# The crön resource

Cron resources are used to define time-dependent events that occur in a manner that is invisible to the player but can cause interesting things to happen in the universe, via the manipulation of control bits. With it, you can create such things as:

- an event that occurs periodically during the course of the game
- an event that occurs at some fixed date during the game, as part of the story's set script
- an event, triggered by the actions of the player, that occurs after some fixed or random interval
- etc.

The cron resource's fields are:

1 | FirstDay | The first day of the month (1-31) on which the cron event can be activated. If you set this to Ignored, only FirstMonth and FirstYear will be considered.
2 | FirstMonth | The first month of the year (1-12) on which the cron event can be activated. Set to 0 or -1 for this to be ignored.
3 | FirstYear | The first year in which the cron event can be activated. Set to 0 or -1 for this to be ignored.
4 | LastDay | The last day of the month (1-31) on which the cron event can be activated. Set to 0 or -1 for this to be ignored.
5 | LastMonth | The last month of the year (1-12) on which the cron event can be activated. Set to 0 or -1 for this to be ignored.
6 | LastYear | The last year in which the cron event can be activated. Set to 0 or -1 for this to be ignored.
7 | Random | The percent chance that the cron event will be activated during the date range defined above. Set to 100 for the event to be activated as soon as it can be.
8 | Require | The Require fields form a 64-bit flag that is logically and'ed with the Contribute fields from the player's current ship and outfit items. Unless for each 1 bit in the Require fields there is a matching 1 bit in one or more of the Contribute fields, the cron will not be activated.
9 | NCB test | A control bit test string that is used to determine whether the cron event is eligible to be activated or not. Leave this blank if you are creating an event whose activation doesn't depend on the state of any control bits.
10 | IndNewsString | The ID of a STR# resource from which to randomly select a string to be displayed in the news dialog while this cron event is in progress, if it doesn't have any applicable local news. Set to -1 for no independent news.
11 | NewsGovt, GovtNewsStr | On planets or stations that are allied with the government whose ID is given by one of the NewsGovt fields, a string will be randomly selected from the STR# resource whose ID is given by the corresponding GovtNewsStr field, and will be displayed as news while the cron event is active. This allows you to let up to four different governments (and their allies) have their own "local news" for a give cron event. Set unused NewsGovt and GovtNewsStr fields to -1.
12 | Duration | The duration during which the event is active, in days. If this is set to zero, the event will start and end on the same day, i.e. its OnStart and OnEnd scripts will be run at the same time.
13 | PreHoldoff | The number of days to "hold" the event in a waiting state after it is activated and before it starts. Set this to zero to have the event start immediately when it is activated.
14 | PostHoldoff | The number of days to hold the event in a waiting state after it ends and before it is deactivated. This is used to keep a repeating event from being activated again immediately after it has just happened. Set this to zero to have the event be deactivated immediately after it ends.
15 | OnStart | A control bit set string that is called when the cron event starts, after waiting through the PreHoldoff time, if any. Checking 'Evaluate continuously' produces continuous, iterative cron entry - it keeps evaluating the cron's OnStart field until the EnableOn expression is no longer true or the constraints of the Require fields are no longer met. This can create infinite loops, so be careful!
16 | OnEnd | A control bit set string that is called when the cron event ends. Checking 'Evaluate continuously' produces continuous, iterative cron entry - it keeps evaluating the cron's OnEnd field until the EnableOn expression is no longer true or the constraints of the Require fields are no longer met. This can create infinite loops, so be careful!
17 | Contribute | When the cron event is active, the Contribute fields form a 64-bit flag that is subsequently combined with the Contribute fields from the player's ship and the other outfit items in the player's possession, to be used with the Require fields in the outf and misn resources.

Based upon the EV Nova Resource Bible by Matt Burch, ©1995-2006 by Ambrosia Software, Inc.