DCS Spring Sale 2025 | Saved Games | Campaigns Update | Black Angels Air Race

[Graphics]

 

 

07 March 2025

Dear Fighter Pilots, Partners and Friends, 

We’re excited to announce our Spring Sale 2025, bringing fantastic discounts on a wide range of DCS World modules, terrains, and campaigns. Whether you’re a seasoned virtual aviator or a newcomer looking to broaden your horizons, there’s no better time to add the next thrilling asset to your hangar.

The upcoming Mission State Save Option provides a way to maintain mission progress across sessions, preserving achievements and unit statuses without requiring complex editing. This feature will allow you to save or generate a new mission at any point, ensuring destroyed or activated groups remain consistent and aircraft return to their latest positions, whether airborne or on the ground. It will also capture essential warehouse data and adjust the mission date and time to reflect the saved state. Dedicated servers will be able to utilise an automatic or on-demand save function to create new .sav files. Please read the details below. 

This week we brought you a campaigns only update that included several improvements across a variety of DCS campaigns, each focused on refining mission flow and gameplay. 

Thank you for your passion and support.

Yours sincerely, 

Eagle Dynamics

 

Spring Sale

Up to -50%

Don’t miss this chance to expand your DCS collection at special springtime prices. Head to our E-Shop to explore all available offers and secure your must-have modules before the sale ends! See you in the skies.

The DCS Spring Sale 2025 has already begun on our E-Shop and will run until the 23rd of March, 2025 at 23:59 GMT. We are also pleased to announce our participation in the DCS Steam Edition Spring Sale 2025, which will commence on the 13th of March and end on the 20th of March 2025 at 17:00 GMT.

 

Mission State Save

Development Progress

We are pleased to share good progress on the Mission State Save Option. This feature is aimed at giving players an easier way to set up their own mission context and environment (story) with basic mission editor skills and be able to keep progress made by transferring achievements to subsequent sessions of the same mission automatically. It’s designed to enhance long-term gameplay, providing a seamless experience for those engaging in lengthy or complex missions. Additionally, we are making it compatible with multiplayer nuances. We hope you’ll enjoy it! The new Save feature will allow you to save mission states between missions. It will also allow you to make mission changes at the save point in the Mission Editor. 

The feature is now integrated with the existing DCS architecture. The current efforts are focused on adding specific dedicated server controls for running persistent missions and saving them on demand. As always, community feedback will be vital to our development process. Once this feature will be available, we encourage all participants to provide as much detailed feedback as possible so we can plan future improvements. 

The Mission State Save feature is aimed at giving players an easier way to create new missions based on the saved events state of the played mission. New Save does not save the state of everything in a mission but rather applies the theatre of operations events to a newly generated mission. This allows you to create linked missions with persistence between them.

You can save the mission state at any time during the mission or generate a new mission from the state you get at debriefing after you exit the mission. The new mission file will have its time and date set to match the day and time the previous mission was saved at, and groups that were destroyed will be deleted from the mission and groups that were activated will be added as active. If you save a mission state while controlling an aircraft in flight, the aircraft will spawn at the location it was flying when the mission ended. The same transfer of spawn position will also happen at airfields or FARPs when the aircraft is on the ground. Ground unit current positions, speeds and waypoints will also be saved between missions. We are also working on adding new types of triggers that will activate by absolute time passed in the mission, not just time passed since the start of the simulation process. 

All warehouse states are also transferred. We are working on adding and refining the parameters that are transferred to new mission files. The Mission State generated file will be compatible with the Mission Editor, just like a regular mission file, so you can adjust it as needed to best support a storyline you want.  Additionally, we worked on multiplayer functionality to give dedicated servers the option to generate these files automatically at the end of a mission or on demand by the admin panel button. Also, we have developed a new dedicated server mission format .sav to support seamless mission persistence, when a mission is converted to .sav, the server will automatically save the last state of that mission after mission end or restart, while saving on demand will give you a new .sav file at the location of your choice. The dedicated server interface also will allow conversion between .miz and .sav formats. 

That way you can run missions lists which will iterate through different types of missions and keep persistent missions automatically updated after the server switches to another mission.

This feature won’t break protection of DCS paid single player campaigns and is aimed at user generated content only initially.

 

Campaigns

Update

In the DCS: AH-64D Outpost Campaign by Stone Sky, mission 2 now has a corrected landing procedure on the Arleigh Burke. For DCS: F/A-18C Operation Green Line by Badger633, the boat movement issue in mission 1 is fixed, and F/A-18C Rise of the Persian Lion 2 sees its mission 13 carrier parking conflict resolved. Ground Pounder Sims updated mission 10 in the F-16C Last Out Weasels Over Syria 2 Campaign to prevent the rotor from engaging MiGs prematurely, while F/A-18C Operation Cerberus North mission 5 received various minor tweaks. Finally, Baltic Dragon’s F/A-18C Raven One: Dominant Fury underwent an overhaul in missions 4, 8, and 9, addressing progression blockers, datalink fixes, and comms improvements. To experience these important campaign fixes, please update to the latest DCS version now!

