Player monitoring

Player monitoring watches for two things: cheating, and the sort of behaviour admins spend most of their time dealing with. Everything is measured on the server from what actually happened in the game. A player's own game never reports its own numbers, because that's the one thing a cheater could fake.

It needs the Change player monitoring permission (edit_monitoring). Each check is a sub-tab of its own.

What happens when a check catches someone

Every check works the same way once it trips:

1. It always goes into the admin log, under the monitoring category.
2. Staff online get a pop-up (spaced out, so a busy minute isn't a wall of them).
3. If Send flags to Discord is ticked for that check and its event has a webhook on the Notifications tab, it's posted to Discord.
4. Then the check's When caught setting is carried out: flag only, kick, or a timed ban.

Kicks and bans use the game's own "disruptive behaviour" reason, so the player sees the game's normal message. They're never told which check caught them, because telling a cheater exactly what caught them just teaches them. Staff who trip a check on themselves do see it, since they're usually testing.

Each sub-tab has its own Save and Default Settings buttons. Default Settings only changes the page, so nothing is lost until you save.

Kill Watch

Looks at each player's recent kills in a rolling window: how many, how fast, how far, and how many were headshots. AI kills count too, which matters on PvE servers.

A Detection setting (relaxed, default, strict) fills in all the numbers for you. Change any number by hand and it becomes a custom setup. A player has to fail several checks in a row before they're flagged, and then they're left alone for a while, so one bad spell gives one flag, not dozens.

Good players do trip it now and then, especially on high. Treat a flag as a reason to look, not proof.

Weapon Watch

Compares what a player does with what their weapon can physically do.

• Fire rate. Shots are counted in a rolling window against the weapon's own fire rate. It's never judged shot by shot, because a busy server handles several rounds from a machine gun in one frame.
• Firing past an empty magazine. The server owns the ammo count. A shot that leaves the magazine at zero when it was already zero is a round that didn't exist. The round in the chamber is allowed.
• Kill range. A limit per weapon type. A pistol kill at 300 m is odd, a sniper kill at 300 m isn't. Kills from vehicles, grenades, autocannons and empty hands aren't judged.

Movement

Checks how players move against how they could move.

• Speed, with separate limits for on foot, ground vehicles and aircraft. On the ground only horizontal speed counts, so falling isn't speeding.
• Hovering: on foot, not falling, climbing or swimming, and well above whatever's under them. It measures down to the nearest surface, not the terrain, so standing on a roof is fine.
• Below ground, with an allowance for basements and bunkers. It can put the player back on the surface.
• Vehicle launches: a vehicle shooting upward or jumping in speed far beyond what an engine can do. This catches physics glitches as well as cheats, so it's flag only by default.

Moves the game makes itself are forgiven: spawning, teleports, Game Master moving a player or vehicle, and getting in or out of a vehicle.

Through Cover

At each kill, it checks whether there was a clear line from the killer's eyes to the victim. One blocked kill means nothing, because rounds do go through thin walls and people fall behind things. It takes a pattern of them, enough in number and a large enough share of that player's kills.

Close kills, killers in vehicles and explosive kills are left out.

Conduct

Not cheating, just the things that make a server miserable. These can warn as well as kick or ban, because most people stop once they're told. Warnings are meant to be seen: a big warning card pops up in the middle of the player's screen saying what to stop, with a copy in their chat.

• Team kills, using the game's own idea of a team kill. The game has its own team kill auto-kick too, so don't set both to kick.
• Spawn killing: killing a player within a set time of their spawn and close to where they spawned.
• Combat logging: leaving within a set time of being hurt by another player. They're already gone by then, so any warning, kick or ban happens the next time they join.
• Chat flooding: too many messages too fast, with repeats counting double if you want. It can mute them, and a mute drops their messages on the server for the set time. Mutes last through leaving, rejoining and server restarts. Staff can also mute or unmute anyone by hand from Online players.

Rate Limits

Everything a player does that the server has to act on (voting, making a group, placing something in Game Master, taking from an arsenal) arrives as a small request from their game, called an RPC. A modified client can send the same request hundreds of times a second, to spam votes or group invites, or just to lag the server.

Rate Limits counts every one of those requests per player: all 162 a player's game can send, including Reforgedmin's own. Each one is listed with a short line saying what it does, grouped by area (votes, groups, Game Master, base building, spawning, character and items, supplies, commanding and map, Reforgedmin and so on). Untick any you don't want watched.

• Detection (relaxed, default, strict) sets the limits: how many of one request a player can send inside the look-back window (10 seconds to start with). Each area has its own limit, and every number can be changed by hand. Normal play never comes near them.
• Developer cheats are the requests behind the game's own cheat menu (give yourself XP, change your rank, make someone commander). No normal player ever sends them, so the limit starts at zero and a single one is enough.
• Drop requests over the limit throws the extra requests away on the server, so the spam never does anything. It's on by default.
• When caught: flag only, warn (the big warning card), kick, or a timed ban. The same request won't be flagged again for a minute, so one burst gives one flag.
• Skip staff leaves anyone on your staff list alone. It's on by default.

Flags go to the admin log, pop up for staff in game, and go to Discord's Rate limit flag event if you tick it, and tell you exactly which request and how many, e.g. sent VoteServer 14 times in 10 s (limit 6), extras dropped.

A handful of the game's requests are sealed off from mods and can't be watched this way, including changing your own player name.