Setting up a server, need some direction!

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    after sinking 600+ hours playing this game on many different servers- I decided i wanted to try my hand at world building. So I have a host and a server ready to go for running another server ( I know, not another one haha)

    Since I am unaware of of all the things that I can change and the ramifications of changing them would anyone give me some pointers from what you guys have learned when setting up servers? everything from balancing blocks, economy, size of ships, entities per ship allowed etc... how to setup the AI factions and such.

    What has worked and what is working for you?
     
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    A lot of it is personal preference but these are the ones I like.
    Server.cfg
    SECTOR_SIZE = 7700. Gives a nice 16km sector.
    THRUST_SPEED_LIMIT = 200 up to you, too high has issues but the default is to slow if you've increased sector size.
    DEFAULT_BLUEPRINT settings set to false except for the faction one.
    UNIVERSE_DAY_IN_MS = -1 stop the systems from moving.
    ASTEROIDS_ENABLE_DYNAMIC_PHYSICS = true I've found it may give you a bit of a ping spike when the double roids spawn and bounce off each other but it doesn't give the same crippling lag issues you get when they double spawn and stay on top of each other. Unless you want to disable spawning altogether...
    WEAPON_RANGE_REFERENCE = 3850.0 the new setting I've been putting to half sector size so still not sure on this.
    These ones!
    PLANET_SIZE_MEAN_VALUE = 50.0
    PLANET_SIZE_DEVIATION_VALUE = 0.0
    Bloody laggy planets. Bain of admins! Set them to these settings and they're tiny cute little things so even if people still futz around on planets it doesn't bring your server to its knees.
    Decent roids so people don't get the urge to mine planets...
    ASTEROID_RADIUS_MAX = 75
    ASTEROID_RESOURCE_SIZE = 5.0
    ASTEROID_RESOURCE_CHANCE = 0.006
    PLAYER_MAX_BUILD_AREA = ? Keep it lowish, 20-50. A miss click with all plains on spawning millions of blocks is not a good thing.
    ASTEROID_SECTOR_REPLENISH_TIME_SEC = 86400... my preference, takes a long time for them to respawn but they will eventually.
    ONLY_ALLOW_FACTION_SHIPS_ADDED_TO_FLEET = true Stops some shenanigans particularly in relation to noob ships in the spawn. Up to you.

    Also have a look in GameConfig.xml and adjust to your liking. In particular that's where Sun damage can be adjusted. We upped the time it takes before damage occurs to 20 seconds to give a chance to turn around and GTFO. You can also set the spawn inventory and add a custom BP for your new players to use on arrival. You'll also want to set your block limits there.
    The other settings to look at are the customFactionConfig/FactionConfig.xml. Again a lot of it is personal preference. These are tricky to get right and there's a lot of different opinions around on them. Depends a lot on how you want your server to play. I suggest doing a bit of research on the forums for this.

    There is no 'right way' but these would be the ones I would have liked to know about when I started out. Good luck.
     
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    THIS!!! THIS IS WHAT I NEEDED! Thank you! I am still looking to hear from anyone and everyone. I am happy to have a beginning! YarHAR!
     

    DrTarDIS

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    faction config and the factions folders are important to investigate if you want to say, switch your traders(and/or pirates, and/or outcasts etc..) to custom ships from community content.

    the enable old power flag needs to say set to true unless you completely wipe out and replace all the current factions. If you do eliminate all the "basic content" that comes bundled with server & factions, and update all NPC assets to new systems you can disable that flag.

    Take a loook through blockbehaviour.xml if you do not disable old power. You might want to put the old power and effects blocks back into shops so players can bot repair captured NPC ships and/or sell off the salvaged power/effects blocks. I think the flag looks something like "sellable in shops=true/false"

    Even if you do disable old power look through that xml to see if there's anything you want to tweak (like reactor distances, thrust curve etc...) you'll need a basic understanding of exponents and logarithms to efficiently change the values (but trial and error works too).

    If you dislike the crafting chain, or just want to lower the cpu/ram in the server, lowering the resource cost per block (again, BBC.HTML) is a good way to make it so players have to mine less to get ships in play. Lots of mining -> lots of block changes server has to write to HDD & send to clients -> more data usage on your server package. Alternatively, you can change how many capsules come out of the basic resource crystals etc to get the same effect with less reading & writing (cause one way you change EVERY/most blocks, the other you just change the resource crystals) If you go with that simple way you can change the mass/volume of the raw resources to be larger along with the larger refined value to keep your balance.

    Player inventory volume is important to watch if you're handing out lots of starter package resources, I was on at least one server that started you off with something like 900% inventory capacity and thus every new play just bled blocks into space while they franticly built a storage container.


    No matter what you change, keep two copies of all your cfg and xml files in two seperate folders from starmade itself, and a copy of your edited factions folder chain again outside starmade itself. One set that is just a backup of the last config you liked, one set that you actively edit and copy overtop of the files in the starmade directory. That's mainly because updating the server can really screw with you if it decides to put the "default" assets back in.
     
