I saw this on the Minecraft forums...
Quote:
You know? I've always thought about what would happen in a SMP server where everyone is walled inside a bedrock cage. As in, it's completely impossible to get through, but also, the cage is pretty big. How big is open to details, but maybe big enough to fit a 50 man server.
The trick is, the server will be populated with over 300 persons. A completely overpopulated, walled in land.
The point of this "vault autism" would be to observe what would happen to the natural resources.
After analysis, and experience in SMP servers, the first thing to deplete or one of the first, would be clay. It's rarer than diamonds, and visible from the surface. Brick houses would be completely gaudy.
After that, minerals would deplete at around the same time. Strip mines would be rampant, not a single block of rock would remain unturned. The next worry is iron: rock tools would be the standard. Diamond tools would completely break within 1 month, and the only diamond there would be is perhaps some diamond blocks in a heavily guarded castle, and strong clans would keep diamond pickaxes to harvest obsidian blocks. Coal would run out, and charcoal will be the only fuel.
At this point, clearly the players will become completely aggressive, and everything will be kill on sight. Every person with a will to live will have been recruited in a clan. Bear in mind that theorically, for this to work, a player would have to log in at least 8 hours daily and would not be able to quit the server.
Since iron tools would deplete very fast, iron would be saved for swords only. Minecarts and tracks would be unfeasible with the constant wars and griefing, so far away stations would be destroyed by other kingdoms instantly. Perhaps some kingdoms would keep buckets for lava moat purposes.
After this, funnily, swords will become rarer and more valuable as they break, and all wars will be fought with bows, since skeleton arrows and spider strings are infinite.
Given some time, the next thing to deplete naturally would be sand. Sandstone cannot be recrafted back into sand, and glass cannot be recovered after placed. Curiously, at this point, flowers and other non-renewable dye sources would have already run out a long time ago (specially flowers), and dyes would indicate hierarchy.
Trees would be cut down instantly, and be rare in the wild, but would not extinct. Wood is the most important resource at this point, so all clans would keep tree farms with the now abundant bonemeal.
Curiously, the next thing to die would be grass. After rampant dirt extraction and griefing in general, the only sight would be dirt and rock. This means that pigs, sheep, and other wildlife would not spawn anymore. Obviously, at this point, grass will become the most important resource, since all the animal spawns will concentrate on the few grass available, because of Minecraft's spawn system. This means that the unfortunate clans without a personal wildlife spawning room (grass carpet) would have no food, no leather, no wool (which will become a popular cheap building material for pretty rooms in safe places) and a shortage of feathers. No grass also means no more wheat, but it will be nowhere near extinct. Since porkchops are not enough for anyone, self mantained farms will be everywhere underground. Funnily, since cake can be quickly deployed and eaten by multiple persons, it will be everyone's favorite raid snack and healer in general deployed in every barrack, since besides the buckets, every ingredient is renewable.
Because of the previously mentioned spawning concentration, the number one priority of the guilds will be to sabotage the enemy's grass carpets as well, to increase the number of spawns in theirs. This way, grass will be even rarer, and guilds with grass will be much more powerful, because of leather armors, cake, porkchops, etc.
When grass becomes extremely rare and localized, and most guilds will be in ruins after having even their farms be destroyed, the true fall of civilization would start.
Theorically, there are only 4 ways in which blocks can be lost completely. One is being crafted into another block, like sand being crafted into sandstone. Other is through lava, but lava moats will be nearly nonexistent, not only because of accident prone, also because smart guilds will keep deep pits so they can keep the equipment of whatever poor bastard fell in, instead of burning it all. Other is explosions, but realistically, TNT cannons and demolitions will be very very rare. There are no creeper spawners, and natural creepers would not stand a chance against a batshittingly overpopulated server. Because of this, TNT will be rare, definitely not enough for TNT cannons.
The final one, is dropping an item and let it decay naturally.
Realistically, everything would be scavenged. There would be nothing that won't be picked up as soon as seen and dumped into a guild vault. What leads me to the interesting thought that the most common way to banish blocks from circulation will be traitors or griefers breaking into vaults and breaking chests, more than they can pick up. This will create a large block sink, losing forever chests full of wood (arguably the most common block after cobble at this point), seeds, dirt, etc to be lost forever. Given it's time, every single resource will be scarce.
Now, the fun way to analize this, is to look it from the building block viewpoint.
