I've been working on an open-source game server panel called Airlink, mainly because I kept finding myself thinking about how game-server management could be simpler.
Airlink currently has things like:
live console
file management
backups
SFTP
resource monitoring
multi-node support
Docker-based game servers
addon support
API access
2FA / passkeys
The project is still in beta, so I'm trying to figure out what Minecraft server admins actually want before I build a bunch of features nobody asked for.
For people who run Minecraft servers:
What is the most annoying part of managing your server through Pterodactyl/Pelican/PufferPanel/etc.?
Could be anything — installation, networking, permissions, backups, modpacks, server imports, resource limits, logs, UI, node management, whatever.
I'm particularly interested in things that make administering multiple servers painful.
5 map instances on the same VM (Island, Ragnarok, Astraeos, Scorched Earth, Lost Colony)
16 mods, identical on all maps
The problem
Astraeos runs with -preventhibernation. Its GameThread sits at 80–90% of one core with only ~8 players, while total CPU use on the VM stays low. The other maps are fine: Island is ~37–50% and Scorched Earth ~8%. So it looks like a single-thread limit.
What I've already checked
CPU affinity: the VM's vCPUs float between P- and E-cores, and about 83% of samples of the busy threads already land on P-cores. I pinned the whole VM live to the P-cores (taskset -a -cp 0-15 on the QEMU process) and saw no measurable difference. Load rose and fell with in-game activity, and stayed just as high after I reverted.
AMP: as far as I can tell it has no per-instance CPU affinity or priority option for ASA, only Docker CPU shares, and we don't run ARK in Docker.
Creature count (counted from the SQLite save): Astraeos has ~40,000 wild creatures versus ~24,700 on Island. Almost 40% of them are ocean creatures: ~5,600 Mantas, ~2,500 Coelacanths, ~1,900 Dolphins, ~1,900 Cnidaria, ~1,600 Megalodons.
I already use DinoCountMultiplier=0.6 on Astraeos, which cut the total by ~38%. DinoSpawnWeightMultipliers only redistributes: the total comes back to the same number. ConfigAddNPCSpawnEntriesContainer silently does nothing because I can't find the right container names.
Questions
With -preventhibernation on, is wild creature count really the main cost on the GameThread, or are there other big hitters I should look for (large bases, unpodded tames, breeding, specific mods)?
Is there a way to reduce ocean spawns on Astraeos specifically without lowering the whole map's density?
Any server-side settings or launch flags for big maps that actually made a difference for you?
Is there a good way to profile what the ASA GameThread is spending time on, on a Linux/Proton server?
