Does anyone fly the B17G_MollyII in a Campaign ?

[IndioBlack]

I've been carefully going through all the advice as to how to get a third-party aircraft to work in a campaign, but for some reason I just can't get the 1% B17G_MollyII  to show up.

Here's the situation:

I have all the official patches and am using the nocd patch to save wear on my CD player and game CD.

I have installed the Airfield fix for Big Bombers that you are supposed to download from Netwings. You install the files in the Facilities folder of your Combat Flight Simulator 3 Folder, incidentally. Neither of the authors mentioned this - thank you guys for assuming we're all psychic.

I've gone into my Combat Flight Simulator 3 Folder, located the Campaigns folder, and opened fortress europa.xml with notepad.
About half-way down with the slider, under Tech Tree there's a list of aircraft. I've inserted the B17G_MollyII here, like this, between the B_26C and the B_26G:


       
     
     
       
     
     
       
     

I put in Date Month figures that would place it after the B_26C, but before the B_26G
I used the Model name of the aircraft, taken from the aircraft.cfg, which is B17G_MollyII, rather than the folder name which is 3_us_b17g.

I then opened the B17G_MollyII.xdp file with notepad, and under , I altered the "entered service="  to read 09/01/1942. This would mean that the B17G_MollyII would be available at the campaign start. I chose this date because it comes exactly after the B_26C entered service date of 08/01/1942.
I then deleted the B17G_MollyII.bdp, because I understand that this needs to be re-created with whatever changes you have made to the xdp next time you use the aircraft.

I believe that this is all you need to do to get the B17G_MollyII to work in a campaign.

I now shut down the computer, re-start, go into the CFS3 Sim, and start a new campaign. I select American, Bomber Career and go to select my aircraft: Currently available is the B_26C. I then go into teh Squadron room to see what the next available aircraft is and it says: B_26G.
No sign of the B17G_MollyII, which by entered dates should be before the B_26G, or at least in that list.

So has anyone actually got the B17G_MollyII to work in a Campaign, and if so, what did you do that I'm not doing?

[farmerdave]

I have flown it in the Fortress Europa campaign as well as the 46th Italy campaign and never had problems with it.  I didn't do anything you didn't, except I didn't change the entered service date and didn't delete the BDPs or anything, which shouldn't affect anything.  Your tech tree entry is fine, so I 've really run out of ideas.  You did save the changes to the fortress europa XML file after you edited it, didn't you?

[birdie]

I play the Fortress Europa campaign from Simouthouse that uses all the 1% aircraft.  It is used in it as well as the Condor and Henkel for the germans and the Swordfish for the British.

[IndioBlack]

Yes thank you, I saved the fortress europa.xml file, and confirmed it was altered by re-opening it directly through html.

Thanks for alerting me to the Simouthouse version of Fortress Europa. I notice a lot of aircraft need downloading, so before I do that I'm going to try the download that Bear mentioned in a previous thread which involves using the excel spreadsheet.

If that draws a blank, I'll go for the new Fortress Europa.

It's irritating to find that you're doing everything right, but stil no result. I'm sure I'm issing something somewhere.

Thanks for the help.

[IndioBlack]

Okay, this is interesting, I've just downloaded and used the Campaign Generator from SimOuthouse. I checked out the B-17 and was given the message that it was missing the B-17 410 gallon Ferry Tank from the weapons folder.

This may have been the problem all along: I had not downloaded the 1% weapons pack, just the B-17 and whatever weapons came with it.

Now I'll try again...

[AvHistory]

Missing weapons, guns or pylons will prevent the plane from showing up as will an uninstalled 3.1 patch.

BEAR - AvHistory

[IndioBlack]

Nope, I still can't get this to work.
And whatever I do with the campaign generator, whatever aircraft I select to be in the campaign, I always get the big NO message that says I don't have aircraft available for any of the three countries.
There was a question about this on this board earlier so I'll now search that out.

Anyway, not to worry, I can always fly the B-17 in single missions.

Thanks guys, for all your support and advice.