Spawns. Unravelling their making and use.

[mongoose]

Having followed without total understanding (very little actually! ) Diawilletti and Mixxer's discussion on spawns in the taxiing aircraft thread, I feel it would be really useful to start a sticky on Spawns; the use and making of which are still partly a mystery to me. I might dig up some notes from others on this issue. like Loic's who was good on them. A pity Wulfmann isn't active any more as he was also a prolific spawn maker.
Anyone like to start the ball rolling before me?

[Daiwilletti]

Well James its a big subject. My bible is the spawn and mission scripting SDK by Microsoft. I have a dog-eared hard copy of the SDK permanently on my gaming desk. It is coffee and food-stained.

Anyone really interested in learning about spawns needs to at least have a soft copy of the SDK.

On spawns, the SDK is divided into two parts, one for the spawn table file (the one ending in .spawns eg the air.spawns file), and the other for spawn xml files. Each spawn.xml file belongs to a spawn table file.

In the Spawns folder of your cfs3 install there are (my arbitrary division) six different groups of spawn table files with associated xml files:

1. default air spawns. Stock or modified set of air spawns files provide for random spawning of aircraft in campaigns, or in missions where random spawns are enabled. There are no air spawns in QC mode.
2. default ground spawns. Trains, vehicles of all sorts outside of a facility's boundary are generated by the ground.spawns file and associated xml files. This file includes the random ship spawns which appear during missions. Random ground spawns DO appear in QC mode, including ships.
3. default frontline spawns. The frontline.spawns file and associated xml files give life to the frontline, providing a swag of frontline facilities banging away at each other. These do not appear in QC mode. Not sure about missions where random spawns are enabled?
4. Default campaign spawns generating the campaign mission objectives. Default campaign has 12 different mission types, so there are approximately twelve (actually a bit more complex) spawn sets which can be accessed to generate the target for a campaign mission. This is the spawn set I would dearly love to hack so as to add different specific targets for campaign missions.
5. Spawns sets written for specific missions by the mission builder. A mission builder will often use a mix of default and bespoke spawn sets.
6. Spawns called for in a facility file - eg rail spawns are written into stock rail-yard facilities.

Every one of those six categories can be modified. ETO provides the best example of a comprehensively modified set of spawn files.

The modified stock install I have uploaded has modifications to all of these spawn categories. The coastal shipping generator utilises the 6th category to have a facility file generate ships in the coastal area.

Looking forward to hearing from experienced spawn makers like Loic, and maybe even Mrjmaint if he is about?

[mongoose]

There is a whole section on spawns in the CFS 3 Mission Builder.pdf which are a good basis. Is this what your are referring to, or CFS3 Mission File Format Documentation.doc?

I actually do make spawns but in a sort of monkey see monkey do way by bastardizing other spawns. More important is that there is a better understanding of the possibilities which all mission makers could take advantage of. Now I don't do QC or campaigns which is what I take much of what you and Mixxer were referring to so that would be interesting to know more about; for others, if not myself. I have several notes on discussion with people like Loic which should be put in either the Knowledge Base or a separate sticky. maybe at some stage we could incorporate that stuff plus relevant stuff from this thread like your comments into a sticky?

[Mixxer]

I sorry to say that over time a lot of the things I knew are long gone, Jason my son was the one who really had a good handle on them back when we were doing mission sets back when cfs3 was new. My son was fortunate to exchange emails with somebody (it may have been Wulfmann from memory) back in the day and he was a great help to us.

Sometimes when I read things now it brings back info as was the case in the other thread, I do have a set of much modded stock files that we created back then which I have installed into my all in one mod setup.


I have somethings which I do remember so I will list them below


1. Its very important that if you want reality with regards models and textures when using spawned formations, the aircraft xdp files must have the correct corresponding EnteredService="xx/xx/xxxx" LeftService="xx/xx/xxxx" dates (mm/dd/yyyy), as an example you only want allied aircraft textured with invasion stripes entering service no earlier than the 4 June 44 and leaving service starting around 1 Aug 44 with all gone by end of Dec 44

2. The other thing that's important is if you are spawning aircraft based on aircraft type (which is better for replay ability) IE fighter_bomber, tactical_bomber or level_bomber types (rather than spawning a particular aircraft) then for the spawned aircraft to react correctly with regard to the mission type you set in the spawn xml file you need to make sure all the aircraft you have include loadouts that have the parameter missiontypes="xxxxxxxxxxx" associated with them.

