How To Use Raiding Dynamics :D

A fair-fight, anti-grief raiding & land-claim system for Project Zomboid Build 42. Every rule in the server owner's hands.

Welcome. This guide is the full manual for Raiding Dynamics — written so a brand-new server owner OR a first-time player can read it start to finish and actually understand the mod, not just skim a settings dump. It explains what each system does, when you'd want it, why it behaves the way it does, and how to use it, with concrete examples and copy-paste setups.

Every setting name and default value in this guide is taken straight from the mod's configuration schema, so you can trust the numbers. Where something is a known gap or not yet fully verified, the guide says so plainly rather than overselling it.

How the guide is organized:

• Sections 1–2 — what the mod is and the big picture, for everyone.
  
• Sections 3–6 — for players: defending your base, raiding one, your faction, and the Hall of Fame.
  
• Sections 7–12 — for server owners, admins, and staff: setup, the admin panel tab by tab, the recipe & character editors, presets, every protection, and Protected Zones.
  
• Sections 13–14 — troubleshooting, and an honest list of known gaps and compatibility notes.

Guide current as of build 8.0 — factions & ranks, the Hall of Fame, the trait/occupation and recipe editors, keypad security doors, auto-zoning and zone loadouts, and the wipe-day performance overhaul are all covered.

Raiding Dynamics replaces the worst part of PvP survival servers — "log off and pray your base is still there in the morning" — with raiding that is fair, skill-based, loud, and entirely tunable by the server owner. Two problems ruin most PvP servers:

• A day-one spawn finds a sledgehammer and can flatten anything anyone ever built — 100 hours of base-building gone in an afternoon of unearned demolition.
  
• Raids happen at 4 AM against sleeping owners. The "fight" is a monologue.

Raiding Dynamics fixes both sides:

Raiding is earned. Every forced entry is gated behind a real Demolition skill and purpose-built tools that cost real resources — a crafted Raid Sledge for wood and stone, five tiers of craftable C4 for metal, bolt cutters for wire fences. A fresh spawn can't crack a fortress; they level into it, learn the recipes from magazines, and gamble on premature detonations if they arm charges above their skill.

Defense is active, not passive. You claim your base with a buildable Claim Block and feed it money as upkeep. While your whole crew is offline, the base locks down — walls can't be chipped, containers can't be opened, stoves can't even be switched on. When you're online, it's honestly raidable. The fight happens when someone can fight back.

And 8.0 builds a whole server ecosystem around that core:

• Factions with ranks — Leader / Officer / Member / Recruit, with a permission grid each faction Leader tunes for their own crew.
  
• A faction leaderboard and a full Hall of Fame — permanent server firsts, stealable trophy titles, Bronze/Silver/Gold badge tracks, and an on-screen badge tracker.
  
• Keypad Security Doors with a real PIN pad, vehicle/crop/livestock protection, admin Protected Zones for points of interest, and in-game editors for recipes, traits, and occupations — modded content included.

Every rule is a dial. The server owner tunes all of it live from an in-game admin window — protection model, raid schedules, tool costs, skill gates, what's protected and from whom. This guide covers the defaults; your server may differ.

Before any of the detail, here's the whole loop in one read. Everything else in this guide is just turning these dials.

Land claims. A player crafts and places a Claim Block. That block projects a square protection zone around itself (Tier 1 default radius is 20 tiles in every direction). Everything inside is "the claim." The person who placed it is the owner; their faction (if they're in one) are members. Everyone else is a non-member — an outsider.

Members vs non-members. This is the single most important concept in the mod. Almost every protection asks one question: is the person doing this a member of the claim, or an outsider? Owners, faction members, and server staff are always treated as members (they can come and go and build freely). Outsiders are the ones the protections act against. (Staff move freely by design so admins can manage any base.)

"Protection" and the protection percentage. A claim is either protected (its protection is "up") or raidable (protection is "down"). Internally this is a protection percentage: when protection is up it's above zero and damage is reduced or fully blocked; when a claim becomes raidable the percentage drops to 0 and the walls can be breached normally. You'll hear "protection drops to 0" a lot — that's the moment a base becomes crackable.

Fuel and upkeep — why protection isn't free. Offline protection is fuel-backed. A claim stores hours of protection fuel (a Tier 1 claim caps at 12 hours). Fuel costs money — players press Refuel at the claim to convert cash into protection hours (default: $100 per press, buying 10 hours). Fuel then drains in real time — one hour of fuel per real hour the base sits offline (a full Tier 1 tank of 12 hours lasts 12 offline hours; covering a whole day costs roughly $240 at the default rate). When the tank runs dry, an offline base is raidable. This is the economic heartbeat of the mod: a base is only as safe as its owners are willing to pay for.

When is a base actually raidable? That depends on the Protection Mode the server owner picks:

• offline (the default): a claim is protected only while its members are offline AND it still has fuel. If a member is online, the base is in "breach-only" mode (raidable — defenders are home to fight back). If everyone's offline and fuel remains, it's locked tight.
  
• schedule: the base is protected at all times except during the owner-defined Raid Schedule windows (e.g. Friday 6pm–10pm). Outside the window: safe. Inside the window: open season.
  
• offline_schedule: both rules apply — the offline rule, plus an open raid window pierces protection even if everyone's offline with a full tank.

