I also like this idea!
And if we can't find a plugin that suits our needs, it's not too difficult to create such system (indeed, it doesn't need to be a plugin), especially to see who is online. A friend and I once made a "statistics site" for our server with only PHP .

For the block logger, I think that's something to let the admins/mods decide. But if it makes their job easier I have nothing against it.

I'd really like to have the ability to monitor the placement/breaking of blocks, and the interactions of chests. Obviously, need to be able to mute/kick/ban users. It would be nice to be able to force a tp to a person, incase they are causing issues (allegedly) and we could check it out before taking action.

I'd love to have our mc.cemetech.net page updated. I'd love for us mods/admins to be able to post news items announcing events and abba caving events, have a place where we can link youtube videos, have a 'live' box that shows who is online in the server, amongst other things.

My main issue with allowing Moderator TP's was that I didn't want it to be abused where Mods feel like they can freely teleport to someone for a convenience. But, being somewhat hypocritical, having the ability to look at block interactions would be just as susceptible to abuse. But I'm still weary on teleportation because I explicitly don't want it to be a tool used for ease of travel: Mod takes loot back to town vault then TP's back to group with Mod Privilege as one example. Thinking to them selves "I need to buy something from this town." So they ask who is in "town" at the moment, teleport to that player and purchase from playershops then tp's back to their home town.

I trust you and Elemental to do things faithfully but I want to try and clear up/eliminate any gray area as much as possible.

I understand. I could only promise that any powers I receive as a mod (or if I'm able to get promoted in the future :p ) would only be used in the times they were needed to figure out an issue or fix things, which I feel my suggestions would help towards.

Ultimately up to you, though

What about letting mods only tp in gamemode 3, that way they can't abuse the TP, and if they want to get out the gamemode 3 they are back at the place they started. This way they can still check it out, with minimal abuse.

Also, mods should be people you can trust, so giving them tp access shouldn't be that big of an issue IMO.

The thing with GM3 is that it let's folks clip through any blocks an potentially see any rare ore. The other issue is that it doesn't give my mods any power to look at an issue, like who took items from a chest in the past. I'd be totally open towards finding a plugin that introduces a new game mode, say, GM4, that teleports my mods to a point of interest with mod tools (like bedrock), invincible, invisible and, maybe while also clearing their inventory. When they're done they type the command to teleport them back to their last coordinate with their inventory restored.

Again, I trust my (current) moderators to be responsible but I want to make sure there's no gray area. I can't say I'll be able to put this level of trust into other moderators going forward if the server grows; If I have to promote members less than ideal candidates I'd rather have these restrictions in place now than trying to put them up after any abuse happens. Again, ideally I'll promote players I can put my 100% trust into to Moderate the server.

I forgot in my list that mods should be able to add people to the grey listing, since I believe people will be able to join but not be able to do anything until they are added to the list, right? Would be helpful for your mods to be able to add people

Be sure to keep this topic about plugin discussion But yes, that is mandatory and was a confirmed responsibility on either Skype or in one of the topics, likely the 1.9 Plans but I can't find it. If you'd like to continue 1.9 Mod responsibilities we can continue in the linked topic; the linked post is regarding 1.8 responsibilities and won't list graylisting.

Why don't you code your own plugins? When I owned an MC server, I made many custom plugins and it wasn't very hard. Just use the Spigot API and Java. Implementing, for example, GM4, would be as simple as having a hashmap with serialized inventory + location, and using a command listener to tell Spigot to swap the inventories and locations.

I'll address a few ideas that have been discussed within the past few weeks, especially having to do with the more essential or core things to the 1.9 server.

The "Essential Plugins" List

As listed out by KermMartian, there are a few plugins we aim to have on the server carrying over from 1.8. Below is the list of these plugins, the status of them (which I will update accordingly) along with links to their respective sources.

► EssentialsX
Status: Updated for 1.9
Details: Last updated on 1 March 2016. Latest version has a 5-star overall rating by a few users.
Plugin Source: https://www.spigotmc.org/resources/essentialsx.9089/

► WorldGuard
Status: Not Updated for 1.9; Developmental Releases for 1.9 Available
Details: Last updated 8 June 2015. There is no stable release for 1.9 yet, however developmental versions for 1.9 are available, with the last "successful" build being 2 March 2016.
Plugin Sources:
Stable Release ( 1.8 ) -- http://dev.bukkit.org/bukkit-plugins/worldguard/
Developmental Releases ( 1.9 ) -- http://builds.enginehub.org/job/worldguard

