Advanced RCON Tool for ArmA - BattleMetrics.com

[BattleMetrics 18]

TL;DR: https://www.battlemetrics.com/rcon/about A new web-based RCON tool that allows you to maintain a persistent connection to your server. Tracks players and admins so you can watch your community and staff. Free 7 day trials. Many features to come.

 

Hello everyone,

 

The RCON tools available for ArmA are usually free desktop clients that give you some ability to run/monitor your server, but are often limited in what they can do and where you can take them. BattleMetrics is here to solve that problem. Our system maintains a constant RCON connection to your server, saving player information, chat logs, and administration logs so that you don't have to go scrounging when you want to find out what happened on your server while you were away.

 

Here are a few of our key features:

 

Proxy & VAC Ban Detection

We automatically detect if a player is using a Proxy or has a VAC ban and display an icon next to their name to let you know. Additionally, we color the name in red so you can easily spot them from the dashboard.

See below:

 

Steam Family Share Detection

We detect if a player is using Steam Family Share. Our data suggests that 52% of those with Steam Family Share have a VAC, EAC, or BattlEye ban associated with their account. We recommend removing these players from your communities and our tool can help you do that automatically.

 

Steam ID < - > GUID Conversion

We automatically reverse GUIDs into steam IDs and vice versa so that you can easily find a person's steam profile.

 

Triggers

We allow you to automate routine tasks such as auto-banning players with VAC Bans/VPNs, send messages to new players, automatically reply to users who request "!info", etc.

 

Common triggers include:

• Auto-ban people who violate certain script restrictions
• Auto-kick for VPNs
• Auto-ban those with VAC bans
• Auto-ban Steam Family Share Accounts
• Respond to player messages (i.e. !info or !admins)
• Kick for name violations
• Reserve an administrator name
• And more!

 

Ban Lists

• Create and share ban lists with other communities to reduce the number of problem players joining your servers. 
• Limit the permissions of those you invite to your ban lists: you have full control over what other communities do with your list.
• Opt-out and create exemptions for bans on a list so that you don't have to be bound by every decision on a shared ban list.
• Quickly ban players with pre-populated ban templates.
• Upon kicking for a ban, automatically add new identifiers to existing bans to reduce ban evasion.

 

Scheduler

Send messages to the server on a customizable schedule. Automate your broadcasts by the minute, hour, day, or month (both by date and day of week). Pick the type of schedule that works for you. We provide three templates: Simple, Warning, and Advanced.

 

 

Staff Permissions & Security

There's no need to hand out passwords to your staff anymore. In addition, you can limit what they can do. New staff member that you don't quite trust? Give them permission to issue bans up to 3 days long or whatever you want. We've made permissions and staff roles fully customizable.

 

 

 

Player Logs

We track players based on name, IP, and GUID. We cross-reference these identifiers against other players in our database. When you go to view a player profile, you can see if they've joined under a different name, IP, etc. You'll also get to see what other servers we've seen that player on before. On the server information screen, we flag first-time players with a star next to their name.

 

The player profile will also show if that player has ever been kicked or banned from the server before, easily allowing you to keep up with repeat offenders.

 

Ban Syncing

We allow you to group your servers into organizations and then issue organization-wide bans. The bans are in our system so that they don't bloat your bans.txt file. You can store more information, detailed notes, and prevent a player from joining any of your servers at the click of a button. No more batch scripts or SQL database complexity. We also support importing and exporting ban lists so that you can have backups if need be.

 

Chat Notifications

Receive an alert any time a user-defined condition is fulfilled (i.e. typing !admin in chat).

 

 

Administration Log

See a detailed history of what your staff has been up to. It has never been easier to see if your staff are using their powers responsibly.

 

Mobile

Since this is a web-based RCON tool, you can access and administer your server from anywhere.

 

 

Dashboard- View Multiple Servers At Once

We allow you to view all of your RCON-connected servers at once from our dashboard. You can issue most server commands and send messages to all your servers at once. You'll no longer need to keep multiple windows open to keep track of your server network.

 

Reverse DNS

We reverse the DNS of any IP available to us so you can more easily see if the traffic coming into your server is residential or something more sinister.

 

 

 

Let us know what you think about this tool in the thread below, or send us an email at staff@battlemetrics.com

 

I hope you all find this tool helpful and good luck with your servers!

 

Hordicus

BattleMetrics Team

https://www.battlemetrics.com/

 

TL;DR https://www.battlemetrics.com/rcon/about    A new web-based RCON tool that allows you to maintain a persistent connection to your server. Tracks players and admins so you can watch your community and staff. Free 7 day trials. Many features to come.

