Ark Survival Evolved startup error: arkserver target pane has exited

[IOcase]

I've been having issues with tmux working correctly with my ark server. I can start and run the server in debug mode just fine, but for some reason it's not configuring tmux correctly.

I'm also getting an error in my tmux logs 'connection refused' but I'm a newb with tmux so I'm having trouble figuring this out.

running 'tmux ls' gets me:

0: 6 windows (created Sat Dec 10 10:52:46 2022)
Maverick_ark: 1 windows (created Sat Dec 10 10:52:46 2022)

The arkserver pane is dead
the 6 panes in the other session appear to be functioning normally still. the 3 zsh windows inside are also empty.

I've been trying to fix this for hours and finding information on this error is extremely difficult. Any help would be appreciated.

Edit:
I renamed my tmux.conf file to tmux.conf.bak in case it was my configuration causing the issue.

Now I'm getting this error on server start:

[ .... ] Starting arkserver: Maverick_arkno server running on /tmp/tmux-1001/default
[ FAIL ] Starting arkserver: Unable to start Maverick_ark