[Solved] Removing portals on restart?

[Rebirth Gaming]

The root issue here is that portal gun portals stay active throughout server restarts AND keep the chunk they are in loaded.

We are trying to take control of force loaded chunks on our server, pointing players towards premium options to do so that would in return support our server. While we are currently moving towards restricting quarrying to the underdark, we have also noticed that portals keep the chunk they are active in loaded. Given the number of portal gun variations plus being able to work with friends, players can keep a considerable number of chunks active while offline.

I'm curious if there is a way to force portals to be removed upon server restarts. I noticed that portals can be configured to require fuel - does fuel depletion cause portals to go away, even when the gun is not in the player's inventory?

Any insight to this would be appreciated! Thanks.

 

[LeoMC]

I'm not too sure about your problem, but I think a plugin could fix this. Are you running MCPC+? If so a command could remove all the portal blocks in every loaded chunk.

 

[Rebirth Gaming]

*gasp* Yes, I do run MCPC+. No, I do not know what this command is. Please do share.

 

[LeoMC]

It's a custom plugin I could write

 

[Rebirth Gaming]

If you did, and shared it with everyone here, that would be amazing. It's something that would be even better if the command could be executed by console on schedule right along with my scheduled server restarts.

 

[Francis Baster]

I have long been interested in a plugin / mod that manages chunkloading tickets. I would love to have all chunk loading tickets 'owned' by a player, or in some cases multiple players, and then that ticket would only be active when that player is online. That way I could leave all chunkloaders unbanned in the safe knowledge that my tick rate isn't going to slowly grind away into the dirt.

 

[Rebirth Gaming]

I agree. It would be nice if quarries would only keep their chunks loaded when that player is online. With the recent update to DW20 that includes ender quarries, I've been considering either banning the BC quarry or just restricting the landmarks. Either way, I'm about to limit all quarrying to the underdark (pretty much a 'mining world' if you think about it), so that would help tremendously, since getting there is a bit difficult.

With quarries out of mind, the only two big issues with force loaded chunks come from portals and AM2 gateways. I have NO idea why or how AM2 gateways are forceloading chunks (haven't really touched AM2 period, so I lack knowledge on the back end mechanics), but I understand portals require force loading chunks in order to function properly. If they could be reset on command/server restart/player logging off, that would be very helpful.

Now let's imagine a perfect world where all of the above are taken care of - that leaves CC, railcraft and Steve's Carts chunk loaders, which are all designed to do just that and aren't a side effect of ensuring some primary mechanic functions. I have restricted all chunk loaders with the exception of personal anchors. CC chunk loaders are off limits period simply because they can keep such a large number of them loaded with one single item.
The world anchors are also banned, but that's because I sell admin anchors to players for points (donation/earned reward system). I also allow my players to craft and use personal anchors, which keep a 3x3 chunk area loaded at the cost of ender pearls. They also unload when the player is offline. It's very useful for things like keeping their lava tanks/pumps loaded, but doesn't stress out the server. Lastly, I sell spot loaders to players, which keep 1 chunk loaded. A bit of a more permanent option as compared to personal anchors at a fraction of the cost of admin anchors.

Point is I like to keep control of what stays loaded, pressuring players to somehow contribute to improving the server's performance when they want stuff to stay loaded. BC quarries and portals can be cleverly abused to keep large areas loaded at no personal cost.

 

[Rebirth Gaming]

I installed and started to mess around with aPerfs. While it's a powerful mod for improving performance, it doesn't seem to (yet) have an option to remove specific tile entities, which is what the portals are. After mentioning this to one of the aPerfs devs, it was mentioned that this feature could be added in a future update. I'll report back if/when that happens. This could be very useful to other server admins to reduce force loaded chunks.

 

[Francis Baster]

I installed and started to mess around with aPerfs. While it's a powerful mod for improving performance, it doesn't seem to (yet) have an option to remove specific tile entities, which is what the portals are. After mentioning this to one of the aPerfs devs, it was mentioned that this feature could be added in a future update. I'll report back if/when that happens. This could be very useful to other server admins to reduce force loaded chunks.

Yeah that would be a great feature. The tile entity search filters are still very powerful, I use Essential's powertool feature to bind commonly used filters to certain items, so I can click with a stick and see the location of all quarrys, etc.

 

[Rebirth Gaming]

Well... "/pg removePortals all" works. Native command with the mod. This whole time....

I'm going to just do a scheduled server command to do /pg removePortals offline. This will remove portals for offline players.

 

[kaovalin]

You realize there is a config option for portal guns to disable their chunk loading features? Also chicken chunks has a feature to disable chunk loading for all chunk loaders of a player that is offline, or offline for more than X time. Railcraft require fuel to chunk load, but I'm not sure about users having to be online. Look through configs.