# IntroSince there was a lot of interest expressed in the last dev diary I thought I'd write a small guide to help you get started modding the new missions system. Hopefully this will make it easier for you to start working on creating and updating mods for it. As we are still working on the immersion pack minor things might change, be added or removed. I will do my best to update you in this thread as we are going forward.For an overview on how the new missions work from a players perspective have a look at last weeks dev diary: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...velopment-diary-23rd-of-january-2018.1066296/ Let's start with explaining a few terms I am going to use in this guide.# GlossarySlot - A column in the missions grid (1 based indexing)Tier - A row in the missions grid (1 based indexing)Series - One or more missions in one slot (Can span tiers)Potential - Trigger that must be fulfilled for a series to be visiblePriority (AI) - Determines what missions the AI picks to work towardsWeight (AI) - Determines the worth of a mission to the AI# Overview & SeriesMissions for a country are composed of one or more acyclic graphs laid out in a grid view. This means missions can have any amount of other missions as a prerequisite and missions can branch out into any amount of other distinct missions. The grid can be as wide and tall as you like, it will automatically expand to fit all missions.All missions are part of a series. A series is used to set various parameters that determine layout, visibility, appearance and AI behavior:slot (Integer): Used to set the slot for the seriesgeneric (Boolean): Provides a way to control series precedenceai (Boolean): Turns AI for this series on or offpotential (Trigger): Determines visibility for the playerhas_country_shield (Boolean): If set, the player country flag will be shown for all missions in this seriesAs you can see series are basically used to conveniently set parameters for any number of missions. Of course you are not required to use it that way, you can use one series per mission as well.The layout of the mission nodes is determined by the tier set for the missions and the slots set for the series, there is no automatic layout. If no tier is set for a mission, missions in a series will be laid out top to bottom, starting in the first free tier in the slot.# MissionsLet's have a look at a simple mission:conquer_franken = {icon = mission_conqueror_iconrequired_missions = { conquer_ansbach }trigger = {franconia_area = {type = allcountry_or_non_sovereign_subject_holds = ROOTeffect = {add_adm_power = 100add_country_modifier = {name = "bavarian_ambition"duration = 7300provinces_to_highlight = {area = franconia_areaNOT = {country_or_non_sovereign_subject_holds = ROOTWe start with the mission key, which also doubles as part of the key for the localization (name + _title for the title and name + _desc for the description). The icon references a sprite in a .gfx file. Required missions can be left out or left empty, and can also contain multiple missions (Comma separated). The trigger describes the conditions you need to fulfill to be able to complete the mission, the effect what you get when you complete it. These work just like triggers and effects anywhere else. There are a few more fields you can set for a mission:has_country_shield, ai (Booleans): Same as in series, setting this will overwrite what was set in the seriescompleted_by (Date): If set, this mission will be marked completed when starting the game later than the given dateposition (Integer): The tier for this missionai_priority (MTTH): Priority for this mission for the AI (See notes on AI below)ai_weight (MTTH): Weight/Worth of this mission for the AI (See notes on AI below)provinces_to_highlight: Will highlight provinces that match this trigger when you hover over the missions requirements and center highlighted provinces when you click on the icon# Series precedence & PotentialYou can have any amount of series of any size in a slot, and as long as they don't overlap and their potential is fulfilled they will be visible and available to the player. If series do overlap, precedence is given to the series with "generic" set to false. If two or more series with the same precedence (Either generic or not) compete for the same spot, you will get an error (Check error.log) and the first series read from disk will get precedence.The potential is only evaluated at the start of the game and when executing the effect swap_non_generic_missions.# ArrowsThe arrows showing the dependencies will be laid out automatically. However, there are a few limitations you should be aware of.Arrows can be laid out horizontally and vertically but not diagonally, that means that required missions can be at any tier above in the same slot and in any slot in the tier directly above. Same goes for follow-up missions, they can be in any tier below in the same slot and in any slot in the tier directly below.Note that, regardless of the arrows being able to show the dependency, the dependencies you define will work no matter where you put the missions, so if you'd want to, you could just manually add arrows and hide the automatically added ones.# Some notes on the AIThe AI will pick missions based on their priority and adjust it's strategy according to their weight to try and fulfill missions. The AI understands many triggers you would usually use for missions, but not all of them, so your results may vary. Have a look at our missions to see what the AI can understand.I'm excited to see how you use this new system to create and/or enhance your mods. If you have any questions at all please do not hesitate to contact me. Suggestions for improvements or additional features are of course also very welcome.