maple classic™ 
aaaaa i think i figured the port forward thing out ??? i had to enable a thing not documented anywhere i could find
and i also went ahead and set up dyndns client so that should update automatically too now (though i think my server already did that but you never know)
i think i'm happy enough with this either way, idk
it CAN be better and i'm sure there's some setting to fix this
but for now i'm just happy to have recreated the whole setup i had without having to use a barely configurable chinese router anymore
NAT loopback doesn't seem to be working though...?
ssh vps -> ssh my ext ip works
ssh my ext ip doesn't work
ssh internal server ip works
hmmmm but the nat loopback flag is set in the port forwards... hhhh