Mission Briefing Start Date, v1.2.3.9871

v1.2.3.9871

Mission Briefing Start Date issues...

I have an old mission (with ships) from prior v1.1.1.1. In the editor and see that the first start date I saw in the Briefing was in July - the 19th, maybe? This is a Winter mission so I moved the month to January.

All the Groups had Start Times with 230 or so days - I assume that this is the day number difference between July and January .. ?

Anyway, I had to fiddle with this a bunch to get it to show each Group's Start Times with zero days. I did find one Group that I could not adjust so I deleted that.

FYI

WC

I don't quite follow. Can you attach the mission file?

I won't post it publicly; it's Moa's Pirates mission. I will PM it to you if you tell me how to do so. (I have permission from 104th_Moa to modify Pirates Of The Crimean. Then again I won't post my missions publicly either. I just won't.)

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I continue to see issues crop up with the number of days. In F10 View it shows 234 days have elapsed. I added some C-17As with delayed hours and all Group's Start Times went RED - but a Fly Mission seemed to fix that. Rather than risk it happening again I put the C-17s on a Late Activation and Time More triggers instead.

WC

[ATTACH]77982[/ATTACH]

^^^ See the number of days here? It should be zero but it is 234. The mission is set now to January 20, from a July date that first showed when I opened this old mission in the new v123.

WC

Nothing has changed between the 1.1.1.1 patch and now with regard to how dates are displayed. The only thing that has changed is how you select a date and the sim start date is limited to a 1 year time span. The change to select the actual date was made because its way easier to get specific dates than figuring out how many days its been since June 1.

Unit start times are based on the relative difference between the start date designated in the mission briefing screen. Instead of saying "July 4th" as the date, the actual number of days since day 0 is displayed, in this example its probably 34 or 35. If you had a 20 minute delayed start time for the unit, like with a default mission: 12:20:00/0. If you then changed the start date a day forward it would be: 12:20:00/1. The unit still activates at exactly 20 minutes into the mission.

Start times of 0:0:0/0 are only use when "late activation" is checked.

The mission in question starts at 1945 hours, so it had been running for 8 minutes, not 234 days and 8 minutes.

WC

Day 0 is the 1st of June, so unless you have the mission date set to the 1st of june, it won't show day 0. Day 234 is 21st Jan, which matches what you say the mission date is.

As Grimes said, not really sure what you're getting at here.

I'd be happy to send you the mission, privately.

The problem is when I make changes and all the groups' Start Times go Red.

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If I choose a Start Date of May 31, then the F10 View will show 364 days at the start of the mission? That doesn't bother me... I guess. :-) It's the Red text in the all the Start Date fields that bothers me.

WC

Are all of the start times equal to or after the mission start time?

Aka: hh:mm:ss/234 (or 235), just place a new group to see what the valid start time is.

Yes, after going through every group all start times are at or later than 1945 hours.

But if I change a start time then it has this effect of making all the groups' start times go Red text.

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In the mission (Test02). Start Date is January 20, Start Time is 1945.

All groups have Black text Start Times, including the Late Activation groups. All groups show zero days for the Start Time - like 19:45:0/0, or 0:0:0/0.

I cloned a Red ship and its Start Time was 19:45:0/0. I changed it to 19:50:0/0 and now all groups Start Times are Red text.

I added a new C-17A. It came in with a Start Time of 1945 and 233 days. No other group shows a Start Time Days count other than zero.

WC

Maybe all the 19:45:0/0 Starts need to be changed to 19:45:0/233?

WC

Correct, vehicle/aircraft starttimes cannot be earlier than the actual mission starttime, itś always on a later time. Doesnt that make kind of sense too?

Also, when you do change it, does it switch from red to normal state colors? That should already be the answer to your latest question given by the ME.

Trying to fix/mod to specs of extensive missionfiles made by other people when you don have the full knowledge of the mission yourself must be a very hard thing to do too. Unless theres almost nothing to fix.

Hmmm, I will try setting all the Days to 233.

