STW/Light Vehicles

What STW/Light Vehicles adds

STW/Light Vehicles creates armed light-vehicle compositions with the appropriate faction, AI crew and behaviour. The server validates every vehicle choice and owns the spawned composition; clients only select from the available Game Master options.

The built-in catalogue supports vanilla US, USSR and FIA vehicles, plus compatible RHS USAF/RHS AFRF, Task Force and TIGR entries when their resources are available in the running scenario. Optional entries are checked at runtime, so unavailable content is skipped rather than becoming a dependency.

For players

No player-side configuration is required. Light vehicles appear as ordinary world vehicles with AI crews. Players can take a seat and use them normally.

For Game Masters

1. Open the Game Master entity browser and place STW Light Vehicle Spawner at the desired location.
2. In the configuration dialog, choose a faction, model and behaviour. RANDOM is available for a faction; EMPTY creates an uncrewed vehicle using an explicit model.
3. Confirm the dialog. The server spawns the vehicle composition at the marker location, then removes the temporary placement dummy.

Available factions depend on the loaded scenario. The Game Master form offers US, USSR, FIA, RHS_USAF, RHS_AFRF and TF only when the corresponding faction exists in that scenario.

Automatic generation and Scenario Properties

Automatic light vehicles are session-only. After the world is ready, the authoritative server indexes usable roads and places the configured number of vehicles near POI-like locations, respecting the configured separation distance.

Game Masters can control the system during a session through Scenario Properties → STW Light Vehicles:

These controls are session-only. The next session reads the normal server configuration again.

Automatic vehicle replacement

Automatic vehicles can be replaced after they are destroyed. This applies only to automatic compositions created during the current session; it never replaces Game Master placements or other vehicles already in the world.

When an eligible automatic vehicle is destroyed, the authoritative server schedules one replacement after a randomized delay. The replacement keeps the original faction and behaviour (Active Guard, Patrol Roads or Free Roam), but uses a fresh location selected from the road list indexed when automatic generation started.

Road patrol and Free Roam vehicles are also monitored for stalled routes. The server first retries the existing order and may then reposition an operational, unoccupied vehicle forward onto a validated cached-road point before reissuing its route. The reposition is skipped when the vehicle, crew, route data or destination is invalid, when players would be too close, or when the vehicle is player-protected. A non-operational vehicle is retired; an automatic composition then follows the same replacement rules as a destroyed vehicle.

Turning off System Enabled or Automatic Generation cancels pending replacement work before automatic assets are cleaned up. A destroyed composition can request only one replacement, preventing duplicate replacements from repeated destruction events.

Soft dependencies

STW/Light Vehicles works without these mods. When one is installed and its vehicle resources are available in the active scenario, the mod can include its compatible light-vehicle entries. Missing optional content is skipped safely.

Server configuration

1. Install and enable STW/Light Vehicles on the server.
2. Start the server once. The mod creates $profile:STW/LightVehicles/STWLightVehiclesConfig.json and $profile:STW/LightVehicles/STWLightVehiclesRespawnConfig.json with their defaults.
3. Stop the server, back up the files, edit the required values, then restart. The mod validates values on load and writes valid configuration back.

Automatic generation configuration

enableChatMessages controls Light Vehicle Support radio-chat messages and defaults to true. enableNotificationMessages controls the matching on-screen hint notifications and defaults to false. The two settings are independent.

Per-faction quotas

New main configuration files include the following quota list, which preserves the default four automatic vehicles while making the faction split explicit:

"automaticVehicleQuotas": [
  { "factionKey": "US", "automaticVehicleCount": 2 },
  { "factionKey": "USSR", "automaticVehicleCount": 2 }
]

Edit the count for each enabled faction as required. For example, setting US to 3 and USSR to 1 creates three US and one USSR automatic vehicle, provided suitable road locations are found. Each quota faction must be present in the scenario and included in enabledFactionKeys.

Automatic replacement configuration

Configure automatic replacement in $profile:STW/LightVehicles/STWLightVehiclesRespawnConfig.json.