Glossary

Every term, plain English.

DCS has a lot of jargon and so do we. Here's every term we use, with a one-line definition and a concrete example.

Cell: A unique combination of Map + Era + Scenario. Each cell is one buildable mission template.; ExampleCaucasus / Modern / SEAD is one cell. Caucasus / Modern / Strike is a different cell. The library currently has about 25 cells across 5 maps and 3 eras.
Seed: The starting-point .miz file the engine uses for a cell. Has the map, weather, time, scripts, and player slots already in place — but no enemies yet.; ExampleThink of a seed as a half-built kitchen. The walls, plumbing, and outlets are in. The threats and ground groups (the appliances and furniture) get added at build time based on your composition.
Fragment: A small reusable piece of a real DCS mission — a SAM site, a CAP flight, an armor column. The engine pulls fragments from a 54,000-piece library and injects them into your seed.; ExampleA typical fragment might be a Tor-M1 SAM with its radar, search vehicle, and crew — captured from a real production mission so it is set up the way an experienced mission designer would set it up.
Anchor: A marker inside a seed that tells the engine "you can put a fragment of this kind here." Every seed has a fixed pool of anchors per coalition and role.; ExampleIf a seed has 3 red-SAM anchors and you ask for 5 red SAMs, you get 3. The live preview on /build shows the ceiling per role.
Composition: The dictionary of "how many of each thing" you want in this mission. Set it manually with the sliders, or pick a recipe to auto-fill it.; Example{ red_sam: 3, red_cap: 2, blue_awacs: 1, blue_tanker: 1 } = three red SAMs, two red fighter patrols, one friendly AWACS, one friendly tanker.
Recipe: A named composition preset. Picking a recipe is a shortcut — it fills in the sliders for you.; Examplesead_normal auto-fills 3 red SAMs + 2 red CAP + 1 blue AWACS + 1 blue tanker. training_basic auto-fills almost nothing. Recipes can be tuned further with the sliders after picking.
Role: What a unit does in the fight. Used as the key in the composition dictionary.; ExampleCommon roles: red_sam, red_cap, red_aaa, red_cas, red_armor, red_infantry, red_convoy, blue_awacs, blue_tanker, blue_cap, blue_recon.
Coalition: Blue (friendly) or red (enemy). Every fragment is tied to one coalition; the engine never mixes them.; ExampleA blue tanker will only spawn at a blue airfield. A red MiG-29 will only spawn at a red airfield. There's no scenario where the two get accidentally swapped.
Slot override: Forcing a specific aircraft type for a player slot, instead of letting the era pool pick.; ExampleBy default a Modern Caucasus mission might give you an F-16C or F/A-18C. Set a slot override to F-15E and that slot becomes a Strike Eagle on every build.
Dynamic spawns: A DCS 2.9 feature that lets a player spawn any aircraft they own at any parking spot of a friendly airbase. Toggle on /build under Doctrine controls.; ExampleTurn it on and your friends can join the same mission flying a Mirage, an Apache, an F-14 — whatever modules they own — without you having to pre-place dedicated slots for each.
Takeoff mode: How player flights start: parking with engine off (cold), parking with engine running (hot), or already in the air. Affects all player roster slots.; ExampleCold start = you fire up the jet from scratch (most realistic). Hot start = you taxi straight to the runway. Air start = you spawn already flying. Pick what matches your mood.
AI density: How "busy" the airspace feels — how many AI-only flights are seeded in (extra civilian or background air traffic).; Exampleoff = empty sky outside your composition. dense = lots of background traffic. auto = the engine picks based on the seed.
Lift (vs. full-adapt): A "lifted" cell uses the original mission as-is and adds a fragment overlay. A "full-adapt" cell rewrites the mission to a Fox3 SEED_SPEC. Lifts are faster to add; full-adapts are more flexible.; ExampleMost cells in the library today are lifts. Full-adapt cells (like Caucasus / Modern / SEAD) support the full slider/recipe flow with composition injection.
Mission of the Day (MotD): A pre-built mission generated automatically every morning at 00:05 UTC. Find it on /today.; ExampleDon't want to think? Click Today, download the .miz, fly. A new one every day.
F10 Menu (Fox3 MenuKit): An in-mission radio menu that adds Fox3-built helpers like Request Threats, Request Targets, Mark Target, and Mission Status.; ExampleHit \\ in DCS, navigate F10 Other, and you will see the Fox3 menu items. They are optional — purely there for pilots who want extra situational awareness.
Deploy to server: A Pro+ feature that pushes the built .miz directly to one of your DCS servers via Tailscale + WinRM, instead of you downloading it manually.; ExampleSet the Host field to your server's Tailscale name and click Build & Deploy. The .miz lands in Saved Games\DCS\Missions on the remote machine.
Remix: Build a new mission starting from the settings of a previous build. Saves you re-typing every option.; ExampleOn /historyclick the Remix button next to any past build — /build opens with all of that build's settings pre-filled, ready to tweak and rebuild.
Quota: How many missions you can build per month at your current plan tier. Free = 2/month, Pro and above = unlimited.
Respawn pool: A bucket of late-activated AI groups that re-rolls when you respawn. The threat layout shifts between lives so the second sortie is not identical to the first.; ExampleWhen the engine picks 3+ red CAP fragments for your mission, two-thirds of them are held in a respawn pool. On each death, one is destroyed and a fresh pick is activated. Powered by Fox3MenuKit v1.3 and an S_EVENT_BIRTH hook with a 30-second debounce.
PvP mode: A toggle on /build that exposes the red roster editor next to blue. The engine then counts both coalitions for AI density and applies a 60% multiplier so the human-vs-human fight stays the main event.; ExamplePick the Skirmish scenario on any PvP-capable map (Caucasus/Modern, Caucasus/ColdWar, Syria/Modern, Sinai/Modern, Falklands/ColdWar), toggle PvP, set 4 blue and 4 red player slots — done.
Auto-QA gate: A live load test that every Mission of the Day passes before it ships. The mission gets uploaded to a real DCS server, loaded via DCS-gRPC, and scanned for log errors. Catches the bug class behind the 2026-04-26 broken-MotD incident.; ExampleTier-1 (live): upload + LoadMission RPC + dcs.log scan. Tier-2 (Tacview-based behavioral scoring) is shipped and runs when DCS_server is active on the test host.
Async build: A Fleet-tier build path that returns a job_id immediately and runs the mission generation in the background. Used for 60-player scenarios that would otherwise time out the API request.; ExampleOn /scenarios, the Build async (large) button submits to /api/scenarios/build/async and polls every 2s until the .miz is ready.
Persistent campaign mode: Multi-session campaign state. Kills, captured bases, and author flags carry across server restarts via the bundled Fox3Persistence.lua framework.; ExampleToggle Persistent campaign mode in /build's Build Options. The generated .miz writes a save file via io.open on death / mission-end / 60s heartbeat; on next load it reads the save and destroys groups that were dead, restores author-range flags 600-899. See /help/persistent-mode for the squadron-night flow.
AI formation: A per-build override for the formation flown by AI plane groups (intercept, escort, strike). Helicopters and player groups always keep their seed-author choice.; ExamplePick Combat Spread for stagger-widewall, Trail Open for single-file, or Wedge for the V-shape. Per-aircraft-category mapping ensures DCS gets a valid formation_template string.

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