Hello everyone and happy new year! The January 2020 GSM has concluded, and we have announcements from it and the ASM that followed.
New Trial Moderator
We are pleased to announce that Vulpicula has accepted an offer to join the ranks of staff as a Trial Moderator. He will be learning the ropes over the next three months, with evaluation for promotion to full Moderator being considered by admins at the April GSM. Please give him a warm welcome to the staff ranks the next time you see him online!
Premier cities
We reviewed two cities for the Premier rank: Radiance Square by MindBender15, and Larkspur by Vickiposa. We are pleased to announce that Larkspur received a unanimous vote and has been promoted! Vickiposa’s acceptance speech was as follows.
On the very first day I was promoted to member–September 11th, 2018–I decided to be a bit corny and build a bell in a plot of land by the NW22 MRT Station and dedicate it to giving thanks for both the sheer luck I had just stumbling upon this server and to the staff for promoting me. See, I have been looking for a server like this for years–none of my personal friends at the time were interested in playing in a creative city-building world which I have always had a bizarre fascination with. I had given up hope in finding a server like this, but while looking to automate a minecart transport system in singleplayer I somehow stumbled upon this place. I suppose it was simply a some kind of catharsis or whatever that caused me to build the bell, but to this day it still stands as the center of the town I decided to found at that site. At the time, I had heard about the then 11 premier cities. I admired the effort of their creators but I never thought my town would join their ranks but, 16 months and 7 premier promotions later, here we are as I deliver this speech. While I have my regrets about how I went about Larkspur’s growth and recognize its many flaws, Larkspur is my city and I cherish it and the many experiences I had building it.
Thus, in the spirit of the first structure I built in what would become the city of Larkspur we know and love today, I extend my deepest thanks to everyone who has in any way contributed land, effort, criticism, transport links, or the time in promoting and publicizing this town, including people who have hosted all or part of their event here. Your contributions have very much made Larkspur into what it is today. While I wish I could thank each and every one of you, this speech is extremely wordy as-is so I will refrain from doing so. Anyway, thank you to my fellow staff members for promoting my town to Premier, as well as the audience for listening.
Vickiposa, Moderator and Mayor of Larkspur (LA8, Premier)
As always, feedback for both (and all previous) Premier city promotions can be found here.
Zeta server migration
In case you haven’t heard about the upcoming migration to our new Zeta server: we are in the final stages of preparation and will be migrating shortly. There are currently two critical issues preventing migration (one with WorldEdit and CoreProtect, and one with Citizens); we are waiting on more information from plugin developers and will provide updates once we have a final schedule in place. Frumple will post here and in Discord with migration information once it is finalized.
We are currently estimating that the migration will take 10 to 11 days to complete, with the bulk of the time being spent on chunk generation and Dynmap rendering. We are tentatively scheduling the migration to start on Tuesday, January 21, and finishing on or around Friday, January 31, though this may change depending on plugins. Update: Based on further testing, our new estimate is February 18 to 28. Apologies for the delay and we will keep you posted if this changes again.
Some notes about the migration process:
- When the migration is complete, you will need to use Minecraft 1.15 to connect to the Zeta server.
- There will be brief periods when various services are inaccessible. In particular, OpenTTD, Minecraft, and Mumble will be offline for several hours or days at a time while we move through various stages of the migration. Please watch the #announcements channel in Discord for updates.
- We are planning to have a “purge” period once files have been safely migrated over to Zeta. During this period, we will disable CoreProtect and WorldGuard on the Epsilon server.
- Please do not bug Frumple and the admins about migration status updates; we will post in #announcements as soon as we have news to share.
Zeta server rules updates
In preparation for migration to the Zeta server and the accompanying world expansion (by the way, we’re going from an 18,000 block radius to a 30,000 block radius – which means we’re nearly tripling the size of the world!), we will be instating temporary rules shortly after the migration. These are in place to help ensure that everyone has an equal shot at claiming land throughout the expansion.
