How to Change the Meteor, World Size and Difficulty on Your Eco Server

The meteor countdown, the size of the world and how hard the game plays are the three settings that decide what kind of Eco server you run. The server identity is on the Game Settings page of the panel; these three live in Eco's configuration files, which you edit with the file manager.

1The Settings on the Game Settings Page

• Log in to your game panel and click your Eco server.
• Game Settings holds the Server Name, Detailed Description, Playtime, Max Players (-1 is no limit), Public Server, Server Password, the Server Owner Token and Auto Update. Save and restart to apply.

2The Meteor

• Open Files and go to the Configs folder.
• Open Disasters.eco. "CreateMeteor": true turns the meteor on, false removes it for a relaxed server.
• "MeteorImpactInDays" is the countdown. 30 is the default; a long running community server often picks 60 or more.
• Save and restart. The countdown of an existing world keeps running from where it was.

3World Size

• In the same folder open World.eco. "Dimensions" is the width and height of the world. Bigger worlds give more room and more biomes, and need more memory and a longer first generation.
• The size only applies when a world is generated. To use a new size, start a fresh world after changing it.

4Difficulty and Collaboration

• Difficulty.eco holds the game's difficulty profile: skill gain, specialty costs, how much collaboration the tech tree needs and the other knobs from Eco's new game menu.
• Pick the preset that fits your group size. A small group wants faster skill gain and less required collaboration; a large public server plays well on the defaults.

Good to Know

• Stop the server before editing. Eco writes its configuration files while it runs, so a change on a running server can be overwritten. Edit, save, then start.
• Keep the JSON valid. A missing comma or quote stops the server from starting; the console names the file and the line.
• Take a copy of a file before you change it, so you can go back.
• Laws and the economy are set in the game and in Eco's web interface by the players, not in these files.

Finished

The meteor and the world are set the way you want. take a manual backup once the civilisation is under way; a wrong edit later is then a quick restore.