You should try again... I think the combination is improving. See below:
a big drawback is how the S2 launches and goes straight to the starting waypoint—no matter what is in the way!
I definitely also noticed that... S2 takes off to about 10ft AGL then straight to waypoint 1. Mine went straight into a bunch of trees but luckily for S2's superior object avoidance, it noodled it's way out of the canopy. This happened more than once with DD on S2.
you cannot choose which waypoint is the first, you cannot add any intermediate waypoints, and you cannot set a height to reach before moving to first waypoint
Actually, you can... In DroneDeploy app, open up 'Advanced Settings', uncheck 'Automatic Settings', then there's a slider bar to adjust the 'Starting Waypoint'. That said, it's very fiddly and only gives a subset of the total number of waypoints (which aren't numbered on the screen). Also, it seems like the app will reset your starting waypoint setting each time you adjust something else, so make sure to adjust it right before lift off.
Obviously they need to fix this
Yes - And I think they are working on it... Because last week updates were released to Skydio2 app, DroneDeploy app, and Skydio2 firmware. All seemed to work much better together than the previous combination of apps/firmware.
My main complaints now are that
1) DD doesn't tell Skydio2 to come home for battery swap on multi-battery missions, and
2) the landing is seriously complicated by DD: It wants to auto-land but can be ~20m away from home. Also, it doesn't recognize the S2 logo for AI-assisted landing. And it requires some strange combination of halting DD-landing task to regain stick control, then turning off OA to actually land, but then stick control is gone again, which gives the effect of no control of S2 position between almost landing and headed to the ground. Feels awkward.
One strange NEW thing I noticed with the update is that the EXIF info on the imagery for Drone Yaw/Pitch/Roll now have a different name: Camera Orientation FLU Yaw/Pitch/Roll, which confuses Agisoft Metashape's importing of camera rotation data. Will explore further, but I'm assuming a software update on Agisoft's side will probably fix that.