Daiwilletti
Charter Member
Well folks, here is my tuppence worth on the subject. Flying an anti-ship mission in a CFS3 (or variant) campaign is often a little fraught from a realism perspective, because the campaign often generates shipping in the channel which is not likely to be there, in daylight hours at least.
But it is made worse when I fly to the target area, and the shipping formation is not there. The campaign shipping mission objective is generated by the ship.spawn table file and the destroy_ship spawns. Often when I arrive at the target area a non-target formation spawns on or in the vicinity, and that seems to inhibit the spawning of the campaign mission objective formation. These non-target ship spawns are generated by the ground.spawns spawn table file and any ship formations spawn files called thereby. My theory is, if there are priority settings in either of the ship.spawns file and the ground.spawns file, there is a mismatch. To promote the spawning of the mission objective formation, I set priority=100 for the ship.spawns file, and no priority for the ground.spawns file.
That seems to help as far as I can tell. The other thing you need if the objective fails to spawn initially, is patience. Recently I had to circuit the area for 20 minutes before the target shipping formation appeared (indicated in purple on the TAC). Today I had to wait 18 minutes on a mission, circling the target area. All this while worrying whether we would be "bounced". Luckily I was flying an American campaign, the aircraft have good fuel reserves. If I was flying a Typhoon, with that big Napier Sabre engine, I would be watching the fuel gauge draining before my eyes.
Anyway, I paused mid-game, checked my ship.spawns and ground.spawns file, and found that there was a priority setting for each spawn table file. So I deleted the priority setting for the ground.spawns spawn table file, and boosted the ship spawns priority to 100. As soon as I went back into the game, the mission objective ship formation spawned. Bingo.
But it is made worse when I fly to the target area, and the shipping formation is not there. The campaign shipping mission objective is generated by the ship.spawn table file and the destroy_ship spawns. Often when I arrive at the target area a non-target formation spawns on or in the vicinity, and that seems to inhibit the spawning of the campaign mission objective formation. These non-target ship spawns are generated by the ground.spawns spawn table file and any ship formations spawn files called thereby. My theory is, if there are priority settings in either of the ship.spawns file and the ground.spawns file, there is a mismatch. To promote the spawning of the mission objective formation, I set priority=100 for the ship.spawns file, and no priority for the ground.spawns file.
That seems to help as far as I can tell. The other thing you need if the objective fails to spawn initially, is patience. Recently I had to circuit the area for 20 minutes before the target shipping formation appeared (indicated in purple on the TAC). Today I had to wait 18 minutes on a mission, circling the target area. All this while worrying whether we would be "bounced". Luckily I was flying an American campaign, the aircraft have good fuel reserves. If I was flying a Typhoon, with that big Napier Sabre engine, I would be watching the fuel gauge draining before my eyes.
Anyway, I paused mid-game, checked my ship.spawns and ground.spawns file, and found that there was a priority setting for each spawn table file. So I deleted the priority setting for the ground.spawns spawn table file, and boosted the ship spawns priority to 100. As soon as I went back into the game, the mission objective ship formation spawned. Bingo.