Rust server.cfg + start.bat Generator

The name players see in the in-game server browser. Keep it short, descriptive, and searchable — "Vanilla 2x | Weekly | EU" beats "ben's server pls join". Don't go wild with emoji; some browsers truncate at the first non-ASCII character.

Longer blurb shown on the server details panel — rules, wipe schedule, Discord invite. Use \n as a literal in-line to force line breaks (Rust will translate them on render).

Clickable link from the server panel — usually your community site or Discord invite. One link only; pick the more useful one.

Banner shown above the server description in the browser. Must be exactly 512×256 pixels, hosted somewhere stable (Imgur, your CDN). Hotlinked from a forum? It'll vanish.

Small logo shown next to the header. Square works best. Same hosting caveat as the header — host it somewhere that won't 404 in a month.

Up to four comma-separated discovery keywords for browser filtering. Pick honest ones — "monthly,pve,US,2x". Lying about your rates here gets you reported and demoted in the browser sort.

Procedural Map is the standard random-each-wipe setup. The hand-built fixed maps (Barren, Hapis, Savas, Craggy) are smaller and mostly used for testing — they don't get balance updates. 99% of servers want Procedural Map.

Concurrent player cap. The technical ceiling is around 300, but real-world stable caps depend entirely on CPU single-thread performance and worldsize. Match this to what your hardware can actually serve — a stuttering 200-player server bleeds players faster than an honest 80-player one.

Side length of the procedural map in meters. Valid 1000–6000; most communities sit at 3000–4500. Bigger maps need more RAM and disk per save, and thin out player encounters — a 6000m map with 50 players feels empty.

Procedural seed — same seed + same worldsize = same map every time. Preview combos on rustmaps.com before committing. Players hate bad-monument-layout seeds; ten minutes of seed shopping is worth it.

Facepunch's official ruleset modes. vanilla is normal Rust. hardcore removes the map and compass, weakens map markers, and makes the world less navigable — true survival feel. softcore reduces death penalty (you keep half your inventory at safe-zone bags) for a friendlier experience. Pick one; it stacks with PvE if you want.

Cap on team membership. Default 8 — vanilla balance. Set 0 to disable teams entirely (solo-only servers). Heads-up: the prefix really is relationshipmanager., not just maxteamsize — the most common typo on Rust admin forums.

Seconds between full world saves. Default 300 (5 min) is genuinely fine — going lower hammers your disk and adds save-stutter without meaningfully reducing rollback on a crash. 600 (10 min) is fine on big servers; below 180 is asking for SSD wear.

Server network tick rate. Default 30 is what Facepunch tunes the game against. Going higher costs CPU per-tick on every entity; going lower makes things feel mushier. Almost no one should change this — if you do, benchmark before and after, not by feel.

Cap on the server's frame rate. High default (256) is fine on dedicated hardware. Cap to 60–120 on weak/shared hosts to keep thermals reasonable; this doesn't affect player experience, just how hard the box works between ticks.

Minutes between scheduled server restart cycles. Default 500. Rust leaks memory over long uptimes — a daily-ish restart on a fresh process genuinely helps stability. Pair with your host's restart scheduler.

How often the server updates each entity per second. Default 16. Affects perceived smoothness of moving entities (vehicles, animals). Rarely changed; lower it to reduce CPU on weak hosts.

Minutes of inactivity before a player gets kicked. Default 30. Set to 0 to disable idle-kicking entirely (popular on small community servers where AFK base-defending is a feature). Combine with the kick mode below.

When to kick idle players. 0 = never. 1 = only when the server is full and someone is waiting (default — sensible). 2 = always after the timeout, even on an empty server.

Global decay multiplier. Default 1.0 is vanilla. Drop to 0.5 for "I want bases to last longer", 0 to disable decay entirely (popular on small community servers — but the map fills up with abandoned bases over time, plan a wipe schedule). 2.0 makes raid timing tighter.

Minutes a base survives without upkeep materials in the cupboard before decay kicks in. Default 1440 (24 hours). Bump to 4320 (3 days) for casual servers, 10080 (1 week) for solo/small group where people log in less often.

Mandatory and not optional — leave it blank or set "rustadmin" and your server gets owned the same day. Use a long random string (32+ chars). Anyone with this password can run any server command remotely; treat it like a root password.

How strict the server-side anti-cheat responds to violations. 0 = log only (no kicks). 1 = warn + kick (default). 2 = ban on violation. Most servers leave this at 1. Bumping to 2 risks banning legitimate players whose connection causes false-positives.

Strictness of flyhack detection. Default 3 is balanced. Bump to 4–5 if you're seeing fly-cheating despite EAC; drop to 1–2 if legitimate players are getting false-positive kicks (usually from high-ping connections).

Strictness of speedhack detection. Default 3. Same trade-off as flyhack — higher = catches more cheats but more false positives on laggy clients.

Server-side validation of incoming projectile data (catches aim-bot and damage-amplification cheats). Default 6 (relatively strict). Lower only if you're getting false-positives on legitimate long-range shots.

