omskTransmash

One more thing, the campaign deletes Scripts/MissionScripts.lua and replaces with one provided inside the campaign package. Most of the case, users dont edit the MissionScripts.lua file, still, I think it should at least notified or under user's discretion 1. It certainly increases user's security risk at least some degree. By removing some protection provided with MissionScripts.lua, users face increased risk. Other dynamic campaigns also have to comment out MissionScripts.lua, however, they "instruct" the users to do so and only notifies the security risks, i.e. the campaign does not act without consent. While this just deletes and replaces with less secure one, almost without notificiation and no way to reverse it by itself (maybe with dcs repair?) I am not saying this to make something look bad, I love liberation from the day 1 and I am a little bit worried that this can bring needless arguments. Suggestion is : asking user y/n in the console before replacing (for now, maybe later with qt ui), and make backup before replace, add instruction / readme to reverse the replace. 2. Some users have some codes in MissionScripting.lua and discovered I lost it by this campaign. A very rare case :) but If 1. can be solved this will be solved too naturally. Anyway great thanks again to Khopa and I will wait for the next update! Thanks!

I looked into the source code yesterday. One thing is that there is no way to "designate" which version to use, understandable because most of users do not install both versions. However strange thing is, when finding DCS installation directory it searches for the release version first then falls back to openbeta. However, the save game folder is hardcoded to "Saved Games/DCS" , and does not search for "Saved Games/DCS.openbeta" at all. But this does not explain my current situation where the campaign "found" my release version install dir, however writes liberation_nextturn.miz to my openbeta save dir :cry: I must missing something.. Anyway if i can make some time I will add some codes to let the users to "select" which version of DCS to use. That would solve it.

Guys, im so sorry for being late for the party. Khopa did truly a great work. Im trying to find a way to specify which version of DCS to use: release or openbeta, for i have both of them I see main.py and installation.get_dcs_saved_games_directory() detecting something but cannot find a way to designate which DCS version to use Please help!! EDIT, NOTES: When I launch the liberation_main.exe in DCS Liberation 2.0RC6, the console says using missionscripting.lua from RELEASE version. But when i proceed with campaign, the liberation_next.miz file created in OPENBETA user save folder. I can play with openbeta, but how do i play with release version?

Any updates on this issue? I myself couldnt feel any difference..

Thank you for the link. Although I already watched it. I also read Nick Grey's article here, While I dont understand why some comments are about "understand more of ED", My post is actually about some possible solutions of Nick Grey mentioned: from the above hoggit article, What I suggested is multi-tier pricing can be what Nick Grey has suggested as "another source of income". Nick Grey's own voice acted, story driven content also can be great (which i will definitely buy it) , but multi-tier pricing can also be a life saver, because it can be coupled with monetary incentives. My idea of enforcing the "rules" regarding in and out of early access, to set the proper incentives is what I think the next form of "ED's Project Management". Better communications would be great, but monetary incentives and rules can also be important. I am practically saying that ED should make more money and suggested a way to do it, not bashing ED. At first I was worried about the community taking me as an ED spy/agent, but it turned out very differently :) Very interesting phenomenon.. (Maybe simply because the people dont read? Dont know..) Anyway, I hope others can see that my post is actually an effort to help what Nick Grey has in his mind, as I have quoted above.

Maybe you are being sarcastic but here I am totally agree with you. We are very lucky :) Just how many niche business went out of business while ED stood firm for the last 30 years and provided us dream aircraft and combat simulations? Don't get me wrong I love them very much, and my though BM experiment is centered on how can ED make more money. (and not to go out of business soon :)

Thank you for the understanding. I knew from the first place that without the (internal) numbers I could not possibly suggest a right number. I admit it maybe was an overreach. Anyway, If this niche market is not that diversified (understandable because this is a very small market), maybe getting to high for the premium segment is unrealistic. But I still think ED should adopt multi-tier pricing for even with a smaller gap. I small incentives are better than no incentives, and no need to "not" to discriminate the customers since many other business do it..

