SO my questions are. Why (How!?) am I getting BluFor profiles outside their areas at the beginning? (Near the airfield Top middle/right & near PuestoCrow centre of image)

Firstly, thanks for the photo and extremely detailed and well written post. I don't often read someone ask questions so clearly and easy to follow. Thanks for that.

The way you set up the mission is perfectly correct based on what you're trying to do. The way AO whitelist markers being defined in obj modules work is, units will never spawn outside these on mission start. And you are correct too, that syncing to the other side's objectives will make those units travel outside their initial AO.

If your BLUFOR units are spawning outside of the AO immediately on mission start, the only thing I can think of is that you somehow still have BLUFOR units set to spawn there. Though keep in mind, depending on your settings units can move very quickly so though it may appear they are spawning where they shouldn't, it's very possible they've just move there as soon as you start the mission. If it's just this one spot and bugs you, it may be easier to put a blacklist marker for BLUFOR there. Look over your settings and see if you missed something (you seem to have a very good understanding of the systems!!!).

What is the significance of the Red writing "Recruit", "Roadblocks", etc on the upper right, and the red dots vs the green dots?

This is telling you what the insurgents are up too. "Roadblocks" mean the insurgents are building a roadblock in the location.

I don't seem to see any IED's? I thought that they were incredibly prolific? Is there a Lythium specific issue or something else?

This is "normal." Nothing you are doing wrong. When the IED module is synced to the Assymetric OPCOM, it can take quite some time for the insurgents to establish themselves to a point where they'll place IED's around objectives. For you that may be too long. If it bugs you, you can unsync the module. Notice how there will be a shit ton of IED's. I prefer to keep it synced but what you prefer is totally up to you.

I don't see many OPFOR profiles? Are there not enough units for the areas I've assigned, or do I need to wait for the insurgency to build and recruit?

Probably both. Almost certainly, actually. I feel like you may have filtered the Assymetric civ obj module too high for the feel you're going for and the map layout. Though I do understand lowering the filtering will raise the initial obj count. I'd say try reducing the filtering and increase the pre-placed installations option in the Assymetric OPCOM module and flavor to your taste. You can safely have more objs past the 80 warning. 120 or so should be perfectly ok depending on your PC.

I have a mission on Lythium and have it at around 110, and am using the tiny filter option for the insurgents.

If doing this doesn't appeal to you or spawns too many objs, definitely yes you can just continue to keep filtering the same and just increase the initial spawn size instead (Platoon, company, etc).

The "H-100" tags, that's hostility right? Seems to be set to 100 regardless of whether I set hostility in the Civilian module to medium or high?

If that's the case, that's possibly bug. If so it should be repro'd without additional mods and reported. I'm curious on this one. Let me see if I can get clarification for you. For all I know it may take time for hostility to adjust to your settings after mission start.

Is the syncing of the modules correct?

For what you're doing for, I'd say yes. I do play around with syncing and not syncing, and combinations of both. But for sure, you have the right idea.

On the second image you can see something being output in the text. This is along the lines of Section ["LOP_AM-entity_121","LOP_AM-entity_129","LOP_AM-entity_68","LOP_AM-entity_88","LOP_AM-entity_66","LOP_AM-entity_127"] moving to reserve objective OPCOM_1792414438_objective_9! ["LOP_AM-entity_121","LOP_AM-entity_129","LOP_AM-entity_68","LOP_AM-entity_88","LOP_AM-entity_66","LOP_AM-entity_127"] pending! What does this mean?

This is normal debug stuff, telling you what the Commander is doing/trying to do. If you see them repositioning and pending actions and whatnot, that's all a normal part of the process from what I understand.

I can't say exactly what goes into the logic for pre-placed installations (this is the setting determined by the Assymetric OPCOM module). My knowledge is based on shit-tons of observing but I know little, if anything about the actual code. @highhead or @SpyderBlack723 would be better suited to handle the logic for pre-placement.

What I can say on it, is this: The pre-placement of installations is pretty good! I can't say it will always choose locations with insurgents but for the most part, the logic is definitely decent. For instance, I've never seen them placed in blacklist areas.

And also bare in mind, the pre-placed setting is basically what I'm using now to get the Insurgency started. And this ties into your question about military logistics. Assymetric factions can only add new fighting groups with civ recruitment HQ's and actual physical civs present on the map. That's it. These are key in the insurgency growing/maintaining their strength.

I used to not allow pre-placed installations in the past, before Insurgency itself was slowed down to what we see in the mode today. And I'll be honest, without any on mission start it makes interrogating civs or finding Intel on dead bodies totally pointless. Insurgency currently has a random sleep for new installations to appear, which is set to 30-60 minutes after mission start. So if none are placed at the beginning, none will be on the map at all until 30-60 minutes have passed.

After 30-60 minutes, the new installation centers will be in enemy areas and will probably make a lot more sense to you. Fast forward for a little while in the SP editor and take a look if you're curious.

Note: And as it stands with the most recent 1.3.5 update, civ recruitment centers can only recruit 1 new group per hour each, for up to 5 hours, and there's a 50% chance the recruitment each hour will fail. Long story short, these installations are important to the Assymetric mode, not just in recruiting new groups, but also in the civs arming themselves (weapons depots) and IED's being placed (IED factories).

For civ hostility, you can use multiple civ placement modules and blacklist like you would the mil obj modules, but unfortunately, I don't think civ pop (where hostility is set) has a blacklist option. So at the moment, I don't think you can separate hostility amongst different civ factions (not a bad idea though!).