...
-- Flugente: if this sector has not yet been liberated by the player, there might be some civilian enemy personnel here
-- the idea is that these people are government employed, and won't stay around once you take the sector
-- parameters of CreateCivilian:
-- - tile where person should be created on the map
-- - civilian group they should belong to (see also CivGroupNames.xml)
-- - bodytype
-- - vest colour (-1 for random)
-- - pants colour (-1 for random)
-- - hair colour (-1 for random)
-- - skin colour (-1 for random)
-- - optional item 1 (-1 for nothing)
-- - optional item 2 (-1 for nothing)
-- - optional item 3 (-1 for nothing)
-- - optional item 4 (-1 for nothing)
	
if ( fHasEverBeenPlayerControlled == false ) then
	-- surface sectors
	if ( bSectorZ == 0 ) then
		-- central SAM
		if ( sSectorX == 8 and sSectorY == SectorY.MAP_ROW_I ) then
			CreateCivilian(16081, CivGroup.RADAR_TECHNICIAN_GROUP, Bodytype.MANCIV, Vest.GREYVEST, Pants.GREENPANTS, -1, -1, 210, 635, -1, -1)
			CreateCivilian(15443, CivGroup.RADAR_TECHNICIAN_GROUP, Bodytype.REGFEMALE, Vest.GREYVEST, Pants.GREENPANTS, -1, -1, 210, 635, -1, -1)
			CreateCivilian(10944, CivGroup.RADAR_TECHNICIAN_GROUP, Bodytype.REGMALE, Vest.GREYVEST, Pants.GREENPANTS, -1, -1, 210, 8, -1, -1)
		-- Drassen SAM
		elseif ( sSectorX == 15 and sSectorY == SectorY.MAP_ROW_D ) then
			CreateCivilian(11297, CivGroup.RADAR_TECHNICIAN_GROUP, Bodytype.MANCIV, Vest.GREYVEST, Pants.GREENPANTS, -1, -1, 210, 8, -1, -1)
...

• 
  radar technicians to SAM sites and airports
• prison wardens to prisons (complete with gasmask, nightstick and handcuffs)
• airport staff to airports
• barrack staff to the Alma barracks
• scientists to Orta
• factory workers to factories
• outspoken civilian supporters of the regime to Balime (you can't tell me they've all fled to Meduna)
• 
  secretaries to places that seem like they'd have some.

Sometimes I hate you (J/K cheeky ). Just when I had settled on 8131 as the release to upgrade Arulco Revisited to, you come up with this extremely useful feature...

This is purely because of

...
if ( fHasEverBeenPlayerControlled == false ) then
...

which is a new variable I added to the script. For these civilian types I added here, it seemed reasonable to only have them spawn if the player has never taken this sector. It would make no sense if prison wardens would still appear in the prison if the player has long taken it, no? In the above case, they will not spawn again if we take the sector.

You can, of course, use the functions without that particular check (or add any lua checks you like). HandleSectorTacticalEntry is called every time we enter a sector.

you dont HAVE to jump on the newest features once they're released..
even though they might be cool and all you should just keep your own schedule, it's not that often that something mod breaking is introduced
Just pick a version that you want the mod to work on and continue from there, all that could happen in newer versions is some red lines during startup.

As for making a group hostile, that might already be in lua, not sure.

SetCivGroupHostile( Group.KINGPIN_CIV_GROUP , Civ_status.CIV_GROUP_HOSTILE )
		
for iLoop = GetTacticalStatusFirstID(Team.CIV_TEAM),GetTacticalStatusLastID(Team.CIV_TEAM) do
	if ( CheckMercPtrsInSector (iLoop) == true and CheckMercPtrsInActive(iLoop) == true and CheckMercPtrsInCivilianGroup (iLoop) ==
           Group.KINGPIN_CIV_GROUP ) then
		for aimLoop=GetTacticalStatusFirstID(Team.OUR_TEAM),GetTacticalStatusLastID(Team.OUR_TEAM) do
			if ( CheckMercPtrsID1SeenID2(iLoop,aimLoop) == SEEN_CURRENTLY ) then
				MakeMercPtrsHostile( iLoop )
			end
		end	
	end	
end
 
if ( CheckCombatMode == false ) then
	EnterTeamCombatMode(Team.CIV_TEAM)
end	

Attribute levels are only really relevant for hostiles. Take a look at the same function in HandleSectorTacticalEntry(), a few lines above I use CreateArmedCivilain(..), which creates goons:

...
CreateArmedCivilain(CivGroup.BOUNTYHUNTER_CIV_GROUP, SoldierClass.SOLDIER_CLASS_ARMY, 			13032, hostile)
...

In this case, it is used to set up (possibly) hostile bounty hunters I added for a new quest where I tried to externalize as much of that quest as possible.

The AI would sometimes use it. It does check whether it has several guns which one to use (afaik), but this would not work on armour. Additionally, a modder might want to explicitly have an enemy use a specific item (like, say, the leader of a criminal gang using a custom-set golden desert eagle). Without controlling the entire inventory, this might not happen (so on, say, higher progress values, the enemy might get spawned with a MG3 and use that, which is reasonable gamewise but not what the modder intended).

So only when you killed the cow did the enemies rise again ;)

Yeah, I was wondering how your idea of external text files was going to work with savegames ;)

Yep, the cows are holding back the undead. Any civilian would do, but apparently, cows worked best. I assume this is because the average gamer is less likely to shoot a cow than kids/cripples in wheelchairs/women in miniskirts.

Actually, I've found that placing a civilian inside a cliff -where available- works best. Even the worst serial killer type of gamer simply can't kill him.

If I recall, the trigger NPC issue was (still is?) used in many mods. Modders found out that all civs respawned in a map if all had been killed. That's why on a few maps where you are supposed to battle enemy civilians, there is a cow stashed away at the side lines - cows are on the civilian team, and nobody is likely to harm them. So only when you killed the cow did the enemies rise again ;)

...

SetCivGroupHostile( Group.KINGPIN_CIV_GROUP , Civ_status.CIV_GROUP_HOSTILE )

...

It's behaviour 2, actually. If you don't want these guys to respawn, you have to decide that by altering the lua script (like checking for a face etc.).

If you want random locations, you can simply choose one at random, the lua script can roll a dice:

from GameInit.lua:

function InitNPCs()

	-- Add the pilot at a random location!
	if is_networked == 0 then
		o = math.random(1, 4)
		if o == 1 then

is there any way to check if a grid is occupied? I am trying to spawn some mobs alongside the kingpin assassins when I do by random location some of them dont spawn, I figured is because they are set to spawn in a occupied grid but the createarmedcivilian function doesnt return anything.