- No seaplanes on Zeta lakes until lake numbers are assigned at a GSM (this will be an agenda item on the first GSM after the migration finishes).
- No boats in the middle of Zeta lakes until we can come to a decision on rules regarding boat fleets in lakes that don’t relate to the surrounding civilization. This will likely be an agenda item at one of the first couple of GSMs after the migration.
- If you’re proposing an A- or B-road in Zeta territory, hold off on numbering it until we finalize wards. We hope to finalize wards at the February 2020 GSM, and we will number roads accordingly at that GSM once ward boundaries are determined.
Other rules updates
The following rule changes were approved at the GSM and are in effect immediately.
- Rules and scheduling details of our OpenTTD server have been formalized as follows:
- OpenTTD access is provided to MRT players at or above the Member rank; this service is not provided to Guests. Please ask a member of staff for connection details if you’d like to join.
- You must join the server with a recognizable username.
- Do not block the construction or routes of other players.
- Do not block off industries from other players.
- Do not steal companies from other players, even if the company does not have a password.
- The OpenTTD map is reset every Friday at around 5 am UTC. Announcements for the settings of the next map will be made in Discord on the #openttd channel and to anyone that has the OpenTTD role.
- There is a “purge” period starting from 6 hours before the reset from 11 pm Thursday to 5 am Friday UTC where chaos, shenanigans, and any sort of trashing of the map is allowed.
- If you would like to save the current map to your own computer, you should do so before the purge period starts.
- Companies that do not have any vehicles are automatically deleted by the server after 12 in-game months. Please take advantage of this if you decide to start your company over instead of asking an admin to delete your company for you.
- We are adding an exception to Economy Rule #4, which currently states that companies that facilitate gambling and betting are not allowed. In addition to private arrangements between two players (which are always allowed at your own risk), we are now allowing you to use your in-game money for these types of activities in the following circumstances:
- When the process is completely managed by an automated system, for example the daily lottery plugin, OR
- When an administrator is actively controlling and managing all monetary transactions, or monitoring their activity through the Minecraft server console.
- We have clarified that the 300- and 500-block “sovereignty” rules for towns do apply in lakes and other bodies of water. This means that building boats within 300 blocks of an existing town requires permission. Existing boats can stay where they are for now until we sort out more detailed boat rules at an upcoming GSM.
- We have formalized a previously implied exception to the town modification rules. Event organizers are now officially authorized to make minimal additions or changes to another person’s build/town for an event as long as they ensure that the build/town is restored to its original condition after the event.
- “Minimal additions or changes” mean only what is necessary for the event. This may include decorations, banners, signs, and temporary buildings, vehicles, tents, or the like.
- Temporary items may not occupy a town or build for more than 24 hours without approval of the town’s mayor or build’s owner.
- If a build/town owner indicates that they do not want an event held at their creation, the event organizer must respect that wish. It is recommended that event organizers get permission from build/town owners beforehand whenever possible.
Roads, rails, and projects
We approved all of the road, rail, and project submissions:
- The B63 from Deadbush to Heampstead
- The A53 and B531 in the vicinity of Southoak, Devon, and New Izumo
- The B600 between Whiteley and Numark
- A high-speed rail line from Vegeta/Willow to Skogheim
- The “B89” (which needs a new number; may I suggest B889?) which connects to the end of the B88 and goes east
- A project to modernize R2 Pig Racing on the old world
- The City of Monoliths has been officially granted an exemption to the seaplane placement rules, and LDShadowLord is permitted to create a seaplane base on the city’s canal system.
ASM
We had a short ASM to discuss some of the technical aspects of the migration. I went off on a rant about SSH key pairs. It was awesome.
In the process, we accepted one ban appeal, thus clearing our backlog of administrative emails.
THE END
Our next GSM is on Sunday, February 9, with proposals due at 7pm UTC on Friday, February 7. See you then!
<3, Chief