--- title: "Hosting a Barotrauma server: the complete guide" description: "Only a campaign writes a save, the server turns away clients on another version, and the RAM tier above would add nothing — a single core is what bounds it." url: https://tickserv.com/guides/barotrauma-server-hosting site: "TickServ (https://tickserv.com)" lang: en published: 2026-09-08 games: [barotrauma] --- # Hosting a Barotrauma server: the complete guide Barotrauma is played as a crew, in a submarine crossing Europa: a pilot, a mechanic, a medic, and a campaign that carries on from session to session. That is exactly what makes hosting on one player's PC painful — the campaign sleeps when they close the game, and the crew cannot move on without them. A dedicated server fixes that, and here it is only billed for the hours it runs. ## 1. Create the server Pick **Barotrauma**, the RAM and the performance level. The server starts on its own; you get a stable connection address and a password to share. There is **nothing to lock in at creation**: the campaign, the submarine and the game mode are picked **in game**, by the crew, once connected. ## 2. A short start-up The game is baked into the image we serve — 252 MB, nothing like an ordinary Steam server. On every start the server still checks with Steam that it is up to date, then launches. Measured on our pre-production on 8 September 2026: **server reported started 1 min 13 s after the container launched**, verification included. If Steam is unreachable, the server **still starts** with the game from the image: an outage on their side is no reason to leave you without a server. ## 3. Joining the game In the game, connect with the **address and port shown in your console**, then enter the password. You have **no ports to open**: the game port (27015) and the query port (27016) are already in place. The server takes **8 players by default, up to 16**. Two things worth knowing up front: - Your server is **not publicly listed** in the game's browser. You connect by its address, and the password stays the door. That is deliberate: a server for friends has no business in a public list. - ⚠️ **Barotrauma turns away a client whose version differs from the server's.** That is a constraint of the game, not a hosting policy. Our servers follow the published version — a restarted server comes back on the current one, the very one Steam has already updated your players to. ## 4. Settings you can change whenever you like | Setting | What it changes | | -------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | **Play style** | Casual, Serious or Roleplay — the label players see, and the tone it announces. | | **Karma** | Off by default. On, the game punishes anyone sabotaging the sub or hurting the crew, all by itself. | Everything else — a good hundred round rules — is changed **in game**, in the server options, and what the crew changes there is kept from one session to the next. ## 5. No console in your account, and we measured why On most games in our catalogue your account shows a console: connected players, a button to kick, one to ban. **Not here**, and the reason deserves to be stated plainly rather than glossed over. Barotrauma's server only listens to its console if it runs in a real terminal. Without one it says so itself and ignores everything we send; with one, it asks that terminal a technical question before every reply and **eats our command while waiting** — tested on a real machine on 8 September 2026, a perfectly clean order came back as "command not found". A console that receives gibberish is not a console. And even solved, it would not have given you buttons: this game's kick and ban commands are **interactive** — they ask for the reason, then the duration — whereas a button only sends one line. What you keep: the address, the server state, the logs, the number of connected players, auto-shutdown — and the **Karma** setting from §4, which is the automatic moderation the game itself knows how to do alone. ## 6. Your campaign is kept between sessions On shutdown the server gets its exit signal, writes its save, then exits. The folder is archived and restored on the next start, on a brand-new machine. ⚠️ **One thing to know about this game in particular: only a campaign writes a save.** A "mission" or "sandbox" round leaves nothing behind — that is how the game works, not an archiving fault. If you want your progress back, start a **multiplayer campaign**. Already have a campaign running? Bring it over: 1. Grab your campaign's **`.save`** file, from the `Multiplayer` folder of your Barotrauma server. 2. Put it in the archive — several campaigns can travel together. 3. Upload the archive when you create the server. We file them in the right place **keeping their names**: the crew finds its campaign under the name they gave it, and picks it in game. ## 7. How much RAM? This is the leanest game in our catalogue, and our two sources agree. The **developers** put their server at "a few hundred MB — 1 to 2 GB is plenty" for a small crew; specialist hosts recommend 4 GB from twelve to sixteen players or with mods, for real-world usage measured between 2.5 and 3.2 GB. | Your game | What we recommend | | ------------------------------- | ----------------- | | Up to 16 players, the full crew | 4 GB | ⚠️ **And the tier above would add nothing**, which is rare enough to be written down: what bounds Barotrauma is not memory but the **speed of a single core** — its server logic is largely single-threaded. If your sub stutters with a large crew, the lever is the **dedicated CPU** level, not more RAM. The price follows the RAM and the performance level, **never the game**. ## 8. Mods Barotrauma goes through the Steam Workshop, and we do not manage its mods: there is nothing to upload in your account. ⚠️ **Every player installs the mods on their side** (Workshop subscription), and the crew must have exactly the same list. Remember too that the server follows the published version of the game: after an update, a mod left behind may stop working. ## 9. Shut it down when you are done Server off = €0. Auto-shutdown kicks in on its own once nobody is connected, and the campaign comes back untouched next time. On a game played in crew evenings, that is where the gap with a monthly plan opens up. > [Create your Barotrauma server](https://tickserv.com/games/barotrauma) · [What it costs, exactly](https://tickserv.com/cost/barotrauma)