NS2 Server Config References

Nordic

With this thread I am asking that server operators share their expertise in best settings and practices as a reference for new server ops. The default NS2 settings are not always best. The default config file structure is not always great. Shine settings can be complicated. Share your expertise.

What settings should a new server operator use for each config file?
Is there a setting you think other server operators should try?
What is the best file structure for the config files?
Is there anything else you think should be shared?

Share config files with pastebin or directly on the forums with spoiler and code tags.


To new Server Ops, what one server does may not work for you. Anything posted in this thread should only be used as a reference sheet, not a guide.

TinCan

You know I started the setup of a server a few weeks ago. I'm excited to see what info is shared on this thread. I'm a little disappointed no responses yet. Maybe they don't want to share their secrets.

SupaFred

I don't think there are any "best settings" since everyone likes to configure their servers differently but here are my config files for The Thirsty Onos #22.

Feel free to use anything you find useful in there. Configuring NS2 servers is difficult because there are so many settings and values to tweak and they are spread out over many different files. Also the documentation is pretty poor. My config files can serve as start for anyone that wants to try running a pub NS2 server.

Archie

Problem is half the time the best configuration for servers isn't simply set up in one configuration file

All hardware is different, what might work for you might not work for me, vice versa, hence needing to get some middle-ground.

Hell i had a 4v4 running on a gnu emulator for android, had server up and tweaked the rates and managed it on a galaxy note 2.

Settings splattered around the place( i'll post configs if you want)

Turn off bots
Turn on pre-game alltalk
Enable 6 minute concede
make sure vote-kick bantime is disabled.
use your own consistency file
allow_drawviewmodel:true(i don't like this, but some people QQ)
When giving people admin, make sure you limit them so they don't get access to sh_statusip/sv_statusip, some people might abuse this system and ddos people they don't like
disable ns2feedback
disable reserved slots
disable wonitor
disable quake/killstreak sounds
disable ns2news
make sure disablevanillavotes is false
friendlyfirepregame true

Network commands:

Depends on your upload speed, however be reasonable, average worldwide speed is less then 24/1 so bwlimit <128kb/s, to get a nice sweet spot, you might find that to be double, however as noted from running servers the server might use up to 300kb/s per player when entities/lategame comes around, as per server size that amount increases

bwlimit/sh_bwlimit:
18player and below sh_bwlimit 320
24player sh_bwlimit 512
largeserver (dependent on your upload speed, however 1gbit/s sh_bwlimit 99999)

sh_moverate/mr, probably the most important command of them all, this command can make the quality of the clients inputs feel like butter or feel like your are somehow missing your step and running on rocks all while somehow affecting the sound(contrary to some devs understanding)
default is @ 26, if your server is struggling at all and the idle is dropping below 30, try lowering moverate to 24, please don't lower it below that as it will affect client-side performance and feel like trash to play, increasing this setting will make clients feel much nicer, bullets will be hitting more, bites will be registering more, however the down-side is that it uses more CPU power and will ruin your performance unless you know how to counter that with tcp/ip networking stack tweaks which i won't explain here as it's pretty much dependent on your own hardware. Always monitor your server with net_stats if your idle drops below 30 you might start getting tickrate + idle drops and clients will start lagging, perfmon 3 times will give you a constant output which is somewhat the best way for up to the ms way to find out where things went wrong.

tickrate/sh_tickrate
interp/sh_interp
Don't bother touching the sendrate or changing the tickrate, you won't see much if any hit registration improvement(tickrate change won't make a difference as this only really is affecting the AI movements/game code execution), however you might see client-side performance drop when changing these. Be careful, also sendrate does have its use, but not worth the hassle
Don't touch the interp, even servers which are intentionally hosting for international players, changing from 100ms is very buggy, we've tested* this for numerous hours and over days in Australian servers and it's just not beneficial to touch it in NS2(even for laggers with 250+ms*tested with NS1 vets).

You have
ServerAdmin(not really needed if you are using shine)
ServerConfig
ConsistencyConfig
MapCycle

ns2+ and shine.
NS2PlusServerConfig
Then you have shine configurations which have atleast 10 different .json files.

Always monitor server performance with perfmon.

Also when you are hosting a server, please don't use webmin as this can drop the idle % of the server, also don't open up the console on your desktop and leave it on the foreground, make sure it's always in the background, for some reason this drops the servers idle % which makes the server perform worse.(please note this only happens when you press tab(server console and leave it open) but it's best to keep it in the background

DC_Darkling

Ive said it before.. but in my opinion, new server ops are best of reading all the documentation and joining the discord server ops channel.
As many folk said, half the config is just flavor. (What maps, vote settings etc)
And the other half is related to player size and your hardware and mod mix. That cant be a mere default.

Nordic

TinCan wrote: »

You know I started the setup of a server a few weeks ago. I'm excited to see what info is shared on this thread.

This isn't directed at you Tincan, but everyone. As someone who has set up a server before, this is exactly it. It isn't about what settings other servers ops use, but looking at what decisions they made. Sure we could talk to them, talk in the discord server channel, but that isn't the same.

At most what is posted here is a reference, not a guide. I will make the OP reflect that.

DC_Darkling

2 big things a server op needs to get done asap:

* Decide what to want for a community. (big server like 24+, small so 7vs7 or something similar. Low skill, high skill etc)
* Make sure the server can performance and modwise support the above decision.

Most servers ive seen fail supporting their concept.

Archie

I wonder, does anyone actually need help? rather then acting like your server is actually any good(lol idle drops + hitreg), please message me on steam.

