Squad Save Location & How to Upload Your World

Squad is multiplayer-only, so there is no singleplayer save to worry about. What you do have, if you have been running a Squad server at home or on another host, is a pile of configuration that took real time to tune: your admin list, your ban list, your map and layer rotation, your RCON password, your license key, and any mods you run. This guide walks you through moving all of that onto a LOW.MS Squad server so your community lands on day one with the same rules, rotation, and admin team as before.

Where Squad Server Files Live on Your PC

On a self-hosted Squad server, every file you care about sits under SquadGame\ServerConfig\. The full path usually looks something like C:\servers\squad_server\SquadGame\ServerConfig\.

Inside that folder you will find:

• Server.cfg — server name, max players, password, and core options
• Admins.cfg — admin Steam64 IDs mapped to permission groups
• Bans.cfg — banned Steam64 IDs
• Rcon.cfg — RCON port and password
• Licensing.cfg — your Offworld Industries server license key
• LayerRotation.cfg and LevelRotation.cfg — map and layer rotations
• ExcludedLayers.cfg, ExcludedFactions.cfg, ExcludedLevels.cfg — rotation filters
• LayerVoting.cfg, LayerVotingNight.cfg, LayerVotingLowPlayers.cfg, VoteConfig.cfg — voting behaviour
• RemoteAdminListHosts.cfg, RemoteBanListHosts.cfg — remote admin/ban list URLs
• ServerMessages.cfg, Motd.cfg — broadcast and message of the day text
• CustomOptions.cfg — custom gameplay flags

Mods are separate. They sit under SquadGame\Plugins\Mods\, with one folder per mod. Logs, if you need them for reference, are in SquadGame\Saved\Logs\.

Before You Do Anything

Open control.low.ms, pick your Squad service, and stop the server from the Web Console. Files that are locked by a running process will refuse to copy or overwrite cleanly, and a half-written Server.cfg on a live server is a bad afternoon.

While you are there, click Cloud Backup and take a snapshot of the fresh LOW.MS install. If anything goes sideways during the migration you can roll back from Cloud Restore in one click instead of redoing the install.

On the PC side, zip up your entire SquadGame\ServerConfig\ folder and your SquadGame\Plugins\Mods\ folder. Keep the zips somewhere you will not forget — they are your offline backup.

Uploading via File Manager

For most admins the File Manager in control.low.ms is the fastest path.

1. Open your Squad service and click File Manager.
2. Navigate to SquadGame/ServerConfig/.
3. Select the existing default config files and delete them, or rename the folder to ServerConfig.default if you want a reference copy.
4. Click Upload and drag your zipped ServerConfig contents in. File Manager will extract archives for you.
5. Navigate back up to SquadGame/ and, if you run mods, create a Plugins/Mods/ folder. Upload each mod folder into it.

File Manager works well for anything up to a few hundred megabytes. If your mod list is heavier than that, skip to SFTP.

Uploading via SFTP

For large mod payloads or bulk config work, SFTP is faster and will not time out.

1. In control.low.ms open your Squad service and look at Service Settings for your SFTP host, username, and password.
2. Connect with your SFTP client of choice (FileZilla, WinSCP, Cyberduck) on port 8822.
3. On the remote side, browse to SquadGame/ServerConfig/ and upload your config files, overwriting the defaults.
4. Browse to SquadGame/Plugins/Mods/ (create the folders if they do not exist) and upload your mod folders.

SFTP preserves folder structure exactly, which matters for mods — Squad will not load a mod if it is nested one folder too deep.

Pointing the Server at Your Config

Squad reads ServerConfig/ automatically, so once the files are in place there is no path to set. Two things are worth double-checking before you start:

• Licensing.cfg contains your licence details in INI format, with both your license ID and key under a [Licensing] header:

  [Licensing]
  LicenseId=YOUR_LICENSE_ID
  LicenseKey=YOUR_LICENSE_KEY
  

  A server with a missing or malformed licence will not appear on the in-game browser.

• Rcon.cfg has a password set if you want to use RCON from an external tool. Match the port to whatever you have exposed on your LOW.MS service.

If you uploaded mods, open Server.cfg and confirm any mod-specific settings (such as custom map rotations that reference modded layers) still point at layers your mod actually provides.

Starting Up

Back in the Web Console, trigger a Steam Update to make sure the server binaries are current, then start the server. Watch the console output for the first two minutes. You are looking for:

• A clean licence check (no "invalid licence" warnings)
• The first map from your rotation loading without a "layer not found" error
• Your admin Steam64 IDs being recognised when you connect

Join the server yourself and run an admin command (for example, AdminBroadcast test). If the broadcast goes through, your Admins.cfg migrated correctly.

A Few Things to Know

Server.cfg edits only apply on the next map change or server restart — do not expect a live-edited max player count to take effect mid-round. Edits to Admins.cfg and Bans.cfg typically take effect on the next server restart, though some admin tooling can reload them via in-game RCON if you have it set up — when in doubt, restart from the Web Console.

Mods must exist on both the server and on every connecting client. Uploading a mod folder to the server does not push it to your players — they still need to subscribe to the Steam Workshop item. If a mod is on your server but not on a client, that client will not be able to join.

Finally, take another Cloud Backup once the server is live and stable. That snapshot becomes your "known good" state, and any future config tweak can be rolled back to it.