Hello Antistasi gurus!

Well after facing many situations of 1) proudly capture a key vehicle or weapon, 2) saving and reloading and 3) realizing to my horror that my prized asset has disappeared I decided to use two computers (with two licenses of ARMA) to understand what persists and what does not persist.

Using two machines to figure this out is a must so that your main gaming PC is *not* loosing any gear as you verify what has saved with a 'restart and reload'. Here is my list thus far...

What gets saved:
- Your soldier's personal inventory.
- The content of the Arsenal.
- Three vehicles in your garage. (at War Level 1 and increases at higher WLs)
- Two of the closest vehicles near your HQ. (Make them good military vehicles!!) . This was measured at WL1 and might increase at higher WLs. This means that you can have a total of FIVE good military vehicles (e.g. MRAPs) at war-level one that persists = super useful!!
- Bunkers (sandbag and huge concrete one) that you construct with the 'Y' menu. (I think you can move HQ, build where you want, move HQ back and it will persist across a reload but not 100% sure)
- Static weapon within a certain radius of your HQ / towns / factory / resources etc. (Have yet to determine radius... perhaps 100m?)
- Squads are reimbursed in HR / money. Note that if any of them are carrying gear that has not been unlocked yet then you *must* 1) dismiss them, 2) transfer their gear (now in the HQ ammo box) into the Arsenal. I have lost a lot of gear that has not been unlocked this way so beware!
- The garrisons you have configured all over the map.

What you will lose:
- You AI squad. (They get refunded in HR / money however)
- Any non-unlocked gear your AI squaddies were carrying if you do not dismiss them. (e.g. save the game with them still in your squad). You must dismiss squad members with custom gear or you'll lose it...
- With the above note that when you dismiss them that their gear gets into your HQ ammo box. Now that ammo box gets placed in the arsenal every time you get paid but if you want save before you must place it in the arsenal. (What I do is place a useless item into the nearest vehicle and 'Transfer nearest vehicle to arsenal' and content of ammo create with squad gear will also be inserted in the arsenal)
- Any gear in any ammo crate / vehicle the world over. (Including the HQ ammo box) You must get it to the arsenal!
- Any military vehicle the world over you didn't get to your 3 in the garage or your 2 near the flag.
- UAV if it's not packed in the arsenal. (Soooo easy to forget and you just want to kick yourself when it happens!!)
- Dead bodies, salvageable military vehicles, etc are all lost forever so loot *everything* before you save!
- Constructions other than bunkers you constructed with the 'Y' construct menu. (e.g. small and large trenches)
- Static weapons you load into vehicles via the ACE 'Load Cargo' functionality.

Checklist of what to do before a save:
- Fly UAV back to HQ and stuff it in the arsenal!
- Garage as many vehicles you want to keep as possible (their inventory is automatically transferred to the arsenal) . BEWARE that if garaged vehicle had 'ACE Cargo' loaded into them that these will be lost! (Remove the cargo before saving and possibly store in the arsenal. (Statics near HQ are safe))
- For the two vehicles that will persist near the flag make sure to transfer their inventory to the arsenal. I think the game keeps the vehicles in order of how close they are to the flag but am not sure... it is possibly that some crummy car at the edge of the save radius can save and you lose an important military vehicle! (For that reason always garage your best vehicles)
- Dismiss any AI squaddies that have custom gear (or manually get that gear into the arsenal) Squaddies that don't have custom gear do not have to be dismissed and can be in your squad as you save. (Prevents having to re-spawn them if you continue)
- Beware that static weapons that were set up faraway from a town / outpost / resource etc will be lost! (Move if it you want to keep it!)

Remaining unknowns:
Q1: Are vehicles assigned to high-command squads persisted??
Q2: What is the radius around a flagpole where static weapons persisted?
Q3: Are vehicles persisted around flagpoles other than the HQ? (If so... how many?)
Q4: How many vehicles can you have in the garage at war level 2, 3, 4, etc?
Q5: Can you persist more than two vehicles around your HQ flag (not in garage) at war level 2+?
Q6: Are bunkers that have been saved too far from any flagpole persisted? (e.g. is it possible to temporarily displace HQ so you can construct a bunker at an amazing spot, move back HQ and your new bunker persists?)

Finally beware losing the UAV! It is all-too-easy to forget this all-important military resource up in the air as you save and realize to your horror that you must restart cuz you didn't fly it back to HQ and stuffed it into the arsenal!

Related to this topic is the ability to save more than one version of your game... (e.g. so that you can go back in the past) . To learn how to do this see my post at https://www.reddit.com/r/A3AntistasiOfficial/comments/9ovml3/how_to_have_multiple_save_points_in_antistasi/.

Do you have additional evidence that can further improve this list?

Jean-Pierre

P.S. This post was also posted at the Reddit forum and has some comments. https://www.reddit.com/r/A3AntistasiOfficial/comments/9v3tqs/how_to_ensure_everything_you_care_about_saves/