How to set up a Starbound dedicated server

The popular indie game Starbound has been on the market since 2016, but is as popular today as it has ever been. This is not least thanks to continuous innovations and developments in the game. In multiplayer mode as in single player mode, players can tackle a series of quests in outer space. With your own Starbound server, you can start an adventure for yourself and your friends with ease (and less lag).

There are several ways to play Starbound in multiplayer mode:

1. Add friends via Steam: You can invite your friends to your Starbound game via Steam. However, this is only possible with a maximum of four people.
2. Community server: Together with your friends, you can join an accessible community server.
3. Own Starbound dedicated server: With your own Starbound server, you can create a game just for you and your friends.

The most convenient way to play Starbound in multiplayer is to set up your own Starbound server. You can install any number of mods for the game and have full control over who joins your game. Furthermore, you won’t be limited in the number of people you can play with. In contrast to the community servers, your own Starbound server also has the advantage that players cannot join the game without being invited by you. So, there’s nothing standing in the way of a joint space adventure with your friends!

As soon as you host a game server on your own computer, you’ll be running the server and the game on it. This means that the resources of powerful gaming PCs can become exhausted fairly quickly. Another important factor for the stability of your server is your Internet connection. A download rate that is too low can lead to lags in the game, which cause certain game contents to be loaded with a delay. These kinds of loading problems are particularly annoying in tense or high-stakes game moments.

By hosting a dedicated Starbound server, you can easily avoid these kinds of problems. No official information about the necessary hardware performance of Starbound servers has been provided by the developers yet, but it is possible to make basic statements about the necessary server performance due to the known system requirements of the game.

The required performance strongly depends on how many players you want to play with on your Starbound server. The more gamers, the more server power is needed.

The CPU seems to be particularly important for Starbound’s performance, seeing as the game’s graphics are also generated with the help of the CPU. For this reason, it is better to choose a higher processor performance if possible. Because the indie game uses a CPU core for the server and a CPU core for the client, it is advisable to go for a high core performance.

For a few players, two processor cores with at least 2.5 GHz are adequate. For more than four gamers, it is recommended to go for a quad-core processor, and for more than ten gamers on a regular basis, it is definitely worth switching to a six- or even eight-core processor.

RAM is crucial for a gaming experience without memory leaks. Minimal server configurations with 4 GB RAM should be enough for games with up to four players. However, if you want to have more players on your server, who also act on different planets in the game, the minimal setup will no longer be enough. In this case, you will need at least 8 GB of RAM. In any case, 16 GB of Ram should be considered a safe performance solution for most use cases. Since the number of players in Starbound is unlimited, a very high number of players at the same time could possibly lead to 16 GB RAM not being enough anymore.

The requirements for the available hard drive space are small for a Starbound server compared to the space usually needed. For the Steam game client as well as for the Steam application, you need around 3 GB of storage space. This does not include backups of game saves or similar, so you will also have to consider the storage space required for this if necessary. The operating system you install on your server also requires memory. For the popular Windows Server 2016 or 2019 operating system, 32 GB is a good estimate. If you want to host Starbound on an Ubuntu server, you’ll want to plan for at least 2.5 GB of storage for the Linux distribution.

To avoid lags, the Starbound server needs enough bandwidth. Especially with an increasing number of players, the bandwidth should be about 10 Mbit/s. With professional providers, this upload speed is not a problem. However, if lags occur, you should check whether your provider limits the maximum upload speed. This is often the case by default. A conversation with your provider can solve this.

Of course, you can host your Starbound server on your own computer. Besides the high operating costs that come with private hosting, the performance of your own computer is often a problem for many players. This is because you cannot easily adjust the server capacities to an increased number of players in this case. Therefore, it is worthwhile considering professional providers like IONOS.

The offers from IONOS includes several variants of servers:

• Dedicated Server: The hardware is 100% dedicated to your application purpose, you don’t have to share the resources.
• vServer (Virtual Private Server): You can access virtualized server environments.
• Cloud Server: you can access virtualized server environments and constantly adapt them to your needs.

The differences between the individual server models available at IONOS lie primarily in the pricing structure and the way in which resources are made available to you.

If you want to rent a Starbound dedicated server from IONOS, you will be assigned hardware that is 100 percent dedicated to your purpose. This strong performance has a price impact; however, thanks to per-minute billing, you don’t pay more than you used in server performance.

Both the cloud and vServer are virtualised server solutions. However, unlike the vServer, the cloud server is billed by the minute and can be scaled at any time. With the vServer, billing is based on a fixed monthly amount.

For each of the presented server models, there are various plans that are differently suited for different use cases of your Starbound server. The following table provides a brief overview of different Starbound scenarios and the appropriate plans for each server model:

Once you have decided on a server configuration, you still need to select a suitable operating system. For a Starbound dedicated server, the Microsoft server system Windows Server and the Linux system Ubuntu are equally suitable, so the choice is yours.

In the following tutorial, we will show you how to create your own Starbound server and play the indie game together with your friends. The server system used is Windows Server 2016.

After you have logged in with your credentials, the server will open.

As the leader of your space adventure, you can now join your friends in exciting quests.