Creating New Mission File
This guide is for beginner users who have never used Sea Power Mission Editor or perhaps even never done any kind of "video game scenario" before. This is a complete walk through, step by step tutorial.
Start Mission Editor by clicking "Mission Editor" in the main menu. You end up in this screen which is scenario tab.
Every mission has to have a unique name, I quickly mentioned this in Mission Design page. Creating your first mission you most likely name it like "asdf" or "Test 1" or "My first mission", that is fine, after all it truly is your historical very first mission for Sea Power. But even so, please give your mission some unique name so you recognize it later and you learn the very first lesson so down the line you don't find your mission directory filled with dozens of untitled missions.
Mission difficulty star rating is cosmetic, it has no functionality you can skip it now. Its simply a suggestive rating, its very hard to say what is easy and hard mission as it depends really about the person playing it, to a certain degree at least.
Mission description. Name is the most important thing and description is the second most important thing on a mission. Players first see the mission name and once they click it on Sea Power Scenarios menu then they see the description. If description is missing or lacking, it leaves immediate bad taste in mouth for any possible new player for your mission, also if you come back to your own mission months or years later, are you sure you're going to remember which mission was which, that is where description comes into play. Give a good thorough but a simple description without giving any spoilers for example don't be too specific about enemy units etc.
For your first mission you can skip several of the following options in scenario tab, they are more like tweaking a mission than making much of a difference in your first one, defaults are fine. Player side, well since this is your first mission to learn how to edit missions, just leave it to Blue.
Now that you have typed in all the initial mission data, its time to save, ie create a new mission file. Load means you will load a new mission erasing anything you have currently done, please don't touch that button now. Save is to immediately save the current file, but the thing is you don't currently have a mission file designated yet, so that leaves you with option "Save As", which means that you need to specify a file name for your first mission.
Click "Save As", the following dialog is a "File Picker" which should be located in "\user\missions" directory as seen in below example image.
By default Save As file picker offers "_Custom Mission" on the bottom input text file with a ".ini" in the end and "Save" button next to it. You need to erase "_Custom Mission" and only use proper file names without illegal characters on it, meaning no spaces, no "!@#$%^*()]['" etc. For your first mission use "my_first_mission" or if you want to go upper case for possibly better readability then "My_First_Mission" file name. Then click "Save" button and the mission is saved with "Mission Saved!" dialog, click OK to close it.
BTW where is this user\missions directory located? Its on "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Sea Power\Sea Power_Data\StreamingAssets\user\missions" by default steam client and game installation, if you changed your steam library location then this directory is where ever that library is. This is not important, but mentioned it just in case you would want to find out the physical location of the mission files.
When joking a bit, technically you could now say that you have just created your very first Sea Power mission file, that is as said technically true, but the mission is completely empty except name and description, so it doesn't do anything, there is nothing to play around with. This is a good place to get into next phase of first mission editing.
Creating First Unit Group
What is a "unit group"? It is a group of units, for example it could be a group of only one unit, ship or submarine or aircraft etc, or you could have dozens of aircrafts, surface ships or even submarines in a group.
Next is to create your first unit group, for this I have written separate page so please read that first, the below link opens in browser new tab so you'll keep this beginner tutorial page open while you go through it.
Read and follow through Mission Editor Groups and then Creating My First Group pages.
So if you successfully read through groups page and creating my first group page, you should now have "MyCoolGroup" with adams-class destroyer and los angeles-class submarine on it somewhere in the oceans of the world.
Now you can already play the mission, there is a surface ship and a submarine you to order around, marvel how they sail the seas, but there is nothing to do in the mission, its just two friendly units without anything to do, nobody to shoot at. Next up is to add enemies.
Adding RED Group
Your mission is configured to be playable as blue side so red is the enemy side, this is US/NATO vs Soviet/Warsaw-Pact mission. You should now know how to create enemy red group with some units on it, but I'll walk you through it step by step once more to re-verify how its done.
To have some actual playable functionality in this mission lets get it done right so we get to see some naval combat soon after mission start.
Start by selecting Ruler map drawing tool from the around top center of the screen as snown in below example image.
Then click on the global map view next to MyCoolGroup, a marker X is placed, then move mouse and you see mouse pointer drawing out a line from the position you clicked, this line has bearing and distance in nautical miles (NM). In my below example image you see how I draw the line about 20nm due north from MyCoolGroup.
The purpose of this about 20nm mile ruler is to give you good understanding of distances, if you are just working on the light blue ocean world map global view background, it is extremely difficult to orient yourself that what is close and what is too far away, even with the distance legend on bottom right corner of the screen.
As a side note: in Sea Power beta builds prior to Early Access on november 12th 2024 the legend is in kilometers, but developers told me that this is an oversight and will be fixed, I don't know if this is going to make it into early access or not, if it does then you see the legend as nautical miles. PMCTODO
Okay now you have good distance measurement indicator for 20nm which is a decent distance to keep to your enemies, well depending of their capabilities of course. Now lets add the actual red group and units.
Make sure you are in Groups tab as explained in the previous mission editor groups page. Groups tab should have "MyCoolGroup" selected in the dropdown as there is nothing else in this mission yet.
First click add vessels group button as explained in groups page, click at the ruler northern end. A new "Group Name 2" has been created. See my below example image, you know, one step at the time.
The group gets created as blue side with all the default values as seen in the above image (blue name heh).
