[Detailed feature request] As a host, I want to be able to host a non-dedicated server for my Steam friends while not playing myself.

[Senthe_]

 As a host, I want to be able to host a non-dedicated server for my Steam friends while not playing myself.

As we all know, DST is a multiplayer-first game, and the vast majority of players will never want to deal with a dedicated server. We should be able to host our worlds for our Steam friends without hassle and worrying about various game features making it harder for no good reason.

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TL;DR: I'm requesting a "Spectator Host Mode" that should satisfy the following prioritised acceptance criteria:

1. When noone else is online, the server gets auto-paused. If anyone logs in, the server gets auto-unpaused.
2. You are invulnerable to all damage and stat drops.
3. All mobs ignore you.
4. All boss/hounds/Antlion/etc. events never target you.
5. In survival mode, there is no timer that requires you to respawn if all other players log off.
6. In survival mode, there is no insanity aura affecting other players.
7. (optionally) You can turn this mode on and off without restarting the server.
8. (optionally) This mode triggers automatically after server startup (based either a) on a server config, or b) whether it was active when you logged off).
9. (optionally) Your position is automatically set to a position of another player, following their loading zone (toggle on/off).
10. (optionally) You can move and fly (like a ghost).
11. (optionally) You are invisible to other players (toggle on/off).

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Detailed explanations WHY I'm asking for those features specifically:

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2. You are invulnerable to all damage and stat drops.
3. All mobs ignore you.
4. All boss/hounds/Antlion/etc. events never target you.
(...)
6. In survival mode, there is no insanity aura affecting other players.

Self-explanatory: If I'm not actively playing, I shouldn't affect anything and nothing should affect me.

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1. When noone else is online, the server gets auto-paused. If anyone logs in, the server gets auto-unpaused.
(...)
5. In survival mode, there is no timer that requires you to respawn if all other players log off.

I don't want to actively monitor whether someone is online or not and have to react to it. 

So if noone is playing, I don't want everything in my world to rot. Or even worse, the entire survival world to get deleted because it considers me (the only online player) dead.

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6. (optionally) You can turn this mode on and off without restarting the server.
7. (optionally) This mode triggers automatically after server startup (based either a) on a server config, or b) whether it was active when you logged off).

A matter of convenience. Reloading a local server to toggle a setting takes several minutes.

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8. (optionally) Your position is automatically set to a position of another player, following their loading zone (toggle on/off)

Ensures that only the actively used parts of the world are actually loaded, meaning less lag and less mobs doing weird things when no active player is around.

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9. (optionally) You can move and fly (like a ghost).
10. (optionally) You are invisible to other players (toggle on/off).

This is just to make for a little more fun and convenient Minecraft-like "spectator mode", but it's not crucial for what I actually need here, i.e. hassle-free afk hosting.

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Why current solutions aren't enough:

There are two available semi-solutions as of now:

A. Die and AFK as a ghost.

B. AFK after setting yourself to godmode.

Here's a quick comparison of those existing solutions vs proposed solution:

 

[AuRuS]

Not to undermine your proposal but to me it seems like you could achieve most of this (the convienence aspects aside) just by simply being afk on a god mode somewhere at the edge of the map (bosses won't spawn on you - aside from the terraria bosses but theres a server mod for that - and your character won't be keeping anything of interest loaded in, just a couple of fish at maximum)  and I'm sure you could make a simple python program that would count "player joined the game"/"player left the game" messages in the chat to determine if a macro toggling the time pass should be executed. 

[reddocc]

I think you can actually afk in the character selection screen if you offer a moon idol to the celestial portal .

you can even still see the chat but you won't be interacting with the world.

But honestly the most memory efficient method is just a dedicated server on a separate machine with the only function to run the server.

For the spectator option I can only think of using the observer camera mod and removing tags from yourself.

Edited January 6 by reddocc