The Demolition skill. Raiding is gated behind a custom skill called Demolition. It levels up like any vanilla PZ skill (it gains XP, you can read it on the skills panel, XP requirements scale the same way). The tougher a protected structure, the higher the Demolition level needed to break it. Low-level raiders are limited to weak builds; veterans can tackle reinforced bases and handle high-tier C4 without blowing themselves up. Putting it together — the loop:

1. A player places a Claim Block and keeps it fueled with money.
   
2. While the owners are offline (or outside a raid window), the claim is protected: outsiders can't loot, grief, or easily breach it.
   
3. A raider levels Demolition, crafts raid tools, and waits for the base to be raidable (owners offline & out of fuel, or a raid window open).
   
4. They breach a wall the loud way — sledge for light builds, C4 for reinforced — pulling zombies in the process.
   
5. Defenders respond by upgrading their claim tier, keeping fuel topped up, building tougher walls, and adding faction members.

Optional extra systems (all off by default). On top of the core loop, the mod ships a few opt-in systems a server owner can switch on for more depth — every one of them defaults to off, so a fresh install behaves exactly as described above until you choose otherwise. These include raid consequences (repeated C4 blasts can damage a careless raider's own hearing, and Demolition skill can ease the arm strain of sledging) and animal population caps (a server-health limit on how many bred animals can exist, since base B42 has none). They're covered in detail later in this guide; just know they exist and that none of them are on unless the owner turns them on.

Two more systems round out the mod. Admins can stamp Protected Zones over map points of interest (gun stores, libraries, gas stations) to keep them permanently grief-proof — lootable, but never destroyable — and players can build a keypad security door, a PIN-locked metal door, to harden their most valuable room. Both get their own sections below.

That's the entire game. The rest of this guide is the detail.

This section is for the survivor who wants to claim land and keep what's theirs. Craft the Claim Block from the build menu (the recipe is server-editable — check yours in the crafting screen) and place it inside your base. Placement tips:

• Press the rotate key (R) while placing to flip the block's facing.
  
• The block reserves its FULL top-tier footprint from day one, so a neighbor can never box you out of upgrading.
  
• You can't place on top of (or too close to) someone else's claim — there's a spacing gap between claims (default 5 tiles), plus a no-build ring so nobody builds a siege tower against your border.
  
• Server rules may require a faction to claim, limit claims per player/faction (default: 1 and 1), or apply a new-claim cooldown after you remove one (default 72h) — anti-alt measures.
  
• A green floor overlay shows exactly which squares your claim covers. Coverage applies on every floor — ground to roof.

Upgrade in place through the Claim Management window (right-click the block). Defaults:

• Tier 1 — Wood: 20-tile radius, 500 block durability, banks up to 12 hours of protection.
  
• Tier 2 — Stone: 25-tile radius, 1500 durability, 24-hour bank. Requires Demolition 5 + the upgrade cost.
  
• Tier 3 — Metal: 50-tile radius, 4000 durability, 48-hour bank. Requires Demolition 7. The server's FIRST Tier 3 gets a permanent Hall of Fame engraving.

Each tier has its own block art, and the block lights up while protection is active — everyone can read your base's status at a glance. Upgrade costs (money + items) are server-editable; the window's tooltip shows the current bundle. Protection runs on money. Open the Claim window and press Refuel (default: $100 per press, converting at 0.1 protection-hours per dollar — both server dials). The fuel bar shows hours remaining. Key facts:

• In the default Offline mode, fuel only drains while your whole crew is offline — online time is free.
  
• If fuel hits zero while you're all away, the shield is DOWN until someone logs in and refuels. Make it a routine.
  
• Staff refuel for free when helping players.

While your claim is protected, non-members cannot (each is a server toggle, all default ON unless noted):

• Damage walls, doors, windows, barricades, or any player-built structure — a server watchdog even instantly un-breaks window glass smashed through engine loopholes.
  
• Open your doors. Optionally the server force-locks claim doors entirely while protected — a lock that holds from BOTH sides, with per-rank exceptions your faction controls.
  
• Loot containers or pick up your furniture and moveables.
  
• Use your appliances — light switches, lamps, stoves and ovens (including from the loot window), TVs, radios.
  
• Damage or tow your vehicles (driving/entering stays allowed by default — protection is anti-grief, not a force field).
  
• Chop your trees, harvest/dig/kill your crops, or injure and butcher your penned animals.
  
• Build inside your claim, in the buffer ring around it, or tower above it (optional height cap).
  
• Walk in while you're all offline — the offline keep-out escorts trespassers back out.

What stays open on purpose: walking through (while members are online), looking, and Inspect. And your OWN property is always free to you — protection never locks an owner out. The craftable Tier-3 Security Door is a metal door with a real PIN pad:

• Place it, right-click → Security Door → set a 4-digit PIN on the custom keypad.
  
• Faction members, the builder, and anyone who has entered the correct PIN once open it freely. Strangers get the keypad.
  
• There is no key item to steal or pickpocket, the lock is server-authoritative, and it holds from BOTH sides — no "walk in behind someone and open it from inside" trick.
  
• The door shuts and re-locks itself a couple of seconds after each pass.
  
• Changing the PIN revokes everyone who knew the old one. You must be standing at the door to use the pad — and the pad closes if you walk away.
  
