Every wall, foundation, door, and deployable in Rust is an entity. Entities consume server resources - memory, CPU for decay calculations, and network bandwidth for synchronization. Managing entity counts is essential for long-term server health.
Understanding Entity Load
A typical Rust base might contain:
- 200-500 building blocks (walls, floors, foundations, doors)
- 50-100 deployables (boxes, furnaces, workbenches, sleeping bags)
- 10-30 electrical components
- Various items on shelves, weapon racks
A single base: 300-600 entities. With 50 active groups on a server, that's 15,000-30,000 player-created entities - on top of map entities (nodes, trees, animals, monuments).
Performance Impact by Entity Count
| Total Entities | Server Impact | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Under 50,000 | Minimal | Healthy server |
| 50,000-100,000 | Moderate | Watch performance weekly |
| 100,000-200,000 | Significant | Optimization needed |
| 200,000+ | Severe | TPS drops, lag, possible crashes |
Decay System
Decay is Rust's built-in entity management. Buildings without tool cupboard authorization slowly lose health. Decay settings:
decay.scale 1.0 # Default. Higher = faster decay
decay.tick 300 # How often decay checks run (seconds)
Decay Rates (default)
- Twig: 1 hour without TC
- Wood: 3 hours
- Stone: 5 hours
- Metal: 8 hours
- Armored: 12 hours
Tuning for Your Server
PvP servers (weekly wipe): Keep decay.scale at 1.0 or slightly higher (1.2). Buildings need to decay between wipes to manage entities.
PvE servers (monthly wipe): Lower decay slightly (0.7-0.8) since players invest more time in builds. But never disable it entirely.
Never disable decay on a long-term server. Without decay, entity counts grow forever until the server becomes unplayable. Even a PvE building server needs decay to clean up after players who leave.
Building Limits
Server Rules
Set clear building limits and enforce them:
- Maximum base size (e.g., 10x10 foundation footprint)
- Maximum entities per base (e.g., 1,000)
- No honeycombing beyond 2 layers (PvP severs)
- No massive compound walls spanning the map
Oxide Plugins for Limits
- EntityLimit: Cap entities per player/group
- BuildingGrades: Control which materials players can use
- RemoverTool: Let players clean up their own builds easily
Monitoring
Check entity counts with:
ent count
Track daily. If entities climb faster than decay removes them, adjust your decay scale or enforce building limits.
Optimization for Large Servers
On Space-Node's Rust hosting, NVMe SSD handles the I/O load of entity serialization during saves. But CPU and memory are the real bottlenecks at scale:
- Memory: Each entity consumes bytes of RAM. At 200,000 entities, that's several GB of entity data alone.
- CPU: Decay calculations run per-entity on the decay tick. 200,000 entities × decay check = significant tick time.
- Saves: World saves serialize all entities to disk. More entities = longer save pauses.
The Ryzen 9 7950X3D's cache advantage pays off here - entity data access patterns are random, and the 128MB L3 cache keeps more of this data close to the CPU.
Balance Is Key
Your players want to build epic bases. Your server needs to stay performant. The sweet spot is:
- Allow creative building within reasonable limits
- Keep decay active to clean up after inactive players
- Monitor entity counts weekly
- Communicate limits clearly so players don't invest in builds that get removed