So for a fighter_bomber you must have at least 1 loadout which have these mission types listed "Recon,Escort,CAP,Intercept,Sweep,Nothing,Bomber_I ntercept,Strike,CAS,Search_Destroy,Anti_Ship"
With regard to both the bomber types you must have Nothing,Strike,CAS,Search_Destroy,Anti_Ship

You can have multiple mission types to a single loadout using the statement MissionType="Strike,Anti_Ship" (NOTE IMPORTANT no spaces before/after the comma) or you can spread them out with loadouts that match the mission, for example torpedo loadouts would have a mission type "Anti_Ship"

In the cases when you have a fighter_bomber that has only a "clean" loadout you can list them all under that one loadout, keeping in mind if your spawn file has a route type "bombing" parameter then they wont do anything, bombers will always attack with the bombing parameter as they should always have a bomb load in the loadouts that matches.
The game knows what the different weapon types are so a bombing command for an aircraft that has no bomb loadout means they wont respond if they are carrying rockets only.

However if you know you are spawning fighter_bombers in a ground attack scenario you can use the route type="allweapons" parameter so they will strafe,rocket and bomb depending on your loadouts that match the mission type in the spawn xml file.
If the aircraft only has a "clean" loadout with the parameter MissionType="Recon,Escort,CAP,Intercept,Sweep,Noth ing,Bomber_Intercept,Strike,CAS,Search_Destroy,Ant i_Ship" then it will still strafe the target when the route type="allweapons" parameter is used

Even if you want to spawn a particular aircraft rather than the wildcard types listed above they must still have the correct loadout format with the mission types defined


Phew Im a one finger "typa" so hopefully somebody finds the time to read all of this cause it took about an hour for me to get it all out.

[mongoose]

That's the kind of useful info we need!

[Mixxer]

That's the kind of useful info we need!

Your welcome mate, its good to be able to give something back

[Daiwilletti]

That's the kind of useful info we need!

It's the reason why I was so keen to get the missiontypes sorted for the loadouts on the aircraft you and Fouteman are working on, James!

[Mixxer]

I sorry to say that over time a lot of the things I knew are long gone, Jason my son was the one who really had a good handle on them back when we were doing mission sets back when cfs3 was new. My son was fortunate to exchange emails with somebody (it may have been Wulfmann from memory) back in the day and he was a great help to us.

Sometimes when I read things now it brings back info as was the case in the other thread, I do have a set of much modded stock files that we created back then which I have installed into my all in one mod setup.


I have somethings which I do remember so I will list them below


1. Its very important that if you want reality with regards models and textures when using spawned formations, the aircraft xdp files must have the correct corresponding EnteredService="xx/xx/xxxx" LeftService="xx/xx/xxxx" dates (mm/dd/yyyy), as an example you only want allied aircraft textured with invasion stripes entering service no earlier than the 4 June 44 and leaving service starting around 1 Aug 44 with all gone by end of Dec 44

2. The other thing that's important is if you are spawning aircraft based on aircraft type (which is better for replay ability) IE fighter_bomber, tactical_bomber or level_bomber types (rather than spawning a particular aircraft) then for the spawned aircraft to react correctly with regard to the mission type you set in the spawn xml file you need to make sure all the aircraft you have include loadouts that have the parameter missiontypes="xxxxxxxxxxx" associated with them.

So for a fighter_bomber you must have at least 1 loadout which have these mission types listed "Recon,Escort,CAP,Intercept,Sweep,Nothing,Bomber_I ntercept,Strike,CAS,Search_Destroy,Anti_Ship"
With regard to both the bomber types you must have Nothing,Strike,CAS,Search_Destroy,Anti_Ship

You can have multiple mission types to a single loadout using the statement MissionType="Strike,Anti_Ship" (NOTE IMPORTANT no spaces before/after the comma) or you can spread them out with loadouts that match the mission, for example torpedo loadouts would have a mission type "Anti_Ship"

In the cases when you have a fighter_bomber that has only a "clean" loadout you can list them all under that one loadout, keeping in mind if your spawn file has a route type "bombing" parameter then they wont do anything, bombers will always attack with the bombing parameter as they should always have a bomb load in the loadouts that matches.
The game knows what the different weapon types are so a bombing command for an aircraft that has no bomb loadout means they wont respond if they are carrying rockets only.

However if you know you are spawning fighter_bombers in a ground attack scenario you can use the route type="allweapons" parameter so they will strafe,rocket and bomb depending on your loadouts that match the mission type in the spawn xml file.
If the aircraft only has a "clean" loadout with the parameter MissionType="Recon,Escort,CAP,Intercept,Sweep,Noth ing,Bomber_Intercept,Strike,CAS,Search_Destroy,Ant i_Ship" then it will still strafe the target when the route type="allweapons" parameter is used

Even if you want to spawn a particular aircraft rather than the wildcard types listed above they must still have the correct loadout format with the mission types defined


Phew Im a one finger "typa" so hopefully somebody finds the time to read all of this cause it took about an hour for me to get it all out.

I should add that all the above applies to the stock cfs3 game, im not really up with the different expansions and whether they have added mission types in addition to the stock ones