Something tells me that I am going to regret the question. The answer may be obvious but not to me thus far. I've been hammering away at a mission for a week and get stuck at every turn. I haven't been able to get the spawner to spawn anything but have had great luck with "Activate". Now if I can just get airplanes to fly properly in formation and get bombers to bomb and survivors to land without hitting hangers, windsocks, etc...

Please Neoqb, localize that editor manual!

Update: The reason the Spawner MCU wasn't working for me is that I was unchecking the "enabled" box on the advance properties dialog--which must be done in order for Activate to work. Activate does work in making a unit visible at the appropriate time but the unit or group may not obey any further MCU commands, particularly waypoints. A good example is made with a train. An activated train will sit on the tracks blowing steam but nothing will make it move. Furthermore if you take a moving train, deactivate it, and immediately Activate it (all through triggers, of course) it will momentarily disappear and when visible again, it will coast to a stop and nothing that I can find will get it moving again. So again Ming, you were right that the Activate MCU has uses but Spawning something in the middle of the game isn't one of them.

Smokin'

Hehehe. Edit 2. Ok, so maybe not my final answer but I'm just posting as I learn...or think I learn. Forget the above. Spawner is great for Spawning airborn units as can been seen in Russian Roulette. But Spawner spawns one unit at a time, doesn't work for vehicles and trains, and usually all links and formations associated with the unit or group are lost. Activate works much better but there is One Big Requirement: a timer (3 sec seems standard) is required after unit activation to target the next trigger (waypoint). In other words, the unit is activated, wait three seconds, then target the the unit's next MCU. That trigger should have just a green line back to the lead unit (no "on message" targeting to create that funny blue/green connection).

Sorry for the confusing threads but I'm just trying to help others avoid this massive amount of trial and error I'm doing.

Smokin'

We don't really know much at the moment Smokin, we have to just try things and see what happens and to pick apart supplied neocube missions

Activate would probably mean activate an object that has been deactivated. The object already exists in the mission when the mission Begins

There's a tickbox in a plane's/object's properties that will activate or deactivate an object at Mission Begin, before you climb in the cockpit

Spawning is different, the spawning objects do not exist (are not instantiated) at the start of the mission when you climb in, and they do not exist until the Spawn control is activated by a trigger of some sort: your plane gets near enough to a Spawn trigger point, you spawn a flight of planes for example

I used Activate right away but after submitting a mission to neocube's Stepan for help - sorry I forgot to say just now that we have had limited help from the neocube team who've been very busy - he told me that Activate has another purpose

But whatever works of course

Something tells me that I am going to regret the question.

If (improbably as you've been hammering away, working not complaining) you reply that you knew all that already and that you are not a moron, yep you might come to regret it. We live in hope that you are normal though and of course you must ask any sort of question, the Mission Editor is a complex bit of kit, takes time to get off the ground and is very juicy

Ming

With regard to aircraft, I think the spawner is the only way to get an aircraft placement to show up in the game more than once. The Roulette missions are a good example of how the spawners work.

I've been able to get the spawner to work in my own missions, just not consistently when paired with random timers. At this point, keeping the design as simply as possible goes a long way. Unfortunately, KISS has never been my motto...

Ming and Gustang,

Both of you have been a huge help over the past month with the editor. I've found that the only way to progress was to work on each element as a simple independent mission. That was how I got flying formations to work. The activate command it pretty cool. As is watching ground vehicle formations change in preparation to cross a bridge (or drop onto the drink if the builder fails to command a collumn). I like the power and I even like the logic. I just wish that things behaved with a little consistancy within that logic.

Anyway keep up the helpfull advice. And look for a dull mission from me soon.

Update at top.

Has anyone noticed different behaviour when the units get activated/spawned? I was hoping that "activate" would load the models in memory when the game starts and then merely makes them visible when activated. However, in my co-op when the "activated" aircraft appear in the sky the game always freezes momentarily (as in IL2). Or is this just a graphics thing, completely unrelated to "spawn" or "activate"?
I hate it, because it makes the mission very predictable. You only need to wake up and look around after the first freeze, because then there will be enemy aircraft in view!