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    after sinking 600+ hours playing this game on many different servers- I decided i wanted to try my hand at world building. So I have a host and a server ready to go for running another server ( I know, not another one haha)

    Since I am unaware of of all the things that I can change and the ramifications of changing them would anyone give me some pointers from what you guys have learned when setting up servers? everything from balancing blocks, economy, size of ships, entities per ship allowed etc... how to setup the AI factions and such.

    What has worked and what is working for you?
    If you get this up and running and the ping is not too great for me in the UK I'd love to jump on and play on the same server again. Would be cool to appear in a MRG video again though I am planning on my own series of videos once life allows me.
     
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    I would love to have you on! and if you ever need any help on your vids, I am open to it!
    [doublepost=1531065946,1531063629][/doublepost]
    If you dislike the crafting chain, or just want to lower the cpu/ram in the server, lowering the resource cost per block (again, BBC.HTML) is a good way to make it so players have to mine less to get ships in play. Lots of mining -> lots of block changes server has to write to HDD & send to clients -> more data usage on your server package. Alternatively, you can change how many capsules come out of the basic resource crystals etc to get the same effect with less reading & writing (cause one way you change EVERY/most blocks, the other you just change the resource crystals) If you go with that simple way you can change the mass/volume of the raw resources to be larger along with the larger refined value to keep your balance.
    .
    This sounds like a great plan! thank you!
     

    Edymnion

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    On the subject of large sectors, a warning. The game engine loads by sector. Which means the bigger the sectors, the more work the server has to do to track everything going on in them. So bigger sectors = more RAM usage. If you're running the host on a beast of a machine, yeah, bigger sectors are nice. If you're on an econo-box, big sectors will slow the game to a crawl for everyone.

    ---

    You should also identify what kind of server you want, and adjust (or not adjust) things accordingly.

    Do you want a survival server? If so, don't mess with things like mining ratios. The need to go out and mine and gather resources ever more efficiently is basically the only real gameplay built into the engine right now. Cranking the mining up so high that one or two asteroids gives you a lifetime supply of mats defeats the entire purpose of having a survival server.

    Do you want a build server? Then you're going to want settings that encourage building. Creative Mode being on is obvious. Adjusting the advanced build area higher is important as well. Thing with the build area is if you go too high, a bad click can crash the server when someone tries to drop a solid block of 500x500x500 blocks at once. Generally I find 50x50x50 to 100x100x100 to be a good range to be in for a build server, 25x-50x for a non-build server. The default 10x is just too damned low for anything.

    The AI difficulty settings are also important to not mess with too much. Right now, they're basically accuracy settings, and they apply to ALL AI in the game, not just the pirates. I've been on servers that had it turned so low that turrets wouldn't hit anything and even lock on missiles couldn't hit a target because they constantly missed and just went into eternal looping orbits around the enemy.

    Also need to decide on what level of PvP (if any) you are comfortable with. Is your server going to be a free-for-all wild west style server, is it going to be a "no pvp at all" server, "only PvP that both sides agree on first" server, or what? And then you're going to need to be ready to enforce those rules.

    ---

    Some basic protection for newbies on the server is also usually a good idea. At the very least I'd say making a couple of sectors radius around spawn protected. That way no one can camp newbies or snipe them as soon as they log in. Makes for a safe space for new players to build their beginner stuff in without getting blasted off the server by assholes. Because it won't matter what the server rules are, there will always be griefers who make one off accounts just to screw with people, so some actual mechanical limitations are good to slowing down how much damage they can do.

    ---

    You should also probably institute some basic build/play restrictions as well. Like no ships over X meters (the bigger the ships, the more strain it puts on the server). That you should dock anything you aren't actively using (again, free-floating ships put more strain on the server). Don't take ships over X size within Y kilometers of a planet (big ships near planets... you guessed it, strain the server).

    ---

    Other than that? I'd actually recommend keeping settings as close to vanilla as possible. The more you start changing default settings, the less people are going to be able to import/export their stuff between your server and their SP/other server saves. What works in your server and what works on others might end up being so different as to be incompatible, and that is going to suck for anyone who wants to make cool stuff on your server. If someone is going to dedicate hours, days, weeks, or even months to building something awesome, they don't want it to be confined to only one server, they're going to want to be able to take it with them, and the more off your server settings are, the harder that is for them to do.

    While some players may like legacy power, you're basically shooting your server in the foot by supporting it. Its a dead system, the game will never go back to using it, so you've put a hard cap on where your server can go if you do. Its just not worth it.
     
