Space Age - running a server?

[nuclearpidgeon]

Hi all,

Really excited to try out Space Age when it launches in the next few days. I've been planning to run a home server for some friends and just wanted to understand what may or may not be involved to to this.

Will Space Age require a new server binary download? Or is it like a modpack that you would just apply to the current Stable / 1.1.110 release?
And will it work/be available for Linux on release?

I ran a quick search for some info but couldn't seem to find any answered questions about the topic...

[Sanqui]

Space Age will release simultaneously with a 2.0 update, and both will require you to upgrade from 1.1.110.

The game will be available on Linux on release, in both regular and headless versions. The freely distributed headless version will come with Space Age support.

[morse]

The game will be available on Linux on release, in both regular and headless versions. The freely distributed headless version will come with Space Age support.

Does it mean that there won't be a separate server binary for space age hosting? How do you switch the game between "vanilla" and "SA" then?

[vinzenz]

if you give the headless binary a vanilla save it will boot in "vanilla mode" without the feature flags

[terror_gnom]

and what will it do, once spaceage is released, when you run

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factorio --create

? That's right now my approach to start a vanilla, blind default-settings spaceage run

[morse]

This is also how the pterodactyl/pelican script does it. Checks if the savefile exists, and runs

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--create

if it doesn't. I guess there should be a switch in

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map-gen-settings.json

. At least that's how I would implement it

[Mole]

With the release in a few hours, could you confirm if there are any major changes in public API of the headless version? Many of us are probably looking to have server running (with vanilla settings) for the first playthrough with friends shortly after release. Knowing whether to expect the server to _just work_ would be helpful for the ones who take a break from work just to play the game

[vinzenz]

The headless server hasn't changed much. The biggest change is that it requires a newer glibc version 2.30.1, so make sure your servers are on debian 11 or newer equivalent. By default --create wil produce a space-age save. If you want to change it to vanilla you need to create a mods/mod-list.json like this.

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{
  "mods": 
  [
    
    {
      "name": "base",
      "enabled": true
    },
    
    {
      "name": "elevated-rails",
      "enabled": false
    },
    
    {
      "name": "quality",
      "enabled": false
    },
    
    {
      "name": "space-age",
      "enabled": false
    }
  ]
}

[nuclearpidgeon]

Thanks for all the info folks, appreciate it

[Eiermann]

I recommend creating the save game locally and upload the save file to the server. Doing it like this has the big benefit, that you can tweak the map generation parameters in the GUI till it matches you expectations (eq. amount of water and so on). I do hope that the space-age flag is part of the save game and i can still use this method for new servers.

[vinzenz]

I recommend creating the save game locally and upload the save file to the server. Doing it like this has the big benefit, that you can tweak the map generation parameters in the GUI till it matches you expectations (eq. amount of water and so on). I do hope that the space-age flag is part of the save game and i can still use this method for new servers.

yes that will work, might have to run factorio with

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--sync-mods

once

[Eiermann]

Worked just fine. I just had to remove outdated mods.

[bjQrnen]

Any way of confirming if the save on the server is space age or not?

[mothravsmechabilbo]

Pre-Space Age I ran a vanilla factorio server on a spare Mac mini just using the downloaded non-steam version of the game and started it with the command line. Is there a way to do this with 2.0.8 and include Space Age as well? My Mac server version of Factorio auto-updated to 2.0.8, but there is no Space Age content.