---
title: "Hosting an Avorion server: the complete guide"
description: "The galaxy seed is locked at creation. Why 8 GB and not 6, the server that shows up in no public list, and the shutdown that saves on its own."
url: https://tickserv.com/guides/avorion-server-hosting
site: "TickServ (https://tickserv.com)"
lang: en
published: 2026-09-07
games: [avorion]
---
# Hosting an Avorion server: the complete guide

Avorion is a persistent-galaxy game: you build a ship, set up a station, and come back three evenings later where you left off. As long as the game lives on one player's PC, it stops when they disconnect — and nobody else can make progress. A dedicated server fixes that, and here it is only billed for the hours it runs.

## 1. Create the server

Pick **Avorion**, the RAM and the performance level. The server starts on its own; you get a stable connection address and a password to share.

Only one choice is made **at creation and cannot be revisited**: the **galaxy seed**. Left empty it is drawn at random; filled in, it gives back exactly the same galaxy.

## 2. The first start generates the galaxy

The game is baked into the image we serve: there is **nothing to download** at start-up, unlike most Steam servers. What the first start spends its time on is **generating the galaxy**, before the server announces itself as ready. Later starts are shorter: the galaxy already exists and is simply loaded.

## 3. The settings you can change any time

| Setting                     | What it changes                                                                                       |
| --------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Welcome message**         | Shown to players as they join.                                                                        |
| **Player-to-player damage** | Off, nobody can shoot an ally. On by default.                                                         |
| **Same starting sector**    | Everyone starts in the same place — the setting to keep if you want to play together from minute one. |
| **Infinite resources**      | Asteroids never run dry. For building without constraints.                                            |
| **Collision damage**        | Normal, halved, or none. Halved, manoeuvres forgive a lot more.                                       |

They are changed from your console and take effect on the next start.

## 4. Joining the game

In the game, connect to the server with the **address and port shown in your console**, then enter the password.

You have **no ports to open**: the game port (27000) and the three Steam ports the server uses are already in place.

The server takes **4 players by default, up to 10**.

Two details that save an unpleasant surprise:

- Your server is **not publicly listed** in the game's server browser. You connect by its address, and the password stays the door. That is deliberate: a server among friends has no business in a public list.
- There is **no console** for Avorion in your account. Its admin protocol is not the one we speak on the other games, and we would rather not open a door we do not control. The address, the server state and the connected players are still visible.

## 5. Your galaxy is kept between sessions

When you stop the server, the game receives the shutdown signal, **saves**, then exits: that is its own behaviour, and the one we rely on. The galaxy is then archived and restored on the next start, on a brand-new machine.

Avorion can also make its own backup copies inside the galaxy folder; we leave those **disabled**, because we are the ones taking the archive — an internal duplicate would only make it bigger without protecting anything more. The backups option, for its part, keeps several of them, spread over several days back.

Already have a galaxy running? Bring it over:

1. Grab your **galaxy folder**: the one that contains `sectors/` and `server.ini`.
2. Zip **its contents** — or the folder itself, we strip that level on our own.
3. Upload the archive when you create the server.

## 6. How much RAM?

Avorion is the hungriest game in its category here, and that is not an opinion: the two technical pages we checked before opening it both ask for **6 GB of memory** for the server, one quoting “4 to 6 GB” and the other 6 GB flat.

| Your game                | What we recommend |
| ------------------------ | ----------------- |
| 1 to 10 players, vanilla | 8 GB              |

Why 8 and not 6: those are **machine** gigabytes, not an internal game setting. Asking for 6 GB on a 4 GB VM leaves nothing for the system or the disk cache — the next tier up is the first one that keeps the promise. The same sources also mention a quad-core CPU: if you tend to gather in a single sector, that is the argument for the **dedicated CPU** level rather than the eco one.

The price follows the RAM and the performance level, **never the game**.

## 7. Shut it down when you are done

Server off = €0. Auto-shutdown kicks in on its own once nobody is connected, and the galaxy comes back untouched next time. On a game played in campaigns — two intense weeks, then nothing until the next update — that is where the gap with a monthly plan opens up.

> [Create your Avorion server](https://tickserv.com/games/avorion) · [What it costs, exactly](https://tickserv.com/cost/avorion)