I was hoping someone could explain a little bit more how hairpin nat'ing applies to my situation. I have a server that runs docker, one of those containers runs a few game servers. I deleted my Hairpin NAT and the game servers would not handshake with steam anymore. I dont see why this is happening, but I put it back and everything is working again. I dont see what is on the same networks that is causing a communication that needs to go through the router. So, I figure I have to put the docker server on it's on subnet. Can it just not be on the same subnet as the router? Do I have to put other things on a different subnet in order to get rid of my hairpin nat?

Why would you want to get rid of it? It's simple, useful, harmless, there's no problem to have it. It definitely doesn't affect communication with internet, it's used only when client in LAN connects to seemingly outside server, but the port is forwarded back to server in same LAN. That's if you do it correctly, which is what only you so far can see, since you didn't post your config.

I've just read a lot of people commenting that the solutions is probably better to have it on its own network. Like I said it works fine, I just want to make sure i'm doing things the right way before they get overly complicated.

Thanks for the notes.

Moving to a different subnet avoids hairpin NAT and is probably best for segmenting your server, security wise.............
viewtopic.php?t=179343

If you don't need separate subnet for anything else, then no, it's not better, it can only complicate some things. You'll have traffic still passing through router, which is the only downside of hairpin NAT. And how much less complicated you can make it, when hairpin NAT needs only single srcnat rule.