Looking for a refreshing space sandbox without bloody combat that can keep a few good friends busy for hundreds of hours? ASTRONEER is an excellent choice! Carry your extendable terrain tool between seven planets, dig through their cores, and build automated interstellar railway and logistics networks between worlds. Here is a practical guide to playing as a squad and avoiding common persistent-server pitfalls.
Why Is ASTRONEER Especially Good with Friends?
- Relaxing terrain shaping and industrial automation: Without complex combat pressure, your terrain tool can cut through mountains, fill deep holes, and help build beautiful circular bases as easily as stacking blocks. Combine auto arms, sensors, and railways to create an entire production line: automatically load ore, transport it across a hemisphere by train, then smelt and pack it.
- Squad roles that fit together naturally: One player drives a giant rover in search of research samples and rare minerals; another carefully builds the home base's large solar grid and high-capacity batteries; a third enjoys flying rockets to radioactive and arid planets to establish outposts. As everyone contributes, watching the base expand is deeply satisfying!
- The awe of reaching a planet's core: Drill downward together through the crust and mantle, feel gravity gradually shift, and finally float before the ethereal planetary core matrix. The romance of exploration in that moment is something you have to experience yourself!
Avoiding Pitfalls: Why Set Up a Dedicated Server?
As your squad lays railways across multiple planets and repeatedly reshapes terrain, the amount of physics-collision data grows dramatically. Hosting on a player's own computer can leave others falling through geometry or getting stuck during rocket flights or drilling if the host goes offline or the computer stutters. A dedicated server is the best solution:
- Server AppID:
728470(anonymous SteamCMD download) - Core communication ports:
UDP 8777(main communication port) andTCP 1234(local administration) - Complete setup guide: For detailed configuration parameters, see ASTRONEER Dedicated Server Setup and AstroServerSettings.ini Tuning.
An Easier Way to Manage Your Squad's Server
We recommend our open-source LanGame Server Manager (LGSM) (GitHub: SZSLGJCOM/LanGame-Server-Manager). Its ASTRONEER template offers one-click deployment, automatic port configuration, and scheduled complete live snapshots of world saves, removing worries about train deadlocks or terrain crashes damaging a save.
Playing Across Networks and Joining the Server
- With a public IP: Forward UDP port 8777 on your router. Friends can select “Dedicated Servers” from the main menu and enter
public-IP:8777to arrive at the home base. - Without a public IP on rental or campus networks: Open the LINK feature in LanGame OS Orbit together, join a private encrypted LAN room, and enter the virtual network adapter IP. The encrypted P2P tunnel provides low latency and zero packet loss so you can begin your journey through space!