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New Modded Minecraft Server!

Hey guys! In case you haven't heard, I've been trying to set up a new modded Minecraft server for us to enjoy. I wanted to make something different than your everyday Minecraft experience, so I've been coming up with some ideas to spice it up a bit. Here are my current thoughts on what could make it great:

Everyone on the server would work as a team. Rather than spreading out too far, we could work together to create our own large city, which could contain housing, shops, towers, a castle, and other various public-use buildings. The city itself could include some empty plots of land for players to construct their own houses as they wish. We could host in-game meetings where players could vote on current topics, including what common goal to work towards next.

Yeah, I know this is such a typical theme in Minecraft... but by having everyone stick to a medieval theme, the world could appear more coherent and immersive. It just doesn't make sense to have a thatched-roof house right next to a skyscraper or some sci-fi base. Part of the medieval theme includes the restriction of too much redstone/automation, which would also reduce potential server lag, and give more value to certain character roles (listed below). I would recommend that everyone choose/make a character skin that fits the medieval/fantasy aesthetic.

With a community of players, specialization becomes more practical. Instead of doing every single task in the game, you can focus on things you find more interesting, while others do the same. Here's my current list of possible roles with the tasks that they would carry out. It is not necessary for you to play as just one role the entire time you're online, and some roles will probably require multiple players to fill them.

• Crop Farmer: pretty obvious, your job is to farm crops for the server! This mainly includes wheat, potatoes, carrots, beetroots, sugar canes, pumpkins, and melons. Remember the rule about limited automation- some is ok, but having a huge fully-automatic farm is probably too much. You will need to deposit your goods in some central location for the animal farmer & baker/chef to use.
  
  
• Exotic Farmer: You will be in charge of growing the other crops not dominated by the crop farmer(s). This includes cocoa beans, mushrooms, cactus, chorus fruit, and nether wart. You will also be responsible for collecting, growing, and harvesting all the tree & flower types. Wood collection is incredibly important, as it is used by literally everyone for many purposes. Having different tree types = more building options, so the architects will greatly appreciate your efforts. More flowers means more dyes, which is another important aesthetic improvement.
  
  
• Rancher: your job is to breed domestic animals, both for food and other animal products. This includes cows, pigs, and chickens; you can also farm sheep, mooshrooms, and rabbits, but you'll probably want to treat them differently due to their drops. You'll also be in charge of killing them, so you get to decide what the most efficient way to do that is (for example, by using a fire aspect/looting sword). You won't be allowed to use 100% of the crops the farmer drops off for breeding; some system will need to be put in place to make sure resources are split up in a fair manner.
  
  
• Baker/Chef: you will be in charge of preparing food for everyone on the server. Your job will be even more important than it otherwise would be, because of the spice of life mod(see mod section below). Players will need to stock up on many different types of food to ensure they can survive. You will cook/make bread, cakes, meats, baked potatoes, fish, pies, soup, cookies, and even golden apples & carrots. Like the Rancher, you won't be allowed to take all of the crops for cooking with.
  
  
• Miner: Our ores have to come from somewhere! Miners will need to seek out the natural fortune of the world, stocking up on coal, iron, gold, and most definitely diamonds. You may also want to search for emeralds, lapis, redstone, and nether quartz, although those will probably have a lower priority. It will also be your job to bring back plenty of blocks for us to build with, including dirt, cobble, smooth stone, bricks, obsidion, sandstone, terracotta, and other naturally-generating blocks. Make sure to rely on the enchanter to get the best picks available- you wouldn't want to mine too many diamonds without a fortune enchantment, and just think about all the extra smooth stone you could get with a silk touch pick!
  
  
• Adventurer: Adventurers will have a few various jobs. Primarily, you'll be exploring the world to find naturally-generating resources in your own style. The 'Recurrent Complex' mod adds a bunch of extra dungeons into the world; along with the default dungeons & mines, you should be able to find certain resources that we couldn't easily obtain otherwise (notch apples, saddles, nametags, horse armor, etc.). You may have to go out to find other miscellanious items/blocks/entities, especially if we don't have all the farms set up yet. Nearly everything you obtain must be deposited for use by other roles. One of your secondary jobs will be mapping the server- obviously we won't need too much to be mapped out, but it will still take some effort. It would be great to set up at least 1 central map station where players could view a wall of connected maps to see their surrounding terrain. You'll need to supply plenty of completed large map copies for other players to use on their own time. One of your final important tasks is scouting around to find the best building locations possible. We'll be starting off with a small town, and chances are we'll want to move to a better location later on to build up a large city!
  
  
• Blacksmith: We gotta protect our citizens somehow! You'll be in charge of providing the best armor, weapons, and tools possible to everyone using our collected resources. You'll also be in charge of repairing broken tools, and supplying plenty of spare items for when players inevitably need them. Since you will be making shields, you're the one who will apply various banner designs onto them. Make sure to work with other specialists to create unique types of arrows! Chances are you'll probably work as an enchanter as well.
  
  
• Enchanter: You're the one who places the best enchantments on the blacksmith's wares. This will require a steady source of XP, as enchanting is quite expensive. You'll want to build up a library of enchanted books, so that you can combine them and use them on tools later on. you'll probably also work as a blacksmith.
  
  
• Warrior: When hostile mobs need to be dealt with, you're the one who is called for help. You should be skilled in both melee and ranged combat, and know when to use potions to their best effect. You must brave up to the challenges provided by the Nether and the End. You will need to frequent the blacksmith for the best swords, shields, bows, arrows, etc. You'll often accompany other players to protect them while they're carrying out their own jobs. It is up to you to collect sufficient mob drops for everyone else to use.
  
