Good server hosting

[RaymondIII 6]

Im sorry if i posted this in the wrong area, but i want to invest in my own TFC server, but im having a hard time finding a good hosting company, any suggestions? also how many GB should i buy for this kind of mod, i do know it does take alot to run TFC but i would like to know a good estimate.

[Bunsan 323]

It depends on how many players you plan to have online together. Like SSP you'll want at least 2gb to run well. Also don't forget fastcraft on server as well. Can't help with hosting companies though.

[Kittychanley 1,002]

Cubedhost is really good. Their prices are a bit higher, but it's worth it.

[RaymondIII 6]

thanks i appreciate it, now when i buy the server from them how do i get TFC mod plus fastcraft onto it?

[InsaneJ 561]

Ask the hosting company how to install mods on their service. They should be happy to explain how this works which should give you an indication if they are the kind of hosting company you're looking for.

 

As for your question about RAM. Like Bunsan said it depends on how many players you want to be able to join. It depends heavily what the players are doing on the server. For example a single large farm with a lot of tiled soil and a lot of fruit trees can bring down a high end server due to the amount of tile entities being used. In my experience it's impossible for any TFC server to have more than 30 players on that have a decent progression in the game without the server starting to lag. Whereas with regular Minecraft 300 players isn't a problem.

 

HappyDiggers has two TFC instances running with 8GB each that can hold up to 20 players and it's generally lag free (server wise). When we let more players in the server becomes CPU bound around 25 players due to Minecraft being a single threaded application which can't take advantage of multiple CPU cores. And like I said earlier, at 30 players it starts to lag quite badly at times depending on what people are doing. If for example you allow players to teleport you can expect a small lag spike each time someone teleports. With 20 players on our Regular TFC server people teleport on average twice per minute to town spawns and "homes". The tile entities mentioned above come into play when there are too many tiled soil blocks and fruit trees loaded which can happen if people scatter instead of live together in a few large towns. The same goes for farm animals which is why we limit those things via the server rules.

 

Lastly what kind of server do you want to run? Regular Forge or Cauldron with Bukkit plugins? Cauldron as a server is vastly superior to regular Forge performance wise but that's only an issue with 10 players or more. Do you want to run additional mods/plugins or only TFC? Keep in mind that the TFC devs do not support platforms or mods that modify Minecraft base classes like Cauldron and Optifine. With the exception of Fastcraft it looks like, although I'm not sure why that is. (Is there perhaps a forum post somewhere explaining the official standpoint on Fastcraft?) Regardless if you're going to use Cauldron or mods that modify Minecraft base classes you may encounter problems that need some special attention with which you can't get help on these forums. So if you want to go the way of least resistance, go with regular Forge as a platform and no mods outside of TFC.

 

A rough estimate on RAM usage with players doing lots of TFC stuff (tiled soil, fruit trees, animals, multi-block structures, the works):

5 players - 2GB

10 players - 4GB

15 players - 6GB

20 players - 8GB

Again, RAM usage depends heavily on what players are doing in game and if you're running additional mods or plugins.