 

Black Angels

Air Race

This weekend, make sure you tune in to an exciting new DCS Mustang Air Race Championship, hosted by our dedicated community members Black Angels. Inspired by Nick Grey’s recent feedback, they have improved their race result export system to update in near real-time, ensuring that pilots can see their lap times both on their Discord and on the event homepage. Join in for free practice sessions on the 7th and 8th of March, with the main competition taking place on the 9th of March featuring the iconic P-51 and free TF-51 Mustangs.

In their commitment to expanding air racing throughout the DCS community, the team will release their racing script for anyone interested in creating their own thrilling events. They also invite participants to #FlyTogether by offering a gift voucher for any Eagle Dynamics module as a prize. If you’d like to get involved please visit the event page, or simply cheer on the racers on the Champions page.

We truly hope you take advantage of the fantastic savings available in the DCS Spring Sale 2025 and that the development progress on the persistent save feature is to your satisfaction. 

 Thank you again for your passion and support, 

Yours sincerely,

[Beirut]

Can't complain about a lack of sales. That's for sure. 

[Sandman1330]

If I read this right, the save function will not work with payware campaigns? Bummer…

[MAXsenna]

14 minutes ago, Beirut said:

Can't complain about a lack of sales. That's for sure. 

Very true! 

Not sure this "save (game)" feature is what users asked for though. This looks more like a save state to keep the persistence between different missions. Not for replay and pause, which what most users have asked for, due to lack of time. This is probably part of the upcoming Dynamic Campaign System. Maybe a real svar game feature will come later with the upcoming replay system.  

Cheers, and have great weekend everyone!

[bfr]

24 minutes ago, Sandman1330 said:

If I read this right, the save function will not work with payware campaigns? Bummer…

I'd be inclined to take the use of the word 'initially' as 'so there is still a chance?' and that there are additional considerations to be worked out on the paid content front which hopefully can be catered for.

[Sandman1330]

1 minute ago, bfr said:

I'd be inclined to take the use of the word 'initially' as 'so there is still a chance?' and that there are additional considerations to be worked out on the paid content front which hopefully can be catered for.

Hope you’re right. But as I read the text, even before I got to that point, I started to wonder if this would work with heavily scripted missions. It does sound more like a persistence save for units, etc - there wasn’t a mention of saving script states. Maybe it’s implied

[bfr]

1 hour ago, Sandman1330 said:

Hope you’re right. But as I read the text, even before I got to that point, I started to wonder if this would work with heavily scripted missions. It does sound more like a persistence save for units, etc - there wasn’t a mention of saving script states. Maybe it’s implied

I presume too that script states is a big part of the problem as well as the stated protecting of the campaign content itself.  If the scripting is 'in game' though then I assume they at least have a fighting chance of doing something if its an area within their (DCS') control?

[Raven (Elysian Angel)]

1 hour ago, MAXsenna said:

Not sure this "save (game)" feature is what users asked for though. This looks more like a save state to keep the persistence between different missions.

Indeed, but most likely this is a prerequisite for the Dynamic Campaign. ED will need time to flesh it out so it can be ready when they are planning to release the DCE.

[kira_mikamy]

save feature is cool but is waaaay far for be accomotated in a 24\h persistent server, at the moment, as i read is more dedicated to a single player that want to fly a simple home made mission, or maybe a co-op one with a bunch of friends.
tha fact airplane in flight stay in flight after the save its a big NO for me, or i had to make a script to remove it at the start of the mission every time.
some plane can only spawn douring certains conditions, if playerbase in the server is enough etc.

the time saving also is cool but is better to give an option to create the next mission in a selected time interval as start, like already DSMC do: new mission will be generated the next day , from 6 am to 15 pm (for example) in that way, a 24\24 server is better for the player base, otherwise if people log in every time at the same real life hours, will be the same hours every day in the server too, if my mission in mission editor start at 10AM and i start the server at 10AM also in real lifee, people who play at night wil aways flight at night.


The server i administrate have a restart every 6 hours, that means 4 at days and that means in one days will be 4 days in the mission editor mission file, each restart have the day shifted by one more and the started time casually setted from 6 am to 15pm, that offer the player base to enter the server and always found a different time condition. That also simulate very weel the season change, every one real like week it will be a month in the dynaimc mission, and weather accomodate itself to fit the actual month. expect reain on spring and snow on winter
also the weather update every restart with a new preset, this is default by DSMC.


it will be difficult to accomodate persistent 24\24 server.
but it will be funny for solo player or little co-op enjoyer trough local server.

