Minecraft server running behind skipping ticks

Understanding Skipping Ticks

When your Minecraft server logs show "Can't keep up! Is the server overloaded?", it means the server is failing to complete its game logic within the allocated 50ms per tick. This results in "skipping ticks," which manifests as lag, rubber-banding, and delayed block interactions.

Diagnosing the Cause

Before making changes, identify the source of the load:

• Entity Count: Too many mobs or items in a single area.
• Complex Redstone: Large-scale farms or inefficient clock circuits.
• World Generation: Players exploring new chunks too rapidly.
• Plugin/Mod Overhead: Poorly optimised plugins or excessive background tasks.

Optimising Your Server

On AwakeNode

1. the Startup tab:** Use the Startup tab to ensure you are running an optimised server software like Paper or Purpur, which include built-in performance patches.
2. File Manager: Use the built-in File Manager to edit bukkit.yml, spigot.yml, and paper-world-defaults.yml. Reducing view distance and entity activation ranges here significantly lowers CPU load.
3. Support: To add your own JVM flags, set a custom startup command in your server's Startup tab.

On other hosts / manually

1. Server Software: Switch from Vanilla to Paper or Purpur to gain access to performance configuration files.
2. Startup Flags: You must manually edit your server's startup script to include optimised JVM arguments (such as Aikar's Flags). Ensure your -Xmx value is set correctly for your allocated RAM.
3. Configuration: Manually edit your configuration files via SFTP to lower view-distance, simulation-distance, and entity-activation-range to reduce the processing burden on your CPU.

Scaling Resources

If your server remains overloaded despite optimisations, you may have outgrown your current hardware capacity. On AwakeNode, you can upgrade your plan at any time; your RAM allocation and Xmx flags will update automatically without requiring manual configuration changes.