Before you decide to hop into our ICARUS servers, there are some things you should know about the ICARUS dedicated server experience. These aren’t really rules per se, but you do need to understand these things to understand how to approach the dedicated server experience.

HOW THE ICARUS DEDICATED SERVER WORKS

First up, understand that ICARUS dedicated server is NOT your average game dedicated server experience. To understand what I mean when I say this, you need to understand the core mechanic behind ICARUS prospects. In ICARUS, a “prospect” is a play session. This can be a session of open world play or a session of mission play. The open world is persistent, and all structures built there and changes made to the world are saved indefinitely, until the open world is wiped manually on the server side. Mission type prospects, on the other hand, have a definite beginning and a definite end. When a mission is finished, players are kicked from the server (but are free to rejoin), and the server rolls back to the lobby. The lobby is the hub of the ICARUS dedicated server experience. Anytime you join an ICARUS dedicated server, the first screen you see will be the lobby. If the dedicated server currently has an active prospect running, the lobby will present information about the active prospect and give you the option of joining. If the dedicated server does not currently have an active prospect running, the lobby will give you the option of loading an existing prospect to continue it or to start a new prospect. This brings us to the major point I want to convey: an ICARUS dedicated serve can ONLY run ONE prospect at a time! We host two ICARUS dedicated servers for this reason. If a group wants to play a new prospect or pick up a prospect they left incomplete previously but another group is already playing, they will be unable to do so. Our second ICARUS dedicated server is set up to give players a second place to play in case the prospect running on the first server is not appealing to them.

COMMUNICATION

Because of this, it is possible that starting a prospect on one server and then quitting the game before you’ve completed that prospect may result in you being unable to pick up where you left off, like for example if the next time you try to log in a different group is playing a different prospect on the Alpha Cohort server. If you get stuck in this situation, there is a possibility you could lose ALL workshop items you took with you on that drop if you fail to return to and complete or safely exit the prospect before it expires or is deleted. Also, prospects persist beyond the point when the team completes them. The server will not keep them running, but any player can load them. We ask that if you are part of a team that starts a prospect on either of the servers and then has to log out before it’s completed, please let us know by submitting a support ticket for ICARUS in 🙋-support-ticket🙋. If you do not notify us that you want a prospect saved, your prospect may be DELETED before you are able to reload it! Otherwise active prospects will autodelete at the end of their mission time limit, and there is nothing we can do to prevent that in the case of extended leaves from the game. Fortunately missions are small in scope, so losing one isn’t that big a deal. Losing workshop items is much more painful, so use insurance wisely.