Hosting a server, I have a question

[Ac0rn]

I'm looking to pay an external service to host a dedicated satisfactory server for me and my friends (approximately 6-7 of us). I understand the local multiplayer has a 4 person limit unless you edit the game files. The question is, if I host a server through a third party, will it actually have the player count I pay for or will I still need to edit the game files?

[Zak]

Thanks! Yeah, I know the requirements, but I was wondering if they may be somewhat optimistic. I never ran a game server.

That machine is 100% dedicated to run the DS, Windows is stripped down to bare minimum of services (or I may put Linux on it again) and the NVME SSD is 256GB and only has Windows on it, so plenty of space. I've run it for few months and it worked fine for me, but that's just one person. I was wondering though of it can handle more players. I can put 32GB of RAM in it, if needed.

1.0 should have improved DS too, so we'll see.

[guska]

Originally posted by Zak:

Originally posted by Jack-o-Lantern:

a rented server can have more power than a spare pc

Don't they run in VMs though, on shared hardware? I never used one but I'm curious. I used shared VMs for web hosting or cloud services but I never rented a game server. A shared VM for a website is no problem but for a game server it could be less than optimal. I'm gonna have to try one simply out of curiosity.

Oh, and there is one downside to hosting Satisfactory with a commercial host: it does not run 24/7 if no players are connected, to preserve server resources, so production stops. At home, you can have your production running 24/7 even if no players are connected. For other games that may not be an issue.

Any hosting company worth paying is going to run VMs, even ifyou pay for dedicated hardware. It just makes sense, as that allows proper snapshots and rollback/restores can take minutes, rather than hours.

The server shutting down will depend on the host, and your settings. By default, the dedicated server will go into stasis (essentially stop simulating) when nobody is around. You can change this, but it's not generally recommended, as things tend to break if left to their own devices for too long.

Originally posted by Zak:

So, what are good game hosting companies? Indifferent Broccoli I have heard of. But yeah, $12.99/month for the minimum plan of 8 players is not very economical unless you do actually have 8 people playing and all 8 people chip in, then it would make sense.

For the performance, backups, support and uptime you're paying for, it's highly unlikely that running a server at home is going to cost less than that. Power costs will vary depending on the hardware, but you also then need a second machine (or hosted space) for backups, you might need to pay a bit more for your internet in order to get the upload speeds needed to support multiple people playing at once (this one is less of an issue nowadays though), and you need to factor in the time you will spend maintaining, upgrading and supporting your server.

I will always be an advocate for self hosting as much as you can (I have 4 servers, with 11 VMs across them, multiple AMP Instances and Datastores, media server, FTP, VPN, and redundant high availability web servers) but will always try to make sure that people are aware of the costs involved. My setup costs me around AU$400-600/yr in power alone as i run enterprise grade networking equipment and rack mounted servers, and it necessitates running A/C all year round.

If you're dabbling and just learning about servers and config, I'd say rent one for a while first. Then, once you have the hang of administering what they expose, move to hosting on your main PC when you want to play, and then, if the bug bites, and you want to branch out to more hosting, then look at starting to do it yourself on dedicated hardware.

[Zak]

Thanks a lot again for all the details. Much appreciated :)

I have Gigabit fiber, Oh, I've got my own Nextcloud, webserver, Pihole running, the whole home lab :) and lots o backup space across several servers so that won't be a problem. I'm familiar with Ubuntu Server and have been doing this for many years. I just never ran a game server. Energy costs should be way less that $13/month too. I was just wondering if that little guy can handle more players.

It's an i5 7500T mobile SKU so slower than a desktop 7500 model, but it's quite power efficient. All my servers run on even slower, tiny Optiplexes because of the energy costs considerations and space :) I also have spare 6700K and 9900K but then power costs will indeed become a factor for a 24/7 operation. My gaming PC already adds significant costs to my electric bill and electricity prices are going up 30-40% this year :( The 6700K draws over 3x as much power as the 7500T not to mention the 9900K.

Overall my setup is quite power efficient and generates little heat. I live in fairly cold climate now, in Poland so I have no need for AC. I used to live in NYC before and summers were very hot. We had to run AC pretty much 24/7 from late May to early September.