IronHorse

@Archie

Regarding the spoiler tagged "network command" explanations :
I don't know if those were your own words or if you just forwarded that from someone else.. but that is probably the most uninformed explanation of the rates I've ever seen.
You didn't even get the default sendrate right, (it's 20, not 26) and you could have checked that by utilizing the same exact steps you listed in that very sentence?? (perfmon)

Please, if you truly do not fully understand something - especially something that can be detrimental to other's experiences - do not attempt to explain it, as it just spreads misinformation.


Obligatory PSA: Don't mess with server rates unless you understand what each does, as well as their relationship to one another.

Archie

IronHorse wrote: »

@Archie You didn't even get the default sendrate right, (it's 20, not 26) and you could have checked that by utilizing the same exact steps you listed in that very sentence?? (perfmon)
.

My bad, i was copy-pasting the lines from previous notes i had made and forgot to pick the right one, i never actually proof read my stuff when posting from a phone(not that stupid Ironhorse) Also if you read it carefully it's clearly meant to be "moverate" and not "sendrate" but an uninformed person would just assume it was sendrate!

Fixed it up.

To be honest you are right, people shouldn't be messing with rates unless they know what they are doing, however i implore people to go ahead and experiment in your own time but don't lessen everyone elses game-time while experimenting like our fellow UWE friends.

DC_Darkling

That rates explanation is still a joke tbh. Please do not spread misinformation like that.

Archie

DC_Darkling wrote: »

That rates explanation is still a joke tbh. Please do not spread misinformation like that.

Only thing i'll be thanking you is for writing documentation/guides. Trying to trigger me? how is it a joke please explain. It wasn't very in depth, it wasn't supposed to be, but it's more then your shallow replies to all these 'technical' threads. People ask questions, maybe if some of you would be less critical and actually help some of these people asking for help, there would be better Quality Assurance in little community that is swindling for numbers to stay afloat.

Hell, actually you are wrong simply because the network commands in this game lead to very nasty behavior when changing anything, hitbox, sound and gameplay is all affected contrary to some misunderstanding. It's imperative that i don't go too deep into explanation because it just wouldn't make sense as they have such a negative impact, hence why i only mentioned sh_moverate.

GhoulofGSG9

Archie wrote: »

DC_Darkling wrote: »

That rates explanation is still a joke tbh. Please do not spread misinformation like that.

Only thing i'll be thanking you is for writing documentation/guides. Trying to trigger me? how is it a joke please explain. It wasn't very in depth, it wasn't supposed to be, but it's more then your shallow replies to all these 'technical' threads. People ask questions, maybe if some of you would be less critical and actually help some of these people asking for help, there would be better Quality Assurance in little community that is swindling for numbers to stay afloat.

Hell, actually you are wrong simply because the network commands in this game lead to very nasty behavior when changing anything, hitbox, sound and gameplay is all affected contrary to some misunderstanding. It's imperative that i don't go too deep into explanation because it just wouldn't make sense as they have such a negative impact, hence why i only mentioned sh_moverate.

Here's the thing: as the network parameter can affect the quality of the game in such drastically ways you shouldn't modify them ( or recommend others to change them) unless you fully understand the basics of how the "network code" of NS2 works.

Even though Shine has some safeguard checks to avoid ppl messing up totally lowering the moverate or increasing the interpolate frame time too much can increase the client predict misses where the client state gets overridden by the server state on sync. In case that happens the game feels very bad for the given player and can cause all kind of issues with sounds, animations and even with the game logic itself.

Hence please don't adjust those network parameters unless you are 99% sure about what you do. And to make sure you do please read the available guide 2-3 times and afterwards talk about your planned changes with somebody else to avoid making miss-assumptions.

Archie

Thank you GhoulofGSG9 for being more reasonable with your response, with that said "or recommend others to change them" there are other means of reading engine code from raw source older versions (which are outdated btw) build <250's(hi MetalPony) it's not simply empirical evidence from observing all kinds of stats. network analysis is something i do for fun and it's something that i enjoy... that and destroying you in game. With that said, i still don't understand why people shouldn't change commands that actually benefit them, especially when they're hosting on pieces of shit to begin with. Also nice job on hosting those servers on the EC2, they actually did perform alright, no tweaking really needed, amrite?

Also, talking to a few server operators + 1 streamline sales exec (4) (3 of which are top 3 most played servers in NS2 who probably don't want me to name them, simply put "nah we don't want to fix anything, because if we fix it UWE will use that as a new base standard and not fix the underlying cause" there's your problem, again they won't fix the performance issues by changing rates even though they know they can because they don't want you guys to change anything.(sorry matso-kun)

DC_Darkling

@Archie
Perhaps I was more harsh in my answer then I normally am. If that failed to get my meaning across then I apologise. I am not out to kick any long term server ops & I agree the community can use all the help it gets.

I've been spending quite a while now trying to get server admins to use rates correctly, adjusted or not, and start becoming quite grumpy when I see questionable information about rates in a topic which is supposed to be informative.
(And I lost interest in the lesser problems these days due to well.. time)

It is as Ghoul said. Its plenty known that changing rates can cause a lot of weird stuff, and I am not amazed that stuff like sound falls under this category of weirdness.

I am indeed reluctant to talk a lot on this forum about detailed information on rates and settings. There is a reason my guide on server maintenance is as thick as it is. Its not optional info. There are no shortcuts. You said it yourself, its many hours of testing. Folk looking into a forum post for a mere quick fix are already approaching the problem wrong.
Also on a technical point, I would strongly argue you should not lower mr but just lower playercount if the server can not take the rates. Who diminish what we got?

As for changing rates, I do believe it can be of benefit. For folk who are putting time into finding the right rates to improve the server, why not?
But id like it for them to be as much informed as possible.