structure ownership

[ekroemer]

Hi there,

 

I'd like to revisit the issue of the ownership of (1) the plotpole and (2) any items placed into the world by crafting or the new modular building system.

 

For admins life would be much simpler if any of those things would carry the unique PlayerUID in the owner id field so you could target your DB cleanup, e.g. when people leave your server.

 

To make things worse, the owner-id field is used to store the key combination for doors, so there is no possibility to identify the owner of a structure including a lock.

 

This has been the case for safes for as long as they are there, but with those the necessity of removing them is much less then for base structures.

 

I think I remember that safes once were automatically locked to the PlayerUID before a design decision was made to use a 4-digit-combination? This would be the historical reason to store the combo in the OwnerId field.

 

In my opinion storing the combo in the OwnerID is destroying information that is worth preserving. BaseBuild's method of storing the combos in the Fuel field has it's drawbacks, too, but at least does not deny the admins a crucial bit of information.

 

I realize that changing the combo location from OwnerID to Fuel field will require changing the object table in the database, but I assume there is a fairly simple SQL statement to copy all vault-OwnerID's into the otherwise unused Fuel field and I think this slight hassle is worth correcting something that imo is a design flaw that crept in more or less by accident.

 

 

Disclaimer:

 

Yes, I know, the developers are in favor of the automatic cleanup system that automatically prunes the DB and thus shall make targeted admin maintenance redundant.

But in my book

• automatic waste disposal is a fine thing but not generating waste in the first place is better
• the build system is still not that stable and manual maintenance is required on a regular basis.