How to host your own Space Engineers Server

At the latest since the release of the final version on February 28, 2019, the sandbox computer game Space Engineers has thrilled space fans worldwide. Whether an asteroid field or an alien planet - the diverse game worlds offer hobby space engineers plenty of ad­ven­tures and surprises. If you want to explore the game together with friends and ac­quain­tances and enjoy maximum freedom, you should play Space Engineers on a dedicated server.

What are the re­quire­ments of the server software, and how can you host your own dedicated Space Engineers server?

If you want to play Space Engineers together in mul­ti­play­er mode online, you have three options:

1. Join a community or public dedicated Space Engineers server.
2. Host a server on your own PC
3. Host a server on external server hardware

The simplest solution for a shared Space Engineers adventure is un­doubt­ed­ly the first option: You choose a suitable, freely ac­ces­si­ble server and join it together, without having to worry about hosting. However, in this case you won’t have any decision-making power about the game world’s texture or the use of mods. Besides, you won’t have control over whether and when the server is online.

The latter problem also exists in option number two: If you host the game on your own PC, the Space Engineers server will only be available when your device is turned on. Besides, since the technical re­quire­ments are very specific, due to many moving and in­ter­act­ing objects with real-time physics, it requires a very powerful PC, even if you plan to only have two to four players.

To achieve an optimal gaming ex­pe­ri­ence when hosting a Space Engineers server, it is therefore rec­om­mend­ed to use external hardware resources, which you can rent from various hosting providers for a monthly fee.

A dedicated server is the best possible solution for long-term mul­ti­play­er ad­ven­tures. The server is in­de­pen­dent of in­di­vid­ual players and also has the advantage of running without rendering and video and sound effects. This favors excellent con­nec­tion and top per­for­mance with low server lag.

Nev­er­the­less, due to the com­plex­i­ty of the game, which results from the high rate of movement and in­ter­ac­tion of objects, among other things, the hardware re­quire­ments should not be un­der­es­ti­mat­ed. The developer Keen House Software rec­om­mends the following minimum setup on the official website:

• Processor: 3.2 GHz (3 logical cores)
• RAM: 6 gigabytes of RAM
• Bandwidth: 5 Mbps

If you want to run a Space Engineers server with the maximum limit of players rec­om­mend­ed by Keen House Software (16 players), you should take the hardware setup a step further:

• Processor: 4.5 GHz (3 logical cores)
• RAM: 10 gigabytes of RAM

Windows is prefer­able as operating system, because the Space Engineers dedicated server

requires that the Microsoft tool col­lec­tion .NET Framework (4.6.1 or later) and the 2013 and 2017 packages of the compilers Visual C++ are installed.

Finding the ap­pro­pri­ate en­vi­ron­ment for hosting your own Space Engineers server is not that easy. Although various providers offer cor­re­spond­ing hosting services - it is not so easy to keep track of the large range of server and cost models. At IONOS you can choose from the following three server models, for each of which there are also different plans:

• vServer (Virtual Private Server, VPS)
• Cloud Server
• Dedicated Server

The three IONOS server models mentioned above differ on the one hand in terms of pricing structure, and on the other hand in the way the resources are made available to customers. Re­gard­less of the chosen model, an external broadband con­nec­tion of the server with up to 400 Mbit/s is guar­an­teed. In concrete terms, the three variants differ in the following points:

When renting a vServer you get access to vir­tu­al­ized resources - so you share the un­der­ly­ing hardware with other customers, whereby this does not mean any loss in terms of per­for­mance. The booked computing power is billed monthly at a fixed price.

The Cloud Server model also gives you access to a vir­tu­al­ized server en­vi­ron­ment. Since this model is billed by the minute, you only pay for the service that you have actually used.

If your choice falls on a Dedicated Server, you rent hardware that is entirely yours to use. The biggest advantage about this model, however, is the strong single-core computing power (up to 3.8 GHz), which plays an important role in the per­for­mance of a Space Engineers server - unlike, for example, a Minecraft server. However, the per­for­mance level is also no­tice­ably reflected in the price.

As mentioned above, each of the three server models is available from IONOS in different plans, which differ in terms of per­for­mance capacity and price. For an optimal start, we have compiled three possible examples for a Space Engineers dedicated server in the following table and assigned matching plans for vServers, dedicated servers, and cloud servers from IONOS.

Once you have decided on a hardware setup and received the access data, you can finally venture into the creation of your own Space Engineers server. In the following tutorial we show the steps required for this as an example for IONOS customers (vServer, Cloud Server, Dedicated Server).

Click the link and keep the “Open with” option. If you are just setting up and es­tab­lish­ing the remote con­nec­tion, a security note will be displayed. Continue the con­fig­u­ra­tion process by clicking on “Connect”.

Finally, enter the cre­den­tials for your Space Engineers server. Click on “More options” and “Use another account” and enter the in­di­vid­ual cre­den­tials there. If you have not yet cus­tomized the cre­den­tials of your IONOS server, you will also find the au­to­mat­i­cal­ly generated startup data on the overview page of the server data in the Cloud Panel - under “Users” and “Initial Password”.

At the same point in the Steam client, you can run the Space Engineers dedicated server software following the in­stal­la­tion by pressing the “Start” button that is now available. The client will sub­se­quent­ly au­to­mat­i­cal­ly ensure that any ad­di­tion­al software required to host the server is down­loaded and installed (such as .NET framework).

Before you get into the deeper con­fig­u­ra­tion, you can specify in the “Global con­fig­u­ra­tion” section whether the server’s log files should be time­stamped and sent to the developer Keen House Software.

With “Local/Console” there is a pre­de­fined instance available, which is always executed in the fore­ground and is perfectly suited for your first own Space Engineers adventure. Al­ter­na­tive­ly, the “Add new instance” button allows you to create ad­di­tion­al server instances, but each will run as Windows services in the back­ground.

New instances also appear in the small overview window after creation. Select the preferred solution by left-clicking and press “Continue to server con­fig­u­ra­tion” to create the con­fig­u­ra­tion for your dedicated Space Engineers server.

Once the Space Engineers server is created and started and the port is enabled (may require a reboot), you and other users can connect to the server. To do this, start the game on your device and select “Join Game” from the main menu.