Static Template Completely Borked Mission

[Rex]

I created a new mission and spent an hour+ designing Blue WW2 airplane groups,  Nothing at all out of the ordinary.  Just fourships of Mustangs, Spitfires, and Thunderbolts, configured for CAP, CAS, Fighter Sweep, bomber formations, etc.  Fairly standard stuff, but I figured I could save myself some time for future missions.  The most complicated thing in it was a Big Bomber formation of 4 x 4 (16) bombers, and a fourship of Mustangs/Thunderbolts escorting each bomber group (so 16 fighters in total escorting).  When I was finished, I saved my groups as a template.

Then I fired up my main mission, loaded the template, and only part of the template loaded.  I tried to delete the units it had placed and try again, but I couldn't delete some of the units I had placed with the template.  I could edit the ones I could not delete, but not delete them.

I deleted everything I could, then restarted DCS, but noticed the mission I had loaded the template into now had 0 bytes.  It nuked the entire mission. 

This is what the log has to say when I try to load the template:

2024-02-29 07:50:34.186 INFO    EDTERRAINGRAPHICS41 (12872): ClipmapGraphics::init("colortexture")
2024-02-29 07:50:34.207 INFO    EDTERRAINGRAPHICS41 (12872): ClipmapGraphics::init("splatmap")
2024-02-29 07:51:02.333 INFO    LuaGUI (Main): Loading Static Template: Aircraft - BLUE.stm
2024-02-29 07:51:02.419 ALERT   LUACOMMON (Main): Error: GUI Error: [string "./MissionEditor/modules/me_mission.lua"]:2810: attempt to perform arithmetic on field '?' (a nil value)
GUI debug.traceback: stack traceback:
  [C]: ?
  [string "./MissionEditor/modules/me_mission.lua"]:2810: in function 'createStaticTemplateObjects'
  [string "./MissionEditor/modules/me_staticTemplate.lua"]:228: in function 'load'
  [string "./MissionEditor/modules/me_staticTemplateLoad.lua"]:193: in function 'onChange'
  [string "./dxgui/bind/Button.lua"]:22: in function 'callback'
  [string "./dxgui/bind/Widget.lua"]:368: in function <[string "./dxgui/bind/Widget.lua"]:363>

 

And that is exactly where the log ends.

 

 

 

Edited February 29 by Rex

[dmatsch]

I'm sorry this happened to you.  Believe me, it's happened to us all.

The only advice I can give you is the advice as a 20+year software engineer:  make many backups and often.  Make backups of backups.

IE:  You make a "master" mission file, then copy it to one, or multiple "editing" files.  Make a "archive" of the LAST working version of your "editing" file, JUSTIN CASE! 

Make MINOR changes to your mission, saving it as your "editing" mission.  Then, when it all works and tested, overwrite the "master", which is ONLY the LAST working copy of your mission. 

Overwrite your "archive" file as needed with ONLY an absolutely positively working version of your mission.  If everything goes wrong, THIS file is your lifeline.

Never, ever edit the "master" mission file directly.

----or, preferably, use GitHub to track version history, but that's another worm can if you think you can handle it----

EDIT:  I believe that the mission editor has this function under the "file" menu, but I haven't tested it out.  No time, re:  software engineer.

As far as your template issue, I believe that saving units as a template will ONLY save the units themselves, and not any triggers or waypoint actions or scripts.  my guess is that a combination of group settings and actions or ONE actions field left unintentionally blank borked the template save.  Then, when you loaded the template into the mission, it borked the whole mission.