Anyway, im really happy ED start to move forward to that feature.
Of course this is just a post tha explain some light behavious, i can judge nothing about that.

I wish you a good work about it!

Edited March 7 by kira_mikamy

[Gunfreak]

The only time i really felt i needed a saved game feature. Was when paying Reflecteds campaigns. They are 90 minutes  to 4 hours long. Outside of that. I've never felt i needed or wanted a saved game feature.

[ThorBrasil]

I would love to see an option to save the aircraft state. If you turn off the aircraft, it will stay the same way you left it. This would make the use of Checklists mandatory.

[Hoirtel]

I think the save game feature sounds awesome. For single player it means we can make big sandbox missions and come to them. Multiplayer will rely less on persistence scripts, which will surely make the job of hosting a server easier. 

The way I read the campaign bit was that it will work for campaigns but won't break the protection those miz files have against changes. 

[kotor633]

Okay...and when EXACTLY does the Spring Sale start? As of now, I don't see any discounts in the shop...

[MadMonty]

1 hour ago, Gunfreak said:

The only time i really felt i needed a saved game feature. Was when paying Reflecteds campaigns. They are 90 minutes  to 4 hours long. Outside of that. I've never felt i needed or wanted a saved game feature.

I feel the same way. My time for flying in DCS is very limited, usually only two evenings a week. When I fly a campaign mission for an hour and a half and fail, it is sometimes very frustrating to end the evening without any success. That comes very close to reality, but from time to time, I would like to simply restart after the third or fourth failure at the IP for particularly difficult missions.

 

But if I understand it correctly, the save-game function is not currently intended for campaigns. Is that only the case at the moment, or will it not be possible in the future either?

[CommandT]

Will the aircraft set-up/ switches/ radar modes etc etc also be saved? Sometimes it takes ages to set the aircraft up from scratch every time you have to re-fly a mission so just curious how this would work with the new save feature?

[bfr]

1 hour ago, Gunfreak said:

The only time i really felt i needed a saved game feature. Was when paying Reflecteds campaigns. They are 90 minutes  to 4 hours long. Outside of that. I've never felt i needed or wanted a saved game feature.

Yes, that'd be the primary use case for me too. I hope they manage to eventually make it work for paid campaign content too.

[ouky1991]

I'm almost always doing cold starts in my own missions, so it's very useful addition, no need to restart the whole thing. If it'll be simple trigger activated action and upon being killed, the game will just let you reload from checkpoint, that will be pretty great. 

I don't own any campaigns, but understand they are updated regularly. It's likely they'll have this feature implemented soon.

[Weta43]

2 hours ago, MadMonty said:

...But if I understand it correctly, the save-game function is not currently intended for campaigns. Is that only the case at the moment, or will it not be possible in the future either?

It doesn't say campaigns, it says pay-ware campaigns:

It seems to me that the problem is that paid campaigns are protected 'art' works & this has to make changes to / inject saved states into the protected mission file as it loads. To do that they need the permission of the copyright holders & have them agree on the methodology.

Quote

"This feature won’t break protection of DCS paid single player campaigns"

Other than the legal issues around making changes to copyrighted works, it doesn't sound like the approach wouldn't work per se. 

 

2 hours ago, ouky1991 said:

I'm almost always doing cold starts in my own missions, so it's very useful addition, no need to restart the whole thing. If it'll be simple trigger activated action and upon being killed, the game will just let you reload from checkpoint, that will be pretty great. 

I don't own any campaigns, but understand they are updated regularly. It's likely they'll have this feature implemented soon.

Agreed - seems to be a very useful feature that the community has asked for for a very long time, and in typical community fashion, when it's delivered it's received with a cry of "BUT WE WANT MORE !!! "

[schurem]

Sounds like a great step forward, something that's going to improve the DCS experience a lot for a great deal of people.

[Japo32]

A shame not comming in payware campaigns. In my case that is the reason I usually not fly them so much. Hate to refly again same what I did previous my death or failure. Hope ED finds a way to also include save into payware campaigns in future (only saves work for people that owns the campaigns or linked to computer ID?)

[zsoltfireman]

It says that the spring sale has started, I don't see it yet

Edited March 8 by zsoltfireman

[draconus]

1 hour ago, zsoltfireman said:

It says that the spring sale has started, I don't see it yet

The prices show no discounts on the modules section but they are shown on the main E-shop page and when you get into module's details.

[Archangel44]

The two birds I would like to purchase are Razbam's AV-8B and the M-2000C. I wish these folks would come to an agreement.

[TheBiggerBass]

Just another stupid rookie question: will already purchased modules and terrains be updated automatically?

[AdrianL]

4 minutes ago, TheBiggerBass said:

will already purchased modules and terrains be updated automatically?

Yes