M9'

"The Easter Bunny ate all of the carrots we left for him. What a pig."

Hey all, My time staffing StrayaGaming has been thoroughly enjoyed, and I cannot be more grateful for all of the wonderful experiences I have had here, however I believe the hour of my retirement has come. I have been humbled by the staff and the community on more occasions than I can recall in good faith, and I want to give a massive thank you to everyone putting their best foot forward for this community. Shoutout to @Fitz @Slep. @Lotza @BridTheAtl and @James32 for being legit weapons. I hope to see you out there some day in the future, but for the meantime, I wish you all the best.

STRAYAGAMING Christmas Steam Gift Card Giveaway 18' As Christmas draws ever closer, the staff team here thought we'd take the opportunity to give a little back to the community for all of the generous donations that have been coming in over the last few months. Up for grabs this Christmas Eve is: 1x (one) $50 Steam Gift Card for the first winner and; 1x (one) $20 Steam Gift Card for the runner up For those interested in entering, the giveaway will be run through our public discord server at http://discord.straya.life/, and the winners will be chosen at random from a reaction to the giveaway post posted in #announcements using a lovely discord bot. If you have not yet checked out our current Christmas giveaway lineup, you can find the master sheet here. Staff will be taking any questions or comments you have below, so feel free to let us know what you think.

We will 100% be releasing another round of forum Iawards sometime in the coming weeks, so keep an eye out ?

STRAYAGAMING CH-CH-CH-CHANGES TURN AND FACE THE STRANGE, CH-CH-CHANGES Hey everyone, Over the past month or so our Community and Forum Staff Teams have been slowly chipping away at a series of updates aimed at shifting the community closer together as StrayaGaming grows. We've scratched out a detailed listing of the various changes that you might have seen implimented over the past couple of days, and staff will be keeping a close eye on this thread for any questions or comments you might want to bring up. COMMUNITY CONTRIBUTOR As our community grows, the number of members who we have seen stand out from the crowd has, at least somewhat, reliably grown with it. Hoping to both support these members and help bridge the gap between the staff and the greater community, we are happy to introduce a new role for everyone to strive towards; the Community Contributor. The new role will be entrusted, on behalf of Management, to those members who are able to stimulate the community through meaningfull contribution. Creating quality video, audio and graphic content, as well as assisting staff with the various community projects that get around will all boost your chances of being assigned the new group. Consideration of the following will also be instrumental in determining eligibility: A member's attitude towards our community and our members A member's attitude towards our community guidelines and our staff A member's dedication towards helping those in need A member's initiative taken towards building the community The aim of the game here is bringing the members who make an effort in contributing to the community more into the spotlight and helping them get recognised for the good work that they have done for our community. Aside from the usual flashy new group icons and channels, it is possible for Community Contributors to be granted specific permissions traditionally restricted from the public, such as greater forum access. If you believe the new tag should be sitting under your name for contributions in the past, message a member of the Management Team and your request will come up during internal discussion. FORUM STAFF GROUP CHANGES In an attempt to make distinguishing between members of the community and our staff easier on the eyes, we are all going to see a little more red and gold around our forums. All StrayaGaming staff below Management will be draped in the new Staff colour, and forum staff members will have their posts bordered by gold, hopefully simplifying the browsing experience. Additionally, there has been a change in some of the titles our staff will adorn. The Strayagaming Lead role has been renamed to Community Owner, the Community/Operations/Development Lead roles have all been renamed to Community Manager, and finally, the Community and Staff Manager roles have been renamed to Community Team Manager and Server Staff Manager respectively. As always, the detailed list of current staff positions can be found here. DONATOR GROUP CHANGES One of the more significant changes that will effect a good chunk of the community is the way donators will be represented going forward. On both our TeamSpeak and our forums, all members who have donated to StrayaGaming throughout the past have been organised into one of two groups: Donator or Lifetime Donator. Members of the community currently holding permanent whitelisting status on one of our three Arma 3 services or those deemed applicable by Management have been merged into the Lifetime Donator role. Furthermore, members of the community who have not currently met the requirements for Lifetime Donator status have been merged into the Donator role. With new roles, comes new group icons for both our forums and TeamSpeak, as well as the usual access to respective channels. For community members curious as to whether or not previous donations grant them eligibility for Lifetime Donator status, please get into contact with the relevant server administrators and we'll see what we can do for ya. STRAYA VETERAN GROUP CHANGES As we get closer and closer to seeing 2019 rear it's ugly head over the horizon, more members than ever before will gaze upon it as a veteran of our community. In an attempt to account for this, we are happy to introduce the implementation of the new 2016 Veteran and 2017 Veteran community groups. The Straya Veteran group has been renamed to 2015 Veteran, and members who created their forum account in 2015, 2016 or 2017 will be automatically assigned one of these veteran groups respectively. Community members who believe that they are eligible for one of the new veteran groups and yet have not had a new tag assigned automatically should contact a forum staff member and we will work towards a solution. If you haven't already, please sync your forum account with your TeamSpeak UID, as staff are not to be providing some of the new groups on TeamSpeak and will need to be synced through our forums. Keep an eye out for another community update set to drop sometime in the coming weeks. Have a good one, and have fun!

oh look strayas dead again guys, been fun

Depends on who you ask.. If people are around and are keen for it, we'll be likely to see some ok pops, it just depends on what is going on at the time. We don't have any plans on bringing the I&A Tanoa/Malden server down any time soon, so there is always a chance it might pick up a bit.

The Community Video Team is going to be experimenting with a few different games and content types. Got an opinion on this video? Comment below and help us make the videos you want to see.

Congrats @Nova for walking away with the prize! Thanks to everyone who entered, and keep an eye out for more giveaways just over the horizon!

I'd love to see what you end up putting together @RaPiD Mason as there are plently of different angles you could pursue with a little creativity. Hope you have fun with it.

Hey mate, StrayaGaming's Altis Life is currently online, and you can find it by filtering 'Straya' in the Arma 3 server browser. You can also direct connect to the server at al.straya.life:2302 If you have any more questions, this is the place to ask. Thanks

Good times

It is possible that we run some kind of 'Vietnam War era' event in the future, where we restrict weapon and vehicle choices down to a select few deemed appropriate, however not only would such an event likely prove difficult to run, I am certain that any such significant restrictions would not align with the vision maintained by I&A staff for any long term execution. For the current setting that I&A is built in, the Ghost Hawks are damn near perfect, and I, personally, would be saddened to see them replaced. This kind of change is something that seems more appropriate applied to our Tanoa server, rather than our Altis server, however I doubt it would serve either as well as you'd think. Pilots being 'more busy' isn't necessarily a net benefit, as not only do Ghost Hawks make up merely most (and not all) of the aircraft spawns (limiting the effect of replacing them), but the entertainment value gained from playing the role is also effected by factors such as server population and distance from airbase to AO, whereby changing the aircraft spawns can have little to no effect at all. Additionally, I'm not the biggest fan in the world of giving every heli pilot an armed aircraft, as not only would it make maintaining our current ROE a nightmare, but it would also have the undesired effect of drawing pilots towards combat roles, rather than transport roles, further complicating the issue. Custom skin implementation for the hellcat is something we should probably look into further, but I'd much prefer to restrict it's access to our lovely donators as a reward for supporting our community services.

Alot of our I&A vets are still kicking around at peak times, who are we missing? We will generally see higher server populations over the weekend and during holidays, as there are several different factors effecting how many people we get on at any given time. Player counts on any given day are inconsequential provided that long term trends are stable, and for I&A, so far so good.