Population Control

Population control stops one species taking over a server. You set a cap per species, and Arkanis takes that species off the spawn menu while it is full.

• A cap is a fixed number, or a share of the players on the server.
• When a species reaches its cap it leaves the spawn menu. It comes back about a minute after its count drops back under.
• Nothing alive is touched. Nobody is kicked or slain, and the dinos already playing carry on.
• Dinos hatched from a nest never count towards a cap.
• Nothing is announced in game. A full species is simply not on the menu, the same as one you switched off yourself.

Population control is off until you enable it, and it is set up per server. Open The Isle, then Integration Settings, then Population. A community with more than one Isle server picks the server first; with one server you go straight in.

1. Open the Population Control card and press Enable.
2. Choose a species under Cap another species and press Add Cap.
3. Pick Fixed number or a share of the server, set the value, and press Save Changes.

• Minimum Slots is the fewest places a share cap ever allows, so a quiet server does not lose a species. The default is 2.
• Keep Off appears on a species that has been closed, including one waiting for your answer. It keeps that species off the spawn menu until you choose Put Back in the Kept Off list. Its cap is kept while it is off.
• Removing a cap or switching population control off never reopens a species: it stays closed and the page asks you whether to put it back. A species reopens when its count falls, when you choose Put Back, or when Arkanis can no longer enforce on that server (see When it is not enforcing).

Setting it up needs the Manage Garage permission.

Member Population View is on by default when a community enables Population Control. Owners can switch Member View off, and the page remains limited to signed-in community members; it is not public.

Members find it in the Member Portal under The Isle Plugin, as Population. Each species the server offers gets one word:

• Needed: a third of its cap or less is playing. The server could use more.
• Open: it can be picked, and nothing more is said.
• Filling Up: three quarters of its cap or more is playing.
• Unavailable: it is off the spawn menu for now.

The page leads with Species Needed, the species the server is short of.

• Members never see your caps or how many are playing a species.
• A species whose cap comes to fewer than six places is only ever shown as Open or Unavailable. With a small cap, the other two words would give the cap away.
• A species with no cap is Open. A species you keep off, or switched off on the server, is not listed.
• If the server has not been counted for a minute and a half, the words are shown dimmed with how long ago they were true. If population control is not enforcing, members are told only that the page is not being updated, never why.
• A server with Member View switched off is not shown to members, or named.

To switch it off for a server, open that server's Population settings, open the Member View card, press Disable and save.

The Isle, then Population, is a read-only board for staff with Manage Garage. It is also a card on The Isle hub and an entry in the sidebar.

• Every species the server offers, as Open, Closed, Waiting or Kept Off.
• For a capped species, the count against its limit, and how long ago it closed.
• Waiting is a species still held closed that needs your answer: Put Back or Keep Off.
• How many players were counted, when, and whether members can see that server.
• Configure opens that server's settings.

When population control cannot do its job on a server, the staff pages say why and link to the place to fix it. While it is paused nothing new is closed. Enforcement resumes by itself once the cause is gone.

• The server did not accept the RCON password. Re-enter it in Server Management, and check RconPassword in Game.ini.
• Nothing is answering on the RCON port. The game server may be stopped, or RCON may be switched off or on another port. Check bRconEnabled and RconPort in Game.ini.
• The server's address could not be found, or it did not answer in time. Check the host in Server Management, and that a firewall is not blocking the RCON port.
• The plugin has not reported players for five minutes. Check the plugin is running on that server, from the Plugin page. Species that were closed are put back, except any on Keep Off.
• The server is outside your Isle Plugin licence's server count. Nothing is enforced on it. See Billing.
• No species has a cap. Not a fault: there is nothing to count or close until you add one.

RCON needs these lines in the server's Game.ini, with your own password and port:

[/Script/TheIsle.TIGameSession]
bRconEnabled=true
RconPassword=your-password
RconPort=8888

Restart the game server after changing Game.ini.

• It never touches a living dino, and never counts one hatched from a nest.
• The server is checked every 30 seconds, so a cap can be passed by a spawn or two before the species closes.
• A closed species drains only when its players die or leave for good, so an apex can stay closed for a long time.
• A player sees the current list when they open a species category on the spawn screen. It does not change while they sit on it.
• If someone puts a closed species back by hand in the in-game admin menu, it can stay open for up to five minutes before it is closed again.
• It caps species, not groups or classes. There is no limit on how many of a species stand together.
• Every RCON read or write puts a line in the game server's log. Arkanis reads the species list only when it needs to: on first contact with a server, before a closure, and every five minutes while a species is held closed or about to close.