Managing Vehicle Decay Settings in HumanitZ Dedicated Servers

Managing Vehicle Decay Settings in HumanitZ Dedicated Servers

In HumanitZ, vehicles are persistent world entities — each spawned or player-modified vehicle is tracked individually by the server with its position, fuel level, damage state, and ownership assignment. On long-running servers without a vehicle decay policy, the map fills with abandoned cars that accumulate in memory, create network desync for players in the vicinity, and reduce the availability of fresh spawns. Properly tuned vehicle decay settings keep the economy of vehicles healthy without frustrating active survivors.

Vehicle Settings in GameServerSettings.ini

All vehicle decay parameters live in GameServerSettings.ini, typically at:

/HumanitZServer/TSS/Saved/Config/WindowsServer/GameServerSettings.ini

Core Decay Variables

[VehicleSettings]

# Hours of real-time inactivity before an UNCLAIMED vehicle begins decay countdown
VehicleDecayHours=24

# Hours of real-time inactivity before a CLAIMED (owned) vehicle begins decay countdown
OwnedVehicleDecayHours=72

# Once decay begins, how many seconds until the vehicle is removed from the world
VehicleDecayDuration=3600

# Maximum total vehicles allowed on the map simultaneously (world cap)
MaxWorldVehicles=80

# Maximum vehicles a single player can own simultaneously
MaxVehiclesPerPlayer=3

# Whether vehicles respawn naturally after being removed by decay
VehicleRespawnEnabled=true

# Minimum time (seconds) between world vehicle respawn attempts
VehicleRespawnInterval=1800

Recommended Configurations by Server Type

🟢 Community PvE Server (Long-Running, Relaxed)

[VehicleSettings]
VehicleDecayHours=48
OwnedVehicleDecayHours=168      ; 7 days — tolerates casual players
VehicleDecayDuration=7200       ; 2-hour visible decay period before removal
MaxWorldVehicles=100
MaxVehiclesPerPlayer=5
VehicleRespawnEnabled=true
VehicleRespawnInterval=3600

🔴 Competitive PvP Server (Fast-Paced, Frequent Wipes)

[VehicleSettings]
VehicleDecayHours=6             ; Unclaimed vehicles gone in 6 hours
OwnedVehicleDecayHours=24       ; Owned vehicles gone after 1 day offline
VehicleDecayDuration=1800       ; 30-minute visible decay
MaxWorldVehicles=50
MaxVehiclesPerPlayer=2
VehicleRespawnEnabled=true
VehicleRespawnInterval=900      ; Rapid respawn cycle — keeps map fresh

🟡 Balanced Community Server

[VehicleSettings]
VehicleDecayHours=24
OwnedVehicleDecayHours=72
VehicleDecayDuration=3600
MaxWorldVehicles=80
MaxVehiclesPerPlayer=3
VehicleRespawnEnabled=true
VehicleRespawnInterval=1800

Vehicle Damage Persistence

Beyond decay, vehicles retain their damage state between sessions. Related settings:

[VehicleSettings]
# Whether parked vehicles take environmental damage over time (zombie attack, weather)
AmbientVehicleDamage=true

# Rate multiplier for ambient damage (1.0 = default)
AmbientDamageRate=0.5           ; Set lower to reduce unfair damage on stored vehicles

# Allow zombies to attack and damage parked vehicles
ZombiesTargetVehicles=true

Monitoring Vehicle Count via Admin Commands

Use in-game admin commands to audit vehicle population before it becomes a problem:

# In chat (after using /AdminAccess [password]):
/vehiclecount          — Shows total tracked vehicles vs world cap
/clearvehicles         — Removes ALL unclaimed vehicles immediately (use with caution!)
/clearvehicles owned   — Removes only unclaimed vehicles (safer option)

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