• The keypad bites. A wrong PIN delivers an electric shock — a real hand burn, pain, and an escalating lockout (5s → 15s → 1m → 5m). The fifth wrong entry back-to-back is LETHAL (the pad warns them on the fourth). Waiting a few minutes clears the strike chain, so a friend who fumbles your shared code is safe — a brute-forcer is not. (Server owners can tune or disable every part of this.)

Open the world map (M) and you'll find two buttons of your own, bottom-right:

• My Base — draws your claim (and your faction's, if your rank is allowed) in green, with an owner/faction/protection popup on hover.
  
• My Team — live markers with names for every faction mate currently online.

Both are toggles, so you can switch either off and screenshot your map without giving away your base or your crew. Whether YOU may see the faction's base and teammates at all is a rank permission your Leader controls (see the Faction section) — fresh Recruits see neither until they're trusted. Luring a horde onto someone's protected base to chew through the walls for free (the "eco-raid") doesn't work: while a claim is protected, zombie damage to its walls, doors, windows and barricades is held, and the zombies lose interest. When the base is raidable, sieges bite as normal — so the horde your C4 attracts still matters mid-raid. (Server toggle, on by default.) Ask a staff member about Raider Mode (a debug toggle that treats you as a non-member of your own claim) — the fastest way to verify your setup actually blocks what you think it blocks.

This section is for the survivor on the other side of the wall — the one who wants in. Protection is absolute while it's up. When a base is raidable depends on the server's Protection Mode — by default, whenever any member of that base is online (or their fuel ran dry). Inspect Structure tells you the target's status before you spend a single swing or charge. Every forced entry is gated by the mod's custom Demolition skill:

• Tougher structures need higher levels — the exact curve is server-tuned, with a floor (default: level 3 to touch anything protected). Wood is entry-level; top-tier metal demands mastery.
  
• You LEVEL it by doing it: sledge breaches (10 XP base), fence cuts (8 XP), and optional C4 XP.
  
• You can study: 5 Demolition skill books and Demolition VHS tapes (watch for flat XP, once per day per character, up to level 7) spawn in world loot.
  
• Start ahead at character creation: the Demolitions Expert occupation (+50% Demolition XP, +15% Electrical, themed clothing, starting recipes) or the Boomer trait (+25% Demolition XP).
  
• Demolition is also your recon stat — higher levels reveal more detail on Inspect, up to exact structure HP.

• Raid Sledge (crafted; recipe from a magazine) — the workhorse for wood and masonry. Loud and deliberate: breach time shrinks as your Demolition grows. It survives ~30 breaches (more with Maintenance) and when it breaks mid-raid, a spare from your pack auto-equips. A HUD icon shows while you're targeting.
  
• C4 — Tiers 1 to 5, timer and remote — the ONLY thing that opens metal. Learn the recipes from the timed and remote C4 magazines, craft from real components, then plant with the targeting cursor (press R to switch the blast between the wall and the floor). Timer charges use the custom "Seconds Before Explosion" panel (default 30s countdown); remote charges pair with a detonator. Blasts scale by tier — walls, zombies, players (shrapnel and burns), and unclaimed animals all care. Blast noise carries (~60 tiles) and can pull a horde. And if you arm a charge above your skill, you're gambling: premature detonation risk per missing level. You'll hear the "oops."
  
• Disarm Charge — found someone's planted C4? With enough Demolition (default 3) you can right-click and remove it.
  
• Bolt Cutters → Cut Wire Fence — the quiet route through chain-link (default Demolition 2 + Strength 4). Cutters wear per cut. Works from either side of the fence, with a proper cutting animation.
  
• Inspect Structure — the recon tool. Right-click → Inspect Structure, sweep the magnifier cursor over any wall from either side: is it protected, what material, what tool and level it needs, and (at high skill) its health.

All the mod's actions sit at the TOP of the right-click menu, in a fixed order — no digging through vanilla options mid-raid.

1. Scout with Inspect. Protected right now? Wood, stone, or metal? What level do I need?
   
2. Wait for a raidable window — the owners online, the server's raid schedule, or their fuel running out.
   
3. Wood/stone: Raid Sledge. Metal: plant the right C4 tier, back off, detonate. Wire fence in the way? Bolt cutters.
   
4. The noise is part of the price — defenders and zombies both heard that. Get in, get the loot, get gone.

Some servers make breaching leave a mark:

• Hearing damage — each unprotected C4 blast wears on the PLACER's ears, escalating from ringing warnings to (optionally permanent) deafness.
  
• Sledge strain and fractures — heavy swings can strain muscles, and a botched protected-wall breach can fracture an arm.
  
• Scratched hands on fence cuts.

If your arms ache after a raid, that's not a bug — that's the server owner's balance choice.

(NEW in 8.0 — this replaces the vanilla faction panel for faction members.)

Your faction is your crew, and in Raiding Dynamics it's also your access control: claims belong to factions, and what each member can do on the claim is decided by their rank.

Press the User Panel HUD button → Faction. If you're not in a faction yet, the vanilla create-faction flow opens instead — creation is unchanged. Once you're in one, you get the Faction Management window with four tabs. Leader → Officer → Member → Recruit. The Leader is the faction owner; new invites join at the rank chosen on the invite (Recruit by default — the server may change it). Rank rules:

• You can only manage people BELOW your rank — an Officer can promote a Recruit, never another Officer.
  
• The Leader can do everything, always, and is the only one who edits permissions, transfers leadership, or disbands.

