Unvanquished

Last reviewed Sep 13, 2026 · 861 words

Unvanquished's dedicated server runs comfortably in 512 MB of RAM on one core and takes about 20 minutes to bring up, and I would only bother if you already have 6 to 12 people who want to play. The game is an asymmetric aliens-versus-humans shooter with base building, a continuation of Tremulous under the GPL-3.0, and its public server list on a weekday evening is a handful of machines. Hosting it is not about joining a scene; it is about giving your own group a reliable, lag-free box.

What you are actually running

The game sits on the Daemon engine, a heavily rebuilt descendant of the Quake 3 lineage, with the gamelogic compiled as a sandboxed native module. The relevant fact for a host is that the server binary, daemonded, is headless and cross-platform, ships in the same release archive as the client, and needs the same asset packages the client downloads. Those packages are the bulk of the install, a few gigabytes of maps, models and textures in the project's .dpk format, and the server has to have them locally to validate and serve maps.

Match structure is the reason people love it and the reason a server needs a quorum. Humans buy weapons and build turrets with a construction kit; aliens evolve into stronger forms and grow organic structures. With 2 players a side it is a stalemate; with 5 a side it is one of the better free multiplayer games available. Plan the player count before the hardware.

Install: the updater does the heavy lifting

Grab the Linux archive from unvanquished.net and unpack it. The first run of the launcher or the daemonded binary with the updater fetches the asset packages into the home path, so give it disk and a few minutes on a slow link. Then start it like any Quake-derived server:

./daemonded \
  +set fs_homepath /srv/unvanquished/home \
  +set sv_hostname "Tuesday Night Aliens" \
  +set sv_maxclients 20 \
  +set g_password "" \
  +set sv_master1 "master.unvanquished.net" \
  +exec server.cfg \
  +map plat23

The console is the configuration surface: sv_hostname, sv_maxclients, g_password for a private server, and a server.cfg in the home path for map rotation and admin levels. Wrap that command in a systemd unit with Restart=on-failure and a dedicated unprivileged user, and it becomes a service you forget about.

Open UDP 27960 and nothing else

The game protocol is UDP on 27960 by default, and the server registers with the master to appear in the in-game browser. If you want a private server, set g_password and leave the master registration in place; the browser will show a lock. If you want it invisible, remove sv_master1 and hand out the address. There is no web panel, no HTTP port, and no database, which makes it one of the easier things to expose safely: one UDP port through the firewall and a non-root user.

For a group that is already on a mesh VPN, skip the port forward entirely and run it on the tailnet address. Latency inside a mesh across one country is fine for a shooter of this pace, and you remove the only public surface.

Modest player base, honest expectations

The project has 1,125 GitHub stars and a development history back to 2012, and it moves at the pace of a volunteer team. Releases arrive when they arrive; the engine and assets are updated together, so a server on an older release will not accept newer clients and you should expect to re-run the updater on release day. The community is small enough that the developers answer questions on the forum and chat directly, which counts for a lot when a Quake-era cvar does something surprising.

If your friends would rather play a straight deathmatch, Xonotic has a far larger public scene and a simpler server, and OpenArena is the lightest option of all. Unvanquished wins only when the team-versus-team base-building loop is the point. That is a real niche; the games category lists the alternatives if it is not yours.

The trap: assets on a tiny VPS

The one way this goes badly is picking a 10 GB VPS and discovering the asset download plus the home path fill it. Give the box 20 GB of disk and it never comes up again. CPU and RAM are the small part of the bill: a single vCPU handles a 16-player match, and bandwidth is tens of kilobits per player, so a home upload of 20 Mbps is more than enough for a full server.

What I'd do

Run daemonded under systemd on the same small box that already hosts your Discord bots or a Minecraft server, 20 GB of disk, one UDP port forwarded or none if everyone is on the VPN. Set a password, schedule a fixed weekly game night, and re-run the updater the morning of. That is the whole operation. If you cannot name six people who will show up, host Xonotic instead and come back to Unvanquished when you can.