 

EDIT: Updated to reflect VAC Ban detection and GUID -> SteamID Conversion

 

EDIT 2: Updated to reflect addition of Proxy detection

 

EDIT 3: Added chat notifications.

 

EDIT 4: Included more screenshots. Updated to reflect new Trigger features and Free Trials

 

EDIT 5: Updated to reflect the new chat trigger system. Added BattlEye script restriction based banning.

 

I have included a screenshot of the dashboard below. Follow the link above for more!

 

Edited December 4, 2017 by BattleMetrics
Ban List changes and Auto-Add for Bans

[GreenPeanut 0]

Holy crap this looks amazing.  :o

[Maxgming72 0]

Superb tool! Needs to have ping tracking of players and would be even more useful with bandwidth tracking/ bans for low bandwidth.

[BattleMetrics 18]

Glad you guys are liking it so far. More features to come!

 

Maxgming72, the screenshots don't show it, but we have added a player ping display to the detailed server pages. Since ArmA handles ping-limits in a .cfg file via BattlEye, we didn't feel it was necessary to implement an autokick for ping in our system. Do you think we should?

 

As for bandwidth, I don't think that information is available to us over RCON. I wish! If we were able to get some of the information that is available on the player screen in-game, we could do a lot more with our RCON tool.

[GreenPeanut 0]

Did you add this feature "GUID to Steam ID conversion..."?

Because players are now showing their steam id when you look up their info, it's great!

[BattleMetrics 18]

GreenPeanut,

 

Yes, we just added that a couple days ago. Working well so far. Development on it went faster than expected. We're hoping to start incorporating that information into other systems (i.e. VAC ban detection, flagging, and auto bans).

[Arrhythmix 13]

Oh, Hi. Arrhythmix here from the [NAK] I&A Community. I pretty much tried every RCONs since most of them are pretty limited, and each having their own strength and weakness. This is by far the best bang for my buck in regards to getting my job done. Something I would like to see in the future is a way to access log files remotely. Like somehow and highlight suspicious entries. I'm pretty sure most admins of most communities require their actual Server Owners to do this manually, but being able to distribute workload would be super great. Solid 9.5/10 Will Subscribe again.

 

Edited:

 

Feature I would like to see (please correct me if these options are available and I didn't check) :

*Admin online by IP, reverse searchable to physical player Admin

*Automatic banlist merging option instead of manual merging as well as banlist count (to ensure the merge was successful)

*Bold or Italicized Admin calls

*Server hopping notification / Name Change notification

*Admin name in reason for ban (because some admins forget to sign bans)

 

P.S This should get a sticky

[BattleMetrics 18]

The ability to process log files is something we hope to add in the future. That
is something that is still at least several months off though.

Admin online by IP, reverse searchable to physical player Admin
You're not the first to ask for this type of functionality and it's on the short list.
We'll be adding the ability to see which of your admins are active on BattleMetrics.
We also plan to add an area where you can specify your admins' GUIDs so that we
can highlight them on the player list.

Automatic banlist merging option instead of manual merging as well as banlist count (to ensure the merge was successful)
Automatic merging is certainly possible and something we may implement down
the road. Adding the ban list count is pretty simple, we'll look to add that in
the next few days.

Bold or Italicized Admin calls
Are you talking about "!admin" type messages from players? If so, our plan is to
eventually roll that type of functionality into the alerts system. That would allow
you to highlight messages that contain keywords (such as !admin) and/or receive a
desktop notification, SMS/text message, or email.

Server hopping notification / Name Change notification
We hadn't thought of server hopping notifications before. That's something we can
do and I'll add it to our to-do list, but not sure when it will make it out.

A notification when a player changes their name is something we can do.
We're currently developing a system that will assign a risk score to players.
One of the many factors that will go into that is how many times a player has changed
their name. A notification is probably still a ways off, but we will be making
name changes more noticeable.

Admin name in reason for ban (because some admins forget to sign bans)
Most communities seem to have a common ban reason format that all their admins
use. We're going to be adding the ability change the default ban reason and
include certain variables which will include the banning admin's name.

Also, we would be happy and grateful if someone were to make this a sticky post!

[GreenPeanut 0]

Glad you're updating this tool frequently, the new features are great!

 

1 Small suggestion is to change the shade/color of players with vac bans depending on how long ago they received it, and how many they have. This way it's easier to see someone who got banned a few days ago vs someone who got banned 4 years ago playing cod :P

 

Also agree that this should be stickied, by far the best rcon tool available.

