One Size Does Not Fit All
Stormworks means different things to different groups. I've seen servers where nobody ever leaves the workbench – they're just engineering helicopters with custom avionics for hours. Other groups want storms, sinking ships, and chaos. Some have 4 mates who play every evening, others run open community servers with people rotating in and out all day.
The default settings are fine as a starting point, but tuning them to how your group actually plays makes a real difference. I'm going to walk through four common setups and what I'd change for each.
All of these settings go in server_config.xml. On a LOW.MS server, open Configuration Files in the control panel sidebar, make your changes, and restart the server. For a full breakdown of every setting, check the Server Configuration Guide.
The Engineering Workshop
Best for: Small groups (2-8 players) who spend most of their time designing and testing vehicles.
The idea here is a calm, predictable environment. You don't want a storm rolling in while you're trying to debug why your fuel system is leaking, and you don't need 30 players competing for server resources when there's only 4 of you.
I'd set max_players to 8 or 12 – no need to go higher, and fewer players means the server has more headroom for complex vehicles. For day_night_length, bump it up to something like 120 or 180 (that's in minutes, so 2-3 hours per full cycle). Longer daylight is nice when you're building, and you won't constantly be squinting at a dark workbench.
For weather, there's no single on/off switch. What you can do is use override_weather, override_time, and override_wind to lock conditions to something stable – clear skies, midday, calm wind. That gives you a perfectly controlled test environment. When you want to stress-test a vehicle in rough seas, just remove the overrides and let the game do its thing.
Set a password. You want a small, focused group, not randoms spawning boats on top of your half-finished aircraft.
A few things I've learned running this kind of server:
Establish naming conventions for saved vehicles early. It sounds boring, but when you've got 40 unnamed saves and nobody remembers which helicopter is the working one, you'll wish you had. Create a manual backup before any big testing session – if someone's experimental engine build breaks the physics, you want a clean restore point. And honestly, consider running multiple world saves: one for active development, one for showcasing finished builds.
Rescue Operations
Best for: Groups of 4-16 who want the full rescue experience – bad weather, night operations, time pressure.
This is Stormworks at its best, in my opinion. Dynamic weather, things going wrong, vehicles that need to actually perform under pressure rather than just look good in a calm harbour.
Set max_players to 16. That's enough for multiple rescue teams without overwhelming the server. For day_night_length, I'd actually go shorter than default – something like 30 or 40 minutes. Faster cycles create urgency and force night operations, which is where this game really shines. Navigating a rescue helicopter to a sinking vessel in pitch darkness with rain hammering the windscreen – that's the good stuff.
Leave weather alone (don't set overrides). You want the full range of conditions. The whole point is unpredictability.
What works well on rescue servers:
Workshop mission packs add a lot of variety. The Steam Workshop has solid rescue scenario collections that go well beyond what the base game offers. Assign roles if your group is up for it – dispatchers, pilots, boat operators, ground crew. Coordinated operations are genuinely fun when everyone has a job.
You'll want to clear out old vehicles periodically. There's no magic command for this – either remove them manually through the game or restart with a fresh save when things get cluttered. Performance degrades noticeably once you have a dozen abandoned vehicles floating around.
The Community Hub
Best for: Large groups (16-32 players) running an open or semi-open server.
Community servers are a different beast. More players means more vehicles, more physics calculations, and more chances for one person's 800-component aircraft carrier to lag the entire server.
Set max_players to 24-32 depending on what your server can handle. Keep day_night_length at 60 (the default) – mixed playstyles means no single cycle length is perfect, and the default is a reasonable middle ground. Don't set weather overrides; let people experience the full game.
Password is your call. Open communities go without one, private groups use one. Either way, you need active administration.
Running a community server well takes effort:
You need multiple trusted admins across different time zones. Set clear rules about vehicle complexity – and actually enforce them. One player's mega-build can ruin the experience for 20 others, and they will not remove it voluntarily.
Use the ban system for griefers. Community servers attract both great players and troublemakers; that's just how it goes.
Schedule regular restarts – every 6-12 hours for busy servers. Memory usage climbs over time, and a restart clears it out. Clean up abandoned vehicles during restarts. If performance is suffering, consider upgrading your server – check the Stormworks hosting page for options.
Workshop Playground
Best for: Groups of 4-12 who want to download and mess around with Steam Workshop content together.
Stormworks has a massive Workshop library, and exploring it with friends is genuinely fun. The challenge is that Workshop vehicles are often more complex than anything your players would build themselves, so they hit the server harder.
Keep max_players moderate – 12 is a good ceiling. day_night_length at 60 is fine. Don't override weather; you want to test Workshop vehicles in real conditions to see if they actually hold up.
Workshop-specific advice:
Create a curated Workshop collection and share the link with your group so everyone subscribes to the same items. Test new content on a separate world save before dropping it into your main session – some Workshop items cause problems, and you don't want to find out mid-session.
Remove Workshop items nobody is using anymore. Every loaded item adds to startup time and memory usage. And keep an eye on compatibility after game updates – major Stormworks patches regularly break Workshop content until the mod authors push fixes.
Back up your configuration before adding new mods. If something breaks, reverting to a known-good state is much easier than trying to figure out which of the 15 new items you added is causing the crash.
Performance – What Actually Matters
Regardless of which setup you're running, the single biggest performance factor in Stormworks is vehicle complexity. A single overbuilt vehicle can bring the entire server to a crawl. Encourage your players to optimise their designs. Fewer components doing the same job isn't cutting corners – it's better engineering.
If you're seeing lag, check your server's CPU and RAM usage in the LOW.MS control panel:
- CPU spikes when vehicles spawn are normal. Spikes that persist point to overly complex vehicles.
- RAM climbing steadily over time usually means you need a restart. Schedule them regularly.
- Both consistently high – time to either reduce active vehicles or upgrade your server.
For physics, the physics_detail and physics_timestep settings (60, 120, 180, or 0 for auto) control the resolution of physics calculations. Higher values are more accurate but more demanding. Auto works well for most servers, but if you're running a building-focused server with complex mechanical systems, bumping it up can help with precision.
Backups
Stormworks worlds represent real time and creativity. Use the automated backups that LOW.MS provides – you can restore from Cloud Backup and Cloud Restore in the panel sidebar. Create manual backups before major changes, Workshop additions, or community events. Use different save_name values for different purposes if you want to keep things organised.
Getting Started
If you're setting up a new Stormworks server:
- Grab a server from the Stormworks hosting page.
- Follow the Getting Started guide to get connected.
- Apply whichever profile from this guide fits your group, then adjust from there.
Every group is different. These are starting points, not gospel. The whole reason you run your own server is so you can tune it to exactly what your group wants.