KPABATOK

I agree, lockboxes should NOT require a jammer to place in 0.3.0 and beyond.   Nor should anyone outside the group be able to unlock them, let's not bring griefing peoples bases to a whole new level. 

Unless I missed it, there is no entry in the changelog that states a lockbox now requires a jammer, however it does state that any building requires a jammer by default.  As far as I know the only thing that does not require a jammer to build is a fireplace.   
 
I think lockboxes should not require a jammer...I mean that's were mose players store stuff to build a jammer most of the time....I haven't tested teepees yet but I assume they are bound by the same rules as the jammer.
 
Yes this is talking 0.3

Nitrado is terrible host and you should switch to something else asap. They do not respond to issues for weeks and when they respond, they pretend to be idiots.

I like the hot air balloons idea... maybe blimps. Armored blimps.

This is some beautiful :) I'd love those. Also air balloons!!!

I was looking, or better, I am still looking for a good server, we prefer Taviana, but I like also Altis. Why the heck do a lot of players and admins think, we need tons of loot? On the most server, I was able to equip me in 5 mins without a prob, where is the fucking challenge? If I want just PVP, I will play Wasteland or Koth. I was also able to build a base in hours alone...

I hope, that will change when Epoch is going further, I like vanilla Epoch. Missons are helping when a server has low popolation, when a server is getting fuller, you can decrease the missons, but I wouldn't change it to zero, but Epoch will have own mission, so we will see what will happen.

It is not about the number of antagonists, but balance over all. It is obvious that these kiddies admins who learned scripting like 2 hours ago know nothing about it. I have seen many servers with stupid amounts of AI or loot. One of the servers had energy packs spawning EVERYWHERE, and I am not exaggerating here. Energy packs spawned everywhere instead of random stuff you get energy packs 90 percent of the time. So it is obvious that the kid fucked it up somewhere or just doesn't care. Another server had ground loot (which is ok) but it was just guns everywhere.
 
After such servers I learned to appreciate vanilla Epoch and think it is the best choice for those who want hardcore and normal Epoch, not raped by stupid script kiddies who know no limits.
 
Some random AI or AI missions are ok, in my opinion, but not like one server that I saw, where there were AI heli patrols AI vehicle patrols and AI foot patrols and they all spawned out of nowhere sometimes at the same time and if you killed on AI group suddenly another appeared and ad infinitum like that.
 
People do not know how to balance these things so you get something totally worse than unfinished vanilla. And I mean it, it is worse and it is no surprise, that there are tons of servers, more servers than there are people playing, because it doesn't take a rocket scientist to set up a server, obviously.
 
That's why it is funny to see so much new threads "come to my server pls pls new clan server free buildings kits" and shit like that, nobody cares what you give for free, dear admin. How is your shitty lame ass server different from 500 other servers? That's what people care about and if you want others to join, try to put some thought in your advertizing and not just 2000+ vehicles 500 AI patrols more loot loot loot.

It is not about the number of antagonists, but balance over all. It is obvious that these kiddies admins who learned scripting like 2 hours ago know nothing about it. I have seen many servers with stupid amounts of AI or loot. One of the servers had energy packs spawning EVERYWHERE, and I am not exaggerating here. Energy packs spawned everywhere instead of random stuff you get energy packs 90 percent of the time. So it is obvious that the kid fucked it up somewhere or just doesn't care. Another server had ground loot (which is ok) but it was just guns everywhere.
 
After such servers I learned to appreciate vanilla Epoch and think it is the best choice for those who want hardcore and normal Epoch, not raped by stupid script kiddies who know no limits.
 
Some random AI or AI missions are ok, in my opinion, but not like one server that I saw, where there were AI heli patrols AI vehicle patrols and AI foot patrols and they all spawned out of nowhere sometimes at the same time and if you killed on AI group suddenly another appeared and ad infinitum like that.
 
People do not know how to balance these things so you get something totally worse than unfinished vanilla. And I mean it, it is worse and it is no surprise, that there are tons of servers, more servers than there are people playing, because it doesn't take a rocket scientist to set up a server, obviously.
 
That's why it is funny to see so much new threads "come to my server pls pls new clan server free buildings kits" and shit like that, nobody cares what you give for free, dear admin. How is your shitty lame ass server different from 500 other servers? That's what people care about and if you want others to join, try to put some thought in your advertizing and not just 2000+ vehicles 500 AI patrols more loot loot loot.

