CatchTheBeacon

Team PvP minigame for Paper – Red vs Blue on a sky map, every team guards two beacons (cores). Break both enemy beacons to win. Known as Cores or Destroy the Core, and a good fit for everybody who likes BedWars – but without generators and without waiting for a shop.

• ⚔️ Attacks need teamwork – near an enemy beacon you get Mining Fatigue: one player mines for about 15 seconds, the rest of the team keeps them alive.
• ⛏️ No generators – iron and diamond blocks are part of the map. Steal the enemy's iron, guard your own.
• 🚀 Playable in minutes – drop a supported map into a folder and the arena sets itself up, or use the guided setup for your own map.
• 🌐 One server or a network – runs on a single server or with one game per server behind Velocity.
• 🎮 Java and Bedrock – Bedrock players (Geyser/Floodgate) get forms instead of chest menus.
• 🌍 English and German included, every message can be changed (MiniMessage).

📖 Documentation · 🐛 Report a bug or suggest a feature

Quick start

1. Put CatchTheBeacon.jar into plugins/ and start the server.
2. Download the map Sakura by BreadBuilds, put the zip into plugins/CatchTheBeacon/maps/ and restart. The arena and the lobby are set up automatically.
3. Players join with /ctb join – the round starts as soon as enough players are in the lobby.

Your own map: /ctb arena create <name> --world <world>, then /ctb arena <name> setup and follow the checklist (every team needs a spawn and two beacons). More in the documentation.

Features

Gameplay

• Two beacons per team – both enemy beacons destroyed = victory. A boss bar shows everybody when a beacon is being mined.
• Mining Fatigue around beacons – breaking a beacon takes about 15 seconds, attacks need teamwork.
• Base defense – the team is warned when enemies come close, every beacon has a trap (blindness + slowness), defenders regenerate near their beacons and campers get poison.
• No generators – iron and diamond blocks of the map give armor and swords when mined.
• Fair start – a fresh kit on every respawn (16 arrows, wool, stone tools, leather armor in team colors), 3 extra hearts, spawn and respawn protection, a compass pointing to the next enemy beacon.
• Modern or 1.8 PvP – with or without attack cooldown.
• Variants – players vote in the lobby: Rush (beacons break twice as fast, events come twice as often), Bow only, No iron, One hit.
• Timed events – beacon protection ends after 10 minutes, effects after 15, the round ends after 25 (all configurable).
• The whole map can be broken – or only placed blocks, with protected blocks of your choice.
• Stats, leaderboard and achievements – kills, deaths, K/D, wins, beacons, /ctb top, 8 achievements, a round summary with MVP. SQLite or MySQL/MariaDB.
• Spectators and rejoin – watch running games, players who lose their connection get back into their team.
• Balanced teams by win rate, team chat with ! to shout, game chats don't mix with the server chat.
• Tips for new players during their first rounds.

For server owners

• Guided arena setup – /ctb arena <name> setup gives you hotbar tools for spawns and beacons and a checklist.
• Map presets – a supported map is set up automatically, the lobby comes with the plugin.
• Join signs and NPCs – [ctb] signs with live status, Citizens or FancyNpcs as join NPCs.
• Game manager GUI – /ctb game lists, starts, stops and creates games.
• Velocity network – one game per server, a lobby server with join signs that show the state of every game server, shared stats in MySQL.
• VIP perks (ctb.vip) – start the game, join full lobbies, double vote, join message, kill particles and a victory firework. Cosmetic only, no advantage in the fight.
• Your world stays untouched – inventories, stats, advancements and recipes of the players are saved and given back.
• Clickable commands in chat messages, placeholders for PlaceholderAPI and MiniPlaceholders.

Languages

Every text is in messages.yml and can be changed. For another language copy the file to messages_<language>.yml and translate it – missing texts fall back to English. Translations are welcome as a pull request.

Supported plugins

All optional:

Requirements

• Paper 26.2 or 26.3 (forks of Paper like Purpur work too, Spigot doesn't)
• Java 25

Commands

All commands, permissions and placeholders: commands · placeholders · network

Privacy

CatchTheBeacon sends anonymous statistics (bStats), anonymous error reports (Sentry) and checks GitHub for updates. Everything can be disabled – see PRIVACY.md.

License

Apache License 2.0