Collaboration & Difficulty
Difficulty settings in Eco directly shape economy speed, profession specialization, and community conflict, so tuning should match your server’s intended social model.
Collaboration Presets
In the server GUI or config, you can choose initialization presets:
- No Collaboration (Solo): High skill gain, cheap recipes.
- Low Collaboration: Good for small groups (2-3 friends).
- Medium/High: For large public servers.
Manual Tuning (Difficulty.eco)
Increasing these values allows players to unlock professions faster, reducing the need for trading.
Difficulty Profile Design
Set a clear profile before launch: cooperative casual, structured roleplay, or high-pressure governance. Mixing settings from different profiles usually creates imbalance where progression is either trivial or blocked, and both outcomes reduce retention.
- Casual profile: Increase XP gain and lower skill pressure to reduce onboarding friction.
- Hardcore profile: Keep scarcity high but publish expected playtime and collaboration requirements.
- Mid-season changes: Adjust in small steps and communicate impact on laws and markets.
Operational Checklist
Treat this topic as a repeatable server operation, not a one-time change. Schedule changes during lower traffic, announce maintenance windows, and keep a rollback snapshot before each update. If your server is modded, validate changes on a staging copy first so startup logs, world loading, and player joins are confirmed before production rollout.
Validation Steps
- Capture baseline metrics: Record CPU, RAM, and average player ping before changes.
- Apply one change at a time: Avoid batch edits that make root-cause analysis difficult.
- Review logs after restart: Check for version mismatch and dependency warnings immediately.
- Run a real join test: Confirm fresh clients can connect and complete core gameplay actions.
- Observe for at least 24 hours: Validate behavior under peak load, not only right after reboot.
Performance and Stability Notes
Most hosting incidents come from resource spikes combined with configuration drift. Keep restart cadence predictable, review world/save growth weekly, and cap optional systems that generate extreme entity counts. When performance drops, compare with your last known-good baseline and revert recent high-risk changes quickly to reduce downtime.
Backup and Rollback Policy
Use automated daily backups plus pre-change snapshots for risky operations. Keep at least one off-node copy and test restore procedures routinely. A practical retention strategy is 7 daily, 4 weekly, and 2 monthly restore points. If a change causes instability, roll back first, stabilize service, and then reattempt with a narrower test scope.
Game-Specific Hosting Notes
- Simulation tuning: Law, meteor, and economy settings should be tested together to avoid destabilizing progression.
- Admin policy transparency: Publish governance rules clearly so law changes do not feel arbitrary.
- World lifecycle: Plan season length and wipe criteria before launch to prevent mid-cycle conflict.