It is not about the number of antagonists, but balance over all. It is obvious that these kiddies admins who learned scripting like 2 hours ago know nothing about it. I have seen many servers with stupid amounts of AI or loot. One of the servers had energy packs spawning EVERYWHERE, and I am not exaggerating here. Energy packs spawned everywhere instead of random stuff you get energy packs 90 percent of the time. So it is obvious that the kid fucked it up somewhere or just doesn't care. Another server had ground loot (which is ok) but it was just guns everywhere.
 
After such servers I learned to appreciate vanilla Epoch and think it is the best choice for those who want hardcore and normal Epoch, not raped by stupid script kiddies who know no limits.
 
Some random AI or AI missions are ok, in my opinion, but not like one server that I saw, where there were AI heli patrols AI vehicle patrols and AI foot patrols and they all spawned out of nowhere sometimes at the same time and if you killed on AI group suddenly another appeared and ad infinitum like that.
 
People do not know how to balance these things so you get something totally worse than unfinished vanilla. And I mean it, it is worse and it is no surprise, that there are tons of servers, more servers than there are people playing, because it doesn't take a rocket scientist to set up a server, obviously.
 
That's why it is funny to see so much new threads "come to my server pls pls new clan server free buildings kits" and shit like that, nobody cares what you give for free, dear admin. How is your shitty lame ass server different from 500 other servers? That's what people care about and if you want others to join, try to put some thought in your advertizing and not just 2000+ vehicles 500 AI patrols more loot loot loot.

It is not about the number of antagonists, but balance over all. It is obvious that these kiddies admins who learned scripting like 2 hours ago know nothing about it. I have seen many servers with stupid amounts of AI or loot. One of the servers had energy packs spawning EVERYWHERE, and I am not exaggerating here. Energy packs spawned everywhere instead of random stuff you get energy packs 90 percent of the time. So it is obvious that the kid fucked it up somewhere or just doesn't care. Another server had ground loot (which is ok) but it was just guns everywhere.
 
After such servers I learned to appreciate vanilla Epoch and think it is the best choice for those who want hardcore and normal Epoch, not raped by stupid script kiddies who know no limits.
 
Some random AI or AI missions are ok, in my opinion, but not like one server that I saw, where there were AI heli patrols AI vehicle patrols and AI foot patrols and they all spawned out of nowhere sometimes at the same time and if you killed on AI group suddenly another appeared and ad infinitum like that.
 
People do not know how to balance these things so you get something totally worse than unfinished vanilla. And I mean it, it is worse and it is no surprise, that there are tons of servers, more servers than there are people playing, because it doesn't take a rocket scientist to set up a server, obviously.
 
That's why it is funny to see so much new threads "come to my server pls pls new clan server free buildings kits" and shit like that, nobody cares what you give for free, dear admin. How is your shitty lame ass server different from 500 other servers? That's what people care about and if you want others to join, try to put some thought in your advertizing and not just 2000+ vehicles 500 AI patrols more loot loot loot.

It is not about the number of antagonists, but balance over all. It is obvious that these kiddies admins who learned scripting like 2 hours ago know nothing about it. I have seen many servers with stupid amounts of AI or loot. One of the servers had energy packs spawning EVERYWHERE, and I am not exaggerating here. Energy packs spawned everywhere instead of random stuff you get energy packs 90 percent of the time. So it is obvious that the kid fucked it up somewhere or just doesn't care. Another server had ground loot (which is ok) but it was just guns everywhere.
 
After such servers I learned to appreciate vanilla Epoch and think it is the best choice for those who want hardcore and normal Epoch, not raped by stupid script kiddies who know no limits.
 
Some random AI or AI missions are ok, in my opinion, but not like one server that I saw, where there were AI heli patrols AI vehicle patrols and AI foot patrols and they all spawned out of nowhere sometimes at the same time and if you killed on AI group suddenly another appeared and ad infinitum like that.
 
People do not know how to balance these things so you get something totally worse than unfinished vanilla. And I mean it, it is worse and it is no surprise, that there are tons of servers, more servers than there are people playing, because it doesn't take a rocket scientist to set up a server, obviously.
 
That's why it is funny to see so much new threads "come to my server pls pls new clan server free buildings kits" and shit like that, nobody cares what you give for free, dear admin. How is your shitty lame ass server different from 500 other servers? That's what people care about and if you want others to join, try to put some thought in your advertizing and not just 2000+ vehicles 500 AI patrols more loot loot loot.

It is not about the number of antagonists, but balance over all. It is obvious that these kiddies admins who learned scripting like 2 hours ago know nothing about it. I have seen many servers with stupid amounts of AI or loot. One of the servers had energy packs spawning EVERYWHERE, and I am not exaggerating here. Energy packs spawned everywhere instead of random stuff you get energy packs 90 percent of the time. So it is obvious that the kid fucked it up somewhere or just doesn't care. Another server had ground loot (which is ok) but it was just guns everywhere.
 