I am not pretending I know all, I suggested an alternative BM from my limited knowledge. It's fine you think it's fine, but that doesn't mean it can't get better. Many business changes, updates their BM continuously. Why ED should not change to a better BM because "you" are fine with it? That said, giving something for for free time to time may be fine for you, but that doesnt mean it's doing well or 30 years old BM is good enough. My suggestion can be wrong but it could not be more wrong because ED is doing fine because you said so. Again, it is not about anyone's wrong, or stating I know everything. As stated, it's at best a wild thought experiment or just an alternative suggestion. If you felt it like someone should not suggest something if the one knows not enough, that, I understand. If you could not resist demise a personality from it's mere alias, maybe you should not join a discussion. 95 is not the year of my birth, 95 is around the year a bought my 5th PC.

Im not sure you are actually happy with waiting until 2022, but the rest of us are fearing that would might be 2030 (why is explained in detail), and want to make it at least 2021 by doing something.

stable and beta branch can working together "Only if they stop adding new, buggy things in the working beta" because obviously it will make more problems than fixed bugs. Any sane developer, if facing a competition, will somewhere stop add things to beta version and finalize, then release. New things added up to the que (or special research branch) and then to the next openbeta. You guys already know this because you use a lot of stable/beta/alpha software in your life. But right now they are keep adding new modules (naturally with a log of bugs) to openbeta. Stable cannot be stabilized because of SC must be launched in OB. Why? simple: Money. Without competition, ED has no reason to fix bugs, keep adding new things to the openbeta and make revenue. This is where your "the big brains of ED executives working". They all know this, but as business, they are maximizing their profit by using the monopoly position. (albeit not very efficiently.)

I'm sure they can solve this immediately with their big brains, "IF" they wanted it to be solved. But I think it's clear they are not working on it now, or like for 6 months? 8 months? Until then.. well, waiting for the monopolist to do something for the customer is not that hard. I waited 25 years, why not a few years more?

I cannot agree more. Although I don't suspect this is what ED intended in the first place, clearly now they have "zero incentives" to manage a working, stable version. Why fix bug (and pay salaries) when nobody wants it? As we all can know, everybody is on openbeta...

Don't worry, the "ridiculous" price is not for you.. it's for the richer and more capable customers. https://kopywritingkourse.com/the-three-pronged-pricing-technique/

We all though so, however, clearly we were wrong. I suspect the "zero incentives" are the culprit here. No money from squashing bugs, although nobody intended it....

This is purely my speculation and opinion. I think any business should always optimally allocated their revenue. Like employee salary, marketing expense, investment, upgrading assets. It "should" be the optimal, so when, why and how we paid them should not matter at all. For example, we buy cars, not engines. But car companies somehow upgrade their engines. And they do it well because they are facing fierce competition. We buy modules, aircraft not engines, same as the car example, but in this case, at least for your and my value priority, ED is not allocating enough resource into engine development. "The customer always loses under a monopoly" is working here. Your investment or cost sunk into a module, is in this case, a hostage. You want your module to run bug free? Do something : in this case the only way is buying another module. It's your choice giving up paying more money. But you know it will slow down engine development, hence postpone your dreamed enjoyment from your already bought module, even for a little bit. I think ED is "optimally" allocating their resources into the engine development. The difference between the car example is, Under competition, optimal allocation is usually good for us customers. Under monopoly, well, it's the opposite. (Again, ED is doing nothing wrong here. it's just how any business runs)

I am either not happy with the possible influence of toxic whale hunting to the sim community. But as was classical role playing games, strategy games and other traditional, value oriented contents. When pushed to competition against ever increasing development cost due to technological advancement and toxic gambling money, they all submitted to capitalistic poison: be the devil to survive from the devil. Hope we can find another way to survive this time. I love sim community, but at least for me it seems that we have to choose between the monopoly and the "toxic discriminatory pricing" Regarding the specific amount, it's only my guess so once ED put their minds on it, im sure they will find the right price, to extract money from the both sides. Anyway, ED is a business, not charity. Only money will move them (or any business) to the right direction.

