[Mushy]

All the issues would be server side, it will run almost just the same as anyother server as long as the host can handle it.

It is more complicated then that buddy.

Unturned itself has trouble processing 24 players with all of our plugins, due to purely the nature of the game and how it was designed.

There could be unexpected client issues as well.

But the biggest problem Clients would face is pure FPS lag due to having to keep rendering in where each player is.

The processing power needed to host more players increases exponentially.

There are really only 3 problems. The first one being that the server host would need to make sure to have enough ram dedicated for the server. Secondly, a normal hard drives might not be able to support the info from plugins and may require an upgrade to an SSD or intel optane. And lastly, Unturned is not necessarily the most optimized game. All you have to do is get past these 3 rather large obstacles and there will be no issues for running a 48 player server.

Although there is some basic logic behind your suggestions, they unfortunately fall short when put into practice on proper dedicated server machines.

• The first one being that the server host would need to make sure to have enough ram dedicated for the server.
  This is not and has never been an issue for us in the past. We have a total of 64Gb of RAM in each machine, and none of them ever get close to hitting 30% RAM usage.
• Secondly, a normal hard drives might not be able to support the info from plugins and may require an upgrade to an SSD or intel optane.
  PH has been running SSDs on all our servers since day one, and have yet to scratch 20% of our max read/write speeds during normal operation on peak days. An M.2 SSD would be a solution to a non-issue as our current SSD's are very far from bottlenecking.
• You also forgot to mention connection speed, server location, network routing and infrastructure as very important factors to consider.
  However, there's nothing wrong there either. Each of our host machines has its own 1Gb/s connection, located at Choopla's New York data center, which offers first-class network routing and infrastructure. Our server bills could be effectively cut in half if we switched to a cheaper provider, such as OVH in Quebec, to be at the mercy of terrible routing that causes ping spikes and packet loss during peak hours on peak days.
• All you have to do is get past these 3 rather large obstacles and there will be no issues for running a 48 player server.
  We could run Washington #13 on a single machine with the most powerful Xeon E5/E7 CPU in existance, 64Gb of RAM, 512Gb SSD, 1Gb bandwidth, and run absolutely nothing but a single Unturned server on it. Hell, you can even make a 32Gb RAM drive out of of that 64Gb RAM and let the server have the machine to itself. We have already tried the configurations above, along with multiple others on multiple server machines in the past and it is clear as day that these player count issues are a software, not hardware, limitation in our case.
• A hardware limitation does exist, as in the case of shared hosting and low-end servers. However, as we have already tried, tested, and proved numerous times, PH's servers well exceed all Unturned server hardware requirements. Giving our servers more juice has exactly zero effect on any of our Unturned servers. None of our server machines ever go above 70% resource usage for any resource type (CPU, RAM, SSD space, Bandwidth).
• I suggest you try and find out why Nelson originally added a 24-player limit for servers. I can assure you he didn't have Pandahut's server specs in mind, nor the fact that any one server needed more RAM or an SSD. Nelson understands the limitations of Unturned and the Unity engine, and as far as we know the 24-player limit was first implemented because all servers, no matter what specs they had, experienced lag issues at higher player counts.

Please remember that Miku and I have been hosting Unturned servers for two and a half years and gone through all sorts of server setups - there is no need to doubt or over-scrutinize what we say to you guys, as we're all working towards the same objective.

We appreciate your input and criticism, however we must work within the realm of reality if we wish to make any progress on the topic at hand

[Abstract Shadow]

Use a plugin to "trick" unturned into thinking 13 has no mods in, instead of removing the mods in order for new players to be able to see the server. (By default unturned doesnt allow you to see any modded servers unless you modify your filters). I'd say that'd be a good way to get more players.. That and also ensuring staff members always RP themselves (Using positive roles such as police) to further encourage RP to allow newcomers to have the best RP-ing experience possible in order to get players to return. Just throwing my 2 pennies in, not sure if this is already being done

Miku already stated that tricking Unturned into doing something like that is really cheap and probably wouldn't go too well with Nelson.

[RagnarosPower]

Use a plugin to "trick" unturned into thinking 13 has no mods in, instead of removing the mods in order for new players to be able to see the server. (By default unturned doesnt allow you to see any modded servers unless you modify your filters). I'd say that'd be a good way to get more players.. That and also ensuring staff members always RP themselves (Using positive roles such as police) to further encourage RP to allow newcomers to have the best RP-ing experience possible in order to get players to return. Just throwing my 2 pennies in, not sure if this is already being done

Miku already stated that tricking Unturned into doing something like that is really cheap and probably wouldn't go too well with Nelson.

Yeah I understand miku's statement due to Nelson helping pandahut enormously , although modifying how the servers I guess, "look" on the servers page has no reason to go down bad with Nelson, especially that this plugin is currently being used by hundreds if not thousands of servers (stats taken from the developer that created a plugin that does this) some of which are Lyhme servers (specifically his popular world war II server), and as most of the people know Lyhme is close to Nelson and actively has conversations with him, although it doesn't seem that Nelson has any issues towards what he is doing. Nelson knows well enough that rocket modifies his game completely although he also very well knows how much rocket has improved his game popularity-wise and entertainment-wise therefore he is more than well prepared for modifications to his game. There have been so many huge modifications to unturned via plugins, a plugin like this is nothing when looking at the other popular plugins out there, in my opinion I see nothing but popularity from using such plugin due to the fact that a big number of the unturned players can actually see #13 instead of it being hidden from them. Yet again that is just my opinion, Miku&Mushy own Pandahut and it's completely their decision what happens to their servers, I'm just simply throwing my pennies in to try to help them what from my eyes would be improvement towards RP #13.

[Mushy]

The map is a mod too. Are you guys saying to remove all the mods including the map, and switching back to regular PEI?

Getting more players at the cost of the horrendous amount of lag which made PH switch away from PEI RP twice already, is like solving one problem to create another just as large.

Pretty much this. No mods = No PEI Large = PEI = Horrendous amounts of FPS lag and frequent map resets because the map is too small for structures be spread out enough.

We want to respect Nelson's basic design decisions such as separating modded servers from vanilla in the server browser. However, I understand Ragna's point as well, which we will consider further.

We could also remove a few unnecessary mods. Even on a 100Mbps fiber connection it still takes ages to download all the mods when you first join the server, which could be hindering playerbase growth. Khroz's Food mod is getting outdated and may have to be removed, as the developer has been offline for about a month now.

You guys can expect a few changes on #13 in the near future to help address these issues.

All further suggestions and ideas are still welcome

EDIT - We have made changes to server #13 in order to help this issue. Please feel free to create a new topic in case you have any issues or any other suggestions. Thanks!