Custom Squads

Create and edit a squad

A squad is a group purchased together during wave planning. It expands into individual planned mobs; it does not create a new entity, a formation, or a guaranteed simultaneous spawn.

1. Open Mods → Invasion Mod → Config → Squads in the NeoForge client. Press New squad and enter a nonblank name of up to 64 characters, for example MY_PATROL.
2. Open Members → Add member, search by entity ID, and select an enabled mob. Add further types and set each row's Count. Adding the same ordinary entry again increases its count.
3. Use × beside a member to remove that row. Counts must be positive whole numbers, with at most 1,000 mobs in total per squad. Red input indicates an invalid value; the previous valid value remains.
4. Return to the squad list and open Themes. Enable the themes that may buy this squad. New squads start with MIXED; remove it if the group should only belong to your custom theme.
5. Choose automatic or overridden costs, then return to the main configuration screen, select Entities, and press Save.

The member picker shows configured active: true entities. Enable missing members in Entities first. The squad's theme list controls group selection; its members do not need to have that same theme individually. Use the page arrows for long lists. To delete a whole squad, click its × in the squad list, then save.

Automatic and fixed costs

Leave the squad's Cost field empty to use the sum of each member's configured cost multiplied by its count. The placeholder displays that automatic total. For example, three mobs costing 4 each plus two costing 6 each make a squad cost of 24. Tier and baby fields do not add a separate surcharge to this calculation.

Enter a positive whole number to override the total. Entering 20 makes the same group cost 20 regardless of later member-cost changes. Clear the field to restore automatic calculation. Invalid or nonpositive input is marked red and does not replace the previous valid setting.

Each phase starts with a nominal budget of wave × 10. During each purchase iteration, an affordable available squad has a 1-in-5 selection opportunity; if successful, one eligible squad is chosen and its full cost deducted. Other iterations buy individual mobs. A squad can be bought more than once, or not at all. Even a theme containing only squads does not guarantee a squad purchase.

Fallback mobs fill remaining budget and minimum counts, with additional support and boss rules applied afterward. Squad cost is a planning cost, not a hard limit on the number of enemies in the resulting wave.

When a squad can spawn

• The squad must have at least one member and include the selected phase theme.
• Every member must be enabled as an active participant, registered by an installed mod, and allowed as a direct wave purchase. One unavailable member excludes the whole squad; it is not silently removed from the group.
• Special environmental mobs such as Guardians and Elder Guardians are not direct squad purchases. Disabled IM Silverfish are also excluded.
• A member with baby: true and the entity path skeleton, including invmod:skeleton, requires Tiny Skeletons. This affects the shipped SKELETON_FAMILY.
• The full group cost must fit the remaining phase budget at the moment of selection.

To test a group, assign it to MY_RAID, save, and use /invasion start 5 MY_RAID at a stopped test Core. Wave 5 begins each phase with 50 budget points. Selection remains random; also inspect availability and cost if it does not appear. Saving affects future planning rather than replacing already planned enemies.

JSON, tiers and baby members

Squads are stored as an array under _squads in config/invasion_mod_mobs.json, alongside entity settings and the theme catalog. If that key is absent, shipped defaults are used. An explicit empty array, "_squads": [], removes all squads after reload. Invalid squad definitions are skipped and logged.

The editor can change names, counts, members, themes and costs. It displays existing tier and baby labels but has no controls to change those two fields. To set them, close the editor and edit the JSON; reopen afterward so a stale editor draft cannot overwrite the file. On a dedicated server, edit its own file while stopped and restart. See saving and server setup, including the risk of losing unsaved changes in the other main area.

Example of one object inside the existing _squads array. Preserve your other groups and entity settings when adding it. Enable both member entity IDs, and create or assign MY_RAID:

{
  "name": "MY_PATROL",
  "members": [
    {
      "id": "invmod:zombie",
      "count": 3
    },
    {
      "id": "invmod:zombie",
      "count": 1,
      "tier": 2
    },
    {
      "id": "invmod:spider",
      "count": 1,
      "baby": true
    }
  ],
  "themes": [
    "MY_RAID"
  ]
}

This creates five planned members with automatic cost. The tier-2 zombie and requested baby spider demonstrate per-row settings; they are not additional groups.

Shipped squads

The defaults provide examples you can edit or remove. Their actual availability still depends on enabled members, dependencies and configuration.