About Better Teams
Team HUD · Rust · Oxide
Rust tells you who your teammates are, and nothing about what is happening to them
BetterTeams puts a live panel on screen with every mate's health, state, held weapon and grid square. It adds a team-only voice channel that ignores distance, a map ping on one key, and automatic authorization on every cupboard, lock, turret and SAM site your team builds. Every part is a config switch, and every player decides what they use.
See it
What it looks like on the server
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How it goes
From dropping the file in to the night the server dies
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MINUTE ONE
Nothing to set up
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The panel is already there
Drop the file in and anyone who is in a team sees their mates on screen. Where it sits, how large it is and how many rows before it starts a second column are config values. Everything else is each player's own choice.
Health as a bar, not a number. It slides toward red as they lose health, and it redraws the moment their health actually changes rather than on a timer.
State takes over when it matters. WOUNDED, DEAD and OFFLINE replace the bar on that row, so a mate who is down is unmistakable without reading anything.
What they are holding. The active item's icon, with its skin, sits at the end of every row and follows each weapon swap.
Grid square, on your own refresh rate. Five seconds by default. A player who would rather not broadcast theirs switches it off for themselves.
The leader keeps a star. One glance tells you who can change the team's settings, and offline mates stay listed instead of vanishing.
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IN A FIGHT
Nobody types grids
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Talk across the map, ping what you are looking at
Team voice replaces the vanilla proximity channel for the players who switch it on. Distance stops mattering, nobody outside the team hears it, and a speaker icon lights up on the row of whoever is talking.
bind h ftmark
Voice at any range, team only. Off per player until they enable it, so nobody has their voice chat changed without asking for it.
One key, no binoculars. Bind the command once and the ping lands wherever you are aiming, up to fifty metres by default.
The ping knows what it hit. An enemy player, an ore node, a storage box and a dropped gun each get their own marker icon and colour. Anything else drops a plain point.
On a cooldown you set. Ten seconds by default, and the time left comes back as a game tip instead of the key doing nothing.
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SOMEONE JOINS
One shared list
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Authorized everywhere, in one pass
The moment an invite is accepted that player is added to every cupboard, code lock, turret and SAM site the rest of the team owns, and everyone else is added to theirs. Leaving or being kicked takes all of it back in the same pass.
Five places, five switches. Tool cupboards, code locks, key locks, auto turrets and SAM sites, each turned on or off for the whole server.
Key locks without the key. A teammate opens a key-locked door because they are on the team, not because you handed them anything.
SAM sites check who is aboard. A teammate's SAM holds fire on a helicopter with an authorized member in a seat, instead of shooting down your own minicopter.
Bases that already exist are picked up on boot. Everything placed before the install is registered when the plugin loads, so this works on a server mid-wipe and not only on what gets built next.
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THE LEADER
Decided in game
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The random you just invited is not automatically trusted
Taking a stranger into the team is where convenience turns into risk, so the whole authorization list is editable per ally from the menu. No config file, no restart.
Revoke without breaking the rest. A blocked ally loses access everywhere except the locks and cupboards they placed themselves, and the team keeps access to those.
Kick from the same screen. Pick the ally, kick, and every authorization they were given through the team is pulled as they go.
Friendly fire off with one toggle. Only the leader can flip it; everyone else sees it locked and is told why rather than wondering if it is broken.
A team skin per item type. The leader picks it, and anything a mate picks up gets it automatically. Thirty-five item types ship in the config with their own skin lists, and both are yours to cut or extend.
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AFTER A CRASH
Teams survive it
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A bad shutdown should not disband half the server
Rust loses teams when a server goes down badly, and the tickets land on you. This one writes the roster and the leader to disk and puts them back on start.
Rosters restored on boot. Members and leader are recreated, including the players who are offline at the time, so nobody logs in teamless.
Optional leader hand-off. If the leader disconnects the next online member is promoted, and the original takes it back when they return. Off by default, because not every server wants it.
A wipe clears it properly. A new wipe id drops the saved teams and skin choices rather than dragging last wipe's data onto a fresh map.
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While you are not looking
Built to be left alone
The parts you will never notice unless they are missing.
| ✓ ImageLibrary is the only dependency, and Clans is used if you have it | ✓ A missing dependency is named in console and the plugin unloads, instead of half-running | |
| ✓ Switching a feature off unsubscribes its hooks rather than leaving them running | ✓ Panel updates are batched into one message per team per tick, not one per player | |
| ✓ Grid squares only redraw for the players who actually changed square | ✓ A burst of joins and kicks collapses into a single data file write | |
| ✓ Every player choice is stored by Steam ID and survives restarts and reloads | ✓ Clan tags are stripped from names in the panel when the Clans plugin is loaded |
Reference
One command in chat, one to bind
Each permission is only enforced if you switch its requirement on. All four are off by default, which means the feature is simply available to everyone.
| Chat | /bt | Open the menu: info, allies, skins, settings. The command name is a config value. |
| Console | ftmark | Drop a team ping where you are looking. Meant to be bound to a key. |
| Permission | betterteams.hud | The on-screen panel |
| Permission | betterteams.voice | Team voice chat |
| Permission | betterteams.skins | Choosing the team skin. One player in the team holding it is enough for the whole team. |
| Permission | betterteams.marker | Easy team markers |
Straight answers
The questions people ask before buying
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Do my players have to install anything?
No. It runs entirely on the server and the panel is drawn through the normal game UI. The only install is ImageLibrary, on the server, once.
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Does team voice take over normal voice chat?
Only for a player who turns it on themselves, and it is off by default. Everyone else keeps vanilla proximity voice untouched.
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Can a random I invite loot everything I own?
Only if you leave them authorized. The leader can revoke any of the five places for one specific ally from the menu, and they keep access to nothing but what they placed themselves.
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Will the panel sit on top of my other UI?
Its offset from the top and left, its scale and how many rows it stacks before starting a new column are all config values, so it can be moved out of the way.
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What if I do not want half of these features?
Panel, voice, skins, markers, friendly-fire toggle, grid positions, team restore and each of the five authorization places are separate switches. Turning one off also stops the hooks behind it.
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What happens if ImageLibrary is missing?
It waits and retries a few times in case load order put it second, then prints the download link in server console and unloads itself rather than throwing errors on every hook.
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5
authorization places covered
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35
item types with team skins
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50m
default ping range, configurable
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1
dependency, ImageLibrary
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