[Maxgming72 0]

Working Great so Far. Some admins find it a little difficult to use as they are used to EPM Rcon but it has nowhere near the options available.

 

Few Points I'd like to mention/ask:

 

Will you be adding support for any other games in future? Such as Rust?

 

How long do bans stay in the database for? Bans dont get written to our ban.txt file, is there anyway to get that working?

 

Chat says alot of 'by unknown admin' even though they are on the list and the admin section could be more intuitive (be nice to see whos online-what ips are connected and they belong to - able to assign the server's ip as it just says unknown admin when an automatic message pops up)

 

Could we please have Hourly Presets for bans please or customisable ones?

[BattleMetrics 18]

Happy you guys are enjoying the tool!

 

GreenPeanut:

We've thought about implementing your suggestion, but ultimately the red coloring and the VAC ban icon are placeholders while we set up our "player risk assessment score" which is basically going to be a number (0-100) that accounts for all the various risk factors a player may have (i.e. vac bans, vpns, multiple names, ips, etc) and combine them into an easy-to-interpret score. With that score we'll start adding auto banning options when a player exceeds a certain score or meets some other condition. Your suggestion will be implemented in some form in that the number we assign a player will be color coded to the risk (blue -> red).

 

Maxgming72:

We intend to add more games in the coming months. We have a few pressing issues to resolve before we start adding games. That being said, adding Rust and DayZ are on the top of our list. They will be relatively easy to implement since we already have much of the back end infrastructure we would need to track and service them.

 

Bans stay in the database forever so long as you do not delete the ban or delete the organization the ban belongs to. That way you can always see if a player has been previously banned on your server. We currently allow you to export or import your bans.txt file in various formats. I would suggest doing this on a semi-regular basis so that you have a backup in the event we have a connectivity issue. We hope to have an API in the future that will allow you to automate this process.

 

"Unknown admin" is the byproduct of an RCON user not using BattleMetrics. We don't get complete information from other RCON clients about who is connected other than the IP of the connected RCON user. Reversing the IP to detect the identity of the admin is a bit buggy and ultimately not reliable for providing accurate information about who is performing RCON actions. I would encourage all your staff members to use our system for accurate tracking. We do hope to implement a "who's online" feature soon, as some other users have requested that feature as well. Additionally, we could allow assignment of the server IP but for the moment that will have to sit on the back burner while we address a few of the more pressing issues.

 

We can absolutely do hourly presets. We'll have to wait for more feedback before enabling customization. Tack that on to the to-do list!

 

Hordicus

BattleMetrics Team

[Maxgming72 0]

Great response thanks.

 

Just had another quick suggestion with regards to bans - Would it be possible to implement it so that on the bans tab its separated to Active bans and Ended bans? Would make it easier to see which are active without having to delete inactive ones and keeping them on file.

 

Regards

Max

[BattleMetrics 18]

Maxgming72,

 

That is certainly something we can do. We need to revisit the way we display the ban list and make it a little easier to browse through. Your suggestion should help with that. Thanks!

 

Hordicus

BattleMetrics Team

[RoidRage 1]

Hey.  My team and I have so far have been loving Battlemetrics so great work guys. 

 

However small issues: 
 

https://gyazo.com/3b3a750d40dd417fbacd319b70041ada

 

One server is being displayed as Dead. We recentely changed a mission on it and it working fine with EPM RCON but its sort of buggy with Battlemetrics. Displaying incorrect number of players, saying the server is dead while at the same time showing people connecting and disconnecting. Not sure if this is a cache issue ?

 

 

 

This is only happening with 1 server. As you can see the rest of the servers are completely fine. 

 

Another thing is that the Battmetrics doesnt seem to be able to keep up with high connect / disconnect spam. With the release of Apex alot of people are trying to connect to my servers and its skipping a bunch of messeges just showing them connecting and disconnecting but the BEC messege that says You have been kicked for not have a reserved slot gets skipped because when to many people are spamming connect.

 

 

Do you guys have any sort Public Discord channel  maybe where or a bugtracker where issues can be posted more efficentely and we could discuss some other features? Give feedback, provide Ideas. My team and I have so far been loving Battlemetrics so great work guys. 

 

 

 

EDIT: The system sort of caught up regarding the dead server bug. After posting this it just sort of fixed itself. 

[BattleMetrics 18]

RoidRage,

 

Glad to hear you guys are enjoying the service. You definitely have one of the larger communities on ArmA III and we're glad to have you!

 

Apologies about the inaccurate/slow to update server information. It looks like you were able to establish the RCON connection regardless. We'll begin looking into what's causing the issue (most likely need to make sure our query workers are communicating with RCON). Thanks for the bug report!

