Holdfast: Nations At War Server Hosting
Access to our custom Game Server Management Panel
The in-house Survival Servers game control panel allows you to configure and customize your Holdfast: Nations At War game server. Switch map rotations, change locations, and edit any setting with our easy one click form. Survival Servers is a Holdfast: Nations At War dedicated game server provider with our custom panel.
Watch the Holdfast: Nations At War Trailer
Holdfast: Nations At War is a competitive first and third person multiplayer shooter from Anvil Game Studios, set across the Napoleonic era and the First World War. Regiments form up for organised line battles, sieges and naval engagements on servers that hold well over a hundred players at once. Rent a Holdfast: Nations At War server from Survival Servers and your regiment gets a fixed address, a rotation you control, and hardware that is already up when everyone shows up.
Global Network, Multiple Hosting Locations
Switch locations any time. DDoS protection available.
How to Create a Holdfast Server — Holdfast: Nations At War Server Setup Guide
This free Holdfast server setup guide walks you through creating a dedicated Holdfast: Nations At War server the fast way (with SurvivalServers) and the DIY way (self-hosted on your own hardware).
Hosting your Holdfast server with us is effortless:
- Click Order Now above
- Enter a Username, Password and Email Address or sign up with Google/Twitch
- Select your slot amount, datacenter, and billing cycle
- Click "Order Now" and your Holdfast server is provisioned automatically, online in minutes with full control panel access
Without SurvivalServers
Running a Holdfast: Nations At War dedicated server yourself takes quite a bit more setup:
System Requirements
- Windows or Linux. The Windows build ships a PowerShell launch script that starts the server through its own watchdog process
- Around 10GB of disk space for the server files, plus room for logs
- A machine you are willing to leave running whenever your regiment wants to play
- Serious single-thread CPU headroom. Holdfast simulates every player on one core, so a 150-player line battle is far heavier than the player count suggests
- A stable connection with three UDP ports forwarded per server
- SteamCMD for headless installs
Installation
- Install the Holdfast: Nations At War Dedicated Server via SteamCMD (App ID
1424230). It is free and installs anonymously, so you do not need to own a second copy of the game. - Forward three UDP ports per server — the game port (default
20100), the Steam query port (default27000) and the Steam communications port (default8700) — and add matching firewall rules. Every one of them has to be unique per instance. - Settings live in a plain text config file,
serverconfig_default.txt, in the install root: server name, region, admin console password, join password, network mode and the whole map rotation. - Game updates overwrite that file. The official guidance is to duplicate it under your own name and duplicate the launch script to point at your copy, or you lose your entire configuration on the next patch.
- The player cap is not a global setting —
maximum_playerslives inside each!map_rotationblock, so it has to be set on every entry in the rotation. - Rotations are inline. There is no include or import statement, so a full line-battle rotation is a few hundred kilobytes of config you maintain by hand.
- Share your public IP and game port with players. They join from Multiplayer → Direct Connect, or find you in the in-game Server Browser once the query port is answering.
Administration
- There is no external RCON. Admin is done in-game: press F1, run
rc login <your admin password>, then issue commands withrc. - That means no remote console, no scripted moderation, and no way to administer the server while you are not in it.
Why Wait? Use SurvivalServers Instead
- Instant provisioning on enterprise NVMe SSD hardware with DDoS protection across 8 global datacenters
- Your config is rebuilt from our control panel on every start, so a game update can never wipe your settings
- Five curated map rotations — Army Front, Line Battle, Naval Front, Melee Arena and Frontlines — switchable from a dropdown, or upload your own
- Your slot count is applied to every entry in the rotation automatically
- Automated restarts, scheduled backups, and full FTP access on day one
- We track new Holdfast dedicated-server releases and roll them out for you automatically
- No SteamCMD wrangling, no port forwarding, no firewall rules, no Windows or Linux updates to babysit
Holdfast Dedicated Server vs a Player-Hosted Match
Holdfast is built around scheduled events — line battles, sieges, naval engagements — and those need a server that is already up, already on the right rotation, and already listed when everyone shows up. A dedicated server gives your regiment a fixed address and a persistent identity instead of a lobby that dies when the host leaves.
Holdfast Settings, Rotations and Sizing
Configuration
Server name, region, network mode, welcome and intro messages, friendly fire and reflect damage, spawn protection, respawn waves, officer orders, faction balancing and round timers are all editable from our control panel. We rebuild the server's config file from those settings every time it starts, so a game update can never overwrite your setup.
Map Rotations
Pick one of the five rotations the game ships — Army Front, Line Battle, Naval Front, Melee Arena or Frontlines — from a dropdown, and your slot count is written into every entry for you. Prefer your own? Upload a rotation.txt and switch the dropdown to Custom.
Administration
Holdfast has no external RCON. You set an admin console password in the panel, then log in from the in-game F1 console with rc login to kick, ban, swap maps and manage a round. Your admin action, chat, player and scoreboard logs land in a folder you can pull over FTP.
Sizing
Holdfast simulates a battle on a single core, so player count is the number that matters. Standard network mode supports the biggest fights; Competitive mode raises the tick rate for a sharper feel and caps the server at 64 players. Pick the datacenter closest to your regiment — in a melee, latency is the whole game.
From the SurvivalServers Wiki
Holdfast: Nations At War Guides & Tutorials
Frequently Asked Questions about Holdfast: Nations At War Server Hosting
Holdfast supports very large battles. In the default Standard network mode a server can go up to 150 players; Competitive mode raises the tick rate for a sharper feel and caps the server at 64. Our plans run from 24 up to 100 slots, which covers everything from a squad scrim to a full regiment line battle. Your slot count is written into every entry of your map rotation automatically.
Yes. Anvil Game Studios ships a free standalone dedicated server tool on Steam that anyone can download, and it is what we run for you. Ordering here skips the SteamCMD install, the three UDP ports you would otherwise forward per server, and the config file that a game update overwrites.
Holdfast plays a rotation of maps rather than a single map. The game ships five curated rotations - Army Front, Line Battle, Naval Front, Melee Arena and Frontlines - and you switch between them from a dropdown in your control panel. Choosing Frontlines also puts the server into Frontlines mode for you. If you maintain your own rotation, upload a rotation.txt over FTP and set the dropdown to Custom.
Set an Admin Password in your control panel, join the server, then press F1 to open the in-game console and type rc login followed by that password. Admin commands then run as rc followed by the command. Holdfast has no external RCON, so this in-game console is the only admin channel the game provides.
Holdfast: Nations At War is a competitive first and third person multiplayer shooter from Anvil Game Studios, set across the Napoleonic era and the First World War. It is best known for organised line battles, sieges and naval engagements fought by player regiments, with servers holding well over a hundred players at once.