The underground will be a completely ugly mess, since every single stone will have been culled for minerals. Only smoothstone and cobblestone will remain. And there would be 2x1 infinite tunnels everywhere, in a perfect grid, coupled with giant clusters of nothing because dirt will be completely extracted from the underground as a building material and gravel will be completely decimated for flint to use as arrow heads. At some point, solid building materials will be rare on themselves. Just because they are solid. There will be no dirt on the surface. There will be huge chasms and the earth will be scarred as sandpaper. All buildings would be made of cobblestone, and sometimes wood. Keeping a structure on itself would be a feat. Staying alive would be a feat, with 300 people fighting themselves at all times.
At this point, absolutely no grass blocks remain in the entire server, effectively extincting it. This means, no pigs, no chickens, nothing. Because enemies will spawn almost fully underground because of the huge empty spaces, even monster encounters will be rare. The sum of all of this means, no food except for bread, only rock tools, arrows themselves will be rare because feathers and flint will be fought for, wool will be discontinued... the true fall of civilization.
Any few remaining guilds will have to be realist and hide underground, with a fair number of members so as to not be overthrown. There will be no more kingdoms. No more trade.
e will have to skip forward perhaps a year.
At this point, nothing exists anymore. The land has been abused so much that there is no more smoothstone. Through nonstop war and hate, Mankind finally extincted all plantlife. The entire world will be standing over adminium. Because now there are no caverns, nothing to hide behind, it's the perfect spawning conditions for monsters.
Surviving is impossible. Players are now spawn camped by skeletons. Any technology you can think of, like a basic cobblestone generator done with lava and water, will have at some point been blown by a creeper. Because of no sticks, cobblestone will not be able to be gathered. The few building blocks remaining are dirt, and nothing else. And even those are fiercely guarded from the creepers, as best as the players can.
Since there is nothing to fight for anymore, players will somewhat calm down and try to survive together against monsters. But nothing can be really done, even with their numbers. Their best hope is to have monsters stuck in cracks between adminium. Treaties are made to not remove the few dirt blocks remaining to form 2 block deep pits in the adminium to trap mobs, but they don't work.
Once the level's floor is destroyed, the only remaining things will be floating clusters of blocks nobody could reach because of no pillars. The players are issued the first admin message since the server started.
"You will all be free once you destroy every block".
And the ugly truth comes.
There are no more building blocks in the floor.
Nobody can reach the floating clusters. They are stuck pitted forever against monsters and themselves, without any solid blocks remaining.
The end.
The trick is, the server will be populated with over 300 persons. A completely overpopulated, walled in land.
The point of this "vault autism" would be to observe what would happen to the natural resources.
After analysis, and experience in SMP servers, the first thing to deplete or one of the first, would be clay. It's rarer than diamonds, and visible from the surface. Brick houses would be completely gaudy.
After that, minerals would deplete at around the same time. Strip mines would be rampant, not a single block of rock would remain unturned. The next worry is iron: rock tools would be the standard. Diamond tools would completely break within 1 month, and the only diamond there would be is perhaps some diamond blocks in a heavily guarded castle, and strong clans would keep diamond pickaxes to harvest obsidian blocks. Coal would run out, and charcoal will be the only fuel.
At this point, clearly the players will become completely aggressive, and everything will be kill on sight. Every person with a will to live will have been recruited in a clan. Bear in mind that theorically, for this to work, a player would have to log in at least 8 hours daily and would not be able to quit the server.
Since iron tools would deplete very fast, iron would be saved for swords only. Minecarts and tracks would be unfeasible with the constant wars and griefing, so far away stations would be destroyed by other kingdoms instantly. Perhaps some kingdoms would keep buckets for lava moat purposes.
After this, funnily, swords will become rarer and more valuable as they break, and all wars will be fought with bows, since skeleton arrows and spider strings are infinite.
Given some time, the next thing to deplete naturally would be sand. Sandstone cannot be recrafted back into sand, and glass cannot be recovered after placed. Curiously, at this point, flowers and other non-renewable dye sources would have already run out a long time ago (specially flowers), and dyes would indicate hierarchy.
Trees would be cut down instantly, and be rare in the wild, but would not extinct. Wood is the most important resource at this point, so all clans would keep tree farms with the now abundant bonemeal.