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    While some players may like legacy power, you're basically shooting your server in the foot by supporting it. Its a dead system, the game will never go back to using it, so you've put a hard cap on where your server can go if you do. Its just not worth it.
    Until at least all the default stations (and ships for that matter,) have been upgraded to new power turning off legacy power is not really an option. I'm certainly not looking forward to the drop in station variety that's going to cause. Have got a whole bunch downloaded from the Dock and all the different stations really make exploring fun. A lot of the stations appear to be from old players and now look abandoned so I'm not holding my breath for them to be updated any time soon. Just updating my own is taking a lot of time. You can't just go replace the power, it's quite a challenge and requires significant rework. Putting big cubes of blocks into some of the older stations just doesn't work. They need to be re-designed and rebalanced entirely... and then there's the turrets... lots of work required that's going to take time. The amount of work that's been made redundant by these updates... sheesh. It's going to be a while before the StarMade ecosystem recovers from the devastation. So I'm keeping legacy around for now, the universe is just empty and lifeless without it.
     
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    Edymnion

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    There's a difference between leaving old power in for supporting those old ships/stations, and making a legacy server that ONLY uses that power.

    Of course leave the toggle on to let the old stuff work, thats default settings right now. Just don't let anyone craft the old power so that anything new is forced to use the new power.

    Support the old during the transition, but don't encourage it to be used in anything new. Because eventually the only people left who played with the old system will fall away, and new people won't care about it, and won't really want to use it because it can't be used anywhere else.

    Supporting the old is fine, but limiting yourself to it is just a good way to limit the server.

    I've seen servers on the list crowing about being exclusively legacy power, and I at least actively avoid them.
     

    therimmer96

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    There's a difference between leaving old power in for supporting those old ships/stations, and making a legacy server that ONLY uses that power.

    Of course leave the toggle on to let the old stuff work, thats default settings right now. Just don't let anyone craft the old power so that anything new is forced to use the new power.

    Support the old during the transition, but don't encourage it to be used in anything new. Because eventually the only people left who played with the old system will fall away, and new people won't care about it, and won't really want to use it because it can't be used anywhere else.

    Supporting the old is fine, but limiting yourself to it is just a good way to limit the server.

    I've seen servers on the list crowing about being exclusively legacy power, and I at least actively avoid them.
    If you don't like it, don't play on it. Simple.
     

    Edymnion

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    If you don't like it, don't play on it. Simple.
    Pretty sure thats what I just said I do.

    He's asking for advice.

    My advice is "Don't marry yourself to an outdated, dead system that will only lose players as time goes on."
     
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    Few Corrections/Suggestions:
    Do a bigger cursor area than 20. Servers with build areas in the 50-100 range tend to be more successful because it encourages people to design ships in game; so, if your server can handle it, bigger is definitely better. I used to actually prefer building online than locally because I could offload some of the processing onto the server. People who design their ships in game will be online 10x as often, and therefore lead to a larger and healthier player community. IE: new players always prefer to join the servers where they already see people.

    Don't base ship restrictions on length or block count because you will be constantly investigating ships people complain about. Mass is the most enforceable since any player can see any other player's mass and report violations accurately with just a screen shot. Entity count is also a good thing to limit both in terms of how many drones a person can fleet and how many pieces a ship can be made out of since this all causes collision lag. 100 tiny drones/turrets can cause more lag than a single massive titan.

    Don't use smaller sector sizes. It does not use more RAM to make sectors bigger, because how much is in a sector stays the same. If your sectors are too small then fights will lag and desync as ships constantly cross sector borders causing constant loading and unloading of data. 10km is a good size IMO because it is big enough to have a fight in and easy to convert distance to sectors/systems in you head. IE: 10 star systems away = 1000km
     
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    awesome help everyone! I will certainly take all this under advisement. - will leave in old power for the AI so we don't have dead systems but will make it useless for players.

    make the build area reasonable with a 50. I hate the local game limit of 10 as well.

    not mess with much else until I know what it will do to the ecosystem.

    I also like the idea of making the Non- PVP zone larger for new players. Is there a way to make more than area a non pvp zone?

    I would like to seed a few large trade stations throughout the galaxy and reduce the amount of little stations populate. try to draw in more people in certain areas and be safe once they are there.
     

    Edymnion

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    I also like the idea of making the Non- PVP zone larger for new players. Is there a way to make more than area a non pvp zone?
    You're looking for the advanced command sector_chmod

    /sector_chmod SectorX(Integer), SectorY(Integer), SectorZ(Integer), +/-(String), peace/protect(String)

    Thats /sector_chmod as the command, the XYZ coordinates of the sector you want to change, and then +/- to add/remove the desired change, and then peace/protect to make it either so hostile npcs (pirates) won't spawn/no one can attack anything.

    So to protect a sector next to spawn (which is at 2 2 2 by default), you'd do this:
    /sector_chmod 2 2 3 + protect

    Sector 2 2 3 would then be protected and anything in it would be immune to attack.

    Here's a list of more commands:
    https://starmadepedia.net/wiki/Commands