King Mechanics

The king plate is the central scoring mechanic in KOTL. A claim begins only when a player physically activates the exact pressure plate location stored for their arena.

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Claim Validation

KOTL checks crown claims in this order:

1. The player must be inside an active arena.
2. The activated block must equal the arena’s stored king plate.
3. If the player is already king, king-settings.become-king-in-a-row must allow repeated claims.
4. The player must pass the arena-specific king cooldown unless they have the configured bypass permission.
5. PlayerBecomeKingEvent must not be cancelled.

If any check fails, the claim does not update scores, cooldowns, announcements, fireworks, or knockback.

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Cooldown Settings

Setting	Default	Description
king-settings.cooldown	5	Seconds before the same player can score again in the same arena. Set 0 to disable.
king-settings.cooldown-override-permission	Empty	Optional permission that bypasses the king cooldown.
king-settings.cooldown-bar	true	Shows remaining time and progress in the action bar.
king-settings.cooldown-when-alone	false	Applies cooldowns even when only one player is inside the arena.
king-settings.show-cooldown-on-rejoin	true	Restores an active action bar cooldown when the player re-enters the same arena.

Cooldowns are stored in memory by player UUID and arena ID. They do not survive a full plugin reload or server restart.

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Repeated Crown Claims

When king-settings.become-king-in-a-row is true, the current king can step on the plate again after passing the cooldown. KOTL sends game.king-retained instead of game.new-king.

When it is false, the current king cannot score again until another player becomes king.

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Score Updates

A successful crown claim:

• Adds 1 to the winner’s total score.
• Adds 1 to the winner’s score for the current arena.
• Adds 1 to tours_played for every player inside the arena.
• Stores the winner as last-king.
• Replaces top-king and top-king-score only when the new arena score is higher.

Note

The top king record is based on the player’s accumulated score for that arena, not the number of consecutive claims in one visit.

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Plate Knockback

The plugin pushes a successful king away from the center of the pressure plate so narrow towers cannot be held indefinitely.

Setting	Default	Description
king-settings.plate-knockback.enabled	true	Enables post-claim velocity.
king-settings.plate-knockback.horizontal-strength	1.25	Horizontal force away from the plate.
king-settings.plate-knockback.vertical-strength	0.45	Upward velocity added to the push.

If the player’s position does not produce a usable direction, KOTL falls back to the opposite facing direction and then to a fixed horizontal direction.

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Celebration Fireworks

When fireworks-on-new-king is enabled, KOTL launches one firework above the plate and six delayed fireworks at open positions inside the selected game area.

Random positions are rejected when they are too close to players or do not have enough passable space. If no safe position is found, KOTL falls back to the area or plate location.