The roster with online dots and rank colors. Select a member → Promote / Demote / Kick (buttons grey out when your rank can't do it). The invite row at the bottom: type a username, pick their starting rank, hit + Invite — they get a join prompt. A grid of 13 actions × the three lower ranks (Leader is always-allowed and shown locked):
open claim doors · use appliances · take items & furniture from containers · build & dismantle · refuel · upgrade tier · rename · change protection settings · manage claim zones · remove the claim · invite · kick · promote/demote.

Only the Leader can flip these. The server sets sensible defaults (Officers manage, Members build and live, Recruits can use doors/appliances/containers but not build) — your Leader tunes it for your crew. A Recruit denied "Open claim doors" bounces off the force-locked door exactly like a stranger.

Two of the rows guard the world map: See the base on the map and See teammates on the map. By default Recruits get neither — a brand-new recruit cannot scout the base location or track members from the map until the Leader promotes them or ticks the box. That's deliberate: infiltrating a faction no longer hands over the base coordinates for free.

• Tag & color — your name prefix, with the full color picker (Leader-only; Enter saves the tag).
  
• Motto — a flavor line for your crew (Leader-only).
  
• Banner — pick from 20 faction banners; it shows on the leaderboard.
  
• At-a-glance info: member count, the day the faction formed, and how deep container access goes (which rank and up).
  
• Transfer Leadership (you become an Officer) and the Danger Zone disband button — both double-confirmed.

Every faction on the server, ranked. Sort by Total Kills (default), Player Kills, Zombie Kills, Members, Name, or Hours Alive. Your faction's row is highlighted, your rank shows in the corner chip, and banners make crews recognizable at a glance.

The important design choice: kills belong to players, not factions. Your personal kill record travels with you — when a 2,000-kill veteran joins your faction, your faction's total rises by 2,000 on the spot. A faction's strength on the board is the true sum of who's in it right now. (Same-faction PVP kills never count — no farming your own recruits.)

(NEW in 8.0.) The trophy shield on your screen is the Hall of Fame widget — drag it wherever you like. It glows whenever something new has happened since you last looked, and award announcements slide in as toasts. Click it to open the window. One set of counters feeds three very different prizes:

• ⭐ Server Firsts — permanent. The first player EVER to do a thing gets engraved with their name and the world day: First Blood (first zombie), Patient Zero (first death), Cain (first player kill), Homesteader (first claim), Fort Knox (first Tier-3), The Locksmith (first keypad door), Demolition Debut, Breaking & Entering, Grand Theft Auto, Green Thumb, The Butcher, Quarter Club (90 days survived), Firestarter — plus one engraving per skill for the first player to master it. Once engraved, it never moves. Wipe-day sprints are real.
  
• 🏆 Trophies — titles you can steal. Each trophy belongs to the current record holder: Methuselah (longest current life), Executioner (zombie kills), Warlord (player kills), Pane in the Glass (windows smashed), Wrecking Ball, Master Breacher, Bob the Builder, Farmer's Almanac, Cold Blooded, Klutz (bones broken), Fumbler (premature C4), Wrong Number (wrong PINs), Nine Lives (deaths), Night Owl, and Pacifist (longest current life with ZERO kills — one kill and it vacates instantly). Beat the holder's number and the title transfers — announced to the whole server.
  
• 🎖 Badges — yours forever. Twelve personal achievement tracks with Bronze / Silver / Gold thresholds: Zombie Slayer, Manhunter, Survivor, Glazier, Demolitionist, Bombardier, Architect, Harvester, Rancher, Die Hard, Accident Prone, Safe Cracker. Earn a tier and it's permanent.

• Players — everyone ranked by Award Score (Firsts ×25, Trophies ×15, Badge tiers ×3 — server-tunable) or ANY raw stat via the Rank-by dropdown (kills, hours, windows, walls, C4, builds, deaths...). Filter to online players or your faction. Your row is highlighted; your rank sits in the footer chip.
  
• Trophies — the title cards: gold cup = held (with holder and record number), silhouette = unclaimed. Hover any card for exactly how it's won.
  
• Badges — the 12 tracks; lit emblem + tier plate when you've earned it, engraved silhouette when locked.
  
• Firsts — the full plaque list, including every individual skill with who mastered it first and on what day — so you can see exactly which skills are still up for grabs.
  
• Me — your personal progress: every badge track with tier pips and a notched progress bar ("312 / 500 to Gold"). Make the window wider for extra per-badge detail.

Hover anything, anywhere, for a tooltip explaining what it is and how to earn it. On the Me tab, every row has a TRACK chip. Click it and that badge's live progress bar pins to your screen as a compact HUD strip — emblem, name, notched bar, and the exact "current / next tier" numbers, updating as you play. Track up to 4 at once, drag the strip anywhere, resize it from the corner grip — position, size, and your pinned list all persist per character. Click TRACKING to unpin.

• PVE server? If the owner disables PVP awards, Cain / Warlord / Manhunter simply don't exist — no PVP categories taunting anyone.
  
• Announcements can be silenced server-wide (awards still record).
  
• Caught cheating? Staff can wipe one player's stats — their badges reset, their trophies vacate for honest players to claim, and their firsts re-open.

Five minutes to a working setup.

1. Subscribe to Raiding Dynamics on the Steam Workshop and enable it in your server's mod list (and Workshop ID list).
   
2. Start the server. The mod prints a boot banner to the server log confirming it loaded — useful later for troubleshooting.

