Avorion Dedicated Server Requirements: RAM Follows the Galaxy, Not the Players
Avorion server sizing confuses people because the obvious number - player count - is the wrong one. Two friends with a mature late-game alliance will work a server harder than eight players who started last week. Here is how the load actually behaves and what to provision for it.
The unit of cost is the loaded sector
Avorion simulates a sector while anything is happening in it: a player present, a ship in transit, stations producing. Each loaded sector runs on one thread. So the real questions are how many sectors your galaxy keeps loaded at once, and how fast one CPU core is - not how many people are online tonight.
This is also why late-game lag on cheap shared hosting is the most common Avorion complaint: the galaxy's simulation demand grows for months while an oversold host's per-instance CPU share stays flat. The server that felt fine in week one starts stuttering in month three, and no config tweak fixes hardware that was sized for week one.
Sizing table
| Galaxy stage | RAM | CPU | Typical shape |
|---|---|---|---|
| Early co-op | 4 GB | 2 fast cores | A few loaded sectors, no unattended production |
| Mid-game alliance | 6 GB | 2-4 fast cores | Stations producing while owners are offline |
| Late-game / public / modded | 8 GB+ | 4 fast cores, high clock | Many concurrent sectors, mods, past the barrier |
Prefer clock speed over core count. Extra cores help when many sectors are loaded, but each individual sector is bound to how fast one core is.
Install and platform
Avorion ships a native Linux dedicated server, installed with SteamCMD using anonymous login - no Wine layer, no game-owning Steam account on the server. The galaxy lives in its own folder, one per galaxy: that folder is the save, the backup unit, and the thing you migrate when moving hosts. Bringing an existing galaxy to a new server is a folder upload plus a restart.
Ports
Avorion uses a small contiguous UDP range from the base game port: the game port, a query port that makes the server visible in the list, and a Steam master-server port. The classic symptom of a closed query port is a server that never shows in the browser while direct IP joins work perfectly - if that is you, it is the query port, not the server.
The settings that actually move performance
- Simulated sector limit and sector update rate - the two real performance dials. Raising the limit on undersized hardware is the standard way people create their own late-game lag.
- Alliance limits - more alliances mean more unattended production, which means more permanently loaded sectors.
- Mods - Workshop mods must be present on server and clients alike, and heavy content mods raise per-sector cost.
Self-host or rent
Avorion self-hosts well on a machine with a fast CPU that you control outright. The failure mode is renting undersized shared hosting and growing a serious galaxy on it. If you rent, size for the galaxy you intend to have in month six, not the one you have today - our Avorion server hosting plans are laid out along exactly the table above, on high-clock nodes, with the galaxy folder yours to export at any time.