ArgonianMaid

I am trying to play vintage story with a friend, unfortunately because of the way his wifi is configured he can't join UPnP works or host them (same issue as this user had however unlike OP he cannot plug directly into his ethernet or change the modem settings) We are considering a paid server, namely G-Portal, but I have never played this way before and I was worried about how the always online nature of servers affects the time relevant nature of the game. My questions are: 1) With a paid server, do the seasons change and does food expire while players are not on the server? Is there any way to prevent this if so? 2) Is there any way to use mods with G-Portal? If not are there other paid servers that handle mods better?