Broken missions/campaigns

Is it just me or are there a lot of broken missions and campaigns in DCS? (the older ones)

I have that "feeling" aswell. I know I've ran into problems several times when playing old mission/campaign content. However, in the name of fixing it, someone must report the specific broken missions/content for it to be fixed.

Is it just me or are there a lot of broken missions and campaigns in DCS? (the older ones)

Yes there are a broken mission and campaigns, some have been fixed and some haven't, it is a matter of man hours and who is going to do it.

Speaking for myself I have previously repaired a lot of the older modules missions and campaigns to a working state and continue to actively repair what I can, based on my own preferences and slated work loads in response to reported issues in all DCS english forums and other testing reports.

Current active works are:

1. The KA-50 GOW campaign, including all 100 missions to v2.5 standard.
   
2. The Su-25T single player missions to v2.5 standard.
   

Note: With DCS, very few of the corrections are ever reported in the DCS updates changelogs, so they just usually sneak in under the radar without fan fair.

Regards, Ian.

Hey Ian,

great that you keep the module campaigns up to date. But as you already hinted, it is quite confusing to know which campaign has been updated in vanilla, and which we should get from the user files for a playthrough atm.

For instance: in todays release version update we read ;

''Su-33 Heavy Sky campaign. Total update all missions by Alex Zelog. Changed: payloads, balance of forces, Su-33s TO weight, weather, minors."

and further down...

"MiG-29 Over the Hump campaign сorrected."

Now, i own the standalone versions of said modules, and the Over the Hump campaign was not even present until this patch and i compared it with your repaired version in the user files section, its a perfect match sizewise.

The Heavy Sky campaign on the otherhand, has not be touched by todays update, and still says last chagned on 31.01.2018 for most files. Probably todays patch just updated this campaign for the FC3 package version, not for the standalone module version.

As you can see...its realy confusing. No idea whats up with the campaigns for the SU-27, F-15, Su-25T and such.

So, if at all possible, could you make a thread where you keep track of which campaign is more up to date, vanilla or user section?

Hey Ian,

 

great that you keep the module campaigns up to date. But as you already hinted, it is quite confusing to know which campaign has been updated in vanilla, and which we should get from the user files for a playthrough atm.

 

For instance: in todays release version update we read ;

 

''Su-33 Heavy Sky campaign. Total update all missions by Alex Zelog. Changed: payloads, balance of forces, Su-33s TO weight, weather, minors."

 

and further down...

 

"MiG-29 Over the Hump campaign сorrected."

 

Now, i own the standalone versions of said modules, and the Over the Hump campaign was not even present until this patch and i compared it with your repaired version in the user files section, its a perfect match size wise.

 

The Heavy Sky campaign on the other hand, has not be touched by todays update, and still says last changed on 31.01.2018 for most files. Probably todays patch just updated this campaign for the FC3 package version, not for the standalone module version.

 

So, if at all possible, could you make a thread where you keep track of which campaign is more up to date, vanilla or user section?

Were do I start, this is not a full time job, but others seem to keep trying to make it that way for me (All volunteered time).

I prefer to keep the work flow of repairs happening than reporting on what is updated or not, I spend thousands of hours on these corrections, then more time responding to reported faults in forums, then reporting faults myself to ED and more time checking that the updates have been applied to DCS.

Taking into account the jumps from DCS 1.2 to 1.5 and 2.5, I have updated all of the FC3 campaigns at least 2 times and multiple single missions also for all modules, (The campaign update ED never used was the Su-33 Heavy Sky one, this was removed from the module altogether due to not being supported any more, so I spend about a month on it, supplied it and then ED rewrote there own and put it back in as version 2) this is were I notice that FC3 aircraft and the standalone equivalent modules in fact had different content, so I reported that and had some corrected in the Su-27 and F-15 stuff.

When I have updated missions, that may need further work by ED for multi language translations, something I can not do myself. This can and does create extra delays to having the update released into DCS for the public, this could be in the order of several days, weeks or months, depending on ED's workload and priorities at the time, sometimes they choose to not use my corrections at all and have developed there own corrected versions of campaigns / missions.

So this is why I no longer continually check to see if the updates have been included into the DCS releases and upload the same files to both ED themselves and to the ED user file download section so users have quicker access to working enhanced campaigns, which can also gives me valuable feed back from users if there may be any extra issues.

So I will continue to do updates in the same way I already have, not wasting valuable time on double checking if ED have done their part or not, the process is no different for me than any user to figure out if the missions have been updated or not, as by file size and dating comparisons or reported in DCS updates change logs.

Regards, Ian.

Ian, thanks for the detailed post. I have gone over the change dates of the FC3 modules i own (all standalone) and there has been a regular stream of changes to many missions since 2.5 dropped at the beginning of the year. And yes, the change dates coincide with open beta patch dates, though most of the time this is not mentioned in the changelog.

Concerning the SU-33 Heavy Sky campaign, i own the standalone module, and the change date on this reads 31.01.2018 12:49h. Anyway, i can only assume that the last patch probably added this campaign back for FC3 owners, while standalone owners had the updated version since the SU-33 standalone release last year.

The only campaign that is one to one with your user files version is the Mig-29 Over Hump campaign. The vanilla even includes your changelog/description txt file.

I kinda wish ED would add a version number to every change they make to a campaign. Like change it up one small decimal number per tweak, even if it only concerns one mission. Anyway, thanks for all the effort and help! I think i am all set for now.

Cheers!

Would be nice if ED kept a list so we can know which ones to acquire / play. As it is, campaigns are cheap eg. I seem to have picked up 4 DLC ones from sales etc (without even having the new CA one yet) and I have almost all the default ones to play still, not to mention actually learning the aircraft first. So it's not like there is no choice in what to play, but if it's broken/outdated the experience is not quite as good as it could be in DCS.

Eg. just categorize mission sets/campaigns by:

Known to be broken but no work scheduled

Will be fixed soon (less than 3 months in any case)

Scheduled to be fixed (3 to 12 months or something)

So this is why I no longer continually check to see if the updates have been included into the DCS releases and upload the same files to both ED themselves and to the ED user file download section so users have quicker access to working enhanced campaigns, which can also gives me valuable feed back from users if there may be any extra issues.

That's a nice approach, thanks!