How to Configure Satisfactory Server Settings and Game Rules

Your Satisfactory dedicated server on LOW.MS is highly configurable. You can adjust everything from server name and passwords to network performance, autosave behaviour, and player limits. This guide covers the configuration files, the in-game Server Manager, and the session settings you will actually want to touch.

Important: LOW.MS ships some additional Game.ini tuning by default to head off the most common Satisfactory multiplayer performance issues. Unless you have a specific reason and know what you are doing, leave the tuned values alone — the defaults we ship are deliberate. Always stop your server before editing any configuration file (Satisfactory writes to these files on graceful shutdown, so changes made while running will be overwritten).

Accessing configuration files on LOW.MS

Open the LOW.MS control panel and go to Service Management → Game Services.
Find your Satisfactory server and click Manage in the Actions column.
From the left-hand sidebar, open Configuration Files for the in-panel editor (the easiest way to edit the common files), or File Manager if you need to browse the full file tree.

INI configuration files live in:

FactoryGame/Saved/Config/WindowsServer/

The binary server state file (ServerSettings.<PORT>.sav, which holds your server name, admin password, client password, autosave interval and rotating autosave count) lives one level up, in FactoryGame/Saved/SaveGames/, next to your world saves.

Where server identity lives (server name, passwords, autosave)

On Satisfactory 1.0+, the in-game Server Manager does not store the server name, admin password, client password, autosave interval, or rotating autosave count in GameUserSettings.ini. Those values live in the binary ServerSettings.<PORT>.sav file in FactoryGame/Saved/SaveGames/ (where <PORT> is your server's game port — e.g. ServerSettings.7777.sav).

That file is not human-editable. The correct place to change any of these values is the in-game Server Manager UI after authenticating as admin:

Server Name — Server Settings tab.
Admin Password / Client Password — Server Settings tab.
Autosave Interval — Server Settings tab. Default is 300 seconds (5 minutes). Increase for larger factories — see the performance tuning guide.
Number of Rotating Autosaves — Server Settings tab. Default is 3.

If you have lost the admin password, the recovery procedure is to delete ServerSettings.<PORT>.sav and reclaim the server from scratch. This is covered in detail in the admin guide. Your world saves are not affected — only the server identity/password file.

Do not follow older guides that tell you to paste a [/Script/FactoryGame.FGServerSubsystem] block with AdminPassword=, ClientPassword=, ServerName=, AutoSaveInterval= or NumRotatingAutosaves= into GameUserSettings.ini. That workflow was accurate pre-1.0 and has not been the way the dedicated server stores these values for some time.

Game.ini

LOW.MS ships a tuned Game.ini by default that includes additional networking and timeout configuration to head off common Satisfactory multiplayer performance issues. Unless you have a specific reason to change a value, leave the file alone — the defaults we ship are tuned for the platform.

If you do need to edit Game.ini, the section most people touch is the player limit:

[/Script/Engine.GameSession]
MaxPlayers=4

Coffee Stain officially tunes the server experience around 4 players. The cap can technically be raised — many groups successfully run 6–8 — but the simulation is largely single-threaded, so the real ceiling depends on your factory complexity rather than the number you put in this file. Before pushing this up, make sure your server has the RAM headroom for it. The performance tuning guide covers what "headroom" actually looks like in practice.

You will also see additional [/Script/Engine.GameNetworkManager] and bandwidth-related entries in the LOW.MS-shipped Game.ini. These are deliberate, not copy-paste cruft — they exist to keep multiplayer smooth on the platform. Do not delete them.

Engine.ini

Engine.ini is a normal INI file. The defaults work for almost everyone — only edit it if you have a specific reason. A safe Engine.ini block looks like this:

[/Script/OnlineSubsystemUtils.IpNetDriver]
NetServerMaxTickRate=30
LanServerMaxTickRate=30
InitialConnectTimeout=60.0
ConnectionTimeout=60.0

[/Script/SocketSubsystemEpic.EpicNetDriver]
NetServerMaxTickRate=30
LanServerMaxTickRate=30

[/Script/Engine.Engine]
NetClientTicksPerSecond=30

Notes on the values:

NetServerMaxTickRate=30 matches Satisfactory's 30 TPS simulation target. There is no benefit to pushing it higher than the simulation can produce.
InitialConnectTimeout and ConnectionTimeout of 60.0 give players on slower connections (or large saves on first sync) enough time to come in without being dropped.

In-game Server Manager

The Server Manager (from Satisfactory's main menu, after you have authenticated as admin) is where you should make most day-to-day setting changes. It writes to the right files for you and avoids the foot-guns that come with hand-editing INI.

Server Settings tab

Server Name — display name in the server list.
Admin Password — required for any administrative action. Keep it private. If you lose it, see the admin guide for how to reset it.
Player Password — optional. Leave blank for an open server.
Autosave Interval — seconds between autosaves. Default 300 (5 minutes). Larger factories benefit from raising this; see the performance tuning guide.
Autosave Count — number of rotating autosave slots.
Network Quality — controls how much state the server pushes to clients per tick. Set this to Ultra, on the server and every connecting client. The default is too low for most groups and is the single biggest cause of "the host is bad" complaints. There is more on this in the common issues guide.

Session settings

Auto-Pause — pauses the world when the last player disconnects. Turn it off if you want overnight production to keep running; leave it on if your group only plays in scheduled sessions.
Auto-Load Session Name — which session the server loads automatically on startup.
Auto-Save on Player Disconnect — triggers a save when a player leaves, so their recent progress is captured even if the next autosave is some way off.

Console tab

The Console tab in the Server Manager runs a small set of server commands directly. The most reliable one to know is quit, which gracefully shuts the server down (it writes the current state to disk before exiting). The admin guide covers the in-game console in more depth.

Scheduling restarts

The in-game Server Manager does not include a built-in scheduled-restart feature. The right place to schedule a daily or twice-daily restart is the Scheduled Tasks entry in the LOW.MS panel sidebar. A graceful restart runs a save, shuts the server down, and starts it back up — typically under a minute of downtime in exchange for a noticeably crisper experience afterwards.

Tips for managing your configuration

Trust the defaults. LOW.MS ships tuned config out of the box. Most groups never need to edit Game.ini or Engine.ini at all.
Back up before editing. Download a copy of the file you are about to change through the LOW.MS file manager. If something goes wrong, restoring takes seconds.
Change one thing at a time. It is the only way to know which setting caused a regression when something breaks.
Game updates can rewrite configs. After a major Satisfactory update, re-check your customisations and re-apply anything that got reset.
Prefer the Server Manager UI for anything it exposes. Hand-editing INI is for settings the UI does not cover, not for things you could click in the in-game menu.

Related guides

Getting started with Satisfactory on LOW.MS — initial setup and first connection.
Admin guide — admin authentication, console commands, player management.
Performance tuning — RAM, autosave intervals, factory design tips.
Multiplayer setup and connection guide — sharing a server with friends and diagnosing connection issues.