After such servers I learned to appreciate vanilla Epoch and think it is the best choice for those who want hardcore and normal Epoch, not raped by stupid script kiddies who know no limits.
 
Some random AI or AI missions are ok, in my opinion, but not like one server that I saw, where there were AI heli patrols AI vehicle patrols and AI foot patrols and they all spawned out of nowhere sometimes at the same time and if you killed on AI group suddenly another appeared and ad infinitum like that.
 
People do not know how to balance these things so you get something totally worse than unfinished vanilla. And I mean it, it is worse and it is no surprise, that there are tons of servers, more servers than there are people playing, because it doesn't take a rocket scientist to set up a server, obviously.
 
That's why it is funny to see so much new threads "come to my server pls pls new clan server free buildings kits" and shit like that, nobody cares what you give for free, dear admin. How is your shitty lame ass server different from 500 other servers? That's what people care about and if you want others to join, try to put some thought in your advertizing and not just 2000+ vehicles 500 AI patrols more loot loot loot.

Unfortunately we cannot use Chernarus+ together with Arma 3, I spoke with Dwarden about this, but he was clear - regardless if we have purchased Arma 3 AND Standalone we are not permitted to use Chernarus+ outside of DayZ:SA. He also said that this may change in the future, but for now, no.

As for Arma 2 maps in Arma 3, personally I think they look like crap, regardless whether they have HD-textures.

It is not about the number of antagonists, but balance over all. It is obvious that these kiddies admins who learned scripting like 2 hours ago know nothing about it. I have seen many servers with stupid amounts of AI or loot. One of the servers had energy packs spawning EVERYWHERE, and I am not exaggerating here. Energy packs spawned everywhere instead of random stuff you get energy packs 90 percent of the time. So it is obvious that the kid fucked it up somewhere or just doesn't care. Another server had ground loot (which is ok) but it was just guns everywhere.
 
After such servers I learned to appreciate vanilla Epoch and think it is the best choice for those who want hardcore and normal Epoch, not raped by stupid script kiddies who know no limits.
 
Some random AI or AI missions are ok, in my opinion, but not like one server that I saw, where there were AI heli patrols AI vehicle patrols and AI foot patrols and they all spawned out of nowhere sometimes at the same time and if you killed on AI group suddenly another appeared and ad infinitum like that.
 
People do not know how to balance these things so you get something totally worse than unfinished vanilla. And I mean it, it is worse and it is no surprise, that there are tons of servers, more servers than there are people playing, because it doesn't take a rocket scientist to set up a server, obviously.
 
That's why it is funny to see so much new threads "come to my server pls pls new clan server free buildings kits" and shit like that, nobody cares what you give for free, dear admin. How is your shitty lame ass server different from 500 other servers? That's what people care about and if you want others to join, try to put some thought in your advertizing and not just 2000+ vehicles 500 AI patrols more loot loot loot.

Cloning is considered by many to be unnatural and unethical, as it goes against the laws of nature.  Nature has a way of maintaining its own balance.  Who's to say that the rock monster and the monster with the mouthful of teeth aren't natures way of evolving natural predators to help get rid of the abomination that is the clones?  The drones that spawn AI could be hunting parties trying to track down all the escaped clones to kill them to clean up the "mess" left behind by a careless scientist.  There's tons of ways you could spin it.

Here are my two cents for what they're worth:
 
Right now, it's not possible to understand what Epoch is about simply by going blindly into the game, you have to be spoon-fed the "technology went wrong, and all this happened" story from the devs and other people who have second-hand knowledge, and even that story is still difficult to swallow straight.
 
Think of this from a new player who's just downloaded the Epoch mod and is logging into the game without any understanding of what Epoch is. Chances are, you've just logged into an Altis server and your character spawns in a confined box with tubes with clothed people inside. The only way to exit is by using teleporter items on the ground - why? Is the game trying to imply that the world's setting has teleportation technology? Or is it because the game is in alpha development and other spawning methods are being looked into?
 