I have more missions where the weather is not June 1st type, so other missions will be affected, too, as I get to bring them up to v123.

Wrecking Crew

We fly so that others may die!

I'm am still bothered by this issue.

Now all of the non-Late Activation groups have the Start Time set to 19:45:0/233. The Start Date on the Mission Briefing screen is set to 20 January. The mission looks to be operating as designed.

It just looks so odd to see these 233 days. It implies that the groups won't activate until 233 days AFTER 20 January. There is no on-screen reference to the 1 June date that drives the 233 day difference - there is a disconnect and the reason is not obvious.

The mission seemed to work fine when I had all the Start Time days at zero. I would prefer to set them all back to zero, but subsequent adjustments to one group then caused all groups times to go to red text. The red text looks to be 'repaired' back to black after the mission is launched and exited.

Why I changed the Mission Briefing Start Date from 1 June to 20 January is simply because the weather in the mission is Winter.

Questions -

1. Why have the Mission Briefing Start Date?

Grimes wrote: "Unit start times are based on the relative difference between the start date designated in the mission briefing screen. Instead of saying "July 4th" as the date, the actual number of days since day 0 is displayed, in this example its probably 34 or 35. If you had a 20 minute delayed start time for the unit, like with a default mission: 12:20:00/0. If you then changed the start date a day forward it would be: 12:20:00/1. The unit still activates at exactly 20 minutes into the mission. "

^^^ I still don't get it (yes I'm dense, I'm sure you all agree by now). IF the 1 June date was permanently displayed on the Mission Briefing screen along with the Number Of Days Difference then it might be clearer.

2. Should I just leave the Mission Briefing Start Date at 1 June and adjust the weather to any desired season?

If anyone says Yes to this then, again - why have the Start Date?

WC

The weather has never been linked to the actual date used. You can make peak of summer weather during winter solstice.

The date does change the sun and moon positions in the sky. So if you want January 20th as a mission date, you will get the appropriate sunrise/sunset for that date in that part of the world.

http://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=1590249&postcount=21

I kind of get your complain, but its been like this for.... well since BS1. Maybe it'll change in the future, maybe not.

Excellent! That was my next question - how do I force the Moon into my night mission - it is VERY dark, and being over the ocean there is no horizon.

I saw this table you linked to in one of the files in the .miz file yesterday, and planned to find it later tonight to try to use the info for a Moon.

There was a recent discussion at SimHQ as to whether or not the sunrise and sunset was date dependent - this link answers that question, as well.

Thanks,

WC

I kind of get your complain, but its been like this for.... well since BS1. Maybe it'll change in the future, maybe not.

I just checked v1.1.1.1 and the Mission Briefing Start Date was not shown. I don't recall it from v1.2.2 either, so this feature is news to me.

Thinking about this, it makes more sense to me if the Mission Start Date was on the Weather screen. Having a 1 June Start Date and -5°C temp and snow is a bit of a disconnect. Ha! because I'm in the Northern Hemisphere.

WC

Further observation -

Thinking back, this was a part of my not understanding what was happening.

I'm looking for the best January date to get the night time lighting I want. When I enter a Start Date and leave the Mission Briefing screen and then go back to it, the date is advanced to the next day. I enter 6 Jan and then look again and it is 7 Jan.

I did verify that the month will rightly change - if I enter 31 Jan and click on the map to exit the Mission Briefing screen and then go back it will then show as 1 Feb.

^^^ When I was testing this initially, that 233 days would be 234, or 234 was 233, heck I don't remember. :-) That was seasons ago,.,,., beware.

WC

I meant the day number shown in either the current time in sim from external or the map views, which has always shown the day number, and the start/eta time for waypoints within the mission editor.

Setting the day number by date is new, but the actual functionally hasn't changed. Its just easier to set now, whereas before if I wanted a mission on a specific day you had to do some math or start the mission to see the date on the briefing screen.

Also most people probably didn't know that day 0 was June 1st 2011.