Brown bear density. Default 2. Bears are the second-deadliest mid-game threat after wolf packs — bumping this to 4+ punishes naked travel and makes meat farming a side-quest.

Snow-biome bears. Lower default because they only spawn in the snow biome, which is a fraction of most maps. Crank this up if you want the arctic to feel actively hostile.

Wolf packs. The single most-feared early-game animal — they're fast, they path well, and they kill nakeds in seconds. Default 2 is balanced; 4+ makes the forest a deathtrap.

Boar density. Default 5 — common food source. Lower it on small maps to make food scarcity matter; raise it on hungry-server setups to keep nakeds fed.

Stag/deer density. Default 3. Cloth and leather source — bump it if your players keep crying about no cloth in the woods.

Chicken density. Default 3. Feathers and small food drops. Raise it for nakeds-friendly servers; lower it if you find the map carpeted in clucking.

Crocodile density. Default 1. Spawn in jungle/swamp areas only, so they cluster — the effective density in jungle biomes feels higher than the number suggests. Crank up for a properly hostile river system.

Panther/jaguar density. Default 0.5 — rare ambush predator in jungle areas. Don't increase too aggressively; panthers oneshot nakeds and are hard to spot until they're already mid-pounce.

How often AI brains tick (per second). Default 5. Higher = smarter, more responsive NPCs but more CPU; lower = dumber NPCs but less server load. Tune up only if you have CPU headroom and want monument scientists to feel more aggressive.

Seconds between NPC sensory updates (checking what they can see/hear). Default 1. Lower = NPCs react faster (good for difficulty), higher = saves CPU but NPCs feel sleepy.

Frame-budget for AI thinking per server tick. Default 5. Affects how much CPU per tick is allowed for AI calculation. Mostly leave at default unless you're tuning a high-NPC-density server.

How long the Patrol Helicopter stays in the world before despawning. Default 30. Raise for more aerial chaos; lower if your players keep wiping when they're trying to do other things.

Multiplier on the Patrol Heli's gun damage. Default 1.0. Lower for casual servers where the heli is currently shredding nakeds; raise for hardcore servers where shooting it down should feel earned.

How accurate the heli's gunfire is. Default 2. Lower number = tighter grouping = more dangerous. Some PvE servers raise to 4–5 to make heli fights survivable for nakeds.

Damage-percentage threshold at which the Heli flees (and you lose the fight). Default 0.35 (35% damage). Raise to 0.5+ to let heli fights play out longer; drop to 0.2 if you want heli to leave faster.

How long the Cargo Ship event lasts before the ship leaves the map. Default 50 minutes. Raise to give players more time to fight over it; lower to make events feel snappier and more frequent.

How many waves of loot the Cargo Ship spawns during its run. Default 3. More rounds = more total loot per event = more reason to fight for it.

Minutes between Bradley APC respawns at Launch Site. Default 60. Lower for high-pop PvP servers where Bradley fights are a contested event; raise for casual servers where one Bradley fight per session is enough.

Maximum length of audio that loops/buffers per boombox track, in seconds. Default 30. Lower to reduce server bandwidth costs from heavy boombox usage; raise on community/RP servers where music is part of the vibe.

Comma-separated list of URLs that boomboxes can stream from. Leave blank for vanilla (default allow). Restrict to specific URLs to prevent abuse — players can only stream from sources you've approved. Useful on hosted/RP servers.

How far (in meters) local chat messages broadcast. Default 100. Only matters if local chat is enabled above.

How many chat messages the server retains. Default 1000. Affects how much history is available for moderation review and how much chat a newly-connecting player sees.

Full owner/admin permissions — every command, no restrictions. Add your own SteamID64 first, then any co-owners. Owners can promote moderators in console without editing the file.

Moderator permissions — kick, ban, mute, teleport, but not server-shutdown level. Use this for trusted admins who don't need full owner access. One SteamID64 per line.

Permanent bans. One SteamID64 per line. Reasons aren't required in this generator — add them in-line in the cfg afterward if you want (banid 7656... "grief"). Bans you issue in-game via banid command in console also need server.writecfg to persist across restart.

This is the folder name your server saves under. Picked once, never touched — changing server.identity on a live server makes Rust think it's a fresh server and ignore your existing save/cfg. The file you're generating lands at /server/<identity>/cfg/server.cfg, so this and the folder name have to match.

UDP port players connect to. Default 28015. Change if your host runs multiple servers on one box. Whatever you pick has to be open on your firewall (UDP).

UDP port the Steam server browser queries for server info (name, player count). Convention is game port +1. If you don't set this, the server picks something random and your server may not show in the browser correctly.

TCP port for RCON. Convention is game port +2. Keep it firewalled to trusted IPs only — anyone who can reach this port and guess your RCON password owns the server.

Which interface RCON listens on. 0.0.0.0 = all interfaces (default; needed if you connect from outside the host). 127.0.0.1 = localhost only — much safer if you only RCON from a tool running on the same box.