2.3 Spawn Menu - BrettRyland/BDArmory GitHub Wiki

The Spawn Menu, accessed via the [Sp] button on the Weapon Manager, allows the creation of automated tournaments and combats, with a number of options for spawning, location, and tournament setup.

The Spawn Menu contains 4 sections:


-Spawn Options
-Spawn Locations
-Tournament Options
-Waypoint Options
-Spawning Buttons

Spawn Options

  • Spawn Distance: This is how far apart the craft should be spawned (radius of the spawning circle). Toggling the Absolute Distance vs Factor button on the bottom left will change spawn distance from distance to a centerpoint to distance from neighboring craft.
  • Spawning Ease-In Speed: This is how fast the spawner will lower craft to the ground, if spawned with an altitude of 10 meters or less.
  • Concurrent Vessels (CS): This sets how many vessels to have active at any one time when using Continuous Spawning.
  • Lives Per Vessel (CS): Sets how many lives each craft gets and how many times they will respawn for a Last-Man-Standing fight.
  • Out-of-ammo Kill Time (CS): Sets how long before killing off a vessel that has run out or otherwise doesn't have ammo in Continuous Spawning mode.
  • Fill Seats: This chooses from a number of options on how Kerbals are assigned to crew the vessel, from minimal (cockpit gets one Kerbal) to command parts (all cockpits/crewed weapons are filled) to all seats which adds a Kerbal to every available seat on the craft. Keep in mind Kerbals add mass to the craft.
  • Teams: Use this to select what sort of team organization (if any) is used; everyone by themselves, teams based on subfolders, teams based on duplicates of each craft, or just splitting them up into groups
  • Craft Files Location (AutoSpawn/): use this to tell the spawner the location on disk to look for craft files (in a subdirectory of KSP/AutoSpawn/).
  • Absolute Distance Vs Factor: Sets how the distance slider works.
  • Continuous Single Spawn (S): Automatically start competitions when using the single spawn button.
  • Random Spawn Order (S): Randomize the order of vessels when spawning them via Single Spawn.
  • Reassign Teams: Assigning teams on spawn (instead of using pre-defined teams).
  • Dump Logs Every Spawn (S): Dump the competition log to disk each time a vessel is spawned in continuous spawning.
  • Spawn Spawn Probe Here - This spawns a probe core at the designated latitude, longitude, and altitude in the fields directly below the button.
  • Set Vessel Spawn Point Here: This will set where the spawner will spawn craft when vessels are spawned, using the lat/long/alt fields to the right of the button.
  • Save Location: This will add a new custom spawn location to the Interesting Spawn Locations list, using the name entered in the text field to the right of the button.
  • Clear Debris Now & Clear Bystanders Now: These buttons will remove and recover debris or vessels lacking a Weapon Manager or AI from the local area.

Spawn Locations

This menu lets you choose a pre-placed spawn point, either one of the default locations that come with BDA, or custom ones of your own creation

  • Select Planet: This sets what planet's Spawn Points you want to look at.
  • Warp Here: This button will teleport the current focused craft to the lat/Long/Alt currently set in the settings fields above the button.
  • Spawn Location Buttons: Clicking one of these will set the Spawn coordinates to the Spawn Location's latitude & longitude. Altitude will need to be custom set by the user.

Tournament Options

The Tournament Options menu is used for setting up an automated tournament.

  • Delay Between Heats: Wait interval the spawner will wait before spawning in the next heat.
  • TimeWarp Between Rounds: Setting this to a time interval will automatically activate timewarp to warp ahead by that amount of time after each heat, but before the next heat is spawned in. Does no work on Jool.
  • Tournament Style: Select type of tournament, FFA or N-choose-K; FFA will randomly order craft into heats vs an N-choose-K style tournament (only for smallish groups or the number of heats gets ridiculous).
  • Rounds: How many rounds before the tournament is complete. Each round will consist of 1 or more heats.
  • Teams Per Heat: The number of teams per heat, if a team setting is selected in Spawn Options. Else, this will instead be Vessels Per Heat
  • Vessels Per team Per Heat: The number of vessels per team per heat, if a team-based tournament is selected.
  • Re-use Craft to Fill Teams: Whether or not to duplicate craft to fill out the teams.
  • Set Up Tournament: Generates a tournament based on the selected settings and spawn location.
  • Run Tournament: This will start the generated tournament. once clicked and the tournament has begun, this becomes Stop Tournament, which will pause the tournament until resumed, or a new one is created.

Waypoint Options


If the Waypoints Mode toggle in the BDA Settings menu (GameModes section) has been enabled, a new section will be added to the Spawn Menu to control spawning for waypoint courses.

  • Waypoint Course: This slider sets which waypoint course will be used.
  • Waypoint Altitude: Adjusting this will set how high off the ground the waypoint gates will spawn. Leaving this at default will use the gate altitudes specified in the course's .cfg.
  • Max Laps: This will set how many laps craft will have to do in order to finish the waypoint race.
  • Activate Guard After: This sets which waypoint gate (if any) should have craft enable Guard Mode and start shooting if equipped with missiles or turrets.
  • Waypoint Size: This will set the diameter of the waypoint gates, in meters. leaving it at default will use the sizes specified in the course's .cfg.
  • Select Gate Mode: This will set what the Waypoint gates will look like. Purely aesthetic.
  • One-At-A-Time: If this is checked, racers will be spawned and run the ocurse one at a time; unchecked, and every craft in the /Autospawn folder will race at the same time.
  • Infinite Propellant until First Waypoint: This does exactly what it sounds like; craft will use no fuel until the race has started.
  • Show Waypoints: if checked, the waypoints will be visualized, using the model selected in 'Select Gate Model'.

Spawning Buttons

  • Single Spawn: This will spawn all vessels in the AutoSpawn folder once. If Continuous Single Spawn is enabled, they will immediately begin a competition, else one will need to be manually started in the BDA settings menu.
  • Continuous Spawn: This will spawn all vessels in the AutoSpawn folder, and automatically spawn in replacements when they die
  • Cancel Spawning: Will abort spawning if one of the above two buttons or the Run Tournament button is pressed.