Once your character has teleported to the outside world, you're venturing out to the towns and cities of Altis. Everything looks just fine, buildings are intact but people are missing. After a few hours, this is what you encounter from the game (not including player encounters):
 
- Armless monsters that appear after you go looting for a while, and explode if they get too close. The player may be thinking, are these zombies? The first thing that goes through the player's mind is definitely not "a mad scientist's strange idea for turning people into living weapons".
- A UAV that searches for the player and calls in what seems to be a small military squad. The player is thinking, why is the military after me? Why is there a UAV? Are they somehow related to the armless "zombies"?
- At night time, a strange cloaked figure is chasing the player. The idea that this cloak is some invisibility armor controlled by an AI and reprogrammed by a cult of monks will definitely never cross anyone's mind in a million years. Many will think it's a clever Slenderman reference.
- Weapons, foot, and other loot can be found just about anywhere. With so many weapons and so much food lying about, what made the island's occupants suddenly disappear like that?
 
I think reliance on the Antagonists to push the Epoch story of "technology gone wrong" is what's causing Epoch to fall flat on its face in terms of its identity. If you take a look at DayZ, the equivalent of "antagonists" were zombies that were easily recognized as zombies, and you needed no story or explanation to make the player realize that they're playing in a zombie apocalypse. Weapons were very rare, weapons that you could find were clearly intended for civilian use and hunting, and military-grade weapons were very difficult to come by. The difficulty of keeping your blood levels high and your character fed/hydrated added to the survival feel.
 
With the Antagonists and base building as Epoch's main distinguishable features, to the average person it looks like that Epoch is trying to be a combination of Minecraft and DayZ without zombies. By simply playing Epoch, a player will never understand the "technology gone wrong" story, while playing DayZ, it's quite in-your-face that you are playing in a zombie apocalypse.
 
Again, this is just my personal view on things, and I do think that it definitely has potential to develop its identity and story with time and effort from the devs. Right now, I just think that Epoch needs to pick a direction and go with it as hard as it can, because it's trying to be too many things and succeeding at none of them.

Epoch in A3 is a mess (right now at least). But an interesting mess. It is like a fresh air for me after thousands of hours in DayZ ForeverAlone. New map which is bigger (and now after a month of Epoch it starts to feel smaller and smaller, but that's expected), more tactical gameplay (possible long range sniping, no shitty weapon sway after 1 minute sprint, etc.), vehicles, helicopters, I like them all, especially Strider. Not some shitty V3S moving at 80km/h glitching through the map and getting stuck in fences.
 
I think what some people want it to be (when they ask for tanks and other military grade toys) is wasteland, KOTH, whatever... But it is not the point of Epoch, in my opinion, despite it not having an actual point except one's imagined.
 
A3 Epoch has potential, as it is based on A3 it should not be surprise to anyone that it has some military gear. Now, I imagine, that the point is not PvP of this game. Battle Royale is PvP mod, Wasteland.. but Epoch should be focused on collaboration/cooperation, completing missions, gathering supplies, maybe role playing a bit (I dislike Altis Life, so just a bit RP shouldn't hurt), building base for your stuff to hoard (lol), looting, killing some antagonists and scripted AI patrolls and so on. It is open ended, there is no "one winner" like in BR for example and everyone forgets it when they start playing it and then get bored and complain.
 
So far it is far from boring for me.
 
For example, DayZ SA also has absolutely no point at the moment and it has been for a year. Yeah, they invented a little bit of crafting, but I heard they break something everytime with new patch and currently it is not possible to craft a splint. I mean WHAAAT? It has been possible for months and now not possible? Middle finger to devs, still can't complain too much as I was addicted to DayZ a lot that's why I mention it in every sentence. So that game is open ended too.
 
Speaking about "hardcore survival", I do not want Epoch to turn into that, personally. It should be relatively easy to gear up and get started, cause I noticed in some server dynamic AI spawns, and it is terrible terrible feeling to be shot at no matter which route you take, take cover or not, you get seen, get shot. It is stupid and admins of such servers overdone their AI scripts and probably do not even know this cause they never play in their own server.
 
Anyway, I agree with OP and few others, I need some answers too. What's the future of Epoch?
 
My only hope it won't turn into some hyper realistic cooking/fishing simulator and getting warm if you run and getting cold if you stop for 1 min. I always loved that military aspect of the game.

Zombies, base building, and trying to survive for days gearing up to a point you would dare to take on players was key for me in A2.
 
Rock monsters, Antagonists, gearing up in 5 minutes to go full PVP again and die without any repurcussions is killing the game in A3 atm.. We've had full servers, for a few weeks, then it dwindled down to pure zero, even with active admins and a good community..
 
The game, after 2 weeks playing on a server, is BORING.  There's literally no hardcore survival, the thing that made Dayz so successful.
This results in players asking for tanks, planes, launchers and all the other stuff that Wasteland brings, esp. since base building is 99% hard work to build followed by 1% effort by others to undo it.
 
