The RCON Console is the moderation cockpit for an Arma Reforger server you host with Loafhosts. It opens a live BattlEye RCon connection to your server from inside the panel, parses the player list into a real online/offline roster, and turns the awkward #kick and #ban commands into one-click buttons with duration and reason presets. Behind those buttons it keeps its own ban list — because the Reforger engine cannot list bans back to you — so the Unban picker always knows who is banned. This guide covers exactly what the console does: opening it, enabling RCON, reading the roster, kicking and banning players, managing the ban list, the raw RCon terminal, and connecting an external tool like BattleMetrics. Everything below is the real behavior of the panel feature, nothing invented.
What the RCON Console Is
The RCON Console is a per-server tool that appears only on Arma Reforger servers (it is scoped to the Reforger egg) once the plugin is enabled for your server. It talks to your server over BattlEye RCon through the Loafhosts node that already hosts the server, so the command round-trips locally — your RCon password and the server’s IP and port stay on the node and never reach your browser. There are two ways to drive it: structured quick-actions (List players, Kick, Ban, Unban), where the panel builds the exact RCon command for you server-side, and a raw terminal where an admin types BattlEye RCon commands directly. Both are authenticated, scoped to who you are, rate-limited, and written to an audit log on every attempt.
Note: The console only shows up on Arma Reforger servers with the plugin enabled — it self-hides on every other game
Note: Your RCon password and the server’s address never leave the node; the panel passes neither and shows neither
Note: Every command — success or failure — is recorded to the server’s RCON console audit log
Opening the Console
Open your Arma Reforger server in the panel and look in the left sidebar for the Console item. Selecting it opens the RCON Console takeover over the server page. The console probes the server first and only appears for a person who holds at least the lowest console permission — moderation-view — so it fails closed for anyone who has not been granted access. If the server is not a Reforger server, or the plugin is not enabled for it, the item simply does not appear.
Tip: Can’t see the Console item? Confirm the server is Arma Reforger and that you (or your subuser role) hold the moderation-view permission — the lowest console node, and what the panel checks before it shows the item
Tip: The owner of the server and Loafhosts panel admins always have full console access
Enabling RCON on Your Server
Before the console can talk to the game, the server needs an RCon block in its config. The console handles this for you with an Enable RCON action. It claims a published port on the node, writes the RCon block into the server’s config.json with an admin permission level and a strong password (keeping the server’s existing password if one is already set, or generating a strong 24-character one if there is none), and syncs the node so the published port is reachable. RCON is published on purpose so external RCon tools can connect — the strong password plus the admin permission is the control, not a hidden port.
One important detail: changing the config does nothing until Reforger reloads it. After you enable RCON, restart the server so the engine binds the new RCON port. The panel tells you a restart is required and can re-check the RCON state afterward, including an optional live probe that confirms RCON is actually answering on the new port. Enabling RCON is a higher-privilege action — it changes server settings and claims a port — so it is limited to the server owner, panel admins, or a subuser who holds the startup-settings permission. Everyone else sees an “ask an admin” note instead of the button.
Note: RCON changes take effect only after a server restart — the console reminds you and can verify the live port for you
Note: The auto-setup keeps the server’s existing RCon password if one is already set, and generates a strong 24-character one only when there is none
Tip: Enabling RCON needs owner, admin, or startup-settings permission; reading the roster does not
The Live Player Roster
The heart of the console is the player roster. When you open it, the panel runs #players over RCon and parses the engine’s reply into a clean table of player number, identity (UID), and name — instead of the raw text dump the game returns. The roster is split into Online and Offline tabs. Online shows who is on the server right now; Offline shows players the panel has seen before, each with a last-seen time and a connect count, so you can act on someone who just left without waiting for them to reconnect.
That offline history works because the console keeps a durable roster of its own: every time it reads the live list it records who was seen, and it can show the offline list instantly without hammering the live server. BattlEye RCon is fire-and-forget, so the player list sometimes arrives a beat after the login acknowledgement; the console retries once and tells you honestly when it only got the login handshake (so an empty table never gets mistaken for an empty server).
Tip: Use the Offline tab to ban or note a player who just disconnected — their identity and last-seen are remembered
Note: The roster shows each player’s in-session number, their Bohemia identity (UID), and their name, parsed from the live
#playersoutput
Quick Actions: Kick, Ban and Unban
From the roster you get one-click moderation. The structured actions the console exposes are:
- List players — refresh the live roster (
#players). - Kick player — disconnect a player by their in-session player number (
#kick). - Ban player — ban by player number or identity, with a duration and an optional reason (
#ban create). - Unban identity — lift a ban, keyed by the banned identity (
#ban remove).
You never type the RCon string for these — you pick a player and the panel assembles the exact, validated command on the server side, so a stray character can’t slip in. The ban form comes with duration presets — 1 hour, 1 day, 7 days, 30 days, and Permanent — and reason presets — Cheating / hacking, Griefing / team killing, Abusive chat / harassment, Exploiting / glitching, Ban evasion, and Admin decision. You can also type a free-form reason. In Reforger’s convention a duration of zero seconds means a permanent ban, which is exactly what the Permanent preset sends.
When you ban someone straight from the roster by their in-session number, the console resolves that transient slot into the player’s durable Bohemia identity before it records the ban, so the ban is keyed to a stable identity rather than a session slot that disappears the moment they leave. Kick, ban and unban are write actions, so they require the moderation-manage permission (the owner and admins always have it); reading the roster only requires moderation-view.
