I think it would be best if we decided to block X-ray users. I've talked to people about this but they say things like "Well they can just be banned and rolledback" But any smart X-ray user knows that you don't just dig tunnels, you go into low level caves and scan the area for relatively close ores, and then dig around the ores so it looks like a naturally formed part of the cave. That way people don't take a second look. X-ray mods are very easy to come by, there's multiple ones posted on the Minecraft Forum, and with the economy we have set up, it's easy for people to go get diamonds and sell them dirt cheap, thus pissing legit players off and ruining the economy. I'm not saying anyone on the server does in fact cheat, but new comers walking about with diamond tools and armor while selling diamonds so cheaply seems a little fishy to me. I know of a plugin that can prevent this: http://dev.bukkit.org/server-mods/orebfuscator/ Good day.
+1 This does need to be added. Before doing so, testing will need to be done to ensure nothing will go wrong. I've heard of maps being corrupted or having all the ores deleted. Edit: The plugin linked in the OP doesn't edit the world file, so it should be safe...
Some of these plugins can dupe ores. Sometimes if someone is near say iron, it will make the iron be everywhere nearby, and you can mine this iron. Not sure if that one is the case..
Yes this plugin is great all it dose is send fake packets to the client and only updates the few blocks around you with the real packet. This is good but comes at a cost at CPU and RAM usage.
I can tell from another server with 20+ slots that these plugins work fine with a low player base, but when there are more people (exact number depends on setup, ...) these plugins could cause lag and in my opinion that's a bad idea. The only thing which would make the use of X-ray harder would be a modified client (e.g. Spoutcraft). But this also comes with some drawbacks and it's still beta.
maybe an ore announcer would be a good solution, not only would it deter massive farming of ores but may make people think twice about abusing the game in such a way. and or aleart admins/mods to possible rule breakers. I have had good results with log ores. it uses a special algorithm to detect suspicious behavior.
