First off, I am not a coder. I’m just starting to look into running a server and will probably be using Sponge.
My goal is to create a server where people don’t have to work hard to survive, but which is compatible with people who want to play survival. Spawn City will be built with all sorts of auto-farms, residential districts, parks, schools/educational resources, communal storage, and more. The central tower will be built in the spawn chunks, and always running.
Things I want (yes, I know there are already plugins for some of these, it was just easier to organize my thoughts this way):
Auto crafting of items
A way to easily craft items from player or container inventory, without having to use the crafting table interface. Anything from a 3x3 grid of item frames with the recipe on them, to shift clicking a crafting table with the item you want to make more of.
Uncrafting of items
Partly because it’s cool, but mostly because it creates a semi-vanilla unlimited source of diamonds via uncrafting villager trades.
NPCs
Custom NPCs, preferably with the ability to have programmed movements and dialogue. Plan to use them in Spawn City as another source of information for players, and to give it a more lived-in feel.
Programmable teleporters
Spawn will have a warp room with a number of teleporters/portals/warps to predefined locations. Not sure yet if I want players to be able to make their own. Could be used to replace/augment a vanilla transportation infrastructure.
Place of Death teleport
Upon respawning, being able to teleport to where you died. I plan to have minimal teleportation aside from the warp room, /home, /back. and /spawn. But /lastdeath or something would be a good feature, possibly with a time limit after which it will not work.
Custom worlds
Ice spike biome world, jungle world, etc. Rather than having people raid the overworld for resources, have biome worlds that can be used for resource gathering.
Custom recipes
Because everyone wants saddles, spider webs, and horse armor. And, if an uncrafting plugin doesn’t work, this can be a workaround for precious materials (craft tools into ingots…).
Whole tree chopping/fast leaf decay
Floating treetops are undesirable, as is waiting for saplings to drop when night is falling and mobs are spawning.
Treasure chests
As seen on another server. Minecraft chests with specific loot inside, lootable by all players, but only once per specified time period. Example: chest with iron tools and a stack of steak. Player one can take everything from it, and it’s empty when they look again the same day. Player two then opens the chest, and it has iron tools and a stack of steak.
Banner maker
GUI for banner design/crafting, preferably with alphabet and numbers as pre-made options.
Storage solutions
Chest and inventory sorting, automated depositing of inventory into surrounding chests with matching items in them, deposit all items in your inventory that match a chest’s contents with a shift-click. Basically BigScary’s Automatic Inventory for Spigot, or something similar.
Zoning
I want to let people make their own builds in parts of Spawn City, but it would be good to have some redstone-free zones, limit build height to different heights in different areas, nature preserves that are fully protected, and more.
Refills
When a tool is used up, or a stack of items you’re placing is depleted, it is replaced in your hand (as long as you have more in your inventory).
Artwork
Item frames or paintings that can show an image hosted at a specified URL. Can be used for art, signage, icons, etc.
Etc.
Basically, I’m looking for things that enhance existing vanilla gameplay without changing it drastically. The things I want to change most are the things that suck up a lot of playtime (sorting inventory/storage, traveling long distances, grinding away to get rare resources). Also, I want players who can only play a few hours a week to have similar opportunities as players who spend hours on the server every day.
Thank you in advance. Looking for existing plugins, interested developers, feedback, and advice.
EDITED TO ADD:
Customizable mob drops.
I’d like to make shulker boxes, elytra, and some other things into drops for certain mobs.