[guska]

Originally posted by Zak:

Thanks a lot again for all the details. Much appreciated :)

I have Gigabit fiber, Oh, I've got my own Nextcloud, webserver, Pihole running, the whole home lab :) and lots o backup space across several servers so that won't be a problem. I'm familiar with Ubuntu Server and have been doing this for many years. I just never ran a game server. Energy costs should be way less that $13/month too. I was just wondering if that little guy can handle more players.

It's an i5 7500T mobile SKU so slower than a desktop 7500 model, but it's quite power efficient. All my servers run on even slower, tiny Optiplexes because of the energy costs considerations and space :) I also have spare 6700K and 9900K but then power costs will indeed become a factor for a 24/7 operation. My gaming PC already adds significant costs to my electric bill and electricity prices are going up 30-40% this year :( The 6700K draws over 3x as much power as the 7500T not to mention the 9900K.

Overall my setup is quite power efficient and generates little heat. I live in fairly cold climate now, in Poland so I have no need for AC. I used to live in NYC before and summers were very hot. We had to run AC pretty much 24/7 from late May to early September.

I'm not real sure how the Satisfactory DC scales with users, but the wiki page says that it benefits from single core performance, which makes sense. 2.7/3.3GHz should be fine for more players, assuming one big factory, rather than 8 slightly smaller ones. It's the factory itself that will be hitting the CPU hard with its calculations, rather than the players with their relatively simple movements.

[Lord Enclave]

Originally posted by Zak:

Originally posted by MrSchmo:

Thanks for the info. NOw I need a server lol

Or host your own :) No need fo anything powerful. I run mine on one of those tiny Dell Optiplexes with an i5 7500, 16GB of RAM, tiny M2 SSD and no GPU. We'll see tomorrow, but the server requirements are very low compared to the main game. Something like this should suffice to handle two players, maybe more. You can grab one of those used, post-lease for around 100 USD/EUR or less. These are popular office machines and companies get rid of them en masse, in good shape, every few years.

Hmm, now that's a good idea. As i was planning to get a new PC, i might turn this one into a server. Should i just leave Win10 on it, or pick another OS?

[Ondratra111]

Originally posted by guska:

Originally posted by Zak:

Or host your own :) No need fo anything powerful. I run mine on one of those tiny Dell Optiplexes with an i5 7500, 16GB of RAM, tiny M2 SSD and no GPU. We'll see tomorrow, but the server requirements are very low compared to the main game. Something like this should suffice to handle two players, maybe more. You can grab one of those used, post-lease for around 100 USD/EUR or less. These are popular office machines and companies get rid of them en masse, in good shape, every few years.

That machine will run it just fine, as long as you've got the 25GB space on that M.2 (with 10+GB to spare). I run a Satisfactory server alongside 4 Ark servers and a Soulmask server on an old NUC with a i3-1115G4 (2C4T) with 64GB RAM and SATA SSD, and Satisfactory rarely uses more than about 12GB even when starting up. Game servers are generally pretty light, especially when only being used by a few people.

https://satisfactory.fandom.com/wiki/Dedicated_servers#Requirements

Reminder that the Fandom wiki is not maintained: https://satisfactory.wiki.gg/wiki/Dedicated_servers#Requirements

[Zak]

Originally posted by guska:

I'm not real sure how the Satisfactory DC scales with users, but the wiki page says that it benefits from single core performance, which makes sense. 2.7/3.3GHz should be fine for more players, assuming one big factory, rather than 8 slightly smaller ones. It's the factory itself that will be hitting the CPU hard with its calculations, rather than the players with their relatively simple movements.

I guess I'm gonna have something to tinker with :)

Originally posted by Ondratra111:

Reminder that the Fandom wiki is not maintained: https://satisfactory.wiki.gg/wiki/Dedicated_servers#Requirements

Oh yeah, I missed that. You're absolutely right!

[Buddha]

Originally posted by Zak:

So, what are good game hosting companies? Indifferent Broccoli I have heard of. But yeah, $12.99/month for the minimum plan of 8 players is not very economical unless you do actually have 8 people playing and all 8 people chip in, then it would make sense.