 

We'll also be looking into the dropped messages. Not sure off the top of my head what that could be, but we'll find out.

 

As for support, you can join us on Discord at: https://discord.gg/mXrtpbw

 

or email us at staff@battlemetrics.com

 

Hordicus

BattleMetrics Team

[bmgdragon 0]

Hey there!

 

Does this have the possibility in the future to work as an auto restarter? Since BEC is no more, and never worked for us linux lovers anyway, finding a way to auto restart and do it in a professional was is harder than ever. Is this something you might consider? 

[BattleMetrics 18]

Bmgdragon,

 

We do have plans in the future to handle many of the BEC functions, but that will require us to write a serverside application like BEC. This will necessarily take us quite a few months, but it is definitely on our radar!

 

Hordicus

BattleMetrics Team

[bmgdragon 0]

Bmgdragon,

 

We do have plans in the future to handle many of the BEC functions, but that will require us to write a serverside application like BEC. This will necessarily take us quite a few months, but it is definitely on our radar!

 

Hordicus

BattleMetrics Team

Thank you kindly, it is great to hear that!

 

For us Linux users it's a nightmare still to try and get anything similar to BEC x.x so it'll be nice to finally have something even if it's in the future. I'll get this install either way so it's preped and ready to go!

[BattleMetrics 18]

7-21-16:

- [Added] Chat notification options. Matches are done based on whole words,
  !admin will not match administrator. Notifications will only be triggered by
  messages from players.
- [Added] Option to toggle showing expired bans.
- [Added] Information about the number of bans you have to the ban page.
- [Added] Hourly presets to the ban form. Select "X Hours" and then the number
  of hours to ban the player.
- [Fixed] Display issue on the ban form that made it appear as if users
  could issue permanent bans after selecting a preset and then clearing the ban
  duration input.

[byCado 0]

HI i have a new idea, if it's not already implemented.

 

Would it be possible to have custom bans. The organisation owner could set up custom bans with custom messages. For example if i click on someones name and click ban then a load of preset bans will appear such as Hacking, Rule Break etc.

The custom messages could be something like (Hacking/{{Admin}}),   {{Admin}} of course being the admin that banned the user. 

 

You could also have it so it gives them a certain ban length in the preset. Another example being the owner could set a preset called 'Quick Ban' which gives the player a 10 min ban or something like that.

 

 

I hope you understand. This would be a great feature.

[BattleMetrics 18]

byCado,

 

Thanks for the feedback and the suggestions! We'll add them to our to-do list.

 

Hordicus

BattleMetrics Team

[BattleMetrics 18]

2016-08-11

• [Added] Scheduler. Send messages automatically on flexible schedules.

2016-08-06

• [Added] Ability to associate player identifiers with an admin. From the organization edit page you are able to edit users and add BattlEye GUIDs and Steam IDs that will be used to identify that admin. This is currently limited to highlighting admins that are in game, but may be expanded later.
• [Fixed] Issue preventing infinite scrolling in server activity views.

2016-08-05

• [Added] Player notes. You can now add notes that are associated with players and an organization. All users in the organization can see the notes. The person who created the note can edit and delete the note. In order to allow your admins to edit and delete other admin's notes give them the "Manage Player Notes" permission.
• [Changed] Added an "Orgs" button to the top right to make organization management a bit easier to find. It is only visible to users who have the required permission to create or edit organizations.
• [Fixed] Issue calculating height of server activity when viewing multiple days worth of activity at once.

2016-07-26

• [Added] Ban reason templates. You may automatically include the ban's unique id (default), the admin's nickname, ban duration (e.g. 2d, 3h), time left (e.g. 4h, updates dynamically), the date the player was banned, and when the ban expires.

  You can also set the default ban reason for your organization under organization options. You can set your organization's locale and time zone which will be used when formatting dates and times in ban reasons.

[kaia 0]

is it possible to have a option to change the ingame chat color when a person types through battle metrics as a serverwide msg. i find the default ingame system color isnt visable enough and just gets ignored most of the time cause the same color is used in everything the server system does from connections to deaths.

[BattleMetrics 18]

Kaia,

 

Unfortunately that is a limitation of the BattlEye protocol/game. Since the game doesn't support that functionality, there's nothing we can do at the moment to change that.

 

Hordicus

BattleMetrics Team

[BattleMetrics 18]

Some new updates:

2016-09-10

• [Added] Ability to broadcast server commands to multiple servers.
• [Added] Option to remove server from dashboard.