Doing some more readings.

Basically I think the reason that mobs slow things down so much is that the method of spawning them is ridiculous.

The spawn algorithm runs 20 times per second(!), and when it finds a valid spawn location it spawns up to 12 mobs at a time. It keeps doing this until a global limit of 200 (possibly 100 since 1.2.1) is reached.

The documentation for the server.properties file is pretty bad - Minepedia is really patchy on it, but I'll keep reading and see what I can find.

It /is/ possible (apparently) to change it with mods, but I'd rather not start installing mods now if Bukkit is on the way. If that's the only way though I guess I will do it...

I was also thinking about upgrading the PC it's running on to 64bit, adding another 4GB of RAM and running the entire World files on a RAM disk....

Right, There's definitely no way to do it without mods.

However there is now a working version of hMod for 1.21, so I'll go about setting that up and see what plugins I need to limit monster spawning.

Any other plugins people want?

Go ask :@

hMod is up and running and the server is now running in Sun's Server JVM which should make things a bit more efficient too.

But I still don't know how to reduce the number of mobs :(

Yeah it's the one in the base, I figured I'd keep it inside for starters. It sounds as if people have built LOADS of stuff since I last connected, which is nice! Is it all relatively close together? Might have another go later on today, when I get home. I need to go deeper with that mine and find more iron / gold / etc - despite the apparent depth, I can still only find coal and very rarely iron... I want to make buckets, dammit! I'll take a look at the sandcave too, sounds exciting - and dangerous...

I endorse the streetlighting idea. I would also endorse the idea of creating a sod-off big fence around the area in which the various establishments are built :Y but that sounds too much like hard work.

Would it be wise to implement some sort of basic authentication for starters, like a server password? It wouldn't take much for someone to ruin what we've built I guess.

My plans:
- excavate excavate excavate! I need iron to at least make some armour and then explore the caves I've found in the house-mine; obviously if anyone else fancies it, go ahead!
- fence-in a bigger area which I'll use for planting trees, maybe farming as well
- build a rather large tower inside the original house area

Consider yourself ignored :C

Monster spawn rate is now 1 instead of 2, but there are various reports that it makes no fucking difference at all :D However, only Zombies are allowed to spawn now, and that seems to have reduced the overall number considerably.

list is now /who

All the commands have changed, basically. Type /help for the new ones. A bunch of commands don't work though, I think that's because it's not listing us as admins and I'm being stupid and can't work out how to make us admins :$