Questions about dedicated and non dedicated servers

[General Baho]

Hello, new player here, have a couple questions.

me and 2 of my friends have been playing on a non dedicated island map that i host for about 40 hoursish, we regularly have `connection lost` error and we have to restart the server, sometimes even that doesnt help, any way to solve that

second question is, we are almost done with island and which map should we play next, we started on the center BUT we cant get into water without the host going in, is there a solution for that

i heard that dedicated server solves these, my pc isnt amazing, i can host and play the game on medium, can I run a dedicated server? I only want to play with my friends and i want the server to be off when we leave since we sometimes take week long breaks. also if i can run a dedicated one, i saw tons of text on sites, what is a simple way to do it



thanks

[LHammonds]

The point of a dedicated server is to maximize the use of a machines resources to JUST hosting the game. You will get zero benefit if you configure a dedicated server on the SAME machine you are playing the Ark client on.

Also, if your friends are not on the same LAN, the disconnects could be due to your internet upload speed. Mine is like 0.1 mbps up and prevents me from hosting anything more demanding than a minecraft server with 1 other person.

[LHammonds]

Also, you need about 4 to 8 GB per map. You could run a cluster where you can access multiple maps at the same time but the machine needs to be beefy enough to run multiple instances of the game. If you don't have a beefy machine sitting around, you might want to consider renting a server for $15 per month.

[MAU]

If you all get lost connection info at same time its server lag due to memory overload.

[necaradan666]

Originally posted by LHammonds:

The point of a dedicated server is to maximize the use of a machines resources to JUST hosting the game. You will get zero benefit if you configure a dedicated server on the SAME machine you are playing the Ark client on.

Also, if your friends are not on the same LAN, the disconnects could be due to your internet upload speed. Mine is like 0.1 mbps up and prevents me from hosting anything more demanding than a minecraft server with 1 other person.

Not really true, there are plenty of benefits to running a dedicated server over a non-dedi beyond just performance, such as not having to teleport into caves whenever the host enters one, this is especially the case with The Center map, a dedicated server will allow your players to enter the ocean freely, while the map is basically unplayable on non-dedicated. There are many bugs that a dedicated server doesn't have in comparison to non-dedicated.

If you can host the game for a few friends then you can probably run a dedicated server and play the game with a few friends too, and it doesn't hurt to try anyway. I've had the game and a dedi running on various levels of PC from potatoes that only run the game on medium-low to gaming beasts. For just a few friends that don't play regularly I would never bother paying a monthly fee for hosting services. You can run a server yourself for free, look up Ark Server Manager for an easy GUI based way to configure your server files.

Another bonus to a dedicated server is that if you or your players are disconnected for whatever reason, it's likely the server will keep running and you only have to restart your client to rejoin rather than reloading the whole thing. When I was running non-dedi games with my fam we also had a lot more disconnects and failures to join in the first place without restarting the game over and over compared to when I started hosting the same saves dedicated, I think non-dedi is just messier in that regard whether your internet connections are good or not.

[Veeshan]

With four friends you may need a beefier computer. That's potentially four times as many active dinosaurs and loaded resources, as well as caves and underwater Etc. My fairly weak computer runs a server and the client at exceptional performance levels, but I only ever have one player connected.

[Veeshan]

One other minor point about the difference between running your own server and paying for hosting.

When running your own server you can clearly tell that the game was designed to be hosted in an always-on 24/7 state. Things like breeding and crop growth will be obviously wrong. It isn't an issue for me in the slightest but I have seen tons of posts complaining about, for example, dinosaurs taking 6 hours between imprinting sessions, and a full day to reach adulthood. On an online server this would not even be noticed, it would merely be part of the backdrop of handing duties from tribe member to tribe member.

These issues however can be addressed by modifying rates.

[General Baho]

allright, thank you guys, i actually have a laptop that is also decent so if the dedi on pc doesnt work i will play with that pc

[ZorTheCruel]

If you do run the dedi server on a different PC/laptop than the one you are playing on, put the dedi server on the weaker computer. It takes a lot less resources to run the server than it does to actually play in the game client.

I run both on the same computer and I actually got a performance increase (slightly) when i switched from solo games to ASM dedicated server on the same computer that i am playing with. Obviously, your mileage may vary.

Also, I love The Center, you mentioned going in the ocean, and it has the best underwater design of any of the DLC maps, IMO. Enjoy!