► Towny
Status: Not Updated for 1.9; 1.8 Version Mostly Works in 1.9
Details: Last updated on 12 October 2015. There is no stable release for 1.9 yet, however users have claimed that the latest build for MC 1.8.3+ here, works for 1.9 other than events in the game which are new for 1.9 such as potions of lingering.
Plugin Source: http://towny.palmergames.com/

► iConomy
Status: Updated for 1.9
Details: Last updated on 5 March 2016. Latest version ("pre-8.0") has no user ratings.
Plugin Source: https://www.spigotmc.org/resources/iconomy-recreation.9374/

► SignShop
Status: Not Updated for 1.9
Details: Last updated on 15 July 2015. Many comments state that the latest [1.8 stable] version does not work properly in 1.9.
Plugin Source: http://dev.bukkit.org/bukkit-plugins/chestshop/

► SignShop Alternative: ChestShop (this is my suggestion in place of SignShop since SignShop is not updated)
Status: Updated for 1.9
Details: Last updated on 5 March 2016. Latest version has mostly good ratings with 7 out of 9 being 5 stars.
Plugin Source: https://www.spigotmc.org/resources/1-9-chestshop.19511/

As far as I have heard, Essentials and WorldGuard are the biggest ones we need to be functioning to be able to even consider a full server launch for 1.9. But to be sure, it would be good to get confirmation on this. What do we absolutely need to be able to launch, if we were to go completely minimal on plugins? I would honestly say that especially stuff like Towny is not essential to the server being operational with our 'graylisted' server. If our primary concern is to just make sure we can be able to have layers of permissions for new users versus members we accept onto the whitelist and being able to protect spawn, then I'd say to just launch whenever the absolutely necessary plugins are in place, and we can always just add on other plugins as time passes.

General Plugins Discussion

Silk Spawners


While I will not hold anything against the Silk Spawners plugin by saying I'm against having it, I will firmly believe in what Comic has stated on it and for related matters. I feel that anything that can be manipulated in a non-survival/vanilla way that acts to decrease the value of something is something I am not fond of. I'm not a big fan of the idea that you can silk touch 20 spawners and then mesh them together in one location to create the most powerful XP farm on the server. I'm one who would find joy in searching for a while to find a double or triple spawner setup, and then having the rest of the members of the server be amazed by it and have it be a point of attraction for members to visit and use, which advocates the sense of community, as opposed to everyone having their own personal 20-spawner setup, which could all easily grind out levels in the blink of an eye. And I feel to try and include the plugin into the server would just introduce a bunch of other silly regulations on the server, such as enforcing a 7 spawner maximum. This is all I have to say about it, and will continue to wave the "vanilla-survival mechanics" flag from the sidelines.
Also, I'll wave this video as to express exactly why I feel the way I do (start at 21:34 if it doesn't already).

Chairs Reloaded
There is one plugin though that did catch my attention which was cool and absolutely not necessary, but it would be the ChairsReloaded plugin originally suggested by CVSoft, which is nothing game changing but is nonetheless a little neat thing. It simply allows you to "sit" on what could be imagined as a "chair", such as a staircase. Interior decor often includes chairs, and you can never sit in them, and can only use them for decor in Minecraft, so what are some thoughts on putting this on the server?
It is updated for 1.9, as of March 2nd-- http://dev.bukkit.org/bukkit-plugins/chairsreloaded/.

Towny



While I don't quite see a consistent argument in this, I would side with the idea of not having Towny (as well as iConomy) on the server. There's nothing wrong with having it (them), but they're additional complications all just in an effort to put a large title on your build, have it outlined on the dynmap, and to separate town/non-town/nation member permissions. I see the large need of this when we were running PvP on the server, but there's not really as much of a need to protect or keep out anyone or anything anymore. The only thing in my personal view that we would need is endermen griefing protection, as to not completely wreck builds and nice looking areas one block at a time.

The economic system is another thing I'm with the idea of not having, and just letting player to player trading interactions prevail, especially since the server will be 'graylisted' and roped off to a select group of people we filter through to some degree.

However in the end of this, it's not something I'm going to passionately argue over not having, as it doesn't really affect gameplay very much other than some possible slight complications when dealing with other peoples' towns by being the person who may not use Towny. It's pretty much in the hands of Comic and Kerm at this point whether we use them (and hence why I'm listing them as a couple major server plugins for convenience).

Web-Based Logger



I would definitely advocate having something like this to be able to use, even if I wouldn't be able to use it as a server moderator. It's not always an option to be able to log online and investigate something immediately, and this would be a convenient thing to have in addition to tools when on the server. This would fall under a non-essential plugin to have to the functioning of the server, but it's definitely a very nice tool.

