This guide is a big work in progress, I will be filling out the sections as well as editing existing sections in the coming days. Formatting and structure will be inconsistent until all the content is complete. I am trying to get all the information into the guide first and then go back to make things more readable. If you have suggestions or feedback please leave a comment!

A big thanks to iBlank, Ian, that_person, SirNuggles, and everyone else in the sp-scenario-discussion channel on the modding discord.

Want to see a lot of this guide in action? Check out my mission pack on the workshop.

Currently available sections:

• Basics & Sources
  
• (Conditional) Triggers
  
• Weather & Seastate
  
• Custom Air Groups
  
• Teleports, Formations, & Changing Sides
  
• Messages: Pop Up
  
• Messages: Intelligence (Incl. Voice Lines)
  
• Messages: Objectives
  
• Voice Lines
  
• Scripted Attacks
  
• Civilian Routes
  
• Briefings

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This guide assumes you have basic knowledge of mission creation using the mission editor. You understand the basics of creating and placing unit groups, changing their behavior, and creating and using basic triggers; all accomplished inside the mission editor.

From this base, we will explore editing the mission .ini file itself, working outside of the mission editor to achieve things otherwise not possible.

By default, your missions will save to

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Any changes you make outside the mission editor will be lost if you open your mission inside the editor and then save it. For this reason, create the bones of the mission (position units, set waypoints) inside the mission editor. Once you are happy with what you have, you can shift to editing the .ini directly to put in all the logic for your mission (triggers, objectives, civilian routes, etc). You should also do any testing via the scenarios menu instead of loading your mission via the editor. The editor recompiles every time you launch a mission - removing any changes you manually made.

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There are two sources of official documentation available:
A document that covers the mission editor and explains triggers and conditions
An .ini that lists a lot of what you can do inside a mission.ini
There is also a vanilla mission that utilizes a lot of what is discussed in this guide - the Warsaw Pact mission Breakthrough. You can look inside that .ini for examples of how certain things work.
Outside of the above, almost all of the information in this guide has come from the sp-scenario-discussion channel on the official modding discord. We have a wonderful little community full of knowledgeable mission makers who are happy to test things and help each other out. If you're looking to make missions and have questions, I encourage you to join us![discord.gg]

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Triggers are the fundamental building blocks of your mission logic. It is important you understand how they work and what you can do with them. Triggers have three parts:

• Trigger Definition
  
• Conditions
  
• Trigger Actions

As an example:
Trigger Definition
Name is the trigger name, it is used to reference this Trigger in other places.
Description is for your own use to keep track of what each Trigger does.

Conditions
Conditions are the logic systems inside of triggers. You can have multiple Conditions inside a single trigger and you can use logic operators to set rules on which Conditions complete the Trigger.
You can create a Condition simply by defining a name and a type.
You can get a list of valid types from the mission editor.
Description is for your own use to keep track of what each Condition does.
Units defines which units the Condition applies to.
MinimumUnits defines how many units must be destroyed before the condition is considered complete.
Depending on the condition type, there could be other Condition fields. _Time or _Position as examples. As a general rule, time is in seconds from mission start and position is in NM relative to the mission center. Create different Conditions via the mission editor and have a look in the resulting .ini to see the details. As you get more familiar with conditions and triggers, you will be able to write them entirely from scratch.

Trigger Actions
ConditionsCompleted defines what Conditions must be completed before the Trigger takes its actions. Typically, as in the above example, only one Condition is used.
Taskforce1_Message displays a popup message for the player. The actual message is defined in the Language_en section near the top of the .ini.
EndMission ends the mission.
Victory sets which side won the mission.

There are plenty more actions a Trigger can accomplish, you can see more by jumping to a section of the guide that you are interested in.

Remember: Conditions are the rules you set up, checking to see if something has happened. Trigger Actions are the actions that take place once the Conditions have been met.

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If you manually add Triggers, make sure to update the NumberOfTriggers field in the Mission section of your .ini.
Note that Triggers have a chance of not working properly if they are set to fire right at mission start or if they fire during heavy time acceleration.

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You can have multiple Conditions defined inside a Trigger and you can use terms such as AND, OR, NOT, etc to create some rules for your Conditions. See section Conditions Complete Rule in the official Triggers and Conditions document for more details.

