Hey Bumfuzzlers! Happy New Year!! I’ve got some updates for you! We’ve got some talk about teaming, alliances, Earl has a malfunction or two, a new SuperHeli event and an upcoming wipe – today! Take a gander and get up to speed with things!

Bumfuzzlertopia

Teaming Up

For a while now we’ve had limits on player groupings. Players could play solo, as a duo with one other or a group of three. Unfortunately, it appears some clarification is required.

I’ll admit it. I personally don’t like having rules in Rust. It defeats the whole purpose. Unfortunately, setting the trio limit wasn’t as much about rules as it was preservation. Having clans of 6 or more join up against solo players has horrible effects on everyone’s enjoyment. Solo players are abused and leave, the 6-person clan has no one to raid and they leave too.

Thing is, while we’ve addressed the group limit, we never addressed alliances and I’m seeing players use alliances as a way to extend their group without breaking the rules. So I’ve adjusted the rules a little and I’m going to attempt to clarify so there’s no confusion.

Here are the rules:

• No groups larger than 3 acting together
• No alliances forming groups larger than 3
• Don’t do obvious wrong – hacking, exploiting, etc.
• Don’t be jerkish – harassing, bullying, stalking, griefing, etc.
• Don’t be abusive – cursing, racist, sexual, etc.
• Don’t solicit players to leave, drive away players, etc.
• Don’t trash server or admins, feedback is appreciated.
• Don’t make repeated hackusations without proof.
• Don’t repeatedly suggest admin abuse without proof.
• Don’t assist others in breaking these rules.
• Not reporting others for breaking rules may result in your ban.

When it comes to “No groups larger than 3 acting together” and “No alliances forming groups larger than 3”, more clarification is required since “acting together” is vague as is the definition of an alliance. I think we can define both situations as being grand displays of mutual benefit.

Players working together for mutual benefit means:

• Raiding together, assisting on raids
• Sharing raid loot
• Sharing resources, bases, access, defenses
• Gifting bases
• Purposefully not engaging in battle
• Swapping out clan members, friends
• Collectively spotting base locations
• Achieving monuments, Tank, SuperHeli

This doesn’t mean neutrality is not allowed. Neutrality is when groups or individual players are indifferent to one another as long as their interests don’t conflict.

A finer note on swapping out clan members or friends – Unfortunately for groups of more than 3, subbing has to be limited to situations where a clanmate is no longer playing (for a long period of time or ever), they’re kicked out of the clan/group or they leave. Players can’t be subbed in and out based on who is online more often. This is because it’s impossible to recognize if a solo player (at whatever individual point in time) is actually playing solo. As a solo player, they may be playing as if they know the first chance they get they’ll be subbed into the team and what they’ve gathered, raided for, or found in the course of exploration, will be the clan’s resources. If a clan wants to change up group members, they should do it at the beginning of a wipe and stick to that.

If you have any questions, you can type !rules, !trio, !alliance, !neutrality, !mutualbenefit in-game and Earl will sort you out or you can just ask me in Discord or Steam.

Cupboard Group Limits

In addition to the rules, I’ve implemented a technical limitation that will help ensure players don’t share in large groups.

Now, there is a hard limitation on how many people can be authorized on a cupboard. When a 4th player attempts to authorize on a cupboard, it will alert them that they can’t and it will log the event. This makes it far more challenging for players to get away with breaking the group limit and it should make other players feel more at ease wondering if players are breaking that rule.

One side effect may be on raiders who will not be able to authorize themselves on the cupboard unless they clear the auth list first. In some cases, the cupboard may need to be destroyed.

Please give me feedback about this as it could cause unintended consequences.

Super Heli Refuel

In an attempt to make the Super Heli more dynamic, I’ve set up a refueling event.

Every so often, in addition to the Super Heli coming in for a crash landing, the Super Heli will require fuel and will land at one of the several monuments for a certain amount of time. The Super Heli will have a crew of four NPCs – two normal and two heavy – which are your primary goal.

If you kill the NPCs, in full, at any time, either in the air or on the ground, the SuperHeli will self-destruct and you’ll gain access to some nice loot. However, on approach to refueling, keep in mind, the SuperHeli will be his typically fierce self.

Let me know how this works out. I haven’t fully tested it and we did run this plugin a while back. I’m giving it a try due to its recent overhaul.

All Servers

Earl Malfunction

Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been tinkering with Earl as he broke down roughly two patches ago.

Unfortunately, this means he won’t be quite as responsive for a while. I need to almost entirely reprogram him which will take a considerable amount of time.

I’ll do my best to get him back in working order. As much as he can sometimes be a busy body with his responses, he’s immeasurably useful to new players – and veteran players since he relieves them from having to answer questions.

Wipe Day

As Facepunch will be releasing a patch today, being the first Thursday of the month, today is the wipe for both Bumfuzzlernilla and Bumfuzzlertopia.

Everything applicable to each server that normally can wipe will – map, economics, blueprints.

I hope all you Bumfuzzlers had a great holiday season and you’re ready to have an awesome new year!