Getting started

09.11.2021: The tutorial is out of date for DCS Liberation >= 3.0. updates pending

How to get DCS Liberation?

Download:

You have two choices, either download a stable or a preview release:

1. Stable release
2. Preview release

Installation:

1. Extract the zip file to a new directory. DCS Liberation does not need to be separately installed; the extracted directory is your DCS Liberation install. This can be extracted anywhere, but it should be a directory that you can access without Administrator privileges to ensure that Liberation runs correctly.
2. Then launch liberation_main.exe to launch DCS Liberation.

First launch splash screen

Important Note before you launch DCS Liberation :

DCS Liberation will modify the following file in your DCS installation: <DCS Installation Directory>/Scripts/MissionScripting.lua. This allows Liberation to record information about mission events. This will not prevent you from passing the integrity check to join multiplayer servers.

This file will be modified whenever DCS Liberation is opened and the original will be replaced when DCS Liberation is closed.

You must always launch DCS Liberation before you launch DCS.

If you don't, DCS will load the file before it is changed and DCS Liberation will not be able to retrieve mission progress.

Start your first campaign

In the top left corner, click on File --> New Game to start the new campaign wizard.

Click on next to start campaign configuration :

Theater configuration - choose your campaign/map and start date

1. Choose your campaign (implies the DCS map)
2. Campaign author & remarks
3. Performance impact
4. Invert the factions starting positions
5. Time period / starting date (start date will affect weapon availability if turned on via options at a later stage)

Choose your faction, and the enemy faction. Based on the campaign configuration, either chose the authors intended, or select any faction of your choosing.

Select any additional generation options you'd like to use. Note that the supercarrier option can be enabled or disabled later in the game settings.

Generator settings:

• No Aircraft carriers - select if you don't want any CVNs in your campaign, even if the faction you selected has them available
• No LHA - select if you don't want any LHAs in your campaign, even if the faction you selected has them available
• Use Supercarrier module - if you own the DCS Supercarrier module, you can select which CVN type will generated in your campaign
• No Player Navy - select whether you want combat ships in your campaign being generated or not
• No Enemy Navy - select whether you want enemy combat ships in your campaign being generated or not

Mod settings:

• If you want any of these mods considered during your campaign generators, please select accordingly
• You are required to have the selected mods already installed and operational prior to DCS Liberation campaign generation

Economy options:

• Player income multiplier - defines the multiplier of the player per-round income which depends on the type and number of objectives held (tbd <linkToObjectives)
• Enemy income multiplier - defines the multiplier of the enemies per-round income which depends on the type and number of objectives held (tbd <linkToObjectives)
• Player starting budget - amount of available money at the beginning of the campaign, to procure aircraft / ground units
• Enemy starting budget - amount of available money at the beginning of the campaign, to procure aircraft / ground units

Player assists:

• Automate runway repairs - system will automatically repair player owned, destroyed runways if enough budget is available
• Automate front-line purchases - system will automatically buy front-line ground units
• Automate aircraft purchases - system will automatically buy aircraft

the system currently will spend 50% on aircraft and 50% on ground unit purchases

Adjust difficulty and economic options as desired. Increasing enemy income and budget can increase the campaign difficulty, while reducing it can improve mission performance by reducing the number of units that the enemy can use at once.

The player assists section allows the player to enable automatic economic management for their faction so they can focus on other aspects of the campaign. These options can be toggled later in the game settings. These options are described in detail in the manual.

Conclusion

Air Wing Configuration aka Squadrons

The list of available squadrons is affected by the following factors:

• Campaign configuration, done by the campaign author
• Chosen faction
• Available squadrons (custom & auto generated)

See (tbd <linkToSquadrons) for more detailed information on squadrons

If you are happy with your choices, close the squadrons window and trigger the campaign generation.

Voila! Your campaign has been generated! We recommend you save your game at this point.