Questions about biomes and homeless spawns

[Random Unit]

I'll try to be short:
1. What's the difference between biomes and biome groups (spawn areas)?
2. 'homeless spawns' section in 'biomes' type has 3 columns instead of 1 as in 'biome_group'. What's the catch?
3. What's the frequency of spawn checks?

Thanks in advance.

[Shidan]

1. Biomes only handle foliage and terrain textures and the like now, and cannot alter homeless spawns. Back in the old world they used to do both, but with the new world they split the spawning off into its own entry type, the spawn areas. Any entries in Biomes with homeless squads attached are simply relics from that time, the squads listed do not actually spawn from that entry.

2. Unsure what the three numbers are supposed to be, but again since they don't actually function in the Biomes section, it doesn't really matter.

3. Unsure exactly what you're asking here. But each spawn area has a "homeless spawn amount" value over on the left. From what I gather the world is divided up into a grid, called zones, and the game tries to spawn on average the "homeless spawn amount" per zone in any zone that is inside the spawn area.

[Random Unit]

Thanks for clearing things out, that really removed a ton of confusion. Regarding my last question I was trying to figure out how exactly spawns are handled, so if I'm getting it right, game scans areas constantly, counting alive NPCs inside each area and if their number is less than 'homeless spawns amount value', it spawns additional NPCs in this area, using the 'homeless spawns' list to the right until they equalize?