The game is no where close to be balanced / interesting, and the closed server files make it even worse for the real coders and admins that want to make a bit of fun out of the current state.
 
IMO, Epoch should go back to closed beta, with a few whitelisted servers and work on balance, balance and more balance, in stead of adding more ferry wheels, poppy plants and other "cool looking things that I won't bother looking at".

It is clear what Epoch is, and how you play it. So that is not what my question is about, because those two questions (what and how) I can understand easily myself, but something has been nagging me ever since Epoch for ARMA 3 was released in its first alpha, and the more information I get on it, the more I realize that there's so much of what and how that it leaves a void in the "why"-department, so basically that's something I would like to have answered, because it would help me understand WHY things like the construct were planned in the first place, and why frequency jammers started out at 300 meters, and perhaps even why the mod balances soldier simulator with survival, with weird toungue-in-mouth items like Purple nurple, funny masks,etc. with building and these fantasy monsters. Without understanding the "why" it all seems a bit like a jumble of ideas thrown into one.
 
Now, before you start quoting me the first paragraph of the mod's front page (which is a bunch of "what") I would like to be clear what it is I am looking for; I'm not so much interested in knowing what it is that you (the devs) want Epoch to be, but what motivates you, why you spend these hours making this thing, what it is that you think the genre is lacking and where you vision this mod to be. Because I think if I learn something about that, I learn something about what's going on "behind the scenes", like I've gotten tidbits of info from streams about AWOL and his brother going through great lengths discussing the mod, I've heard AXLE talk about "this isn't about the money for us", and Sequisha clearly has some sort of vision with the hooded/cloaky guys, the cemetery of the first front page, and the "hype videos" we saw before we were even able to try this mod for ARMA3 (for those who cannot recall, it was some dude stopping his car and walking toward a church where a cultist would slowly walk toward him, with lit up smoke, lighting and doom metal playing in the background).
 
I believe I'm not alone in my curiosity about this, so that is why I made this a forum post instead of a private message to the developers, because I also believe that in answering this central question, we also will have a couple of puzzle pieces fall into place about a bunch of things, and it will help motivate some in their eager awaiting for the big test of 0.3.0 :)  WHYYYYYY... WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN?! :D
 
Also, thanks for having the stamina to pay attention throughout this small wall of text, yo. 

I want to redo some of my database stuff anyways.  During the last update I had a brain fart and copied the epochServer.ini file from my test server over to BOTH production servers, so both servers are running off the same db file.  I want to create two different db server instances, one for each server with their own unique dump files.  This update will be the perfect time to do that.  
 
And to answer BenR_Reborn, with so many issues with base maintenance not working properly and base items disappearing and all the changes they're making to the traders it just makes sense to me to do one.  This way we can start fresh and I can know without a doubt that any new "bugs" or "glitches" players may complain about aren't related to anything that was brought over from the previous patch.  It will help me sleep a little better.  I've made my players aware for the last two weeks that a wipe is coming and given the issues we've had, everyone is ok with it.  

So yesterday I bought a drink which had written "Coca cola" on it, and it was amazing, how do they make such drink, with "coca cola" written on the bottle? it is amazing how tasty and refreshing it is, "Coca Cola" best drink ever, how do they make "Coca Cola" is it some secret? "Coca Cola".dot.com

My humble opinion it would be not very interesting if you can buy whatever you want whenever you want. Current system forces people to interact, trade between themselves and search loot. I like to see peple selling to traders stuff that I need the most, and then I think to myself "who these idiots are", hehe.

So yesterday I bought a drink which had written "Coca cola" on it, and it was amazing, how do they make such drink, with "coca cola" written on the bottle? it is amazing how tasty and refreshing it is, "Coca Cola" best drink ever, how do they make "Coca Cola" is it some secret? "Coca Cola".dot.com

I don't think the shelves are maintained by the jammer. Instead, I think they delete after several days of no one accessing them (going into the inventory). I had this problem when I had a similar amount of tipis. After putting items in the tipis and not accessing them for a while, they would disappear. So every day you maintain your base you should also go and look in the inventory of each of your storage devices and maybe move some items around so the server doesn't think they are abandoned. 

Haha servers where admins give away "base building kits" are the worst. I saw a few on some streams. I would never join such a server. I mean, what's the point? Of course it is nice when vehicles+ or loot+ or AI+, but never noticed such nonsense in PVE servers. At best, they will give you a free hatchet after death and a gun, which is like saying "here is a tool, now build a fucking base yourself, scrub". Which is kinda a grey area, but anyway.