Generally speaking, there is a few things I feel like every new community server owner should know about, but I find people tend to gatekeep them for some reason. Whether you're a server owner, or generally knowledgeable— share your knowledge here in hopes to help new server owners do better from the start.

Let's help each other out and give hyperlinks to information, some helpful advice, less known commands, or 'I wish I knew about...'

My personal points below are strictly from time working on multiple realism projects or having conversed with server owners or technicians in the past.

• When managing server files(for technician work or myself) I have always added 400-600 health and 200-400 combat weight to all playables. You can change this, slowly, up or down as needed, to reach balanced feeling fights in-game. It helps extensively during testing phases of combat, which is absolutely necessary, in my opinion.

The purpose is to extend fights, prevent 'chase my tail' opportunities as much as possible, and give your players a better surviving chance across the board if you run a lot of modded creatures alongside the base game list.

Test how many of every attack every creature can withstand without dying. I know it's tedious. It is necessary before you go around claiming something is weak. You don't need creatures 1-shotting each other.

Your focus should be on a playable's longevity as a product when testing combat features. You are selling the playable's enjoyment as well as their profile, at least for servers who are focused on realism. Remember not to make things so realistic that they deflate the moment a rex bites them like a pathetic balloon.

• Increase every creatures' water and hunger pool by at least 100 from the start. I can not stress enough how some creatures might need up to 200 extra to actually be more viable for a walking around phase on realism servers. You can not have hunting timers as a rule if your playables are physically starving the moment they can hunt again.

If you factor in specific hunting lists, you need to assure those creatures also give enough food to your playable, with a balanced 'risk versus reward', otherwise they will not hunt those creatures.

If you make a laten's prey a campto but the campto is twice as fast, twice as strong, and takes more than 15-20 attacks to kill one.. players will consider the campto 'low reward, high risk' and become discouraged from hunting camptos.

In my experience, I find hunting targets that take between 8 - 12 attacks present an average challenge but a good opportunity for both prey and predator to enjoy the experience or run the risk of death/injury and a prey's escape.

• When adding or altering stamina or speed to playables. Your playables' edited speeds should look natural(look at the back hip and legs for jumping/hitching) and your playable stamina should be consistent to the type of profile you want.

I.E.; A pursuit predator needs stamina. An ambush predator does not, unless, their attacks are stamina based.

I.E.; Consider herbivores, especially quadrupeds, should have larger stamina pools than your average biped carnivore that would normally hunt them. This specifically is to offer opportunities to escape and 'live another day' if the carnivore fails to be strategic enough.

============= What about you?