Rooms and server economies

TARDIS has the potential to disturb the fragile balance of a server’s economy, by allowing the cheap growing of rooms which can potentially be harvested for their blocks.

TARDIS has a configuration option — rooms_require_blocks — that enables server owners to balance the cost of a room against their server economies. When set to true, it only allows a room to be grown if the player has collected and condensed the blocks needed to grow it.

The following table illustrates the actual cost of the default TARDIS room based on the lookup tables currently used to convert blocks to Artron Energy if you were to put them in the TARDIS energy condenser chest.

Room	Actual cost to grow	Default cost in config
Allay	12469	1225
Antigravity	17330	1725
Apiary	7130	700
Aquarium	8928	875
Arboretum	8639	850
Architectural	7794	775
Baker	7624	750
Bamboo	7086	700
Bedroom	8853	875
Birdcage	8489	825
Chemistry	7102	700
Cloister	4020	400
Empty	8456	825
Eye	6332	625
Farm	7487	725
Gallery	12807	1275
Garden	6315	625
Geode	6974	675
Gravity	15485	1525
Greenhouse	7738	750
Happy	9749	950
Harmony	9452	925
Hutch	7685	750
Igloo	16245	1600
Iistubil	4362	425
Kitchen	15291	1525
Laundry	9957	975
Lava	4304	425
Lazarus	8590	850
Library	18710	1850
Mangrove	5489	525
Maze	6850	675
Mushroom	5196	500
Nautilus	9494	925
Nether	2903	275
Observatory	39653	3950
Passage	5126	500
Pen	7430	725
Pool	8849	875
Rail	11211	1100
Renderer	16572	1650
Shell	10435	1025
Smelter	10441	1025
Stable	8284	825
Staircase	7767	775
Stall	10047	1000
Surgery	14150	1400
Trenzalore	7975	775
Vault	8643	850
Village	6732	650
Wardrobe	7640	750
Wood	4523	450
Workshop	11826	1175
Zero	7556	750

A choice

Server admins can either adjust, the config values for room costs, based on the table above (or by using the /tardisroom blocks save command to generate per room text files that list the required blocks and the actual room cost — good if you have custom rooms). This makes things better, but Artron Energy can still be gained for free using a recharge beacon.

A better choice

On SURVIVAL servers, the better choice is to use the rooms_require_blocks: true option. Rather than using just the Artron Energy cost, this makes sure that players have gathered the resources they need first. This can be balanced with the rooms_condenser_percent option. Setting this to less than 100% means that players need only gather a portion of the required blocks, and the rest can be made up of Artron Energy. There is plenty of flexibility to get the balance just right :)