In a modding landscape dominated by kitchen-sink tech packs and cozy farming simulators, Liminal Industries carved out a deeply original niche. The premise is brilliantly unsettling: you and your friends have no-clipped out of reality and are now trapped in the endless, fluorescent-lit corridors of the Backrooms. Your only path to escape? Scavenge repurposed office furniture, filing cabinets, and fluorescent light fixtures to construct elaborate automated factory lines.
It's a horror-tech crossover that shouldn't work, and yet the community can't get enough of it. There is also an unofficial community branch, Liminal Industries Acension (spelled that way on CurseForge), which adds bug fixes, extra mod integration, rebalancing, gameplay tweaks and quality-of-life changes on the same Minecraft 1.20.1 Forge base.
But hosting a Liminal Industries server presents unique infrastructure demands that set it apart from typical modpacks.
Why the Backrooms Break Servers
The core technical challenge of Liminal Industries is its custom world generation. Unlike standard Minecraft, where the overworld follows predictable biome and heightmap patterns, the Backrooms dimensions are procedurally generated mazes of corridors, rooms, and impossible spaces. Every wall, every carpet tile, every humming ceiling light is calculated by the server's CPU in real-time as players explore.
This has two critical implications:
1. Infinite Exploration Means Infinite Generation
There is no natural boundary in the Backrooms. Unlike the Overworld, where oceans and mountains create natural barriers that slow player exploration, the Backrooms are flat, featureless corridors that players can sprint through at full speed for hours. Every step into unexplored territory forces the server to generate another chunk of procedural maze geometry.
On a weak CPU, this results in devastating TPS (Ticks Per Second) drops. Players will experience rubber-banding, delayed interactions with machines and, worst of all, the eerie atmosphere of the Backrooms is completely shattered when the game stutters every three seconds.
2. Automation Compounds the Load
The escape mechanic in Liminal Industries requires players to construct factory automation: conveyor belts, item sorters, and processing chains built from salvaged Backrooms furniture. Each machine is a tile entity that the server must process every single tick.
As players progress deeper into the pack and build more sophisticated factories, the tile entity count in loaded chunks grows dramatically.
Server Requirements
| Setup | RAM | CPU | Storage |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2-4 players (early game) | 6-8GB | 3.8GHz+ single-thread | 40GB NVMe |
| 5-10 players (mid-game factories) | 8-10GB | 4.0GHz+ single-thread | 60GB NVMe |
| 10+ players (late-game automation) | 10-14GB | 4.2GHz+ single-thread | 80GB NVMe |
Setting Up a Liminal Industries Server
1. Download the Server Pack
Liminal Industries is distributed via CurseForge. Download the server files for your pack version:
mkdir liminal-server && cd liminal-server
unzip Liminal-Industries-Server-[VERSION].zip
2. Java 17 and Forge
Liminal Industries and the Acension branch are listed on CurseForge for Minecraft 1.20.1 on Forge, which runs on Java 17:
sudo apt install openjdk-17-jre-headless -y
3. Startup Flags
The Forge 1.20.1 server installer creates a run.sh script and a user_jvm_args.txt file. Put your memory and garbage collector flags in user_jvm_args.txt, one per line:
-Xms8G
-Xmx8G
-XX:+UseG1GC
-XX:+ParallelRefProcEnabled
-XX:MaxGCPauseMillis=200
-XX:+DisableExplicitGC
-XX:+AlwaysPreTouch
Then start the server with:
./run.sh nogui
You will see guides that recommend -XX:+ZGenerational. That flag was added in Java 21, so Java 17 does not recognize it and the server will not start. Plain -XX:+UseZGC does work on Java 17 (the older, non-generational ZGC), but G1, Java's default collector, is the simpler choice for a 1.20.1 pack.
4. Critical: Pre-Generate Where Possible
Unlike standard Minecraft, you cannot easily pre-generate the Backrooms dimensions with Chunky (the maze generation uses non-standard world providers). However, you can mitigate the exploration impact by:
- Setting a world border in the Backrooms dimensions to limit how far players can sprint before they must focus on building factories.
- Reducing the
simulation-distanceto6inserver.propertiesto limit how many chunks around each player are actively processed.
view-distance=8
simulation-distance=6
max-tick-time=90000
The increased max-tick-time prevents the watchdog from killing the server during initial world generation spikes.
Why Single-Thread Performance is Everything
Liminal Industries is one of the more CPU-sensitive modpacks you can host. The combination of real-time procedural generation, dense tile entity processing, and the lack of natural exploration boundaries means the server's main thread is under constant, maximum pressure.
Space-Node does not sell Liminal Industries as a ready-made product, and there is no dedicated Liminal Industries plan. It is a Minecraft modpack, though, so it can run on a regular Minecraft modpack plan: use the panel's CurseForge installer if the pack shows up there, or upload the server files over SFTP. Which CPU you get depends on the region and tier you pick in the plan selector. For a pack that leans this hard on single-thread speed, the Premium tier with a Ryzen 9 9950X, available in the Netherlands, Germany, Poland and Canada, is the one to look at.
No CPU keeps a pack like this at 20 TPS on its own. The world border and simulation distance settings above do as much for a smooth server as the hardware does.
Escape the Backrooms. Don't let your server hold you back.