How do I disable random spawns?

[BobZ]

Hi, a newbie here to CFS 3. I have installed CFS3 Upgrade v2 from this website, and all is working great!


I like to create missions, and would like to disable any random spawns, just for that mission only, or perhaps turn this feature on and off temporarily.


In the text file in the above upgrade, is the following:
"I have thrown in a couple of "no air" and "activate air" spawns files. Not sure if these will work for you. These are to allow you to fly missions without random air spawns. First try the no air spawns option. then check the air.spawns file to see if it worked. Remeber to reactivate air spawns for campaign play!"


Within the main CFS 3 folder, there are two files:
02 No Air Spawns.cmd
03 Activate Air Spawns.cmd
I suspect these files are the answer...


My question is, how do I do that? Thanks to all for your help!


BobZ

[Flamingskull5000]

Here's how I do it.....start by typing %AppData% in to your Windows search feature. Next select the Microsoft folder and then your CFS3 folder, in there you will find the uisel xml document. Right click it and open with notepad or any program that you can edit it with. Scroll down to Quick Combat section and under Enemy Aircraft you'll see respawn type. Change Val = "y" to "n" and save it. Hope this helps!

[mongoose]

For missions as opposed to QC, Daiwilletti is the man to ask IIRC!

[Daiwilletti]

Hi, a newbie here to CFS 3. I have installed CFS3 Upgrade v2 from this website, and all is working great!


I like to create missions, and would like to disable any random spawns, just for that mission only, or perhaps turn this feature on and off temporarily.


In the text file in the above upgrade, is the following:
"I have thrown in a couple of "no air" and "activate air" spawns files. Not sure if these will work for you. These are to allow you to fly missions without random air spawns. First try the no air spawns option. then check the air.spawns file to see if it worked. Remeber to reactivate air spawns for campaign play!"


Within the main CFS 3 folder, there are two files:
02 No Air Spawns.cmd
03 Activate Air Spawns.cmd
I suspect these files are the answer...


My question is, how do I do that? Thanks to all for your help!


BobZ

Hi BobZ I apologise for my incomplete explanation - a question of time to release vs perfecting some knobbly aspects. So I'm very pleased you have asked the question as there are no doubt others asking the same thing.

Disabling random air spawns is important for many of the missions. Nothing is as frustrating as flying for ages, following the waypoint directives, then a flight of Me 262s comes and cuts you up!! (I'm thinking of the stock p_47d_25 mission to blast some sub pens in 1944....).

The first thing is that a file ending in .cmd is like a .bat file. I've just taken some .bat files and renamed them .cmd because apparently (I'm no techo wizard) Win 10 prefers a .cmd file to a .bat one. Anyways, if you go to the relevant spawn changing .cmd file in Windows Explorer (02 No Air Spawns.cmd), you can right-click on the file and choose "Edit". This will open the file in notepad.

You will see some simple script that will take a no air spawns file and rename it to air.spawns. The same script will take the stock air.spawns file and rename it to something else (I don't remember but will be obvious when you look at it). Once you have run the 02 no air spawns .cmd, then go to your Spawns folder, and see that the air.spawns file has been modded from the stock air.spawns one. Maybe I should recommend that you take a look at the stock air.spawns file first, if you are not familiar with it. It generally has about a dozen air formation options and a 1D12 (one roll of a 12-sided dice) die-roll. Once the no air spawns command has successfully run you should have a different air.spawns file and a renamed backup stock air.spawns file.

What the 03 Activate air spawns cmd does (right click on it and choose Edit) is take the new disable air.spawns file, rename it, then it takes the backed up renamed stock air.spawns file, and brings it back as the air.spawns file. This will give you random air spawns again.

Sorry I'm being a bit vague I still haven't got my CFS computer going properly after a Win 10 "upgrade" to ver 1909, and I'm too disheartened to turn it on. I'm just using the family room hack PC to write this response.

[BobZ]

Good Day Daiwilletti,
Thank you for your recent posting. For some reason (Windows 10?), I can't get either of the *.cmd files to run, even when changing them to a *.bat file. However, your files gave the needed guidance, so I got it to work in this fashion:


1) within the spawns folder, I made another folder, and stored your *.cmd files there. (This is a belt + suspenders/braces move!)


2) I copied both files to the main spawns folder, and then renamed them as *.BAK files.


3) For the spawns folder, I opened properties, then security, and added Users, for permission to access/change files.


So now it looks like this, where the underlined is a folder name:
spawns
air.noair.BAK
air.spawns
air.spawns.BAK
Air+Noair files archived
02 No Air Spawns.cmd
03 Activate Air Spawns.cmd
When I want to change the setup, I open the appropriate *.BAK file in Notepad, and "save as..." air.spawns, overwriting the present file. This works great!
Thanks much for pointing the way! Here's hoping you get your CFS computer working again.
BobZ

[Daiwilletti]

Well I suppose that is like no alcohol beer, the cmd file to have when you don't have a cmd file . Glad it works for you, that's the main thing.