Now lets configure this group as soviet surface ship. In Group Name text edit box erase the "Group Name 2" text and write lets say "Soviet Surface Group" there. Tip: once you have typed the name text, hit TAB key or click the global map view to shift focus out of Group Name text edit box, this will lock in that text edit. Use the Side dropdown menu to switch into "Red". Next in ROE (rules of engagement) dropdown change it to "Weapons Free". Then in Nation dropdown select "USSR", its almost in the bottom so scroll that mouse wheel or drag the vertical slider bar. Keep Unit Category as "Vessels". Click Unit Type dropdown, choose hmm lets say, "Grisha III-class (Frigage)", leave Unit Name as is, then click "+ Add Unit" button and "[Grisha III-class]" appears in the Units box.
Still not done, few more things. In Speed dropdown lets give this comrade some attitude, change it to "Ahead Flank" which means he is sailing his ship at full speed. Change heading zero (0) to 180, this means compass value in degrees, so 180 is south, towards MyCoolGroup. And last click "Radars ON" tickbox as selected.
Change to Scenario tab, then click Save button to save the mission using the previous file name you already saved it once. Sea Power mission editor now asks "This will overwrite the current mission file. Are you sure?", click OK to save. Click OK for the "Mission Saved!" dialog too.
Now you can click "Play" button in the bottom of the screen to preview this mission.
In the above example image you see unknown contact, that is the Grisha III-class soviet surface ship coming at you. Actually as there was no waypoint given to it... he might just start to circle in a loop, but anyways he is there and ready to fight. Now you have added your very first enemy group with a unit on it.
Adding Welcome Message
Now you can add a welcome message so once mission begins you get a dialog popping up with some text on it. Such message dialog is created with a trigger. You don't have to read this following page completely through, just look at the first two images to see how you find mission editor triggers. So when I say "add a trigger" then refer to that link.
So step by step how to add mission welcome message box using a trigger. Creat new trigger, next click Conditions section open. Click "Add Condition" button. Change Condition Type dropdown to "Time". Then tick "Set up date and time for the condition" tickbox. You don't have to touch any other settings in Conditions section.
Then click messages section to open it up. Then in the Blue Side Message write something like "Welcome to PMC mission editor beginner tutorial message dialog part" or whatever you want to see in the mission start welcome message.
Now would be good time for another in-game preview to see if this message trigger works or not.
Below example image shows how the mission start welcome message box looks like.
Oh looks nice. This message box could be to send some last minute briefing type message to player, for example before you figure out how to do a proper briefing then this message box method is quick and cheap way to give mission orders/intel and other info to player.
Mission Ending Trigger
It is very important that your mission has clear ending, nothing more frustrating than mission without briefing and ending trigger, just throwing few units in mission editor is not a mission, you need briefing and ending trigger, a beginning and clear ending.
At this point you should be able to create trigger and navigate its settings. Now as last step you'll learn how to hook up a trigger to a specific enemy unit being destroyed to end the mission.
Create a new trigger, in Trigger Name field type "Grisha_Dead", this is kind of like a programming variable. Description you can leave empty unless you want to write something to it, like "this trigger activates when grisha3 is sunk." but that is entirely up to you, I personally don't describe my triggers as the variable itself "Grisha_Dead" is self explanatory.
Open Conditions section, click Add Condition button and select Condition Type dropdown as "Unit destroyed".
Groups dropdown select "Soviet Surface Group" which is the grisha 3's group. Then in "Units in Group" select "Grisha III-class" which is the only option there, then click "Add" button and now the unit is copied to "Condition Units" box. Then check "Exit mission" tick box.
For this I decided not to add example image as it doesn't fit into one, but every step I explained above are with exact names, if you have difficulty following it just take your time and read carefully what mission editor trigger options read.
Then open up Messages section, on Blue Side Message write "Congratulations, Soviet Grisha III has been eliminated! Mission complete." text, this will be displayed once you have destroyed the grisha3.
To make testing easier, especially as I know whats the goal, I'm moving "Soviet Surface Group" much closer to "MyCoolGroup" so they are within weapons range or at least wont need to travel far to test this trigger.
Last thing to do is to switch over to Scenario tab, click Save button to save once again, always need to save changes so you don't lose editing progress if something goes wrong. Then just click Play to preview the mission. Set your adams-class and los angeles-class to weapons free, get close, kill the grisha3 and if trigger was setup correctly you should see a nice congratulations message before mission ends.
Please note that how the Grisha_Dead trigger is setup there is 0 seconds delay between game "registering the unit dead" and message box being displayed, in my long experience playing various "kill the target" missions this is very crude method, there always should be a short delay between the kill/destruction and mission ending victory trigger activating, however for this first mission of yours, it doesn't really matter, its fine as long as it works :)
There you go, a nice congratulatory message for you on the job well done. Good job :)
In end of the mission you get to see Sea Power After Action Report, how did you do, what units did you and the enemy lose.
You have now reached end of this tutorial, now you can:
- navigate mission editor
- create groups, for both sides
- create welcome message box
- create all important mission ending trigger
So congratulations, job well done! :)
This was just the beginning, now you get to have some fun in Sea Power mission editor, explore all kinds of different units, naval combat scenarios etc, once you get bored to that you can start to study some more high tech stuff for mission editor, more complex triggers, a proper briefing etc.
But for now, I'm so happy that you have gotten your first mission in-game and working, have some fun, create some more scenarios and enjoy Sea Power battles :)