The offline keep-out (the "you can't walk onto my property while I'm offline" wall) rides on the game's native safehouse system. For it to work, three server INI options must be set. If they're wrong, the keep-out silently does nothing — the mod will print a warning to the log, but the wall just won't hold.
Note the spelling: the engine option really is "Trepass" (missing the second 's') — that's a vanilla typo, not a mistake in this guide. Set it exactly as written.

• SafehouseAllowTrepass=false — the make-or-break one. If this is true, trespass eviction does nothing.
  
• DisableSafehouseWhenOwnerConnected=true — makes the keep-out offline-only (locked while owners are away, breachable while a member is online).
  
• SafeHouseRemovalTime=0 — stops the safehouse auto-expiring after ~6 days.

After boot, grep your server log for to confirm all three are correct.

(This is multiplayer-only — there are no safehouses in single-player, so the keep-out doesn't evict in SP. Everything else works in SP for setup and testing.)

First, get admin. The config window is staff-only, so you need an admin role. Raiding Dynamics adds a Become Admin toggle to the vanilla User Panel (the "Client" button on your HUD): a co-op/listen host is always eligible and can one-click promote themselves; other players must be added to the host's allow-list file ( per line, a bare username = admin, for comments — auto-created, re-read live, no restart). It issues the real engine access-level change (connection role + database), not just a cosmetic nametag, so every admin tool works afterwards. Raiding Dynamics has an in-game admin config window — the control panel for every setting in this guide. It is staff-only (admin / moderator / overseer / gm / observer roles) and does not require the launch flag. Open it from the staff button, change a setting, and click Apply. Apply validates your values, saves them, pushes them to all clients, and re-runs the claim tick immediately.

Settings are live. Almost every setting takes effect the moment you click Apply — no restart needed. The handful that do need a restart are flagged in the UI with an amber (restart) tag (notably the entire Recipes tab). If a setting seems to do nothing, check whether it's a (restart) field.

In the General tab, set Protection Mode — this is the biggest single decision you'll make:

• offline (default) — bases are protected while owners are offline and fueled. The classic "you're safe when you log off, but only if you've paid your upkeep" model.
  
• schedule — bases are protected at all times except during the Raid Schedule windows you define. Best for servers that want raiding confined to announced events.
  
• offline_schedule — both rules; an open window can crack even a fueled, fully-offline base.

Set this, set your three INI options, and you have a functioning server. Everything below is tuning.

(NEW in 8.0 — this replaces the vanilla faction panel for faction members.)

Your faction is your crew, and in Raiding Dynamics it's also your access control: claims belong to factions, and what each member can do on the claim is decided by their rank.

Press the User Panel HUD button → Faction. If you're not in a faction yet, the vanilla create-faction flow opens instead — creation is unchanged. Once you're in one, you get the Faction Management window with four tabs. Leader → Officer → Member → Recruit. The Leader is the faction owner; new invites join at the rank chosen on the invite (Recruit by default — the server may change it). Rank rules:

• You can only manage people BELOW your rank — an Officer can promote a Recruit, never another Officer.
  
• The Leader can do everything, always, and is the only one who edits permissions, transfers leadership, or disbands.

The roster with online dots and rank colors. Select a member → Promote / Demote / Kick (buttons grey out when your rank can't do it). The invite row at the bottom: type a username, pick their starting rank, hit + Invite — they get a join prompt. A grid of 13 actions × the three lower ranks (Leader is always-allowed and shown locked):
open claim doors · use appliances · take items & furniture from containers · build & dismantle · refuel · upgrade tier · rename · change protection settings · manage claim zones · remove the claim · invite · kick · promote/demote.

Only the Leader can flip these. The server sets sensible defaults (Officers manage, Members build and live, Recruits can use doors/appliances/containers but not build) — your Leader tunes it for your crew. A Recruit denied "Open claim doors" bounces off the force-locked door exactly like a stranger.

Two of the rows guard the world map: See the base on the map and See teammates on the map. By default Recruits get neither — a brand-new recruit cannot scout the base location or track members from the map until the Leader promotes them or ticks the box. That's deliberate: infiltrating a faction no longer hands over the base coordinates for free.

• Tag & color — your name prefix, with the full color picker (Leader-only; Enter saves the tag).
  
• Motto — a flavor line for your crew (Leader-only).
  
• Banner — pick from 20 faction banners; it shows on the leaderboard.
  
• At-a-glance info: member count, the day the faction formed, and how deep container access goes (which rank and up).
  
• Transfer Leadership (you become an Officer) and the Danger Zone disband button — both double-confirmed.

Every faction on the server, ranked. Sort by Total Kills (default), Player Kills, Zombie Kills, Members, Name, or Hours Alive. Your faction's row is highlighted, your rank shows in the corner chip, and banners make crews recognizable at a glance.

The important design choice: kills belong to players, not factions. Your personal kill record travels with you — when a 2,000-kill veteran joins your faction, your faction's total rises by 2,000 on the spot. A faction's strength on the board is the true sum of who's in it right now. (Same-faction PVP kills never count — no farming your own recruits.)

