With the stock game, you will generally only get something to the effect of "Patrol off Honshu Island and engage enemy shipping" for your mission orders. Some of the mods will give you rather explicit instructions, such as "Patrol off Honshu for the next 96 hours containing your search area to a 100nm radius" or some such.
If you look in the mis file with a text editor, you'll see this:
Quote:
[MapZone 1]
Name=Patrol Honshu 01_Zone1
Radius=100.000000
MaxHeight=1000.000000
MinHeight=-1000.000000
Long=16761500.000000
Lat=4170000.000000
Height=0.000000
[Objective 1]
ObjName=Patrol Honshu 01_Objective1
Obj=7
ObjType=0
RenownAwarded=200
AreaName=Patrol Honshu 01_Zone1
AreaType=0
Presence=0
Time=2880.000000
|
The important lines for consideration are the "Radius=100.000000" in the MapZone section - which refers to km, not nm - and the "Time=2880.000000" in the Objective section. 100 kilometers is equivalent to approximately 54 nautical miles (if you're using that measuring scale), so take the NavMap compass and draw yourself a circle about that size, centered on the Patrol Star marker. Stay inside of that for the "2880" duration, which is measured in "minutes", which is 48 hours, or 2 days. If you happen to wander outside of the patrol area, the "clock" starts over again.
You do not have to look in every file for every assignment in the stock game, the "Patrol" assignments are all the same 2 days inside of a 100km circle. With the "Sink" assignments, where they tell you "Deploy to 'Area Xx' and engage enemy merchant shipping", with the "Area Xx" being a named location, you just proceed to that area, where upon arrival, you'll receive a radio message to the effect "ENGAGE ENEMY MERCHANT SHIPPING IN AREA Xx", although it does not matter where you sink the tonnage required, which in stock is generally 10,000 tons...
