56 is already in use near Venceslo, but these haven’t been verified.
- A road from Lakestdale to Mojang Town, proposed by SuperSamuel25, has been denied as we believe there are better routing options.
Projects and events
- _O_OM3GA_O_ has received reduced funding for The Great Token Chase.
- MinecraftYoshi26 has received full funding for an upcoming building-themed game show.
- We reviewed a request for Carnoustie to be exempt from the named lakes rule and build a seaplane base on a local lake. We determined that the lake was too small to fully support seaplanes, and so have denied permission.
Next GSMs
The next four GSMs will be at 7pm UTC on the following dates:
- Saturday, September 14
- Sunday, October 13
- Saturday, November 9
- Sunday, December 8
Please note that the November and December dates may be subject to change depending on staff travel schedules, especially as coordination responsibilities begin to shift over to the admins.
I almost certainly forgot something, so please yell at me in Discord when you figure out what it is I forgot. See you around!
<3, Chief