Avorion Server Hosting

Why Avorion Plays Best on a Dedicated Server

Avorion starts you at the edge of a galaxy torn apart by a ring of broken hyperspace, with an alien race, the Xsotan, at its centre and a strange metal called Avorion waiting there. You build ships out of freely scalable blocks, fight pirates and factions, mine, trade and slowly work your way inward, where things get more dangerous and more rewarding.

It is a long game, and much of it happens while you are not looking. Captains fly your extra ships on mining, trading and scouting commands; stations and factories attract NPC traders; fleets in distant sectors keep earning. A galaxy hosted on one player's PC stops when they log off. A dedicated server keeps the whole economy running for everyone.

It also puts the group on equal terms. Nobody has to wait for the host to be online, the galaxy lives on hardware built for it, and you choose the mods, the rules and the admins.

Playing Together in One Galaxy

Boxelware built Avorion around co-op. You can build stations together, fight pirates and enemy factions side by side, and even crew one ship together, with one player steering and another firing the weapons. Or, as the developer puts it, you can blow your friends apart: it is a sandbox.

Steam lists Avorion with online and LAN co-op, PvP and cross-platform multiplayer, and the game runs on Windows, macOS and Linux. A group with mixed computers can share the same server.

Progression, Captains and Update 2.0

Update 2.0 in September 2021 changed how a galaxy unfolds. Instead of building anything from the start, players now unlock each material by gaining building knowledge, either by beating a boss or a tough pirate encounter, or by buying it at a shipyard. Material limits also cap processing power and ship size until you progress.

If your group prefers the old free-form approach, Classic mode keeps it. Decide which you want before you start a galaxy, because it shapes the whole campaign.

The same update gave captains personalities, perks and quirks, and turned their orders into contracts. Tell a captain where to mine and which escort to take, and they handle the rest, from finding asteroids to refining the ore and sending you the yield. On a server that keeps running, that is what turns a few ships into an economy.

Workshop Mods on Your Server

Avorion has Steam Workshop support, and the server loads mods from a file called modconfig.lua. In our panel you edit it with the text editor in Configuration Files.

1. Stop the server.
2. Open modconfig.lua with the text editor.
3. Add each mod to the mods list as {workshopid = "ID"}, with no comma after the last entry.
4. List optional, server-only mods such as UI mods under allowed, as {id = "ID"}; these are not pushed to players.
5. Save and start the server, then check the log.

Mods in the main list are sent to players when they join, so nobody has to subscribe by hand. Choose gameplay mods before a galaxy starts where you can; adding or removing them mid-campaign can cause problems in an existing galaxy.

Black Market, Into The Rift and the Behemoths

Avorion has two paid expansions and one free one. Black Market, released on 2 November 2020, adds three syndicates with more than 20 story missions, bosses, hidden traders, smuggling and a hacking upgrade. Into The Rift, from 4 August 2022, is a hardcore add-on that sends small groups of ships into the dangerous Rift dimension on research expeditions, with full co-op support for Rift missions.

The Behemoth Event Series, released free on 5 December 2023, sends very large ships to attack random sectors every few hours in all four directions of the galaxy. The whole galaxy hears about it, and a sector falls if nobody stops the attack. Player-owned sectors are safe.

Behemoths can be switched on or off, and Boxelware's store page says players do not need the DLC to play on a multiplayer server that has it enabled. That makes it an easy way to give a community galaxy shared events to rally around.

Slots, Memory and What Makes a Galaxy Heavy

Player count is only part of the load on an Avorion server. The galaxy itself matters more: every sector players have visited, every station, factory and fleet, every wreck from last night's battle. A small crew that has spread across hundreds of sectors can ask more of a server than a bigger group that stays together.

Boxelware does not publish a memory figure, so our plans use our own sizing: 5GB on 12 slots, one tier more on each bigger plan, up to 16GB on 100. Battles with many fighters, turrets and ships shattering into blocks are the moments that test the CPU, which is why every plan runs on 5.0GHz cores.

Our order form sells any slot count from 12 to 250. Start with what your crew needs and grow later; the galaxy does not move when you change the plan.

Admins, Updates and Keeping the Galaxy Safe

Make yourself admin first: create a custom command line with your Steam64ID in the Commandline Manager and select it. After that, admin commands work from in-game chat with a slash in front, or from the Web Console. /admin -a adds another admin, /kick, /ban and /banip deal with trouble, and /whitelist turns the server into a members-only galaxy.

Boxelware tests patches on a beta branch before putting them on default, and the default build is what a server should run. When a patch lands, update the server with Steam Update so it matches your players, and take a snapshot first.

For a long campaign, keep backups at two levels: panel snapshots before any change, and an occasional download of the galaxy folder over SFTP. Use /save before a planned restart so the latest state is written to disk.

What to Compare Before You Rent an Avorion Server

The details that decide how a galaxy feels after a month.

1. Memory that grows with the galaxyCheck what each plan includes and whether you can raise it without moving the galaxy.
2. Mod file accessYou need to edit modconfig.lua yourself to add and remove Workshop mods.
3. Flexible slotsA slider from 12 to 250 lets you pay for the crew you have.
4. UpdatesOne-click and scheduled Steam updates keep the server on the players' build.
5. Backups you can downloadLook for snapshots and SFTP access to the galaxy folder.
6. Locations with a ping testCombat and docking feel better on low latency. Test first.
7. Billing termsCompare monthly against 3, 6 and 12 month prices, and check for setup fees.

Avorion Server Glossary

Galaxy

The saved universe on your server: sectors, factions, stations and ships.

Sector

One area of the galaxy map. Ships travel between sectors by hyperspace jump.

Xsotan

The alien race at the centre of the galaxy.

The barrier

The ring of torn hyperspace around the core that normal engines cannot cross.

Building knowledge

What unlocks a new material in Update 2.0 progression.

Captain

An NPC who flies one of your ships and carries out commands such as mining or trading.

modconfig.lua

The server file that lists Workshop mods to load and server-only mods to allow.

Behemoth

A huge hostile ship from the free event series that attacks random sectors.

Avorion Server Help and Next Steps

Official pages and our own guides.

• Avorion official siteBoxelware's page for the game.
• Avorion on SteamPatch notes, DLC and the Workshop.
• Add Workshop mods to your serverOur modconfig.lua guide.
• Avorion admin commandsThe full list from our knowledge base.
• Gaming Deluxe control panelWhat the panel does and how to log in.
• Contact support24/7 help with mods, galaxies and backups.