Starbound Server Adaption

[Rynea]

As I'm currently looking into adapting the server I'm running I thought I'd share the information I've gathered and experienced so far.

Maybe others make other experiences or find out other details that can be useful for a server, please share them!

Basic Information on my Setup:
Dedicated Root Server, 32GB RAM
Running on a Windows 2008 R2 Enterprise Server VM, ESXi 5.1
The usual Mirrored Raid configuration, SATA Drives 10k RPM 2x 1TB

Idea / Theme / Basic Server Information:
.) Mostly Vanilla Server
.) Password protected
.) Anywhere from 1-20 players
.) Co-Op, No PvP
.) Bigger ships

Overview Changes that I've tested and got working so far, though not sure if I will actually change anything, so far i only tested it, but I've kept it vanilla.

In general, you can change/edit most settings in different config or image files that you find in your installation folders. In specific the ones I'm editing are in ...

E:\Starbound\assets

...or the location wherever you saved your game, for steam users this is normally under..

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\common\Starbound\assets\

..per default

Setting a password for your server:
You find the default config file, where you set passwords, ports, admin access and the like directly in the assets folder. The file that you are looking for is named default_configuration.config

There you find something along the lines of:

"serverPasswords" : [
"yourpasswordhere",
"yourpassword2here",
"yourpassword3here"
],

You can just edit the password(s) by changing the yourpasswordhere to something else. Only one password is necessary, you can of course add more than one, like the example above where we have 3.

Don't forget to delete the other default passwords!

Setting an admin who has access to admin commands:
This goes a little bit more into details, especially when you use a host and not a local server. I will make another post with the details when I get home.

Different ships
You find different files under /ships in the assets folder. Each race has its own ship, which is made up of a config file, a coloured map file that acts as sort of overlay to define what is a useable/clickable part and what is the outline of your ship which is not visible to the end user, as well as an actual image file that the end user will see. I will also make a more detailed post about it once I get home, perhaps make a tutorial video too.

Additional quests / custom quests (only similar quests to the already existing ones)
Currently there is only a custom racial starting "quest" thats more of a starting text for your race, as well as all of the follow up quests that we have so far. This can be easily adapted to have additional quests beyond the starting questline. I didn't test any more than that yet, for example I didn't test any hunting quests that go beyond the "collect X of an item" default quest definitions.

You find the default quests in (who would have guessed!?) /quests
To expand on the vanilla questline, you can simple set one of your own quests give the file a name and then add it to the "follow up" of the last questline


Why no PvP? Several reasons.
1) It gets more complicated and needs more adaptions, all of which I don't have the means at the moment.
2) As the game isn't balanced at the moment, PvP doesn't make a lot of sense to me. It's just a 1 hit kill scenario every time.

[Rynea]

A little update. Things are changing way too fast for me right now honestly. I give it some more time before I try modding stuff, otherwise things change under my nose without me being aware of it.