As an example, you could have a Trigger fire if you lose a ship but only if that ship has not reached a certain area yet. If the ship is lost after reaching the defined area, the Trigger will not fire. This would be accomplished using a UnitLost Condition and a UnitsInTheArea Condition with the ConditionsCompleted being <ConditionLost> AND NOT <ConditionArea>.

Using conditional Triggers is an easy and powerful way of adding more advanced logic into your missions.

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Weather and Sea State can be controlled via Triggers, giving you control of the environment during longer missions.
You can examples of this in action in Breakthrough.ini; mentioned in the Basics & Sources section of this guide. Note that the sea state and weather change the level of ambient noise making it easier/harder to detect submarines.

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You can overwrite the default air wing of any unit that has a flight deck. Carriers, Airbases, etc.
As an example:
Adding in CustomAirGroup=True overwrites the default air group. If you do not specify any further information, the unit will spawn with no aircraft.
The Mig-23A squadron will not be added because Kiev class does not support it.
Only 8 KA-27s will be added because of Kiev's max capacity of 36 aircraft.
See above folder for a list of all aircraft in the game.

FlightDeckAIDisabled=True is optional. This line prevents this unit from launching anything of its own accord. Presumably with a custom air group you want to control what launches when and what the aircraft do. See the Civilian Routes section for more.

This example was copied straight out of the official MissionFileInformation.ini

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Using Action_TeleportToPositon is it possible to teleport a group of units upon a Trigger firing. However, if multiple units are being teleported they will spawn in the same location, inside of each other. To prevent this, a default formation must be used.

Place your unit group down in the mission editor as usual. When you are ready to edit the .ini, find the formation under the [Mission] section of the file. As an example:
The arguments of the formation in order:

• All the vessels in the formation, separated by commas
  
• Name of the formation that shows up in game
  
• The default formation type (see below)
  
• Formation spacing in NM
  
• OverrideSpawnPositions means when the formation is teleported, they will be spawn in formation (optional)

When teleporting into formation, units will reform the original formation shape and spacing, not the relative positions they were in at the moment of teleporting. If you remove a vessel from the formation or disband the formation entirely, the units will teleport into one location; inside of each other.

The available default formations are:
Loose, Circle, Vic, Echelon, LineAbreast, LineAstern, Box

There are two WIP additional types, Convoy and Battlegroup. Use these at your own peril.
Using Action_UnitTransferToTaskForce, it is possible to swap a unit's side between blue, red, and green. When a unit changes sides, they lose all orders they may have had. To fix this issue, you can issue the units new orders in the same trigger that teleports them. As an example:
There is more to explore with unit movement - you can randomize course and turns as well as spawns. More details can be found in the official MissionFileInformation.ini.

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The simplest way of conveying information to the player, a pop message pauses the game and presents a message. Using Action_Taskforce1_Message as part of a Trigger, you can display messages to the player at various points in your mission.
The message itself is defined in the Language_en section of your .ini. As an example:
A message has three parts, the title, the body and the button. Each section is separated by a | character. You can use <size> and <color> tags in your messages. Accepted colors can be found here.[learn.microsoft.com] You can also input any hex color using the following format:
Use \n for linebreaks. The game also supports using emojis. 🚢⚓

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Avoid using special characters such as '#' or '/' anywhere in your .ini. These characters are used to denote comments and if used inside a message or a Trigger name, may break your mission file.

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The intelligence system allows you to present the player with messages that show up in the Intelligence tab (in the same window as the Event Log). The benefit of this system is that the messages are delivered with time stamps and are persistent through the entire mission, allowing the player to look back at all the past messages. The downside is that this system is not well known and it can be easy to miss new messages, even with voice lines informing the player that a new message was received. Until this system becomes more popular, a good compromise would be to deliver the full details with a pop up message and a summary with an intel message.

Mechanically, intelligence messages are very similar to pop up messages. Action_Taskforce1_Intel goes inside a trigger and the intel message itself is defined in Language_en. As an example:
How it looks in-game:
Voice Lines go great with the Intelligence feature, see section Voice Lines for more.

Note that XAML tags don't seem to work inside Intelligence Messages.

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Objectives are another tool to convey messages to the player. Objectives will show up in the After Action Report at the end of the mission. This screen can also be accessed at any time by hitting Escape and then Exit. You are still able to return to the mission from the AAR screen.
Objectives have three parts, they must be defined, they must be given a message and they must be actioned.

