Tutorials

This guide is to get you started building your first Spearhead mission.
Spearhead was created to enable the mission maker to worry as little about the running, timing and scripting and most about the setting and looks and feel of the mission.
In the example we'll show how you can create a simple island hopping mission

Include the script

Read here how to include the Spearhead script in your mission first.

Stages

In general, stages are the backbone of a Spearhead mission.
They define the flow of the mission and what is active at what time.
Don't worry, it can be changed and adapted later on, but it's best to translate your mission idea into stages first.

Stages are defined by trigger zones.
They'll be picked up by Spearhead when named according to the naming convention:
MISSIONSTAGE_[OrderNumber]_[FreeForm]

Stages are divided in primary stages: MISSIONSTAGE_[number]
or secondary stages: MISSIONSTAGE_x[number]
Note the x before the number. This marks it as "extra"
Secondary stages will follow the order number, but are not required to be completed before moving on to the next stage numbers.

For this Demo mission we'll create 3 stages.
MissionStage_1_start
MissionStage_2_continuation
MissionStage_3_finale
Each stage will have it's own trigger zone.

There's 3 stages now.
The first MissionStage_1_start is the first stage and will be active at mission start.
The second MissionStage_2_continuation will be pre-activated when stage 1 is active.
But will be fully activated when stage 1 is complete.
Pre-activated means that the SAM missions and Airbase units will be activated.
This is the difference between SAM and DEAD missions, but let's not get into too much detail at this time.
You can ofcourse create as many stages as you want.
You can also change the amount of stages that get pre-activated.
By default Spearhead will pre-activate 1 stage ahead.
This can be changed in the configuration.

Create Missions

Now that we've created the stages we can start adding missions to them.
Missions are also defined by trigger zones.
They'll be picked up by Spearhead when named according to the naming convention:
MISSION_[Type]_[FreeForm]
Where [Type] is the type of mission.

CAS

Personally CAS is one of our favorite mission types.
Mostly because it's easy to set up and creates a truly immersive experience.

SAM

STRIKE

Setting up CAP

If you don't want to use the CAP managers withing Spearhead you can skip this and continue to Setting up Missions.
However CAP is one of the painpoints in a lot of missions and setting up a dynamic feeling airspace can be quite the challenge.
With the CAP managers we've tried to make this a lot easier.
A CAP group needs to follow the following naming convention: CAP_[A|B][CONFIG]_[Free Form] For details on config read this: CAP Group Config For now I set up 3 groups with the following names. CAP_A[1]1_Rota1, CAP_A[1]1_Rota1-1, CAP_B[1]1_Rota1
The first two are marked with A and will therefore be primary CAP units. They will be scheduled and make up for the total count.
Meaning that for this airbase there is 2 CAP units max at a time flying out.
In this case all groups have [1]1 in the name, (This would be the same as [1]A) which means that when stage 1 is active the groups will activate and fly out to stage 1. I also set up a few groups further back. One example: CAP_A[1-3]3_Group1. This group will protect zone 3 when zones 1 through 3 are active. CAP units fly out, fly their CAP zone for x amount of minutes and will then RTB.
Before they actually RTB an event is triggered 10 minutes before the actual RTB task. This event will trigger a backup unit to startup and fly out to take over.

You can start a mission, speed up the simulation and make the CAP fly out to see what happens

Creating CAP Routes

Creating CAP routes is not needed per se, but with a multi-stage stage (we have 2 stages with _1_) it is recommended.
Similarly with huge stages.
If there is multiple zones it will "round-robin" over them.

If no CAP route is present the unit will fly a route generated differently per zone:
quad zone => race-track between the corner closest to the origin airbase to the center point of the zone
circle zone => race-track between the closest point on circle to the origin airbase to the center

If you want to create your own CAP Routes you can!
For this example I created 2 CAP routes inside of the 2 _1_ stages.

As you can see below there's a nice feature you can exploit. As long as the X of the zone is inside of the the CAPROUTE will be used for that stage!

Well, nice, we're done setting up the initial CAP effort.
If you want to change values for the CAP routes please read about how to configure it here: Cap Config

Mission Briefings

So now we've created some missions we also want to add briefings to them. This is pretty easy with Spearhead.

To do so click on draw on the left hand pane in the mission editor. This opens up the drawing tools in the editor.
On the right click TextBox and click somewhere inside the zone to which you want to add the briefing.
Give the briefing a name (It's not used, but can be nice to use to reference the briefing later) and add the briefing.
The text box is quite small, but can have a lot of text. Easiest is to edit the text in an editor of choice and paste it into the box afterwards.

Keep the binding layer to "Author" only. That way it doesn't show up for anyone other than in the mission editor.

See the two images below. The left shows the Text Box drawing. The right shows the briefing as shown in the mission.

We are now done creating a first mission. Hit fly and test it.
Check all references for way more features and keep up to date with the latest changes as they come along!