MINECRAFT HOSTING
GAME SERVERS
Game Panel
by Sandbox is the mode Garry's Mod is named for, and the one most likely to bring a server down. Everything you build stays simulated: props, constraints, ragdolls and contraptions all cost the server on every tick, forever, whether anyone is looking at them or not.
That is the whole trick to running a good build server. Not restricting what people make, but understanding what it costs.
What costs what
- A loose prop is cheap. A few hundred are fine on any plan.
- A constrained contraption is expensive. Welds, ropes and axes are solved together every tick, so one large welded machine can outweigh hundreds of separate props.
- Ragdolls are worse than they look. Each is a full physics object, and they accumulate quietly.
- Anything on a thruster or wheel never sleeps. Physics objects at rest cost less; things that keep moving do not get that discount.
The practical consequence: a server can be perfectly healthy with a thousand props and struggle with fifty, if those fifty are welded into one contraption somebody is driving around.
Prop limits are a kindness
A build server with no cap will find its limit during the most fun session anyone has had on it, which is the worst possible time.
- Set a per-player prop limit and tell people what it is. Most builders would rather know the budget than discover it.
- Automatic cleanup on a timer for orphaned props and ragdolls. Not everything anyone ever spawned deserves to persist.
- Consider a separate build area if your server also runs something round-based, so accumulated builds do not tax the mode people are actually playing.
Tools that pay for themselves
The Sandbox tools worth teaching a new group, roughly in the order they become useful: the physics gun for placement, the tool gun for constraints, duplicator for repeating a design, and the advanced duplicator for moving builds between sessions. None of these are performance features, but a group that knows them builds deliberately rather than by accumulation, which is a performance feature in practice.
Addons: the same rule as everywhere
An addon that does work every tick costs you sixty-plus times a second forever, and most do not advertise it. Add them in small batches so a drop in performance points at something specific, and be wary of anything that reacts to events anywhere on the map rather than near a player.
Large Workshop collections are also a download for everyone joining. On a build server where you want friends to hop in casually, that download is a real barrier.
This is the same discipline that keeps Factorio servers healthy, where mods are also judged by per-tick cost rather than by feature list.
When the server is struggling
Work through it in this order, because the cheapest fixes are the most likely:
- Count props and constraints. If they climb all day, that is your answer.
- Clean up orphans, then measure again.
- Lower tickrate one step. Physics-heavy Sandbox pays for tickrate more than most gamemodes.
- Check memory last. If it is not full, it is not your problem.
The full diagnostic order for a struggling server is in reducing Garry's Mod server lag, and the same "tick budget before memory" logic applies to Minecraft.
Our Garry's Mod server hosting exposes prop limits, tickrate and addons from the panel, so tuning a build server is a restart rather than a ticket.
What a bigger plan does not fix
More memory will not make a welded contraption cheaper to simulate. If your server slows down when someone drives their creation around, that is the physics solver on one thread, and the fix is the build or the tickrate rather than the plan.
