I start: Satisfactory - because having your production running 24/7 really makes this game even more enjoyable and satisfying. There are just docker container for the server out there.
What games do get better for you trough selfhosting the server?
For sure Minecraft Modpacks. Can set up factories for stuff you need and leave it running.
Terraria
That’s what I played, they already have been mentioned.
Would have loved it to have a Arma 2 Dayz Mod Server when it was on its peak. Get myself enough loot and raid other ppl on the official servers. But there were enough unprotected “hack” servers where you just could hack in your loot without getting banned. Oh Yea was a fun time. No, I never teleported ppl or nuked a whole server. I just got myself back what other hackers destroyed.
OpenTTD - the transport tycoon game
Terraria, using Tshock.
Conan Exiles, 7 Days to Die, Space Engineers, Memories of Mars, Ark, V Rising.
I host quite a few servers for our gaming community and mostly it just keeps griefers out and allows people to request mods if they want them. More options for more people to have more fun
Just like Satisfactory: Farming Simulator xD With a dedicated server you can choose to keep the sim running while no players are logged in.
It only sucks that they dont offer the server software as a standalone independent free software. Instead you need to buy another copy of the game to run the server with, and im pretty sure if you want to use DLCs, you need to buy those for the server too. Mods of course exist and make some of the paid DLC less interesting. Still not a great practice. Other games only require the host to own DLC and each connecting player can make use of them, while playing on that server. Imo this leads to making a game much more interesting to a small group of friends.
Valheim for sure. My friend and I tried two “Valheim hosts” and it was a nightmare to manage. 15 minutes later, our own server was up and running including V+ and we’ve had no issues since.
I like to make my Project Zomboid server, which I set up to my liking.
I use https://linuxgsm.com/ if possible, which makes setting up a server really easy.
Probably not quite what you mean but Foundry VTT makes playing Role Playing Games like Dungeons and Dragons or Pathfinder online much better. Most competitors are cloud hosted and all but the basic features are locked behind a subscription whereas Foundry is an application you buy outright. The catch is that it still needs hosting somewhere so those with any technical wherewithal either host it in Oracle’s Cloud since “always free” tier VMs are ample to run it or else self-host on a Raspberry Pi or similar. Those who don’t self-host have no other recourse except to pay a housing service like Forge a monthly subscription for a limited amount of disk space
Good question; Game servers are one aspect of self-hosting I haven’t explored yet. Just wondering: How heavy is this? I assume it mostly needs a lot of RAM?
Not as much as you’d think.
Not having to render the graphics at all really helps reduce the performance impact of games a lot, because it basically brings it down to gameplay code only, which is usually not too complex. Any game that has server simulated physics might still get spicy though.
Don’t want to hijack this post, but I’m very interested in setting up my own game servers, but interested in how you all do it - pterodactyl? MineOS? what options are available?
How beefy does the server need to be for Satisfactory?
Not too bad, iirc its like a mid-low range PC from a few years ago.
I suck at anything except Windows and have a machine that I use for hosting 2-3 DayZ servers for friends in addition to Plex. I use Omega Manager for it and it uses a separate Steam account that I own the game on. It manages the mods from Steam workshop too, which is great.
Other good games are 7 days 2 Die, Space Engineers, Minecraft, Valheim, Ark and Connan Exiles. All are great if you want something for your friends or want to host a bigger community.
I’ve messed with CubeCoders AMP a little bit for Minecraft and 7 Days and it worked. There is also WindowsGSM and Pterodactyl which i think is for Linux and Windows.
Happy gaming!
I run a slew of game servers on a proxmox node. What gets used most often are Minecraft servers and Factorio servers.
Rust
Edit:
Check out AMP by cubecoders for an easy to deploy all-in-one game server hosting web interface.
I love it. It supports many of the games mentioned in the thread already.
Terraria and Valheim are two I ran with a lot of success