  
• Potion Brewer/Alchemist: Using your arcane knowledge, you will prepare dozens of different types of potions for players to utilize throughout the server. This includes night vision, strength, swiftness, water breathing, healing, and more. You will want to make great use of glowstone/redstone to make your potions even stronger. Utilizing resources collected by other players, you should build up a large collection of potion ingredients for your use.
  
  
• Architect: You are the designer and builder of most, if not all of the city's structures. Your builds should value both function and form, and be built to the needed specification of others. You may be hired to build individual houses for other players if they do not wish to build their own. You will also need to make sure to block hostile mobs spawns from occuring within the city (this is made easier with the TorchMaster mod, see below). You should provide adequate light for other players, but that doesn't necessarily mean lighting up every last inch of land. Make sure to communicate with the suppliers of blocks and resources so that you don't have to compromise too much on building materials.
  
  
• Animal Tamer: Most everyone loves a good pet, and anyone who travels could use an excellent mount. You will be in charge of finding & breeding for tameable mobs such as wolves, ocelots, parrots, horses, donkeys, mules, and llamas. You can also have authority over other mobs, like golems, rabbits, squid, polar bears, and possibly even some hostile mobs like slimes. Part of your jobs will be breeding for the best mounts possible, and providing them for other players. You can even train a caravan of llamas to make long-distance trade more viable. Make sure to provide extra leads for others so they can secure their mounts when necessary.
  
  
• Fisher: Some resource are best found while fishing- you will be the one who collects them. Make sure you get the best enchanted fishing poles possible from the enchanter/blacksmith to maximize your findings. This job really isn't very involved, so you'll probably want to spend a lot of your time working as another role.
  
  
• Other Roles: I may not have thought of every important role for the server, so if you can think of something, let me know. Some of the roles above may have some extra jobs associated with them that I didn't already mention, so keep that in mind.

So far, I've installed some mods that affect gameplay, but don't change the game too much. Here's most of the important mods(including both client & server side):

• Recurrent Complex: adds plenty of new naturally-generating structures into the world, including dungeons. Makes exploration much more interesting.
  
  
• Morpheus: allows a minimum percentage of players (currently 50%) to sleep the night away; great for when a few players can't easily get back to bed but everyone else can.
  
  
• Simulated Nights: updates the world around you while you sleep. You may waken to find that your furnace has finished smelting, or that your crops/animals have grown.
  
  
• Harvest: a simple mod that lets you right-click on crops to harvest them. Automatically replants them too!
  
  
• Advanced Capes: now anyone and everyone can wear capes! You'll have to find/host a cape .png image online, and copy the url into the in-game cape menu to load it up.
  
  
• KleeSlabs: break half slabs one by one- now they're a bit easier to use as a building material.
  
  
• AppleCore/AppleSkin: now you're able to view your current saturation level & see how close you are to losing the next hunger bar. You can also see how much hunger/saturation any food item will replenish.
  
  
• The Spice of Life: a.k.a. the diminishing returns mod- makes it so you need to eat a variety of foods to keep healthy. The amount of hunger any food heals you by is based on how many times you've eaten it recently (currently counted within the past 10 meals). No longer will you thrive with just a stack of cooked steak- after eating a few, each one will only heal you by ~.5 hunger, until you have eaten enough other foods to make up for it.
  
  
• Quick Hotbar: quickly switch your hotbar to any row within your inventory by holding ctrl + scroll wheel. I recommend changing the hotkey to something else that isn't usually used (like left alt). This mod is incredibly useful for building and adventuring.
  
  
• Hardcore Darkness: removes the minimum light level from the world- now you will see true darkness. Gives a slightly more creepy/serious/realistic feel than default, especially with the 'Moody' lighting option.
  
  
• TorchMaster: adds a very special (and expensive) torch into the game that can be used to stop mob spawns within a configurable radius. This will let us prevent hostile mobs from spawning within our city without spamming the entire place with thousands of torches.
  
  
• ToroHealth Damage Indicators: see the health of your enemies & allies alike! You can also see just how much damage you inflict when you attack.
  
  
• Optifine: one of the most popular mods ever made for Minecraft. Boosts perfomance; increase FPS while making your world visually better at the same time. Includes some very awesome features such as dynamic lighting (light sources will work when held or dropped as an item), a zoom-in feature, connected textures, and more.

I'm still planning on adding more mods when they seem appropriate. Here are some mods (or ideas for mods) that I may add if we decide they're worthwhile:

• Shared XP block: deposit and extract XP at will. This would be super helpful for the enchanter; others who gather large stores of XP could drop it off for the enchanter to use on new items.
  
  
• Quest mod: gives specific quests in-game with useful rewards.
  
  
• Bloodmoon: adds the bloodmoon event from Terraria, causing increased mob spawns (it probably wouldn't have as severe an impact in Minecraft, but would still be cool).
  
  
• Minecolonies: lets you create your own colonies of NPCs, which will build and run a town under your control. May be worth adding if we ever get bored working as a team (I hope not).
  
  
• Extra bosses/raid bosses: these would be great to fight against as a large group. Vanilla Minecraft only has a couple bosses, and neither one is too challenging if you're prepared.
  
  
• More creatures/mounts: having more mob variety is always an interesting idea. I'm not opposed to adding them in if more people want them.

If you really like or dislike any of the details layed out here, just let me know. We can always change things around!

I'm hoping to start stress-testing the server with a bunch of people soon, so I can know whether or not to upgrade it. If you're interested, just send me a message letting me know. Pretty soon I'll add a quick tutorial on how to install Forge for Minecraft + the custom modpack, so you should have no problem getting it to work.