Arma 3 Config Editor: server.cfg and BattlEye RCON Settings

An Arma 3 dedicated server reads its core rules from server.cfg, a file written in Bohemia’s SQF-style config syntax rather than plain JSON or INI. It controls your server’s name, the message-of-the-day rotation, mission voting rules, addon signature verification, BattlEye anti-cheat, and voice chat. On an Arma 3 server hosted on Loafhosts, the Config Editor turns the fields that matter for day-to-day operation into a labelled form, grouped by what they affect, so you do not need to know SQF syntax to change them. This guide covers exactly what the editor does, which file(s) it touches, how the groups and presets work, which fields are locked and why, and when a change actually takes effect. The Config Editor is currently a BETA feature.

What the Arma 3 Config Editor Does

The editor works against two files:

• server.cfg (at your server’s root), edited through a grouped form covering the settings that matter most for running the server day to day
• beserver_x64.cfg (inside a battleye/ folder), Arma 3’s BattlEye RCON configuration, shown as a raw text file rather than a form

For server.cfg, instead of hand-writing lines like verifySignatures = 2;, you get a labelled control for each setting, a short explanation of what it does, and validation before anything is saved: numbers have to fall inside their allowed range, dropdown-style settings only accept one of their listed options, and on/off settings are written as proper booleans. If a value is out of range or the wrong type, the save is rejected and the file on disk is left exactly as it was.

The editor only ever writes the fields you actually changed. Some parts of server.cfg (list-style entries like the message-of-the-day rotation, the admin list, or headless-client addresses) are array values rather than single settings, and the form deliberately leaves those alone; they are not part of this editor.

Note: The editor covers server.cfg as a form and battleye/beserver_x64.cfg as a raw text view.

Note: Array-style entries in server.cfg (the MOTD list, admin list, headless-client addresses) are not part of the form and are left untouched.

Note: Values are checked against an allowed range or list before saving, so a bad entry is caught before it reaches the server.

This Is a BETA Feature

The Arma 3 Config Editor is labelled BETA in the panel. It covers the settings Arma 3 operators change most often, but it is newer than the editors for some other games, and the BattlEye RCON side in particular is a raw-text view rather than a full form, because the egg does not provision that file automatically (more on this below). Expect it to keep growing.

Opening the Config Editor

Open your Arma 3 server in the Loafhosts panel and look in the left sidebar under the Game section for Server Config. Click it to open the Config Editor. Like every other config editor on the panel, this item only appears on Arma 3 servers.

If your server has never been started, server.cfg may not exist on disk yet, since it is downloaded during the install script. Start the server once, then reopen the editor.

Tip: The Server Config item lives in the Game section of the server sidebar, near Change Game.

Tip: If the editor reports no settings found, start the server once so server.cfg is downloaded, then reopen the editor.

How the server.cfg Settings Are Grouped

The form splits server.cfg into five groups:

• Identity: Server name (the name shown in the multiplayer browser) and the MOTD interval, which controls how often the message-of-the-day lines rotate.
• Players: Max players (locked, see below), Persistent mission (keeps the mission running even when no players are connected), and Kick duplicate IDs (disconnects a player whose player ID is already connected).
• Voting: Vote threshold (the fraction of connected players required to pass a vote, for example 0.33 for 33 percent) and the minimum number of players required before mission voting is allowed at all.
• Security: Addon signature verification, Required secure ID, BattlEye anti-cheat, BattlEye license acceptance, Disable voice over network, and Voice codec quality.
• Logging: Send statistics (opts in to Bohemia’s server analytics) and Log timestamp format.

Tip: Read the tip under a setting before changing it if you are not sure what it does; several of these, like addon signature verification, directly affect whether modded clients can connect.

The Security Group in Detail

This is the group most worth understanding before you touch it, since it controls both anti-cheat and who can connect at all.

• Addon signature verification (0, 1, or 2): 0 disables checks entirely, 2 requires a valid version-2 Bohemia Interactive signature on every client addon. If you run mods that are not signed the way BI expects, set this to 0; on an unmodded server, 2 is the safer choice.
• Required secure ID (0, 1, or 2): 0 disables the check, 1 warns on an invalid secure ID, 2 kicks players without one.
• BattlEye anti-cheat: turns BattlEye on or off server-wide. RCON only functions while this is on, so if you plan to use BattlEye RCON at all, this has to be enabled.
• BattlEye license accepted: confirms acceptance of BattlEye’s licensing agreement.
• Disable voice over network: turns off in-game voice chat for the whole server.
• Voice codec quality (0 to 30): higher values improve voice audio quality at the cost of more bandwidth per player.

