Set aside a few weekends and mess around distro hopping. Think of it as a small scientific study. Use what you determine to be the most comfortable with.

I suggest being clever in your partitioning keeping /home and any other areas personal to their own partition if not their own disks. If you want to experiment you lose nothing by wiping / and installing something else. Also, you should decide on an effective backup strategy.

If you wanted to go overboard, don’t even make the server accessible publicly. Distribute keys to a Wireguard network that is accessible publicly. Mandate your players obtain keys from you to play.

I would not just default to exfat because it is “newer,” it does have compatibility issues on non-windows systems. The implementations differ wildly.

Veracrypt. Make a file on your disk.

Don’t want a storage file?

Make 2 partitions, put veracrypt portable exe on the first normal storage partition. (fat32 is likely ideal here) Second partition formatted with veracrypt.

Factory games. Resource management… I get all caught up rebalancing inputs and outputs… This building needs an expansion to fit the new gears project… Over here we need more room for screws… Plates??? Why are all the plates gone!!! 🤬