The term Lan server stands for Local Area Network, meaning on your network anyone in your house hold or network may join you freely without port forwarding. Which i will teach you in a later section, Doing this on windows for me at least is easier than any other OS, but that is because i like Windows more than Mac or linux. The first thing you need to find out is your personal IP or the IP of the machine you are using to host this, what ever computer you are hosting this on that is the IP you need. You can find this on windows by going to run, command prompt, or if you are running windows 10 like i am just type in command prompt, either way you do it command prompt is what you need running. I wont be using pictures of my command prompt for reasons but as long as you know how to use a PC you should be able to do this by just reading this guide. You want to type in ipconfig no spaces just ipconfig and many things will pop up, what you are looking for is IPV4 Address it should read out 192.168.X.XXX, where X= the numbers on your IPV4. That is the address you are looking for and need. Once you have this you want to go to your steam folder where ever it is should be something like this F:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\StarMade Mine happens to be F but most peoples are C, it honestly doesnt matter what it is as long as you go into your starmade folder in your steam folder. Once you are there you want to run the starmade.exe it doesnt have to say starmade.exe either for me it just says starmade and looks like a java file which it is and the type is the Excutable jar file this is the .exe file you want to run. From here you want to run the Start Dedicated Server, with that you are done. and your Land server should be running. The reason why we went to the starmade folder to run the server is because if you are using steam, steam will not run the game twice so this bypasses it and allows you to run the server and start the game to join it. Now i have assumed that anyone reading this knows how to join a multiplayer server but just in case you don't, when you hit start game you want to check the box Host:Port and in the thread you want to put in the IP address you found before. it should look like this 192.168.X.XXX:4242. Only people on the network you are on or that the PC hosting it is on may join a lan server.

For a Dedicated server you can rent one from https://thesmelter.com/, which as of right now 6/15/2015 they are having a sale, but i do not know how long they will be having this sale. Otherwise if you are like me and cant afford a server but still wish to have one for either friends or to own a server of your own for the community, you will need to set one up. Just like the last section you will need your IPV4 Address, and just incase find your WAN IP just incase for some reason your IPV4 doesnt work for them. This can be found using Google or https://www.whatismyip.com/. Hosting a Dedicated Server should not be used on a day to day PC that you use for work, school or games. the people that join you will have such high ping, get pissed off and leave so your server will be dead. So host this on a computer with High internet something with fiber would be best, normally big companies have fiber cable but do this at your own risk i will not be held for you getting fired at your job cause you want to host a server. Other wise only host a server on a day to day machine for Friends at a good time so they dont even lag or it is small amounts of lag. The only difference in a Dedicated server and a Lan Server is the lan is on your network and is not hard to do, the Dedicated server is not that hard either but more work will have to be done and some things must be met to get this working. You will need to port forward to get anyone out of your network to join, so billy bob in the next state country or what ever can join you. You must also give them your IP adress, this is how they will connect to you. I will be going over Port Fowardering in another section. You can however also use a virtual network like Tunngle or Hamachi to get by all of this so you do not need to port foward, i will also go over these in another section.

Port Forwarding is configuring your Router to direct incoming traffic to a set computer on your home network. The following port is used by Starmade TCP 4242. You want to open up your router and go to Port Fowarding to enable the TCP 4242, now i will not show you how to open up your router because there are just to many out there to name and if you do not know how to do this by now just use google and type in the name of your router and how to open it. You can also just use a site like PortForward www.portforward.com and using your routers make and model you should get an idea of how to get this done. Essentially you need to tell your Router any traffic coming into port 4242 should be directed to the computer that the server is running on.

A firewall is a software utility or hardware device that limits outside network access to a computer or local network by blocking or restricting network ports. You must make sure that the firewall on your computer you are using to Host this server is not blocking the ports and the server it self, if it is then there is a major problem and even if you have done everything right no one can join you or the server will not work right. Using windows you can just type in firewall and go and make sure it is not blocking your server if you are using mac or the other OS and you do not know how to open up your firewall use google to tell you how.

