The latest DCS World Weekend News update is out and there are two big news items contained within. The first is news on the new mission generator that seeks to replace the antiquated Instant Action system with a new Instant Action Generator. The other news is that we’ve got a new livery contest for the F-5E though that comes with a tiny bit of controversy too. We’ll dig into that. Plus, Ugra Media have been sharing more videos of their DCS: Cold War Germany so let’s check that out too!

Instant Action Generator (IAG)

DCS World has needed this feature for such a long time now. The old Instant Action generator didn’t provide all that much in the way of features and after a few times using it I generally tended to find other ways to play DCS. The Instant Action Generator or IAG then holds some promise with a slightly more user configurable mission maker.

Eagle Dynamics say that it will have customizable scenarios from air to air, ground attack, and escort to SEAD and anti-ship. They also say you’ll be able to select and sort by different eras, fine tune loadouts, set time of day, weather, and use carriers.

The whole thing is intended to make different scenarios while keeping them short and fast paced. That sounds great and is a very welcome feature. Hopefully its well designed and offers something enjoyable enough to keep coming back to time and again.

F-5E remastered livery competition

I really like the idea of these livery competitions as it does help community members get recognition and a little bit of compensation too while the community benefits from a nice selection of liveries for the modules in the contest. DCS: F-5E remastered is up next for a livery competition.

Prizes range from first place with $100 USD worth of DCS ED Miles, a free module, and livery added to the module. Second place gets $50 USD worth of ED miles while third gets $25 USD worth of DCS ED Miles and all three have their livery added to the module.

There is a bit of controversy here as the F-5E is one of those DCS modules that has had their model file encrypted. This affects livery creators by making it impossible for an external model viewer to see the model and thus makes rapid edits of livery files more difficult to get right. Some enterprising folks have noted that the files do get refreshed when a new unit is placed in the mission editor, however, that still feels like a bit of a workaround.

NineLine, ED Community Manager, has reported that they are looking at a refresh feature built into the DCS mission editor which should make for a better workflow but it hasn’t happened yet.

As I said previously we are looking into solutions including the ability to refresh in the game, but it requires programmer time which is a valuable resource, so I hope it will be done sooner than later, but I have no timeline right now.

NineLine on the DCS forums

The contest goes on and the deadline is June 2025 so there is some lead time yet. Let’s hope that an easier workflow for artists is found before that time.

Read about the contest rules right here!

Ugra Media show off more DCS: Cold War Germany

The floodgates have well and truly opened for DCS: Cold War Germany and Ugra Media are showing off more sections of the not yet released map.

The following line-up of videos were released just in the last 72-hours… and there are many more before that. I encourage you to check them out!