To define an Objective, you must create an entirely new section in your .ini. Example:
The CompletedScore and FailedScore play into the scoring system but the inner mechanics of that are a complete mystery. Please get in touch if you know how scoring works. The StatusAtMissionEnd does not seem to work at the moment. From the above screenshot, the ProtectCivilians Objective should be marked as Completed as the mission is complete but it still shows in progress.
To define what shows up in the AAR for each objective, you must add a line inside Language_en. Example:
Finally, to action an objective you must add a line inside a Trigger. Example:
If you want to action multiple Objectives, use commas. Do not use multiple lines of Action_ObjectiveCompleted/Failed, the game will not recognize this.

You are able to create Hidden Objectives by adding Hidden to the end of the Objective definition. These Objectives will not show up in the AAR unless they have been Completed or Failed. Example:

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Sea Power supports playing audio clips as part of a Trigger's actions. As an example:
Combining these voice messages with your messages can help create a more immersive mission as well as alert the player to a new message.

The most relevant ones for objectives and intel messages are: MissionFail, MissionComplete, NewTaskReceived, NewIntelReceived, ObjectiveComplete, ObjectiveFailed

You can find the full list of messages in
There are two voices, one for NATO and one for WP. The voice is automatically chosen depending on the side the player is on. Be aware that not all messages have their associated audio clips available yet, especially on the WP side.

You are also able to supply your own audio clips. You will need your own .wav as well as to create an updated copy of the voice.ini file. Place your .wav and the updated .ini in the appropriate folders (see Folder Structure section).

Inside voice.ini, define your .wav copying the format used for vanilla clips.
The comma and number following your file path determine the priority of your voice line if multiple audio clips are attempting to play at once. See the top of voice.ini to see which types of messages have what priority. To use your audio:
Thanks to Sinlos and Plasm@n for their help with this section.

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Scripted Attacks are a powerful tool which allow you to force units to attack designated units at a specific time and place. From MissionFileInformation.ini:
The attack line goes inside a unit. As an example:
Attack the designated target upon reaching way-point 3 with a single Harpoon.

This method works on any side against any target. You can use this to have green attack red, red attack blue or even blue attack blue.

Keep in mind the unit must have vision of its target at the assigned attack time/location otherwise the attack will not work. This vision can either be from itself or relayed by other units on its team.

Unrelated to scripted attacks (but I didn't have anywhere else to put it), guided missile submarines will not use their missiles to attack by default. If you want to enable this behavior, you must add:
You must specify each valid target. Keep in mind this may result in all missiles launching causing almost certain death for the player vessels. You can instead use scripted attacks to launch a few missiles at a time over a longer period of time.

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Civilian Routes are another very powerful tool to use in your missions. Civilian Routes allow you to launch aircraft from airbases and ships and have them fly a predetermined route. This feature is oddly named because it can be used to launch any kind of aircraft for any team - is it not limited to civilian aircraft.

• StartTime, when does the first unit spawn, in seconds from mission start.
  
• Taskforce, this should set the side that the unit spawns on but this seems to be overridden by the side of the launching platform. Ie a green airbase can only ever spawn green planes.
  
• SpawnFrom,DespawnAt, where the unit spawns from and where does it try to land at.
  
• UnitType, theoretically could be Vessel or even LandUnit but I have had no luck getting those to work myself in testing.
  
• AllowedUnits, defines which units can spawn
  
• AllowedNations, defines which countries are valid
  
• AllowedLoadouts, defines which loadouts the aircraft spawn with. Use "all" for units that don't have loadouts.
  
• EnableWeaponsAtWaypoint, defines at which waypoint the unit starts to think for itself. Prior to weapons being enabled, the spawned unit will strictly follow the waypoints. Post enabling, the unit will follow the waypoints if it has no valid targets. Otherwise it will turn to engage. Keep in mind targeting info is shared across the team so another unit across the map could feed the spawned unit a valid target.
  
• MaxUnits, how many spawned units (not groups) in total can exist.
  
• SpawnInGroupsOf, how many units to spawn at once.
  
• SpawnInterval, when should the units be spawned. In this example, the first group of 2 will spawn at 600 seconds, the next at 900 seconds and the final single unit (because the max limit is 5) at 1300 seconds. The SpawnInterval is a queue to spawn, not a check to spawn. This means that at 1300 seconds, only 1 fighter is spawned because the max allowed in the world is 5. But at 1350 seconds if an existing fighter lands or is destroyed, the remaining fighter will immediately launch.
  
