One of the biggest factions servers
InfusedMC was one of the biggest factions servers back in the day. We were its main developers: we built its custom faction cores, did the optimization work, and kept the servers running.
Our job came down to one thing: making sure every map was a success, both in gameplay and in performance.
Why factions is hard to keep fast
Factions is one of the hardest gamemodes to optimize. A raid can put huge amounts of TNT and falling blocks in the air at once, and cannons depend on exact Minecraft physics: change how TNT or sand behaves to save performance, and cannons that worked yesterday stop working.
So the usual shortcuts are off the table. The server has to stay fast under raid load without changing the mechanics players have built their cannons around.
Custom faction cores
We built InfusedMC's faction cores ourselves. That meant the gameplay and the performance were both ours to tune, and we could fix problems at the source.
Seasons that went smooth
With the cores and the optimizations in place, seasons went smooth: cannons worked, raiding worked the way it was supposed to, and the map was a success.