A new update for BoS was released earlier today. It has received mixed feelings from the BoS community.
Personally I do not mind having to unlock everything now via SP mode but the necessary fresh install is a pain.
Cheers Charlie, downloading now.
I’m also looking forward to trying out the single player campaign.
I have it downloaded now and have begun to “fly” (cough) the 1st campaign.
There has been a hell of a lot of posting over the weekend in the link above about this new unlock system. Most players seem to be really pee’d off about it, some almost frantic, and one has even closed a popular server over it.
Having to unlock all that we had before also isn’t very endearing to players like myself who have very limited time due to work.
But one poster did throw a life line to us work laden folk.
Launch the campaign, hit 16 x speed and then hit Autopilot. Very quickly the missions and the campaign are over and the unlocks begin. (Hence the “cough” in the first sentence).
As for the unlock ratio, after “completing” (cough, cough) the 1st campaign, the only unlocks “I” (cough,cough,cough) got for the IL2 was the 23mm VYa cannon and 2 x FAB250’s. No skins yet nor rockets nor 37mm cannon.
Could be a long week for the Autopilot as the M.O. has grounded me so I can get this bleedin’ cough sorted out. 
Nice tip and a shame they implemented the locks for the same reason as you - time. I guess its historical though?
hope the cough gets better and you actually get to fly some missions.
I’ve unlocked the first 2 campaigns with the help of my trusty autopilot and now I have a fully blinged up IL2 ready for action over Stalingrad.
Careful with the missions Skipper. Quite a few players have crashed and have then been locked out of the Campaigns due to a bug. This bug is to be repaired with the next update apparently.
Za Rodinu!
EDIT:- It looks like the update has already been released to fix the frozen mission bug.
C&P from the BoS Forum…
- fixed the bug with skins unavailability;
- impossibility to finish tutorial and start the campaign was fixed;
- video cutscenes were converted to Bink to avoid stutters;
- autopilot feature was turned off for campaign mode;
- it’s now possible to speed up time for x2 only;
- some corrections were made to the He 111 physical model;
- aim helper added in Normal difficulty (RCTRL+i to disable it);
- incorrectly low resolution at first start of the game via Steam was fixed
- autopilot feature was turned off for campaign mode;
- it’s now possible to speed up time for x2 only
That’s worrying!! They’ve patched the work around the buggers.
I’ve read that come the official release in a month or so that all unlocks will be reset to default again so to give a level flying field to everybody. Makes me want to leave it till then due to lack of time to redo it all over again.
If they made SP very good, there wouldn’t be any complaints, or would be just a few here and there.
But I have played SP and it’s not that good at this point. I don’t really like that mission generators. It’s ok for carrier mode (like ROF has) but it’s totally bad in historical campaign sense.
I for one would be much happier with proper hand crafted missions that are always the same, but more immerse then what this generator provides at this point.
But they can fix it in time, only we can’t wait for it, we need to play SP now so we have unlocks in MP, hence I am joining bunch that is not satisfied by this very odd design decision.
Can’t even understand the need for silly experience concept in combat simulator. It’s insane how some small stupid thing like this can actually annoy people and spoil otherwise very solid game.