How often do Wrecks, Crashsite, and Convoys respawn?

[Oyakata]

Tried searching this question, but nothing turns up. I was wondering if event spawns are at a single/multiple location around the map that individually respawns or does every event respawn after a particular time? Is there anyone who has watched a convoy despawn and then seen it respawn after a set period of time? The developers may have set the event appearances with RNG and it's next to impossible to predict when and at which location they will spawn. Any ideas?

[kolorotur]

Event spawns depend on server configuration, so the answer will depend on how server owners have set up spawns.
If we talk vanilla Chernarus map, then there are up to 3 heli crashes and up to 5 convoys on the map at a time. Heli crash site stays for 35 minutes before despawning (if there are no players within 1km radius), convoys despawn after 30 minutes. Once an event despawns, the CLE will immediately try to spawn a new one to reach the nominal value.
Spawn locations for both crashes and convoys are fixed. There is a whole bunch of them, a specific location is selected randomly at the time of spawn.

[Oyakata]

Originally posted by kolorotur:

Event spawns depend on server configuration, so the answer will depend on how server owners have set up spawns.
If we talk vanilla Chernarus map, then there are up to 3 heli crashes and up to 5 convoys on the map at a time. Heli crash site stays for 35 minutes before despawning (if there are no players within 1km radius), convoys despawn after 30 minutes. Once an event despawns, the CLE will immediately try to spawn a new one to reach the nominal value.
Spawn locations for both crashes and convoys are fixed. There is a whole bunch of them, a specific location is selected randomly at the time of spawn.

Thanks, dude, that was precisely the answer i was looking for. I suppose it WOULD be an exhausting waste of time to wait around for random spawns.

[BIT Bear]

Seems like the DayZ wiki isn't up to date so i'm copying your answer. Have another award.

[kolorotur]

Originally posted by Oyakata:

I suppose it WOULD be an exhausting waste of time to wait around for random spawns.

It depends, I suppose.
As far as I know, the server avoids spawning and despawning things in the immediate vicinity of players - after all, it would look weird if stuff started appearing/disappearing in plain sight.
As of 1.20, there are 95 heli spawn locations across the Chernarus map, if you can round up that many players to camp each location except one (or three!), then I guess you can somehow force the server to spawn helis at specific locations of your choosing. In practice, a lot of those locations are very close to each other (just to add some variety and not spawn a heli at the exact same spot all the time), so with a 1km radius you'd need a lot fewer players to cover all spawn locations.

Originally posted by BIT Bear:

Seems like the DayZ wiki isn't up to date so i'm copying your answer. Have another award. :gk_smile:

Thanks for the award mate, appreciate it.
I like to play on my local server without any mods from time to time, just to chill out without worrying about getting KOS'd. The benefit of having a local server is you can go into the server files and just check what are the default spawn settings, so you don't have to rely on the Wiki.
Here's the ones for heli crash sites, as an example (events.xml):

    <event name="StaticHeliCrash">
        <nominal>3</nominal>
        <min>0</min>
        <max>0</max>
        <lifetime>2100</lifetime>
        <restock>0</restock>
        <saferadius>1000</saferadius>
        <distanceradius>1000</distanceradius>
        <cleanupradius>1000</cleanupradius>
        <secondary>InfectedArmy</secondary>
        <flags deletable="1" init_random="0" remove_damaged="0"/>
        <position>fixed</position>
        <limit>child</limit>
        <active>1</active>
        <children>
            <child lootmax="15" lootmin="10" max="3" min="1" type="Wreck_Mi8_Crashed"/>
            <child lootmax="15" lootmin="10" max="3" min="1" type="Wreck_UH1Y"/>
        </children>
    </event>

The <nominal> value tells us how many sites the server tries to keep up at a time.
<restock> is the delay between spawns in seconds, so a value of 0 tells us that the server will attempt to spawn another event as soon as an active one despawns.
<lifetime> is how long each site stays for before despawning, in seconds (2100 seconds / 60 = 35 minutes)
<saferadius>, <distanceradius> and <cleanupradius> dictate the distance from a nearby player that the server should not spawn or despawn the event, in meters.
<position> = fixed tells us that the spawn locations are pre-set and we should look in the cfgeventspawns.xml for each location's coordinates.

So, if you wish to keep the Wiki up to date - go ahead and install a local DayZ server on your machine and rummage through the files for the current settigns.

If you want to go even deeper, install the DayZ Tools from Steam library and you'll pretty much get the source code for the entire game. If you know a thing or two about programming, you'll have no trouble reading the code and understanding all the mechanics, like types of illnesses, the effects they cause and how they are transmitted, among other things.