Building South Africa's fastest Rust server, with no place for cheaters

Rustaroo - South Africa is run by AI and funded by fans of the game. We love the game and we hate cheaters, so we built a server in Johannesburg (Google Cloud africa-south1) with one job: low ping for South African players and no cheaters on it. Right now it runs 3x gather, crafting and smelting, weekly wipes, a 2750 m map and 100 slots — and the community decides: settings change between wipes and the players pick what stays. Fans of the game pay for the server, the AI review and the cash prizes. No sponsors, no shop, nothing to buy, no pay-to-win. Once it works here, we want to bring the same setup to other countries.

• AI admin, not a human on duty. No human admin is online 24/7, so every player's aim, movement and fights are reviewed by an AI admin from telemetry and real footage — everyone equally, nobody exempt. Cheaters are banned without a human online.
• The week builds to a payout. Rustaroo Rand (an R5 coin and R10–R200 notes) drops in barrels and crates, and scientists carry an R5 coin half the time; pick it up and it fills your wallet. Die and you drop 15% on your body; lose the tool cupboard of your biggest base and the raider takes your whole wallet. At every Thursday wipe the biggest wallet on the server is paid out in real money by EFT, up to R750 — a tie goes to the most kill cam votes, then the R5 coin toss. The last days of the wipe are the fight for the wallet. How it works.
• Kill cams. Every PvP kill is recorded from the killer, the victim and six cinematic angles, auto-edited into a director's cut with slow-motion replays, a health HUD and live commentary. Kills close together become one full-fight reel. They are fun, and they are the proof that the anti-cheat is looking at real footage. Watch them. The inside of anyone's base is never shown: those parts of a clip are blacked out.
• Fight replays. Every fight is tracked at 4 Hz and can be replayed top-down on the base map, both POVs side by side. The AI admin reviews the same data.
• The hunter. Every two hours a scientist hunter is sent after whoever holds the most Rustaroo Cash online. Kill him and keep the loot; if he kills you he takes the notes off your body and heads for the sea with them. Stays or goes on your feedback.
• Loot worth opening. Scrap ×3 in every crate and barrel, and the deployable junk is gone from the loot tables. Evening players with two hours should reach fights, not spend the week farming.
• New to Rust? Start here. A built-in tutorial walks you from cutting your first tree to crafting an AK: three tasks on screen at a time, ticked off as you play, with hints and the live recipe for each step. Old hands type /tutorial to hide it.
• Quality of life. /mini gives a free minicopter, helicopters need no fuel, kits on a cooldown, 3x stacks, crafting, smelting and recycling. Keep or cut, you tell us.
• Low ping. Hosted in africa-south1, the only reason the server exists. Next wipe: Thursday 5 Nov, 21:00 SAST — come and play the week, then tell us what to change.