Banning and Unbanning Players on your Eco Server

This guide will cover how to ban players from your Eco server, and how to unban them.

Banning Players

There is an admin command for banning players. You must have admin privileges on the server to use any commands like this. We have a separate guide on how to make yourself an admin, which is located here: How to become admin in your ECO server

Ban Command

The command to ban players is:

/ban (playername)

This command will automatically:

Kick the player from the server if they are online.
Add the player to a blocklist config file. They will not be able to re-join the server once they are on the blocklist.

Optional Argument

When using the /ban command, you add a comma after the player name, and then text for a reason for the ban.

Example:

/ban bob, Shot an Otter

This will kick and ban the player, and they will see "Shot an Otter" as the reason. (Seriously, who would do that!?? Otters are awesome).

Unbanning Players

While there is a command to ban players, unfortunately there isn't a command to remove a banned player.

To removed a banned player, you will need to find the config file that stores the player information, and remove the ID number that the game uses to record who is banned.

Users.eco Config File

The blocklist is stored in the config file Users.eco. This config file is normally found in the folder Configs, in the main directory.

Once you are in the Configs folder, find and select the Users.eco file, and click the square checkbox to the left of its name. Then click the "Edit" button.

If you need more assistance with using the text editor built into the Nodecraft control panel, you can follow this guide located here: How to Use the File Editor in the Nodecraft File Manager

The config file will look something like the screenshot below. Find the section for banned users, which we have highlighted in the screenshot.

A view of the Users.eco config file, showing the section for banned players

Banned users will show as their 17 digit Steam64ID number, in quotation marks. The Steam64ID in the screenshot has been replaced with x's.

Removing Steam64ID Numbers

Find and carefully remove the Steam64ID number of the player you want to unban. If you have banned many players on the server, there will be a list of multiple Steam64ID numbers in the file.

There shouldn't be any blank lines between the numbers
Numbers need to be surrounded by quotes
Each line must end in a comma
The very last number doesn't need a comma (or if it's the only number)

With a single banned player

If only a single number remains, it will look something like this:

"xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx"

With multiple banned players

The numbers remaining will look something like this:

"xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx",
"xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx",
"xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx"

If there was only one number, you can remove the entire line, and the spaces, until the two square brackets are touching again. It will look like the screenshot below.

A view of the ban list config file for the game eco

Finding a Player's Steam64ID

You can find a players Steam64ID by two methods:

Use the admin command /whois (playername) in the in-game chat. This will show the player's ID number in the chat box. It's unfortunately only displayed for a very short time (seconds only), but it can help you confirm which one is the correct number. This command only works for players who are connected, but you can use it as a process of elimination.
You can use an online tool to look up player's Steam64ID numbers, like the tool steamid.net

Once you find the correct ID number, edit the file and remove it. Please see the following section for warnings about format of the config file, and editing it.

JSON (`.json`) Format

The config file Users.eco is in JSON format.

JSON files have very specific syntax rules, and the overall format, quotation marks, brackets, and commas are required. The text editor in the Nodecraft file manager will warn you if the syntax is violated, and provide indicators for where the issue is possibly located.

We have a guide which explains how to use the Nodecraft control panel's built-in text editor, and it also has a section on editing JSON files (at the very end of the guide). It shows what those syntax warning indicators look like. A link to this guide is located here: How to Use the File Editor in the Nodecraft File Manager

`Users.eco.template`

If you make mistakes in the editing, and the syntax for the config file is broken (and can't be easily fixed), don't worry too much. The game has a backup file named Users.eco.template.

Any file that ends in .template is essentially a backup copy, a sort of "blank" form, which you can use to start over again. We highly recommend making a copy of the file Users.eco.template, and editing the copy. This way you still have the unaltered original in case you need it again.

We have a guide which shows how to make a copy of the User.eco.template config file, rename it to only Users.eco, and use it to replace the damaged config file. A link to this guide is located here: Copying, Moving, and Renaming Files in the File Manager