Dealing with explosions

I've been thinking about how to solve the vanilla issue of utilizing the well-known creeper to grief other people's handiwork. So far, I have delayed in implementing any solution, since I figured nobody at this moment would invest enough time to doing this procedure repeatedly to cause enough damage.

Well I was wrong. Just over a week ago, this method was used to loot protected chests.

I first thought of using CreeperHeal - as it still allowed the destruction of blocks, albeit temporary, to at least provide that vanilla behavior effect. But this solution requires 100% success in order for it to meet my standards - and there are some bugs with it, unfortunately. Not to mention people can use this method to enter otherwise-sealed structures.

So for now, I have resorted to disabling above-sea-level explosions, which I assume is a good middle ground - after all, creeper explosions on the surface are more of a nuisance than anything else, and as it seems from last week, such things are more likely used as cheap "portable TNT."

Stuck and need assistance in getting out?

While I aim to provide the closest vanilla gameplay possible while still providing ample protection, there are those times when players get stuck, especially in situations where a minecart, boat, horse, or whatever entity drags you right into a block.

Of course, adding the element of teleportation removes a big portion of the vanilla gameplay experience, so I took time to think about how to solve this situation. After a few weeks, I finally came to a solution. (Feel free to suggest your own solutions at the forum!) My current solution has two options, and can only be operated in certain conditions:

• Option 1: Basically a suicide command. As long as the player is able to stay still and not take damage from other mobs or players for 10 seconds, the player will be killed by the all-knowing server. The player will respawn at their bed or at the server spawnpoint.
• Option 2: Basically the normal spawn command used in other servers, teleporting you to the server spawnpoint. However, it requires that the player has at least 20 XP levels, which will be used to energize the Enterprise transporter (which orbits the Tech Fortress world, despite its flatness). However, due to the differences of a flat world, the transporter will not be able to teleport you unscathed, so make sure you're at full health, or you might literally die in transit!

I feel these options prevent mis-use of the command, while still making it available for those who need assistance from the bugs of vanilla Minecraft. Check out these options in-game with /help

Thanks, and enjoy!