How did this happen? Help please!

[Oliver]

I recently posted that a computer blow up cost me my CFS3 install and my BoB expansion. I got CFS3 up and running on my new windows 10 computer (thanks to this forum). But the BoB expansion was gone, and with the download site down I was stuck. Posted my plight on here and Pat Pattle very kindly gave me a link and all up and running.

BoB expansion comes with the CFS3 mission builder. to try my hand I designed a simple training navigation exercise

A lone Spitfire Mk1 was to take off from RAF Duxford fly south east heading for the Thames estuary, climbing to 10,000 feet proceed down to Kent and fly along the south coast before turning in land and flying directly back to Duxford. I worked out this flight would leave about 30% of fuel after landing.

All went well until we were over Dover. I attempted to warp and was informed I could not leave as enemies were nearby! Sure enough the HUD showed 6 enemy aircraft nearby, not wishing to tangle with that lot I flew on all but one of the EA dropped behind, one stuck with me. Following the fighter pilots maxim, face the threat I turned and saw flak to the east of me and out of the flak a ME109 passed me at great speed. I got on his tail and managed to damage him to the extent that white vapour (fuel or glycol ?) was pouring out, another burst removed his wing and down he went making a mess in the ogin off Dover.

I carried on with my flight only to discover my calculations on fuel usage had been scuppered by the dogfight, I just got to Duxford on fumes!

I re-checked my mission, I created no enemy aircraft or spawns, the only flight was my lone Spitfire, neither did I put in any flak units.

Where did this large flight of 109's come from, and what triggered the friendly flak?

A fantastic and very immersive flight but where the hell did the hostiles come from?

[Daiwilletti]

BoB expansion comes with the CFS3 mission builder. to try my hand I designed a simple training navigation exercise

Where did this large flight of 109's come from, and what triggered the friendly flak?

A fantastic and very immersive flight but where the hell did the hostiles come from?

Hi Oliver, sounds like your flight was more immersive than you bargained for!

The enemy aircraft could have arrived from a number of sources. Probably the air.spawns file - the default random airspawns generator - is the cause. A number of addons use a simple spawn switcher to disable air spawns when flying a mission. In that way only aircraft which the mission builder specifies, will appear in your mission. A less likely cause of aircraft is that facility files can have a "chord" added to them which trigger defined air spawns, it is something which Charles Simpson's Day It All Began install (an early BoB example) used to great effect. The facility files show up in the global_layer.csv in the global layer folder.

Which leads to the flak. Often the first clue that enemy aircraft are around is the sound of flak. Pat Pattle has done a great job of realism for the Bob era by including a large number of flak batteries, in their historical locations, in the global layer csv file. So when you fly a mission, not only are the facilities which you define included, but also all the default facilities appear in your mission, as defined in the global layer csv.

A mission works a little differently from "Free flight" mode in QC. A quick way to have an unmolested flight would be to travel the route in Quick combat, free flight mode.

[Oliver]

Thanks for the suggestions. The flight was more real than I expected!