Note: Addon signature verification and Required secure ID are the two settings that most often need loosening on a modded server; a strict signature policy on a heavily modded server will lock out players whose mod copies are not signed the way the server expects.

Presets

The editor ships two presets that retune the Security group in a single save:

• Vanilla Secure: sets Addon signature verification to 2, Required secure ID to 2, and turns BattlEye on. The tightened baseline for an unmodded, public-facing server.
• Modded (Relaxed Signatures): sets Addon signature verification to 0 and Required secure ID to 0. The baseline for a modded server, where client addons are not expected to carry a matching BI signature.

Applying a preset writes every setting in that preset in one save. Neither preset touches Max players, since that field is locked and managed elsewhere (see below).

Tip: Apply Modded (Relaxed Signatures) as soon as you plan to run any Workshop mods; a strict signature policy is the most common reason players get silently rejected from a modded server.

Locked Settings and Why They Are Read-Only

Four fields in server.cfg are shown with a Locked tag and cannot be edited from this form:

• password: your server’s join password, managed from the Server Password field on the Startup tab. Loafhosts writes it directly into server.cfg from that field on every boot, so an edit here would be silently overwritten on the next start.
• maxPlayers: the same story, managed from the Max Players field on the Startup tab and rewritten on every boot.
• passwordAdmin and serverCommandPassword: the in-game admin login and server-command passwords. These are treated as sensitive credentials and are not yet exposed as editable fields through this editor.

The lock is enforced, not just a hint: the editor will not write a locked key under any circumstances, even if you try to change it.

Note: Server password and Max players are managed by the Startup tab, not this editor; a hand edit to either line in the file gets overwritten on the server’s next start.

Note: passwordAdmin and serverCommandPassword are locked as sensitive credentials.

The BattlEye RCON File: A Raw View, Because It Isn’t Provisioned Yet

The second file the editor opens is battleye/beserver_x64.cfg, Arma 3’s BattlEye RCON configuration. Unlike server.cfg, this file is shown as a raw text view rather than a grouped form, and it isn’t a form because the Arma 3 install script does not create this file or set it up for you at all. There is no RCON password or port field on the Startup tab, so out of the box, BattlEye RCON is completely inert.

Within the raw view, three keys are locked as reserved network and secret fields: RConPassword, RConPort, and RConIP. Because the panel does not currently provision or manage this file’s contents, you cannot yet set a working RCON password through this tab. To actually enable BattlEye RCON today, use the panel’s File Manager to create beserver_x64.cfg inside a battleye/ folder at your server root by hand, with your own RConPassword and RConPort values, and then turn on BattlEye anti-cheat under the Security group above, since RCON only works while BattlEye is enabled.

Note: battleye/beserver_x64.cfg is not created automatically; if it does not exist, that is expected, not a bug.

Note: RConPassword, RConPort, and RConIP are locked in this view; use the File Manager to set up BattlEye RCON manually for now.

When Changes Apply: Restart Required

Arma 3 reads server.cfg only when it starts. After saving changes in the Config Editor, nothing is live until the server reads the file again.

1. Make your edits, or apply a preset
2. Click Save changes; the editor writes only what changed and confirms how many settings it saved
3. Restart the server from the console or power controls
4. Watch the console to confirm the server comes back up cleanly

There is no hot-reload for any of these settings, including Security group changes like BattlEye or signature verification. If you change several settings, save them all first and do a single restart to bring everything in at once.

Note: Saving writes the file but does not apply the change; restart the server to load the new settings.

Putting It Together

The Arma 3 Config Editor turns server.cfg from a file you would otherwise hand-edit in SQF-style syntax into a grouped form: Identity, Players, Voting, Security, and Logging, each with plain-English explanations, validated input, and two presets that retune signature verification and BattlEye in a single save. Server password and max players stay locked here because the Startup tab already owns them, and BattlEye RCON is a raw, manually-set-up file for now since the egg does not provision it automatically. As a BETA feature it will keep expanding, but today it already covers the settings most Arma 3 operators touch most often, without the syntax errors that come from hand-editing SQF config files.