Drop Spawn Unit Placement

Drop-Spawn Unit Placement

Drop-spawn is a sandbox tool that lets you right-click blank map space to place a unit group — armor, a SAM site, an EWR, a ship, or a coastal/missile site — anywhere on the map, attached to the nearest friendly command post. It is gated behind cheat settings and is intended for sandboxing, testing laydowns, and shaping a campaign by hand rather than for normal play.

Enabling it

Two cheat settings control drop-spawn:

Setting	Effect	Default
enable_unit_placement	Unlocks the feature — right-clicking blank map space opens the placement dialog	OFF
enable_free_unit_placement	Free placement: skips the budget cost and bypasses the range limit	OFF

With enable_unit_placement off, a right-click on blank map space behaves normally — for example, right-clicking a target marker to plan a package — and never pops the placement dialog. The unlock has to be on for the dialog to appear.

Placing a unit group

1. Turn on enable_unit_placement (and optionally enable_free_unit_placement).
2. Right-click blank map space. The placement dialog opens, anchored on the spot you clicked.
3. Choose from the dialog:
   • Coalition — Blue by default; Red is locked behind the enemy buy/sell cheat.
   • Category — Air Defense SAM/AAA, EWR, Coastal/Missile, Ground Force, or Navy.
   • Unit type — drawn from the full set of named layouts the campaign engine knows (S-300, SA-2, Patriot, NASAMS, Early-Warning Radar, ship classes, and so on), filtered down to what the selected faction can actually field. If a category shows "(no compatible units for this faction)", that faction has no units matching that layout type.
   • Unit rows — pick the unit type and count for each group in the layout.
   • Deploy timing — Spawn Now or Deploy Next Turn.
   • Respawn — auto-revive the group on destruction each turn.
4. The dialog shows the cost against your budget; the Place button is disabled if you're over budget (unless free placement is on).
5. On confirm, placement validates terrain and range — the spot must be land-appropriate for the unit and within 200 km of the nearest friendly command post (the range check is bypassed by free placement). The new group is attached to that command post and appears on the map immediately.

Deploy timing and respawn

• Spawn Now creates the group right away.
• Deploy Next Turn queues the placement and materializes it at the start of the next turn; the budget is deducted when you queue it.
• Respawn revives a destroyed user-placed group at the start of each turn.

Removing a placed unit

Right-click a unit you placed and choose Remove. The group is deleted and the marker disappears from the map immediately. (Note: there is currently no budget refund on removal.)

See also

• The-Retribution-UI