Custom Loadouts

Custom Loadouts

By default, Retribution picks a stock weapon loadout for each flight based on its mission type. You can override those defaults per aircraft so that, for example, every Strike F-16 spawns with your preferred bombs. This page explains the two ways to set custom loadouts and the CLSID pitfall that silently breaks them.

Two ways to customize

1. Name a loadout in the Mission Editor (per-install)

The simplest path needs no code:

1. Open the DCS Mission Editor, place the aircraft, and build a loadout.
2. Name the loadout Retribution <mission type>, where the mission type matches what appears in Retribution's UI — for example Retribution OCA/Aircraft, Retribution Strike, or Retribution TARPS.
3. Save. Retribution looks up a loadout with that exact name when it generates a flight of that type.

If you don't define a loadout for a given mission type, Retribution falls back to the included defaults — missing names are harmless, not errors. All stock DCS loadouts also remain selectable in the flight-editing interface, so you can always change a payload by hand.

2. Customized payload files (shipped with the fork)

The fork ships curated default payloads as Lua files under resources/customized_payloads/, one per aircraft type (e.g. F-14B.lua, F-16C_50.lua). Each file is a table of named profiles keyed by the same Retribution <mission type> convention, with pylons listing weapons by CLSID:

{
  ["displayName"] = "Retribution Strike",
  ["name"]        = "Retribution Strike",
  ["pylons"]      = {
      [3] = { ["CLSID"] = "{GBU-12}", ["num"] = 3 },
      -- ...
  },
}

This is how the fork bakes in role-appropriate loadouts that ship with the build rather than depending on each player's Mission Editor.

The fork's TARPS payload (worked example)

The 414th treats TARPS as a real player task (see Fog of War and Reconnaissance), so the F-14 payload files add a Retribution TARPS recon profile alongside the usual BARCAP/TARCAP/Escort/Strike entries. It mounts a reconnaissance camera pod on the Tomcat's belly recon station — for example, in F-14B.lua:

["displayName"] = "Retribution TARPS",
["name"]        = "Retribution TARPS",
["pylons"]      = {
    [4] = { ["CLSID"] = "{F14-TARPS}", ["num"] = 6 },
    -- ...
},

The same Retribution TARPS profile is present across the F-14A/F-14B variant files so the photo-recon task is available whichever Tomcat a squadron flies.

CLSID currency — the gotcha that bites

A pylon's CLSID is the exact weapon identifier DCS uses internally. These strings change when ED renames, splits, or removes a store across DCS updates. If any CLSID in a named loadout is stale, DCS rejects the entire loadout — the aircraft spawns with the fallback, not your payload, and there's no obvious error message.

So when you add or edit a loadout:

• Copy CLSIDs from a current DCS install or a freshly-saved Mission Editor loadout, not from memory or an old guide.
• After a DCS update, re-verify the payloads for any aircraft whose stores changed.
• If a custom loadout "isn't taking," suspect a stale CLSID before anything else — verify the offending profile in the Mission Editor for that aircraft.

Keeping CLSIDs current is the single most important discipline for custom loadouts.

See also

• Custom Factions — which aircraft a side can field
• Custom Campaigns — where mission types come from
• Fog of War and Reconnaissance — why TARPS matters
• Mission planning — assigning flights and tasks