I figured that public was open to all and that friends only was password protected.

Also you might check that your network settings are set to lan and not internet.

Thanks Troll,

I am set to LAN in the drop down box at the top of the server setup screen. Have you had any success?

Although I have a home lan I am the only one here so I have not tried a lan game.

I believe the "LAN" dropdown entry you are selecting just configures the amount of data the server should send to clients; it is probably still trying to establish an online server. I haven't experimented with hosting much myself yet, but it's possible what you want might be easier to achieve with a dedicated server.

As far as getting steam to work, the most reliable method is just to log in in online mode, then manually switch to offline mode, then leave it that way.

I found this from another forum.It is dated march 24,2011.So take it with a grain of salt.

"Lixma: How will the multiplayer aspect work? Will it need Hyperlobby (or a similar 3rd party tool)?
Multiplayer matchmaking is done via steam from inside the game. There’s also LAN mode that doesn’t go through steam. There’s also dedicated servers, of course.

As a client, you’ll simply click Multiplayer – then Client, and go into the Server Search window. Select type (LAN – Internet – Recent – Favorites – etc), and see the server list populate. You’ll have a filters option, where you can filter servers by realism options, ping, map, etc etc etc."