Would it be possible to add a crate despawn timer so they despawn after X amount of minutes?  

There's already a ConVar for that: hackablelockedcrate.decayseconds 7200.

Ah thanks so much I didn't realize!

Merged post

So only problem with this solution is that it also despawns Train Heist, Convoy and some other custom event locked crates too fast.  For PvE servers, it is important to synchronize the NPC despawn time with the locked crate despawn time so players don't get a free locked crate nor are NPCs left behind that are guarding nothing.  A decay specifically for crates this plugin drops would really give admins more power and control with this plugin.  As it is right now I can't seem to make this work without affecting other event plugins

I think this is backwards. This plugin does not technically spawn crates, it just sets a number on the chinook telling it how many to drop, so it should not be responsible for setting the despawn of them. That's what the convar exists for. Those other plugins are spawning crates, so they should expose an option to customize the despawn of those crates. The general best practice is that if a plugin is spawning an entity, most customizations needed on that entity should be provided by that plugin.

If there are other vanilla sources of these crates, and you want to reserve the convar to customize those, then it would make sense to add an option to this plugin to control the despawn time specifically for chinook-dropped crates.

I understand it will probably take longer to get those other plugins updated, but that approach seems the most sensible to me. If you need a short term solution, I can produce a few lines of code that will change decay of specifically chinook-dropped crates.

Makes sense.. you know much better than me.  Just reporting from the ground lol.  Appreciate your response in having a better undertanding of the situation and I'll see if I can tweak it from the end of the other plugins. Thanks for your info.