• Lead a flight of Wildcats as they protect US bombers attacking a Japanese convoy.
• Take off and engage a flight of enemy fighters attacking your base.
• Fly a solo attack against US ground targets

Get something in your head so you have a starting point. On complex missions you may want to jot down a few notes or create an outline of what actions you want to include, the aircraft types, etc. For historical missions, you will need to do the appropriate research. Do what works best for you as long as you have some idea of what you’re trying to build.

Now that you have your idea, power up Mission Builder. If you did a typical installation of CFS2 you installed Mission Builder into the same folder as the game. That is where you will find it now. If you’re like me, you moved the game to some other more convenient place. If you plan to use Mission Builder a lot you may want to create a desktop shortcut or a Quick Launch button for it. I found it easiest to add a shortcut to the top of the Start menu. Wherever you put it, find it. Start it up. Let it get all loaded up then meet me down below.

The screen is divided into two parts.The left third of the screen displays information on the type of equipment, aircraft, ship, vehicle, and infrastructure, that you have highlighted, while the right two thirds of the screen is a map of the area in which your mission is taking place.

The map is orientated so that North is always at the top.

Buttons along the top and bottom of the screen are used for performing various commands and functions used in mission building. Descriptions of these buttons and their use can be found in the Help files.

You should become familiar with the Help files and their use. You need to know where to go when a question arises. An understanding of the Help files and their contents will enhance your mission building experience.

The default starting point for any new mission places you (the player) in an A6M2 Zero flying North, about 75 nautical miles East of Munda. I’ll guess that 99% of the time you will want to start you mission either somewhere else or in a different airplane. So let’s get started.

For our first mission we are going to fly a Wildcat out of Henderson, intercept a flight of Zeros, shoot them down (hopefully) and return to base. Simple.

Begin by clicking the New Mission button in the upper left-hand corner. This will bring up this window which allows you to start at the current location, an exact location specified by longitude and latitude, an area within the Pacific or a specific airbase. Click on ‘Airbase’, scroll down to ‘Henderson’, highlight it, click on ‘OK’.

The map now places you at Henderson, still flying North in a Zero however. First let’s change planes.

On the left hand side of the screen under the ‘Player Aircraft’ you will see a column with the following fields lit up, ‘Aircraft’, ‘Nationality’, ‘Mission’, ‘Unit ID’, ‘Payload’, ‘# of aircraft’, and down near the bottom ‘Pre damage (%)’.

Click the down arrow next to ‘Aircraft’. Scroll down until you find the ‘F4F-4 Wildcat’ and select it.

Click the down arrow next to ‘Aircraft’. Scroll down until you find the ‘F4F-4 Wildcat’ and select it. Follow the same pattern to select ‘USA’ as your nationality. Under ‘Mission’ leave it as ‘Fighter Sweep’. The eight different types of missions are listed and explained on page 139 of your CFS2 Pilot’s Manual. Refer to that book for more information.

If you’d like to give yourself a name in the mission, scroll down under ‘Unit ID’ and select one you like. Since you will be flying alone it isn’t really necessary to identify yourself. Leave the payload as ‘Guns Only’ and the number of aircraft as 1. You’re on your own this first time! Leave ‘Pre-damage’ set to ‘0’. You can start any plane out with existing damage by setting a value in this box. You might use this if you were to design a mission where you were escorting a damaged bomber back to base, as we will do in Part 2, for example.

Since you are flying alone the ‘Formation’ number box is not lit up. As the player your own ability determines your skill and aggressiveness levels so you can never change these. At the same time, you as the player must always survive to complete the mission so you don’t have a choice there either. OK, now you’re flying a Wildcat, so lets fly it someplace.

Next