Note: Permanent is a zero-second ban — the Permanent preset sends it for you
Tip: Banning from the roster captures the player’s lasting identity, so a reconnect under a new session slot is still covered
Note: Kick / Ban / Unban need the moderation-manage permission; viewing the roster needs only moderation-view
The Ban List and Unbanning
The Reforger engine has no command to read its ban list back to you — asking for one returns “unknown command” — so the console maintains its own ban list. Every ban the engine accepts is recorded with the identity, last-known name, reason, duration, who issued it, and when it expires; every unban marks the row inactive rather than deleting it, so your ban history survives. That recorded list is what the Unban picker reads, which is why you can pick a banned player and lift the ban without remembering their identity by hand.
The list shows active bans by default and can include lifted history too. Temporary bans are kept honest automatically: a maintenance pass ages out timed bans that have already expired and marks them as system-expired, so the Unban list never offers to lift a ban that lapsed on its own. (There’s no on-disk bans.txt to import on this build — the panel’s own list is the source of truth.)
Tip: Use the Unban picker rather than typing identities — it reads the panel’s own ban list, which the game itself can’t enumerate
Note: Lifting a ban keeps the history; expired temporary bans drop off the active list automatically
The Raw BattlEye RCon Terminal
For admins who want direct control, the console includes a raw BattlEye RCon terminal — a free-form command box wired straight to your server’s RCon. This is a deliberately dangerous surface, so it sits behind its own explicit permission (the RCON-console control node) that is off by default and never granted automatically; the owner and panel admins hold it, and you can grant it to a trusted subuser on purpose. Whatever you type is sanitized first — control characters are rejected and the command is length-capped — then sent as a single line. Every command, whether it succeeds or fails, is audited, and the terminal is rate-limited to roughly thirty commands a minute per person per server so a live server can’t be hammered.
The terminal also offers a reference list of the native Reforger RCon admin verbs (#players, #kick, #ban create, #ban remove) as a palette. Note that #shutdown is intentionally not a console action — stopping the server belongs on the panel’s power controls, not the moderation console, so a moderation-scoped operator can never take the server down from here.
Note: The raw terminal is gated behind its own opt-in permission and is off by default — grant it only to trusted admins
Tip: Commands are sanitized, single-line, length-capped and rate-limited, and every attempt is logged
Connecting an External RCON Tool
Because RCON is published, you can also point an external tool such as BattleMetrics at your server. The console has a connection details reveal that returns the host, port, RCon password, and permission level to paste into your tool. This is the one place the RCon password is shown in the browser, so it is gated exactly like Enable RCON — owner, admin, or the startup-settings permission — and every reveal is recorded in the audit log. Roster reads and the setup-status checks never expose the password; only this reveal does.
Note: The connection-details reveal is the only place the RCon password appears — it’s restricted to owner/admin/startup-settings and audited on every view
Tip: Paste the host, port and password into BattleMetrics (or any RCon tool) to manage the server alongside the panel console
Who Can Use What
The console maps cleanly onto Loafhosts subuser permissions, so you can hand out exactly as much access as you trust someone with:
- Moderation (view) — open the console, read the live and offline roster, and see the ban list. The lowest console permission.
- Moderation (manage) — kick, ban and unban players.
- RCON Console (raw) — the dangerous free-form terminal. Opt-in, off by default.
- Startup settings — Enable RCON, reveal connection details, and manage compatibility and auto-moderation.
The server owner and Loafhosts panel admins bypass these checks and have everything. Subusers only ever see the controls they can actually use; anything they lack permission for either fails closed or shows an “ask an admin” note rather than appearing and erroring.
Tip: Give community moderators Moderation (view) + (manage) for kick/ban without exposing the raw terminal or RCON setup
Note: The frozen permission picker is extended by the panel to expose these Reforger console permissions when you edit a subuser role
Optional: Compatibility and Chat Auto-Moderation
Two further surfaces ride alongside the core console. First, the console can detect whether the WCS_Commands community integration is active on your server — checking your startup parameters, your mod list, and the server files — and, for an admin, offer a one-click install that adds it to your config.json mod list (a restart is required for Reforger to download and load it). When the integration is active it unlocks richer feed-driven views such as live chat, killfeed, admin-audit and detailed connect/disconnect feeds.
Second, with that integration in place you can set up chat auto-moderation triggers — rules that watch in-game chat and automatically kick or ban on a match. These are built to be safe: a new rule always starts in log-only (dry-run) mode so you can preview exactly what it would have done before it acts, and the whole feature has a per-server master switch that is off by default. A rule only ever takes real action after an admin explicitly arms it (switches it to enforce) and turns the master switch on, and a per-rule cooldown stops any rule from ban-storming. Both of these are optional — the core console, roster and bans work without them.
Note: Auto-moderation rules start in dry-run and the master switch is off by default — nothing auto-bans until an admin arms it on purpose
Tip: Use a rule’s log-only history to confirm it matches what you expect before you ever switch it to enforce
Put together, the RCON Console gives an Arma Reforger admin a real moderation workflow inside the panel: see who’s on, kick or ban them in a click with sensible presets, lift bans from a list the game can’t give you itself, drop into a raw terminal when you need it, and connect BattleMetrics on the side — all scoped, rate-limited and audited so the dangerous parts stay locked down.