• Waypoints, the waypoints the spawned units should follow. The middle number is altitude in feet. The easiest way to get these numbers is to spawn a unit in the mission editor and give it the path you want your units to follow. Then copy the waypoints from the file and put it into your civilian route. It is recommended to have at least two waypoints to avoid odd pathing behavior with units.

Civilian Routes are placed outside of any other section in your .ini. Eg, you can place them at the bottom of the file and they'll work fine.

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You must add a NumberOfCivilianRoutes=1 field in the [Mission] section of your .ini. Adjust the number to match the number of routes you have.

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It is best to pair Civilian Routes with Airbases with Custom Air Groups (see previous section). The spawning unit must have the requested units for the Civilian Route to work. Civilian Routes do not spawn units out of thin air. You can add FlightDeckAIDisabled=True inside your airbase's [LandUnit] to prevent it from trying to launch its own strikes.

Other uses:
Should work for blue side but may get wonky if the player is also issuing commands
Not working:
Breakthrough offers civilian routes with no spawn and despawn locations, just waypoints. I tried testing this with no success.
Breakthrough also has ships spawning from ports but I have not been able to replicate this. Not even sure if it works in the original mission or not.

TBA

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Briefings provide the player with detailed information at the start of a mission. Briefings allow you to set the scene, give specifics and provide context for the mission. Briefings are made up of a left pane and a right pane.
To create a briefing, you must add the relevant lines inside your mission.ini as well as set up the proper folder structure and briefing files in your mod folder.

• MissionBriefingAssetsDirectory defines the directory where all the briefing assets are located for this mission.
  
• MissionBriefingAssetsSearchPattern defines what extra asset types to look for. Typically these are images you want to use in your briefing. Untested - other formats such as audio or video may be supported
  
• MissionBriefingLeftPane defines the path for the left pane file.
  
• MissionBriefingRightPane define the path for the right pane file.

To set up your folders, inside your <mymod>/missions/<mymodmissions> folder, create another folder. This folder will contain all of your briefing folders. Inside this newly created folder, you will need an _info.ini as well as a folder for each mission you want a briefing for. See the Folder Structure section for a visual depiction of this.
Your _info.ini should contain: This hides the top level briefing folder and prevents it from showing up in the scenario browser in game.
Typically, the left pane of a briefing is where all your text goes and the right pane is used as a visual aid - a map or other graphic. The easiest way to get started is to copy an existing briefing from the base game. For example: The right pane is simple, change out the image name with your image's name and update the image size to match your image. Make sure you've defined the file type correctly in your mission.ini. The left pane is slightly more complicated but all you need to do is edit the text until you're happy with what you have. The panes are .xml files and the game supports BBCode formatting as well as XAML. XAML is very powerful and you can do almost anything you want if you know what you're doing. For an example, look at the right pane of Dong Hoi's briefing.
The format followed in the left pane is that of an Operations Order. An Operations Order follows the SMEAC format, also known as a 5 paragraph order. SMEAC stands for Situation, Mission, Execution, Admin/Logistics, and Command and Control. Within Sea Power, Admin and C2 currently do not play a large role. Instead, you can replace Admin and C2 with OOB (Order of Battle) listings for both REDFOR and BLUFOR as a way to give your player some insight on what they're launching into (or deceive them with faulty intelligence on REDFOR assets). Adjust this format as needed to fit your mission. You do not need to include every section.
An example of a custom mission briefing
Online tool to generate NATO symbols[spatialillusions.com]
Special thanks to iBlank for their help with writing this section of the guide.

TBA

TBA

quick and dirty:
your mod folder should be located in streamingassets.
Inside your mod folder should reflect the same structure as inside streamingassets/original.
Upload your My Mod.folder
The _info.ini inside your My Mod.folder should have:

[Language_en] Name=My Mod's Name Description=A short description of what My Mod does.

This is what shows up inside the mod list in game.

streamingassets.folder └── My Mod.folder ├── _info.ini └── missions.folder └── My Mod Missions.folder ├── briefings.folder │ ├── _info.ini │ └── My Mission 1 Briefing.folder │ ├── My Mission 1 Briefing Left.xml │ ├── My Mission 1 Briefing Right.xml │ └── My Mission 1 Briefing Map.png ├── My Mission 1.ini ├── My Mission 2.ini ├── My Mission 3.ini └── My Mission 4.ini

TBA

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Stores
Damage
Missions