Two full in-game editors mean you customize the server's items and character options without ever opening a text file. Both are staff-gated, both live behind the admin config window. Three abilities, one tab:

• Modify any RD recipe — every C4 charge, the Raid Sledge, the Claim Block: click modify and edit its ingredient slots. Each slot holds an amount plus one or more substitute items (the row's [+] adds alternatives — "3× Iron Bar OR Metal Bar OR Steel Bar"). The item search accepts anything loaded, modded items included.
  
• Modify a vanilla recipe — search any craftable item; your edited version supersedes the original at the next restart.
  
• Add Custom Recipe — build a brand-new recipe: pick the output, add ingredient slots, save. Custom recipes appear under their own header with Delete/modify.

Special slot types (tool tags, fluids) are preserved verbatim and shown locked. Everything is validated server-side — invalid items are dropped, empty recipes are rejected, and the mod never writes a recipe that can't load.

Restart-flagged, with the badge: recipe changes save instantly but the game only reads recipe scripts at boot. Every edited recipe wears an orange pending-restart badge until the restart that makes it live — when the badge clears, the change is in. If a save ever fails to write, staff get a loud halo and the server log names the file (no silent failures).

Rebalance character creation for your server:

• Traits tab — every trait with its icon and point cost. Positive traits show [color=#66cc55]green[/color], negatives [color=#e06550]red[/color], sorted exactly like the character-creation screen. Steppers adjust the cost; per-row Reset restores vanilla. Costs apply after a restart.
  
• Occupations tab — pick an occupation: edit its description and skill XP boosts (both apply live — no restart), and its starting traits (add/remove chips; restart-flagged).
  
• Mod-aware — occupations, traits, and even custom skills added by OTHER mods are detected automatically and editable exactly like vanilla entries (including this mod's own Demolitions Expert and Boomer).

Overridden entries carry an orange dot (the footer shows whether anything on the server is overridden at all); Reset to default un-edits one entry, Reset all clears everything back to vanilla. Search works on both tabs, and the counters show how many entries you're looking at.

Five ready-to-use server personalities. Each says who it's for, the feel it creates, and exactly which settings to change from default — set them in the admin window, then SAVE it as a named preset so you can always come back. Anything not listed stays at its default.

For: most PvP servers. Feel: fair fights, no 4 AM griefs, raiding is an event.

• Change nothing. The defaults ARE this preset: offline protection at 100%, raid gate on, all protections on, consequences off, Hall of Fame on.
  
• Optional flavor: turn ON door force-locking (Lock doors & gates while protected) if you want protected bases sealed tight rather than just theft-proof.

For: rust-style, high-stakes servers. Feel: nowhere is truly safe; logistics and hiding matter.

• General → UNCHECK Offline protection = 100%; set protection % to 50–70 (offline bases take reduced damage instead of none).
  
• Raid Tools → turn ON Hearing damage, sledge fracture risk, bolt-cutter scratch (raiding leaves scars).
  
• Skill Gates → consider the C4 gate mode risk (default) so under-skilled raiders still TRY — and sometimes blow themselves up.
  
• Claim System → shorten the protection-hour caps (e.g. 6/12/24) so upkeep is a real chore.

For: co-op/PvE servers that just want anti-grief. Feel: build in peace; the mod is a shield, not a sword.

• Claim System → Allow offline raiding OFF.
  
• General → Protection mode offline, protection 100%.
  
• General → PVP awards OFF (the Hall of Fame drops all player-kill categories).
  
• Optional: crops/animals/appliances "always protected" ON — the full theft-proof model even while members are online.
  
• Raid tools stay craftable for zombie-hoard clearing and map demolition — or disable the recipes in the Recipes tab.

For: community servers with a weekly rhythm. Feel: build all week, war on the weekend.

• General → Protection mode schedule.
  
• Claim System → Raid Schedule: check Fri / Sat / Sun, set the window (e.g. 18:00–22:00), clock basis realworld.
  
• Announce the schedule in your server description — the mod enforces it, you advertise it.

For: casual servers that want protection with minimal rules. Feel: the mod disappears until someone tries to grief.

• Claim System → raise Max claims per player if you want solo players to have outposts.
  
• Skill Gates → drop MinProtectLevel to 1–2 and the C4 tier requirements by a level or two (breaching is easier when it IS allowed).
  
• General → Hall of Fame ON with announcements — the awards do the community-building for you.

Also in the box: nine pre-seeded "Session" presets used for the mod's own QA passes. They're organized by system (Grief & Melee, Theft & Access, Farm & Livestock, Vehicles, C4, Raid Breach, Claim Economy, Modes & Schedule, Recipes & Restart) — handy if you want to stress-test one system at a time before opening day.

A clean reference to every non-member protection: what it stops, when to use it, and its scope — whether it applies only while protection is up (raid-windowed — a raid window opens it) or always (even while the base is online / mid-raid). Everything here is server-authoritative: an honest client is bounced instantly with a quip, and a modified client is undone by the server anyway.

• Structure damage (melee) — raid-windowed. Non-members can't chip doors, player walls, or barricades. A unified watchdog covers every engine path — including the window-glass smash that fires no event; broken glass is restored and the shards cleaned up within seconds. Legit breaches (sledge at level, C4) go through the raid gate instead.
  
• C4 protection — optional (default OFF). When ON, protected claims shrug C4 entirely; when OFF, C4 remains the metal-tier answer even against protected bases during raid windows.
  
• Doors — raid-windowed. Strangers can't open claim doors. The optional force-lock mode uses the engine's hard lock: both sides, no inside trick, member/rank-gated opens — the same lock the keypad Security Door uses.
  
