okay. I'll give that a shot. I saw there were a bunch of missions and campaigns further in the forum. Those too should be installed after the Upd_Nov2012 (NTA) entry?
In theory, yes. Unfortunately, author SPM UU changed the name of some units and now a several missions are not compatible with current mods. That's why I'd recommend to keep "installation order" exactly as it was described in readme of the missions.
It seemed I had some other mods above the Nov 2102(NTA) that had worked before I loaded the desert campaign which I beleived caused my crash. Is there a cutoff patch date or the mods that are posted in this forum will work as placed in your suggestion.
It goes without saying, that most stable mod is
SPM1.5+fix. I'm sure it'll suit for desert mod. But I'd like to recommend u ask Kyth. He is more mastered in this question.
Do I have to place one mod above another due to release date?
Well, in a way yes
But I'd like to recommend u to create two SF installation.
First - only for er personal use and experemintation.
Second - clear(etalon) for the new mod by users. If it works, then u can pick up what u likes and transfer tu er personal(first) installation.
I noticed that in the new SPM u u release that the uu patch is gone and replaced by UPD_NOV 2012.
Partly. June patch included into November(it was noted in readme). SPM UU wasn't changed.
Does that matter? Or stilll the same operation regardless?
Of course, it does
New stuff added, some bugs fixed. It's normal. When SF with all mods will work stable and without bugs - it does that game is dead.