I was an Alpha player of Arma way-back-when. I remember trying out Antistasi way back in its earliest incarnations. I loved it back then, but thought of it as being a bit rough around the edges, and my main cause of death was a random UGV on patrol. Eventually I moved onto a bunch of other games, through no real fault of the mod. I didn't get around to trying the mod again in 2016 post-Apex when I had briefly gotten a setup for IFA3 Full and had enjoyed that for a while, and then moved onto other games for another three years.

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Within the first forty minutes of installing and starting this mission again for the first time in five years, I was a little disappointed.

The page warned me about mods like ASR, VCOM, etc., and I was willing to accept the risk of buggy behaviour if it meant fun firefights where the AI was actually my equal rather than a calf being led to the slaughter. I was only running All-in-One Singleplayer Deluxe, VCOM AI, and LAMBS Danger, which don't tend to seize control over the AI units as harshly as -- say -- GBX or Tactical Combat Link, so I figured I'd be fine.

When I attempted to boot up the mission, rather than merely warning me about possible problems, the mod refused to boot with an error message on the startup screen about incompatible mods. I was rather shocked: the mission actually tells me that I am not allowed, on the hardware and software I own, to run the mission with certain mods.

I immediately went into the mission structure to disable that code. Now, the interesting part: the mission didn't even have a complaint about the AI mods I was running anyway. It didn't like that I was running ACE medical in single player. In spite of having mods explicitly designed to allow AI to provide ACE medical treatment to my character (e.g., AIO Singleplayer), I was barred from playing the mission solely because it was "not supported".

I don't think I've ever commented out code fast enough.

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With that out of the way, mission startup was quick and efficient, especially compared to Dynamic Combat Ops which can take nearly a minute to analyse the config tree. I was quite impressed with that.

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I decided to play the classic Antistasi scenario -- me against the government --- Reb vs Gov, baby. Within moments, I was a patriot proudly taking arms against tyranny! Except... the government for the mission is apparently NATO, which as far as tyrannical organisations go is one of the least. Literally every outpost on the map is occupied by NATO... not by the AAF, not by the CSAT. So... I guess I'll have to start a different version of the scenario next time. Okay. But let's give it an honest shot.

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I rearrange everything around my new rebel camp in the foothills near Oreokastro, hidden from the shoreline and aerial observation. Prime guerrilla territory (and the first place they'd send troops in real life, but no one would design a game that way as that just wouldn't be fun). The placement interface was only as clunky as the vanilla action menu -- just grab an asset with the action menu, move it where it needs to go, and put it down again with another action. No problems there. I had the base neatly arranged with the ammo box, medical box, flagpole, and mission board behind cover, and the flagpole both visible and inconspicuous at the same time. I would be flying that flag in Pyrgos before the year's end!

I report in for my first mission. "Deliver supplies to Oreokastro".

I experiment a little with figuring out the conditions for going undercover with the mod key (which is not-configurable and is bound to the same key as AiO Singleplayer's menu... but that doesn't break anything apparently). I purchase a civilian offroad truck for a song (just 200 euros for a brand new truck with a full tank), and stow my weapons and carrier vest in the truck bed. I try to keep the pistol and tuck it in my uniform rather than keeping it in a holster, but it's still too encumbering -- that's vanilla's fault, though, so no problem there, and I can always keep it in the truck too, and grab it if things go sideways.

However, my guerrilla uniform -- literally just a shirt and shorts --- is still considered overt. That's... not quite right.

Oh well, as long as I'm in the truck, I'm fine.

I bring the truck over to the crate of IDAP aid to load into the truck and then fiddle with the UI until it gives me the action to load it into the truck. "This vehicle can not carry this cargo!" Well, shoot.

I then attempted to dig through the garage. I had an FIA camo truck, a static AA, and a static MG. Maybe the camo truck can load the cargo? I give it a shot.

"This vehicle can not carry this cargo!"

What? The Van_01 flatbed cannot carry the cargo crates either? Why on Earth would the mission assign me a task that is literally impossible to complete?

I still have forty minutes to deliver the supplies to Oreokastro which is just a two minute drive away, so I decide to run a reconnaissance mission first. No idea how I'm going to get the supplies there -- maybe I can find a Zamak or something and bring it back that way. I hop in the civilian offroad to go undercover, drive to Oreokastro on the back roads, and have a look around. NATO has occupied a small outpost near the wind farms on the hill -- check. The village is deserted of all military presence. Double check. Excellent!

And... no trucks. Big-ass X. I drive back to base. It's okay, I can still buy a bigger truck. That's another 600 euros (only), and doable.

Except... it's just the civilian variant of the same FIA truck.

I try buying it anyway -- maybe it's just one of the many idiosyncrasies of the mod -- and try to place it on the road. I hit Spacebar to commit it--and-it's-gone,thank-you-for-using-our-bank,this-line-is-for-paying-customers-only,please-leave. It never spawned into the world. I check the Garage. It's empty. (What happened to the static MG, static AA, and other FIA truck that were there? No idea. They're now gone too.)

With that entire session obviously lost to the gods of jank, I closed it down.

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TL/DR: Five things I attempted within twenty minutes of starting the scenario failed in some fashion or another due to the scenario's weird scripting.
The good: asset placement.
The bad: asset purchasing, giving players literally impossible missions without ability to cancel.
The ugly: actually halting the mission when using ACE medical in single-player rather than simply issuing an at-own-risk warning, and not using a specific message per mission refusal reason so that I would have to go into the source code to figure out why exactly it refused to boot for me. (Also ugly: the part of the description.ext file, though commented out, which suggests that a mod author would build in code to prevent someone from playing their mod based on interpersonal issues.)