Servers and modpacks

Installing

• Install the mod on the server and on every player’s game, with the same version on both.
• The server still handles a player whose game doesn’t have the mod: the mod’s messages reach them as plain English chat, and they can talk to friends in public chat with @<friend>. Their own friends can’t think, because a friend thinks in its owner’s game.
• Minecraft 1.21.1 with NeoForge 21.1.248 or newer.
• The server needs no AI connection and no keys. Each player’s friends think on that player’s own computer, through that player’s own connection.
• Server settings are in pyhf-server.toml: see Configuration.

What the server checks

The server decides everything that happens in the world. A friend’s plan, written by a player’s AI connection, is only a request: the server checks each step before it happens against who asked, their rights, reach and the world as it is. Stale plans, plans for a friend that has since died and plans after a stop are refused.

A friend acts within the rights of the player it works for: the player who gave the order, or its owner when it acts on its own. For breaking a block, that means:

• the player’s game mode, as for the player themselves;
• spawn protection;
• FTB Chunks claims, when FTB Chunks is installed (see below).

If the player couldn’t break it, neither will the friend: “You can’t break the block at … yourself, so I won’t either.”

FTB Chunks claims

FTB Chunks is optional. When it is installed:

• A friend may break blocks in a claim only when FTB Chunks would allow both the friend itself and the player it works for.
• By default a claim refuses a friend, even in its owner’s own claim, and a friend never breaks blocks in a claim for a player who has no rights there.
• FTB Chunks’ PvP protection applies to a friend’s fights. See Fighting.
• If FTB Chunks is installed but the mod can’t ask it, the answer is no: friends refuse to break blocks and to attack players until it can.

Without a claim, whether a build or chest belongs to someone else is the friend’s own judgement, the way it would be for a player. There is no protection radius to set up.

PvP

Friends follow the server’s PvP setting, vanilla team friendly fire and FTB Chunks PvP protection, as if the player they fight for were making each hit. With PvP off, friends don’t attack players. There is no separate switch for friends. See Fighting and safety rules.

Loaded chunks

While its owner is online, a friend working or following far from every player keeps a small area around itself loaded and releases it behind as it moves, within limits the server sets. It does this only in terrain that has already been generated: a friend never causes new terrain to generate. When the owner logs out, the friend stops and the area is released.

Privacy on a server

Players’ private chats, memories, notes, keys and voice never reach the server. The server stores each friend’s public card (name, skin, description and Stability), its trust list, its home, its job and the friend in the world. See Privacy.