On the OpenStarbound repo, there's an issue involving server-side mod support, something Starbound never had and OpenStarbound still doesn't. It dates back to January 1, and I'm still not quite over how it took me this long to realize a simple truth.
Starbound cannot support server-side mods.
That is, you can't have it connect to an external server and have the server send any missing mods over.
Consider the startup process:
On startup, the game goes through all asset sources (assets\packed.pak, anything in assets\user, folders and zips in mods\, and anything in the Steam Workshop folder), listing all the files in there, in prioritized order and all that, and then loads all the data from these files into various in-game databases. This takes a fair bit, especially when you have a couple mods in place (that's both the mods folder and the Steam Workshop).
You create a character if you haven't already.
You can now start a new game, in which case your copy of SB plays both server and client roles, or join another game.
If you try to join a game that doesn't have the same assets, things break. This is what server-side mods are supposed to solve! But there's a problem:
Same as before.
Same as before.
You join an external game. An asset mismatch is found, so the server's mods are downloaded from the server, to a special server-specific folder. All that's gonna take a good while.
The game has to go back to step one, effectively restarting to load only assets\packed.pak and what's in the server-specific folder. Depending on the server's mod loadout, this will another good amount of time.
If you didn't create a character of one of the vanilla species, or they had items from a mod this server doesn't have, you now have to create a new character specifically for this server.
You can now join the game... but starting a local one or trying to join another server means starting all of this all over again.
It's simply not designed to handle server-side mods.