Web-Based Server Statistics



I would like to reiterate, as I have pointed it out on multiple occasions elsewhere, that I was a big fan of the mc.cemetech.net web statistics that listed things like blocks mined, distance traveled, and such. Back on the very old "retro" Cemetech server that ran through MC 1.6, I used to visit the webpage on a regular basis specifically for those statistics. As soon as I noticed they stopped updating and working, my website interactions slowly decayed away. I would love to see the website not only be updated with such statistics again that might update once a day even, but I would also like to see the webpage overall become much more lively, updated often ideally, and with perhaps another theme. Things like the events we plan to have on the server should definitely be posted there, and it should be a central hub for anything Cemetech Minecraft related-- something people will want to revisit on some basis, and feel like they're more involved and in-the-know of the server happenings. When there were some new things like server events (scavenger hunts) that were posted monthly, it certainly had me checking back at that webpage. Then when the hunts stopped happening or otherwise end up being posted to the webpage, my webpage visitations also likewise stopped. If it may require some manual input such as small articles on what's the latest happenings on the server, I would be happy to volunteer to assist in making that happen, along with other webpage-related content, if it's something that stands as a position that can be taken.



Basically this.

On the note of forum organization, I definitely upvote that happening, as the forum could use some organization and consolidation of all Minecraft-related things. It would be good to make a standalone post about this somewhere as far as how this will be structured, and have some agreement on the layering of subforums/topics based on what we consider to be major umbrella categories of Minecraft/server-related topics.

On a related note, I would also like to nudge the idea of having possibly even a carbon copy of the Cemetech Minecraft section of the forums on mc.cemetech.net, to further advocate bringing more activity to the webpage (and ultimately the server). Having such a thing couple possibly make for quite the Cemetech Minecraft central hub in my view, and that webpage would most certainly get lots more attention.

TRIGGERED
ChairsReloaded revolutionizes Minecraft by fundamentally altering the way we plan and design structures. No longer are cafes and public benches mere items of decoration, they are both functional and practical with ChairsReloaded! It encourages players to think with a new dimension, that of sit. ChairsReloaded fills a vast gap in the functionality of 1.9, a feature requested by many but ignored by the heathenous developers at Microsoft. But we no longer have to live with this hole in our hearts; I ask of the Cemetech Minecraft administration to instate this wonderful, necessary, and revolutionary plugin to ensure a complete and proper Minecrafting experience for all who deem themselves worthy.

Can't forget our egg catching plugin that some of us definitely want.

I will continue to advocate for that silk spawner plugin, though I'm sure everyone will rule against me on it.

And I also agree, we need some heavy reworking of the site. It would be cool if we could have a php bit that only pulled from the Minecraft section of the forums and displayed them there, but something tells me that would be crazy difficult to deal with. I'd just like the ability to add content to the pages myself by logging in, editing information, and adding news and events. I wonder how hard it would be.. If we could get some kind of script to display the latest 3 post items from the Cemetech minecraft server facebook page?

I'm strongly in favor of keeping Towny, a Sign+Chest shop plugin, iConomy with lapis ore currency as we've discussed, and the Chairs Reloaded plugin sounds pretty fun. I also believe we should stick with the EggCatcher plugin for more exciting machines. As much as I want tons of spawners in my new machines, though, I think SilkSpawners is taking it too far.

I also like the EggCatcher plugin, but it has one part I don't like. You can change the type of spawners with right clicking with an spawnegg on the spawner. In my opinion this is too OP because you can easily spawn mobs which are normaly not easy to spawn (ie witches, guardians, blazes, ghasts, passive mobs...).

I don't like the idea of having SilkSpawners, one reason is that it can spawn mobs without checking the mobcap and thus making it (like the giant portal farms) an possible cause of server freezes due to too many mobs.

I think Server Moderators should be able to use it in order to help maintain the server along side admins. I certainly have days where I don't want to launch Minecraft to check who stole from a chest and being able to check from the comfort of my phone, tablet or, just briefly from my browser would be great.



I'm no expert on this but I think this is outside the scope of phpBB. This is very likely not going to happen.

Regarding Chairs, I'm not for or against it per-say but purely cosmetic mods are not something I'm keen on adding. So few of our members actually stay in their homes that I think chairs would be a novelty. I'll explore about adding that though, most importantly that it won't interfere with the AFK timer so players can still be kicked after a set time.



I realize egg catching is a pivotal part of the server. How would folks feel if I lowered the chance of a catch? To reiterate, I feel like the 100% catch rate we have on 1.8 of allowed mobs is way too generous. Maybe up to a 50% chance for the common mobs and, at most a 1% chance for the rare ones. With 0% for certain mobs like Ghasts, Withers, etc.