I've used many host from 200$ to 4$ monthly subs and I can tell you indifferent broccoli is good, i only discovered it recently and hosted few servers on it without a problem and the best part is you pay for players slots+uncapped ram unlike the expensive one where you have to pay for ram to increase player capacity 😂

[Zak]

Originally posted by Lord Enclave:

Originally posted by Zak:

Or host your own :) No need fo anything powerful. I run mine on one of those tiny Dell Optiplexes with an i5 7500, 16GB of RAM, tiny M2 SSD and no GPU. We'll see tomorrow, but the server requirements are very low compared to the main game. Something like this should suffice to handle two players, maybe more. You can grab one of those used, post-lease for around 100 USD/EUR or less. These are popular office machines and companies get rid of them en masse, in good shape, every few years.

Hmm, now that's a good idea. As i was planning to get a new PC, i might turn this one into a server. Should i just leave Win10 on it, or pick another OS?

I'm not sure, but since the DS isn't doing any fancy GPU stuff I'd say Windows 10 should be fine. The DS runs Unreal Server and even full UE5.4 Engine supports Windows 10.

Another option would be Linux server, like Ubuntu server, it uses less RAM than Windows 10 or 11 but you'd need to do admin it from a terminal. How much RAM does your PC have? Windows uses 2-3GB while Ubuntu Server OS uses less than 1GB so you're saving close to 2GB of RAM going the Linux way. But if it has 16GB or more then Windows 10 will be fine.

[Zak]

Originally posted by Buddha:

Originally posted by Zak:

So, what are good game hosting companies? Indifferent Broccoli I have heard of. But yeah, $12.99/month for the minimum plan of 8 players is not very economical unless you do actually have 8 people playing and all 8 people chip in, then it would make sense.

I've used many host from 200$ to 4$ monthly subs and I can tell you indifferent broccoli is good, i only discovered it recently and hosted few servers on it without a problem and the best part is you pay for players slots+uncapped ram unlike the expensive one where you have to pay for ram to increase player capacity 😂

Thanks!

[Lord Enclave]

Originally posted by Zak:

Originally posted by Lord Enclave:

Hmm, now that's a good idea. As i was planning to get a new PC, i might turn this one into a server. Should i just leave Win10 on it, or pick another OS?

I'm not sure, but since the DS isn't doing any fancy GPU stuff I'd say Windows 10 should be fine. The DS runs Unreal Server and even full UE5.4 Engine supports Windows 10.

Another option would be Linux server, like Ubuntu server, it uses less RAM than Windows 10 or 11 but you'd need to do admin it from a terminal. How much RAM does your PC have? Windows uses 2-3GB while Ubuntu Server OS uses less than 1GB so you're saving close to 2GB of RAM going the Linux way. But if it has 16GB or more then Windows 10 will be fine.

Thanks for the info.
I've got 16GB, then i might as well leave win10 on it. Though i can always upgrade the RAM if needed, these old ones are cheap these days.

[guska]

Originally posted by Ondratra111:

Originally posted by guska:

That machine will run it just fine, as long as you've got the 25GB space on that M.2 (with 10+GB to spare). I run a Satisfactory server alongside 4 Ark servers and a Soulmask server on an old NUC with a i3-1115G4 (2C4T) with 64GB RAM and SATA SSD, and Satisfactory rarely uses more than about 12GB even when starting up. Game servers are generally pretty light, especially when only being used by a few people.

https://satisfactory.fandom.com/wiki/Dedicated_servers#Requirements

Reminder that the Fandom wiki is not maintained: https://satisfactory.wiki.gg/wiki/Dedicated_servers#Requirements

Thanks, I waw writing this pre-coffee this morning. Good catch

Originally posted by Lord Enclave:

Originally posted by Zak:

I'm not sure, but since the DS isn't doing any fancy GPU stuff I'd say Windows 10 should be fine. The DS runs Unreal Server and even full UE5.4 Engine supports Windows 10.

Another option would be Linux server, like Ubuntu server, it uses less RAM than Windows 10 or 11 but you'd need to do admin it from a terminal. How much RAM does your PC have? Windows uses 2-3GB while Ubuntu Server OS uses less than 1GB so you're saving close to 2GB of RAM going the Linux way. But if it has 16GB or more then Windows 10 will be fine.

Thanks for the info.
I've got 16GB, then i might as well leave win10 on it. Though i can always upgrade the RAM if needed, these old ones are cheap these days.

Yep, Windows 10 will be fine. I'd reinstall it so you're starting clean, but otherwise, it should run it just fine.