Hi all,
A member of staff on my sqn has approached me with the idea of a minecraft server being created for the use of the Squadron, cadets and staff alike. This comes obviously as a general interest following the RAFAC competition.
I have suggested the following:
-Taking a whitelist system approach, so everybody’s usernames are taken for ID purposes.
-Assigned time slots for the server uptime are given so responsible staff/cadet NCOs can supervise.
-Prior to any events, a short brief on the aims and internet safety.
Can anyone advise on any other concerns you may have? What kind of authorisation does this need? Does anyone have anything similar?
Looking for general bits of advice on how to make it work, and how to make it practical.
Many thanks.
If you’re going to do this, you’ll need to turn in-game chat off, and set up a teams call for the time slots for cadets to communicate. This has been discussed on the e-Sports teams chat quite extensively, and long story short is they only online voip or messaging that we should be using with cadets is Teams.
Obviously on Squadron, this isn’t really an issue as you can directly supervise all cadets involved. It’s only an issue if you are looking at doing this whilst cadets are at home.
You may want to ask this as a direct question on the ESports team.
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While I’m not familiar with RAFAC regs around this at all, I’m something of a Minecraft server expert and can advise on the technical aspect.
The first thing to consider is which version of Minecraft to use. There’s currently two versions available, “Minecraft” (aka bedrock edition) which is available for PC, mobile and consoles, and “Minecraft: Java Edition” (previously known as just “Minecraft”) which is the original version of the game, but is only available on PC, Mac and Linux. I would recommend asking your cadets which version they have and aim to run a server for that. If you have a mix of both then you have the option of GeyserMC which will bridge the two versions but does require running an actual server instead of something managed like Realms.
Keeping the whitelist on is definitely a good idea, make sure that you run the server in online mode.
I would recommend establishing a set of “community guidelines” or similar for players to follow and ensuring they’re enforced - server plugins like coreprotect can be really helpful for this. I’ve tried the honour system in the past, granted it wasn’t with cadets, but it has never gone well.
The rest of how you actually run it very heavily depends on what you want to do on the server - Minecraft is a very open-ended game.
Sorry to bring up an old thread. But with the current MC competition going on I thought I’d help out.
First, if you want to create a server for the competition you’d want to create a Spigot MC server. This allows more fine control of the server and allows plugins and is more officiant than both a vanilla server and a bukkit server.
The sort of plugins you’d want is, (all of which are free): WorldWdit and WorldGuard. WorldEdit allows for quicker building and WorldGuard allows for creating regions that can protect areas of the world so only certain players can build/destroy/enter/leave. It also lets you prevent fire spread and tnt form being among lots of other things.
EssentialsX is a great plugin as it’s got alot of key commands for general management of the server.
LuckPerms is needed as it allows to set who can do what in terms of commands. It also allows you to create ranks for people to be in rather than setting the perms for each player.
In terms of how much RAM you need, depends on how many people you are expecting to use it at once, along with the version of Minecraft you use. Minecraft: Java Edition 1.19.2 is the latest. If you use that then for 10+ people you’d need at least 3gb of RAM, which can be pretty cheap if you find the right people.
You’d also want to whitelist the server but that is built into the server and is easy to use.
You could also get a chat management plugin to block swearing and to record everything said, or you could use Discord/Teamspeak 3/MS Teams.
Minecraft had an education version that you can get for educational purposes. Allows “teacher” much more control and the likes of guest accounts for the kids
Minecraft still has an education edition which you can get for free (or I did). This has got alot of features built in like controlling where the players can and can’t build/destroy things and having more interactive features like signs and testificates that talk and ask quetions.
It’d probaly be easier to convince the powers that be to fund a server that has the word, Education in the title than the generic game.
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