Maybe less than 50% to make the ability to change spawners a bit more special? Maybe up to 30%?

I think the plugin introduces a very unique part of the gameplay which is pretty cool to actually be able to "save" a mob in the least and spawn it later like Pokemon. When you mentioned the chances of catching them as opposed to not having a guarantee, and talking about how the rate of catching them could be decreased possibly depending on their rarity, I think that's very cool, as it would bring value to having some mobs. And in a sense, it's like Pokemon, since the rarer Pokemon would be much harder to catch, even if you weakened them (it kinda would be cool to have it dependent on health too, but I feel that's starting to go beyond what we can easily and immediately do with the plugin as is). Perhaps we could make some slight modifications to the code on the plugin (because I think it's a chance of catching a mob regardless), and have all mobs be catchable, but make certain ones very hard to catch. For instance, perhaps the following could be a sample probability list:

10% Zombie
10% Skeleton
05% Creeper
05% Zombie Pigman
05% Guardian
01% Ghast
01% Witch
01% Wither Skeleton

This would certainly make them much, much more valuable since you'd actually have to work to catch them generally, and it would be such an accomplishment to actually own something like a ghast spawn egg, since you'd have to track it down, get it to be over land, throw eggs at it, and continue back and forth until you get one. I mean, if we didn't have spawn eggs, as it would be in survival, vanilla minecraft, then to "catch" a ghast, it'd actually be much, much, much harder than that even, since you need to get one to fly into a minecart, and then transport it with tons of rails. All things considered, we perhaps would even want to make that chance even smaller or like you said, not make it possible at all, in an effort to preserve the value in catching one.

I'm not going to reply to your post just yet, as I want others to weigh in, but I do want to address the chances of catching a mob which are entirely configurable in the appropriate config.yml with 0% being possible. Not sure if we can do fractions though. Something to test or research I suppose.

Honestly, I only really care about zombies and pigmen, and of course passive mobs like cows, sheep, rabbits, and villagers. Will the catch rates effect the usage of dispensers as well?

I don't see why not, it's only the catch rate. Once you caught the mob it'll still "hatch" when thrown. But it's something we can test on the 1.8 server for a day perhaps.

EggCatcher has been updated for 1.9!

► EggCatcher
Status: Updated for 1.9
Details: Last updated on 7 March 2016.
Plugin Source: http://dev.bukkit.org/bukkit-plugins/eggcatcher/



I think what tifreak8x is referencing to is the automatic way of catching them, which is to load a dispenser with plain eggs, and have the dispenser toss them to catch the mobs. Normally, this would cost money to manually catch them by hand, and there would also be a chance of catching them, but it would turn into a 100% chance with a dispenser. So basically as long as you have a dispenser, there would be no drawbacks to using them other than the lack of versatility. I think regardless of what we do, we should make it so that to catch mobs manually or automatically, they should be consistent with each other in cost. So maybe we should make catching mobs free (why should it cost money anyway, especially if we will just limit the chance... time is money? --> lower chance of catch = more time spent catching it = time that could be spent earning money).

Also, when I was reading the context on the plugin, apparently it has something I had thought of, but didn't bother mentioning on my last post-- mob health affecting catching rate. The plugin has a setting for the mob health limit, which I assume has to do with how much you have to damage the mob before you're allowed to catch it? If that's the case, I think we should also be required to bring the mob we want to catch down to lower health before being able to catch it. This, along with the lower chances of catching any given mob, would help make for a more engaging and challenging experience catching the mob, and would also greatly increase the value of a spawn egg, as it probably should be more valuable anyway. For instance, if you have a ghast spawn egg, it should certainly be somewhat impressive that you have one, as opposed to being like "oh, no big deal, it was easy to get". Like I mentioned previously, if this were vanilla-survival, you'd have a really hard time catching something like a ghast manually in a minecart and transporting it from one place to another. Some people spend hours doing such a thing with ghasts, so I don't think it should be something we can do in 15 minutes even. Honestly though, I'm very inclined to agree more with the idea of making certain mobs not catchable just to retain the value of doing something like actually catching a ghast the vanilla-survival way.

On a related note, I would also like to mention that I noticed that ChestShop has a dependency on Vault, but it seems perfectly fine that Vault is not updated for 1.9 formally, since all the reviews on ChestShop are positive for the 1.9 updated version. Here's the stuff on Vault:

► Vault
Status: Not Updated for 1.9; 1.8 Version Probably Compatible
Details: Last updated on 18 August 2015.
Plugin Source: http://dev.bukkit.org/bukkit-plugins/vault/