Question about surface editing

[AEthelraedUnraed]

Surface editing seems to work mostly as it did in GB, as described in my Surface Editing Manual: https://forum.il2sturmovik.com/topic/73571-surface-editing-manual/. In fact, it has become even more powerful since the new village functionality allows one to build realistic villages in mere minutes, with almost zero effort! This allows a mission writer to change the battlefield just as required. Extensive life-like reconstructions of selected areas, additional villages and hamlets, detailed enemy positions, tire tracks giving away the positions of hidden trucks... everything becomes possible.

However, since it seems the textures.tini files of the maps have been encrypted, it is impossible to pack any changes along with a mission file or campaign, as it was prior in Great Battles. Right now, the only option seems to be to have it as a mod, overwriting the in-game surface files. This obviously leads to conflicts with other mods as well as potentially with the base game.

Does anyone know of a way to embed edited terrain surfaces in a mission, without overwriting the default surface.dat? @LukeFF are there any options available right now? Or is there something in the making?

Edited August 9 by AEthelraedUnraed