• Appliances — raid-windowed + optional always. Light switches, lamps, stoves/ovens (world right-click AND the loot-window button), TVs, radios. The "always" variant is the pure theft-model: even during a raid your stove isn't theirs.
  
• Containers (item transfer) — raid-windowed. Taking items or furniture out of claim containers is blocked. ⚠️ Honesty: B42 exposes no true server-side veto for transfers — this is a client gate backed by a server ground-truth sweep. Effective against normal players; see Known Gaps.
  
• Pickup / moveables — ALWAYS. Nobody walks out with your crates and furniture even while you're online — the "grab everything during the fight" grief is dead by design.
  
• Trespass keep-out — offline only. While every member is offline, non-members who walk in are escorted back out (the engine's own safehouse eviction — smooth, no teleport jank). Staff exempt.
  
• Vehicles — raid-windowed. No smashing, part-stripping, or towing claim vehicles. Entering/hotwiring/driving stays allowed by default (vehicle ACCESS toggle) — it's anti-grief, not a parking spell.
  
• Trees — raid-windowed. Your orchard isn't a stranger's lumber run.
  
• Crops — raid-windowed + optional always. Harvest, dig-up, kill-by-overfertilize, water, cure — all five farm actions gated.
  
• Animals (livestock) — raid-windowed + optional always. No injuring, shooting, or butchering penned claim animals. (C4 spares claim-protected livestock too.)
  
• Animal ZONE creation — non-members can't lay a designation/animal zone over someone's claim.
  
• Build-block — ALWAYS. Non-members can't build inside a claim, in its easement ring, or over its height cap (if enabled). Server deletes anything that sneaks through; the honest client's cursor just shows red.
  
• Disarm trespassers — optional (default OFF). Non-members on a protected claim get force-unequipped (items kept in inventory, not dropped). The nuclear anti-camping option.
  
• Faction rank layer — every one of the above ALSO consults the actor's faction rank when the claim belongs to their own faction: a Recruit denied "containers" by their Leader is blocked like a stranger. Outsiders are never granted anything by ranks.

The two absolutes: your OWN property is always free to you (anti-lockout), and staff bypass everything (with the audit log watching).

(NEW in 8.0 — this replaces the vanilla faction panel for faction members.)

Your faction is your crew, and in Raiding Dynamics it's also your access control: claims belong to factions, and what each member can do on the claim is decided by their rank.

Press the User Panel HUD button → Faction. If you're not in a faction yet, the vanilla create-faction flow opens instead — creation is unchanged. Once you're in one, you get the Faction Management window with four tabs. Leader → Officer → Member → Recruit. The Leader is the faction owner; new invites join at the rank chosen on the invite (Recruit by default — the server may change it). Rank rules:

• You can only manage people BELOW your rank — an Officer can promote a Recruit, never another Officer.
  
• The Leader can do everything, always, and is the only one who edits permissions, transfers leadership, or disbands.

The roster with online dots and rank colors. Select a member → Promote / Demote / Kick (buttons grey out when your rank can't do it). The invite row at the bottom: type a username, pick their starting rank, hit + Invite — they get a join prompt. A grid of 13 actions × the three lower ranks (Leader is always-allowed and shown locked):
open claim doors · use appliances · take items & furniture from containers · build & dismantle · refuel · upgrade tier · rename · change protection settings · manage claim zones · remove the claim · invite · kick · promote/demote.

Only the Leader can flip these. The server sets sensible defaults (Officers manage, Members build and live, Recruits can use doors/appliances/containers but not build) — your Leader tunes it for your crew. A Recruit denied "Open claim doors" bounces off the force-locked door exactly like a stranger.

Two of the rows guard the world map: See the base on the map and See teammates on the map. By default Recruits get neither — a brand-new recruit cannot scout the base location or track members from the map until the Leader promotes them or ticks the box. That's deliberate: infiltrating a faction no longer hands over the base coordinates for free.

• Tag & color — your name prefix, with the full color picker (Leader-only; Enter saves the tag).
  
• Motto — a flavor line for your crew (Leader-only).
  
• Banner — pick from 20 faction banners; it shows on the leaderboard.
  
• At-a-glance info: member count, the day the faction formed, and how deep container access goes (which rank and up).
  
• Transfer Leadership (you become an Officer) and the Danger Zone disband button — both double-confirmed.

Every faction on the server, ranked. Sort by Total Kills (default), Player Kills, Zombie Kills, Members, Name, or Hours Alive. Your faction's row is highlighted, your rank shows in the corner chip, and banners make crews recognizable at a glance.

The important design choice: kills belong to players, not factions. Your personal kill record travels with you — when a 2,000-kill veteran joins your faction, your faction's total rises by 2,000 on the spot. A faction's strength on the board is the true sum of who's in it right now. (Same-faction PVP kills never count — no farming your own recruits.)

Q: I can't sledge ANYTHING — not even unprotected map walls.

AYour server INI has SledgehammerOnlyInSafehouse=true. The ENGINE blocks sledge targeting everywhere outside safehouses when that's on. Set it false and restart — the mod's boot log prints a CRITICAL warning when it detects this.

Q: My recipe / trait-cost / starting-trait edit didn't apply.