Thank you BIGNEWY. We all know you guys are working as hard as you can. I am trying to make it better by changing some systems / mechanics around here. You are not forcing the server admins to use particular build. But human nature (as economics say), like prisoner's dilemma, drives everybody to use openbeta. All the fancy new modules are there, I want to try it, a guy tommorow also want to try it, and the next.. If I run a stable multiplayer server, I will lose most of the players whenever the new EA modules launches. No need to run an empty server, because it's a multiplayer server.. It's nobody's fault, it just is. Maybe ED foresaw it or not (even many smart business do not), but I think what matters is how do we solve this prisoner's dilemma. In theory maybe it's not ED's problem in the first place. Does governments responsible for economic collapse of a small town because a new city has built right next to it?

Including not only the rich but also powerful, influential people is tremendous idea i think. "To enter, be rich or be famous". simple and effective, and even better for the community in general, because influential people will say in the perspective of the rest of us. About wanting the different module priority, someone on the reddit suggested interesting idea about something like "per module funding / pricing/ payment." I think it's valuable enough to develop into a BM, as I myself couldnt care less about supercarrier. :)

Only ED will know the optimal price to draw the line between VIP and the rest of us. Anyway my opinion is ED and the module makers must draw cash somewhere to improve its service and finish the early access. I think if the right price is set, the business will work well just as the same as the 1st class of international flight, Penthouse on a casino hotel.

A sound, reasonable pay-as-you-go model, which can work perfectly with DCS. We all love aircraft but we need that to work and upgraded as we want. Maybe kickstarter like funding / subscription per aircaft? Need to think more about this.. About space sim, i dont play space sim much. I bought X3 (VR) and Elite Dangerous but dont play much of them as there are no content update recently.. In contrast, DCS is a fantastic platform and I love to visit user files campaign sections almost every day. Recently there are a lot of quality, even fully voice-acted user missions and campaigns. DCS is a good platform to play with!

Thanks for the advice :) You commented about a very important points but had to left out in the slide itself: The Prisoner's Dilemma Network Externalities Even some of us want to wait for the stable release, if many other players are playing on the openbeta, their expected value of the DCS is significantly reduced. Only one persons want to play football, all others want to play soccer: 1) Play alone miserably 2) Play soccer. less fun than football, but well. So it's not an independent, closed decision. others' decision affects your utility/value/fun. The problem of current BM is pushing everybody into prisoner's dilemma. Giving up multiplayer because i want stability but all others left for the openbeta? That's not the product value ED promised.

Thanks BiGNEWY for reminder. But I do hope everybody just could think of this post as a though experiment or a what-if scenario about future DCS Business Model, extending current early access model. ED and third parties make more money, some people get new planes fast, others can enjoy more stability. Win-Win-Win, isn't it? Many other good business incorporates multi-tier pricing mechanism to discriminate its customers and it's working well. I think it's perfect for DCS.

Dear fellow pilots, I made a short powerpoint presentation regarding a different business model for DCS, "DCS: A Way out of Endless Early Access" This does not have any specific intent, other than my own curiosity about DCS from a management science viewpoint. Although the content may explore the possibilities of ED exploiting more from its customers, I do not have any connection with Eagle Dynamics. I am just one of the (frustrated) customer. Comments are welcome, especially if about similar line of thought experiments. The slideshare version: here. The pdf version: here Better DCS Business Model (1).pdf

When DCS is installed in another drive, DCS save folder is still in C: if untouched. for example, C:\users\username\saved games\dcs.. Problem is DCS read/writes into saved folders a lot from a lot of reasons, such as writing track files, read/write metashaders.. etc I suggest you to move your DCS save folder to SSD. It's a little bit tricky but you can do it. @I highly doubt that pagefile is the culprit. easy to prove with disabling page files altogether. 32GB should be no prob. at least for testing

have the same problem here! in my case CHARLIE is at past roadblock, but it is engaging some buildings (?!) between target 1 and 2 and not moving. (i saw tracers) hope this info helps!