A virtual network is a computer network that consists, at least in part, of virtual network links. A virtual network link is a link that does not consist of a physical (wired or wireless) connection between two computing devices but is implemented using methods of network virtualization. This is what it stands for. Programs like these are Hamachi and Tunngle, which are used to bypass port forwarding for games. I recommend Tunngle Hamachi is a little easier to use but with tunngle you can have more than 5 people on your server and if you want there is even a community so who knows maybe you can get someone you dont know as a friend on there to join your server.

This is not really needed but a nice thing to do is to use DNS. Which means Domain Name System. DNS is how domain names are translated into IP addresses this means you can give people a nice friendly name that does not change like name.domain.com:4242 and this will not change but you will need to ensure it always has your current IP Address.There are a few free DNS providers out there, but the one I know of is http://www.noip.com/. i hoesntly haven't used these serviceses other than maybe once.All you need to do to set this up is register on the site, Setup a Host, and setup a A Name Host Type.Fill out the details and you are done. I would also recommend grabbing their Client which when installed on the computer hosting the server will keep the A Name updated with your current IP Address which is essential for the DNS to work.

This is the method preferred by most server operators and is what SteamCMD was designed for.
Download and install SteamCMD. Once done, runs SteamCMD and you will want to do the following. Creat a new steam Account this works best but you honestly do not need a new one if you do not wish to have one. Then run the SteamCMD client and plug these in.
login username password
once loged in you want to type
force_install_dir x:\SteamCMD\Starmade
once installed type
app_update 244770 validate
Use your new or current one Steam Username and Password, you may also be required to provide an Authentication Code which will be emailed to you.
There is not a dedicated server Steam AppID that I can see, so you will need to login to SteamCMD with credentials that has access to AppID 244770(Starmade).
The path x:\SteamCMD\Starmade is an example, use this to specify where you want to install Starmade.

Once you have made a server the way you want it be it is time to configure it.

Under the Starmade folder you should now see a file called server.cfg.
This is the configuration file for your server, it will allow you to do everything from set its name, change how large sectors are all the way to handling how death works. Every thing about the server that can be messed with can be done in this file and it is honestly better to mess with it now then mess with it later and break the hole thing.

To find this file head to your Starmade folder and under that folder will be another Starmade folder.Inside this folder will be the file server.cfg, the most common way to open this file is with notepad but Notepad++ is a much better program and if you run a lot of servers or want to start this is a very good option to use and can be found here. https://notepad-plus-plus.org/
There should be enough information to allow you to understand what you are messing with.
Once done, then next time you launch the server, it will have these new settings.

Admins
By default if you do not specify any character names or IP Addresses in admin.txt then everyone who joins will have access to admin commands.Under the Starmade folder, edit the admin.txt file and type in your Starmade character name. This will allow the players you choose to be the admins of your server, note this can be dangerous however they may not be able to mess with the server file it self they can ban players mess with buildings bankrupt things and just cause a hole mess of problems so whoever you make, make sure you either know them personally or well enough

Whitelisting your server means that ONLY people in that list can join.
Anyone who is not on the list will not be allowed to connect.
To add people to the white list file, simple edit the whitelist.txt file from the Starmade folder.
Admins can also add people to the white list file with the following command:
/whitelist_name playername

You might want to show a message box when ever someone connects.
This is very simple to do, simply edit the server-message.txt file and type in what you want to show, an example might be:
Welcome to the my server
Visit my site: www.NameASite.com
Join me in Chat service.
Don't break the rules
Rules
rule 1 xxxxx
rule 2 xxxxx
or just a ♥♥♥♥ you
It is your server say what you want. This message will be shown each time someone connects.

Once you have your server made and the way you want it, it will help you get more people by adding your server to the starmade serve data base. go to https://starmade-servers.com/ and add it and welcome all the new players that you should get in time.

StarMade Common Sense or Effective building on a server
http://steamproxy.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=459600025
Effective Power Systems
http://steamproxy.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=456713957
StarMade Classifications and Philosophies
http://steamproxy.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=461705404
StarMade Drone Racks: http://steamproxy.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=575199710
StarMade Console & Admin Commands: http://steamproxy.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=495940080