Python generating payload and parsing payload

(Using python) I am looking to generate a bytes (or can be string that I convert to bytes) that is a message to send over TCP. The format is (Header)(Length)(Payload).
Within (Header) is a (PayloadType) which determines the content of (Payload).

Equally, I am looking to take a response message of a similar format that I can parse into a class/object for later use. Again, the content of the response would determine what ‘properties’ the class object would have.

My first thought was something like:

class message():
    def __init__(self, payloadType, data, propA=None, propB=None):
        self._payloadType = payloadType
        self._data = data
        self._header = '123456'
        self._propA = propA
        self._propB = propB


    def createPacket(self):
        if self._payloadType == 1:
            return self._header + self._payloadType + self._propA + self._data
        elif self._payloadType == 2:
            return self._header + self._payloadType + self._propB + self._data
        # etc

    def parsePacket(self, packet)
        payloadType = packet(4:6)
        if payloadType == 1:
            self._propA = packet(10:12)
            # etc

The issues I see with this is there a number of payloadType and each has some commonality in the header but could have a number of different properties.

This would lead to lots of optional arguments being passed, lots of properties in the class that are potentially unused…all making the code hard to read I feel.

I feel that there is a better pattern for this in Python but I can’t figure out what it is – I’ve read about inheritance, mixins, dataclasses, @class_method, etc but not sure if any of those fit the bill.

Is there a standard pattern way of doing this?