Curiously, the next thing to die would be grass. After rampant dirt extraction and griefing in general, the only sight would be dirt and rock. This means that pigs, sheep, and other wildlife would not spawn anymore. Obviously, at this point, grass will become the most important resource, since all the animal spawns will concentrate on the few grass available, because of Minecraft's spawn system. This means that the unfortunate clans without a personal wildlife spawning room (grass carpet) would have no food, no leather, no wool (which will become a popular cheap building material for pretty rooms in safe places) and a shortage of feathers. No grass also means no more wheat, but it will be nowhere near extinct. Since porkchops are not enough for anyone, self mantained farms will be everywhere underground. Funnily, since cake can be quickly deployed and eaten by multiple persons, it will be everyone's favorite raid snack and healer in general deployed in every barrack, since besides the buckets, every ingredient is renewable.
Because of the previously mentioned spawning concentration, the number one priority of the guilds will be to sabotage the enemy's grass carpets as well, to increase the number of spawns in theirs. This way, grass will be even rarer, and guilds with grass will be much more powerful, because of leather armors, cake, porkchops, etc.
When grass becomes extremely rare and localized, and most guilds will be in ruins after having even their farms be destroyed, the true fall of civilization would start.
Theorically, there are only 4 ways in which blocks can be lost completely. One is being crafted into another block, like sand being crafted into sandstone. Other is through lava, but lava moats will be nearly nonexistent, not only because of accident prone, also because smart guilds will keep deep pits so they can keep the equipment of whatever poor bastard fell in, instead of burning it all. Other is explosions, but realistically, TNT cannons and demolitions will be very very rare. There are no creeper spawners, and natural creepers would not stand a chance against a batshittingly overpopulated server. Because of this, TNT will be rare, definitely not enough for TNT cannons.
The final one, is dropping an item and let it decay naturally.
Realistically, everything would be scavenged. There would be nothing that won't be picked up as soon as seen and dumped into a guild vault. What leads me to the interesting thought that the most common way to banish blocks from circulation will be traitors or griefers breaking into vaults and breaking chests, more than they can pick up. This will create a large block sink, losing forever chests full of wood (arguably the most common block after cobble at this point), seeds, dirt, etc to be lost forever. Given it's time, every single resource will be scarce.
Now, the fun way to analize this, is to look it from the building block viewpoint.
The underground will be a completely ugly mess, since every single stone will have been culled for minerals. Only smoothstone and cobblestone will remain. And there would be 2x1 infinite tunnels everywhere, in a perfect grid, coupled with giant clusters of nothing because dirt will be completely extracted from the underground as a building material and gravel will be completely decimated for flint to use as arrow heads. At some point, solid building materials will be rare on themselves. Just because they are solid. There will be no dirt on the surface. There will be huge chasms and the earth will be scarred as sandpaper. All buildings would be made of cobblestone, and sometimes wood. Keeping a structure on itself would be a feat. Staying alive would be a feat, with 300 people fighting themselves at all times.
At this point, absolutely no grass blocks remain in the entire server, effectively extincting it. This means, no pigs, no chickens, nothing. Because enemies will spawn almost fully underground because of the huge empty spaces, even monster encounters will be rare. The sum of all of this means, no food except for bread, only rock tools, arrows themselves will be rare because feathers and flint will be fought for, wool will be discontinued... the true fall of civilization.
Any few remaining guilds will have to be realist and hide underground, with a fair number of members so as to not be overthrown. There will be no more kingdoms. No more trade.
e will have to skip forward perhaps a year.
At this point, nothing exists anymore. The land has been abused so much that there is no more smoothstone. Through nonstop war and hate, Mankind finally extincted all plantlife. The entire world will be standing over adminium. Because now there are no caverns, nothing to hide behind, it's the perfect spawning conditions for monsters.
Surviving is impossible. Players are now spawn camped by skeletons. Any technology you can think of, like a basic cobblestone generator done with lava and water, will have at some point been blown by a creeper. Because of no sticks, cobblestone will not be able to be gathered. The few building blocks remaining are dirt, and nothing else. And even those are fiercely guarded from the creepers, as best as the players can.
Since there is nothing to fight for anymore, players will somewhat calm down and try to survive together against monsters. But nothing can be really done, even with their numbers. Their best hope is to have monsters stuck in cracks between adminium. Treaties are made to not remove the few dirt blocks remaining to form 2 block deep pits in the adminium to trap mobs, but they don't work.
Once the level's floor is destroyed, the only remaining things will be floating clusters of blocks nobody could reach because of no pillars. The players are issued the first admin message since the server started.
"You will all be free once you destroy every block".
And the ugly truth comes.
There are no more building blocks in the floor.
Nobody can reach the floating clusters. They are stuck pitted forever against monsters and themselves, without any solid blocks remaining.
The end.