AThose are restart-flagged — saved instantly, applied at the next server boot. Edited recipes wear an orange restart badge until the boot that makes them live. If a badge never clears (or an edit vanishes), check the server console for a loud [RD-RECIPE] warning — the mod refuses to fail silently.

Q: C4 exploded next to a player and did nothing.

AThe server log prints a per-player verdict on every blast — mayHurt=true/false with the reason in parentheses. Nearly always: server PVP is off, or one of the two players has their safety on. Both safeties off + PVP on = C4 hurts.

Q: The trespass keep-out isn't working — outsiders walk onto my offline base.

ACheck three things: the claim has FUEL (no fuel = no protection), Block trespass is ON in the Claim System tab, and the server isn't in a raid window (schedule mode) — raidable means enterable.

Q: A stranger broke my window / door while I was protected!

AThey didn't keep it broken. The structure watchdog restores non-member damage within seconds — including window glass smashed through engine paths that fire no event. If you can reproduce damage that STAYS, report it with the server's console log.

Q: The faction leaderboard numbers lag behind my kills.

ABy design — stats sync on a batched timer (default 5 minutes, server-tunable) to keep wipe-day servers smooth. Opening the window fetches fresh numbers immediately.

Q: My Hall of Fame "windows broken" counter climbs slowly.

AWindow credits confirm on a sweep (up to a minute after the break) so every engine break path counts. It catches up; nothing is lost.

Q: Players joining get "file doesn't match the server."

ASomeone hand-edited a generated recipe script while the server ran. Restart the server and never hand-edit the generated files — use the in-game editor; it manages those files safely.

Q: I turned a zone's power on but a lamp inside stayed dark.

AFlip the lamp's own switch — the zone provides POWER, the switch still decides on/off. Also note zone power can reach a short distance past the zone's edge; that's the engine's power radius, not a leak you configured.

Q: Doors won't lock for non-members.

AClaim System → Lock doors & gates while protected must be ON (it defaults OFF). Note player-built gates (not doors) can only use the weaker outside-only lock — an engine limitation, see Known Gaps.

Q: How do I test my own base's defenses?

AStaff flip Raider Mode (Debug tab → "Treat me as non-member") and try to rob yourself. Turn it off when you're done.

Q: Something's wrong and I want to report it usefully.

AGrab the server console log (coop-console.txt or the dedicated console) around the moment it happened — the mod logs its decisions with [RD-...] prefixes, and most reports are solved by the log line that explains exactly why something was allowed or blocked.

Build & platform. Raiding Dynamics is built and balanced for Project Zomboid Build 42. It is multiplayer-focused but loads safely in single-player, so owners can set up and test there (the safehouse-based trespass keep-out is the one multiplayer-only feature).

Save safety. The mod is entirely additive: no vanilla files are replaced, every system has an off-switch, and claims, zones, configs, presets, faction ranks, and Hall of Fame records all persist in the server's own storage across updates. Removing the mod leaves your map intact (claim blocks become inert decoration).

Performance. The 8.0 overhaul was built for wipe day: the mod's server cost stays flat as claims, vehicles, and players accumulate (cached claim lookups, throttled watchdogs, batched leaderboard sync). If your server struggles, the mod is very unlikely to be the reason — but the leaderboard sync interval and watchdog-heavy toggles (disarm trespassers, animal caps) are the dials to relax first.

Compatibility.

• Item / map / vehicle / QoL mods: fully compatible. The recipe and character editors actively EMBRACE modded content — modded items work as ingredients, and modded occupations, traits, and skills appear in the editor automatically.
  
• Mods that also rewrite base-protection, safehouses, or faction behavior: run ONE system of each kind. Two claim mods fighting over the same door ends badly for everyone.
  
• The mod drives vanilla safehouses internally for the offline keep-out — avoid INI/admin setups that fight safehouse assignment.

Known gaps — the honest list. We'd rather you read these here than discover them mid-raid:

• Container item-transfers have no true server-side veto hook in B42. Container protection is a client-side gate backed by a server ground-truth sweep — fully effective against normal players; a purpose-built hacked client has a race window. (Pickup/moveables protection, by contrast, is fully server-authoritative.)
  
• Player-built GATES (not doors) can't take the engine's hard lock — they keep the outside-only key lock. A gate-to-door conversion is planned; until then gates are a deterrent, not a wall.
  
• Zone punishments: all five options (Warn / Teleport / Break a Limb / Noise Maker / Kill) are fully implemented as of 8.1.
  
• Zone power can reach a short distance past the zone's edge (the engine's power radius).
  
• Localization: English only for now.

A note on trust. Every enforcement decision is made or verified server-side, staff powers are allow-list gated, and staff actions on other players' property are written to an audit log. The mod is built on the assumption that clients lie — and designed so it doesn't matter.

That's the whole mod: claim your land, pay your upkeep, rank your crew, chase the Hall of Fame, and raid fair. Whether you're running a hardcore PvP gauntlet, a chill PvE co-op, or a weekend-warzone, the dials are all in your hands — start from one of the presets in Section 10 and tune from there.

If you find a bug, have a balance idea, or build a server preset you love, please leave a comment on the Workshop page — feedback is read and acted on, and most of this mod's best features started as player suggestions (the badge tracker included). If Raiding Dynamics made your server better, a rating helps other servers find it, and development can be supported on Patreon[www.patreon.com].

Happy raiding. Watch the noise — something always hears it.

— GrenadeDave