Servers filled with modifications don't weight much.

[Moony]

I've been working on my own server for a few weeks now. After adding mods for vehicles, weapons and skins rocketed it to aproximatelly 500mb. I've found servers that are filled with skins, great mappings, scripts and more, and they weight around 200mbs. They have more skins, a lot more scripts and complex functions, new textures for buildings; basically, a complete make-over.

I've only heard about the word "compiling". I'm confident there are other ways to reduce the weight for the client.
Is there such thing as "server-side mods"? These are the heaviest. Maybe moving them server-side reduces the downloaded content significantly.

[Tut]

You'll need developers who are experienced in file optimization across sound, texture and model field. Those with knowledge in the fields can bring down all 85 of your 20mb sound files to just a few megabytes, or kilobytes, cut down polygons from 120k to 12k or effectively compress textures to barely no size while retaining most of the vital details.

If your developer can do this, he can do it for the rest of the server's assets as well, which equals a very low download size for the server. And if these heavily optimized assets are frowned upon by players with high end computers, you can utilise a LOD system which lets users choose higher graphic settings for higher quality assets, but keeping the lowest LOD setting as default for newly joining players.

Optimization is one thing, retopologising and recreation of assets is another. While the former destroys areas on the asset, it's by far a lot easier on development time and thus can get the desired result ready a lot sooner.

TL;DR you'll need to find someone experienced in optimization of model, texture, sound files etc.

Edited March 23, 2020 by Tut