Question about Community List with Oxide and Server Stats - General Discussion

Hello, Hoping to get some advice on this. I've read a lot of conflicting information regarding this subject, some say it's possible others say just having Oxide installed will place your server under the Modded tab. Though I've read about and also seen many servers under the community tab with what looks like plugins, things like VIP and queue skip. Unless they aren't using Oxide? Basically what I'm trying to achieve is to pull stats from my server things like players online, kills, deaths etc and display them on a website. The way I've found is using Oxide plugins like Player Rank or Statistics Database. I've read that if you were to disable the ability to display it in chat and player commands this would prevent your server from being listed as modded as there are no gui or gameplay changes. However, just the fact that I've installed Oxide with no plugins yet, my server is already being listed under the modded tab. Does anyone know if it's possible to have it listed under the community tab with oxide installed? If it's not possible, does anyone know of another way to pull stats from my server to be able to display it on a website? I'm able to pull server stats like players online, map size, seed, entities created etc through the rust-servers.info API but in terms of player kills, deaths I've not been able to find much apart from Oxide. I had thought Steam API would be able to achieve this but it seems it's mostly useful for global game statistics unless I missed something? Any advice would be greatly appreciated, thank you for your time.

If you modify server files, the server belongs in the modded list. Installing Oxide modifies files. It is possible to spoof your server's info in the list and improperly appear in the community tab despite having a modded server. Doing this is asking for the devs to permanently blacklist your server IP from the server list without warning. It is also possible to run an unmodified server that includes enhanced functionality through rcon scripts. Use of rcon does not modify the server files and is just automating remote administration so it's fine. You may be seeing servers on the community list doing this, and it's allowed. P.S. I am not a dev.

Ah okay I see. In my Oxide logs it states that 'Facepunch only allows admin tools(that do not affect gameplay) under the Community section" Is there any truth in that to your knowledge? Or is there anything I can look into that facepunch has said regarding this? It would seem that for my purposes, I would fit into that category. I'm just trying to collect statistics to a database and all commands and in-game menus would be disabled.

I can't speak with the authority of the devs but if the server files are modified, they're modified. Determining that you're doing an entirely harmless thing is not easy to automate, because the server is modified. It's too labour-intensive for too little benefit and almost all downsides to have a fuzzy grey area for if a server is modded or not. I agree that what you've described that you're doing is not actually modifying how the game plays, but that's a nuance that can't be automatically determined without way too much work to be worth it -- and it'd be easily worked around, resulting in modded servers that genuinely should not be listed having a presence in the community list. It's like trying to say that you shouldn't be banned for cheating because you did install hacks but you didn't use them against anyone; the criteria for an anticheat ban is not "used cheats on players" but "launched the game with cheats", reading your mind and determining your intention is not possible. And, no, I'm not accusing you of cheating, only drawing a parallel.

Yeah fair enough makes sense. Thanks for the info I'll have to find some other way to pull the stats. Appreciate you taking the time, cheers.

I don't know if any specific scripts or rcon utilities that exist (I don't administer any servers), but it would in theory be possible to write an rcon script that listens to the server console and tracks everything. I'm no expert in what the rcon does and doesn't do but, for example, it should track player logins/disconnects, and if the script monitoring your remote console started up before any players connected to your server and never stopped running while the server was up, you could easily be able to count how many people have connected and haven't disconnected yet, and now you've got at minimum a player count and, depending on how the script is written, a player list. The console should also report kill events, and I'm assuming it includes the killer as well as the victim in the event, so there's both a kill feed and a statistical kill count data source.