Hosting Practice

[AirBadger]

Hi All

Apologies if this has already been covered. I've "searched" already, but only had time to check out a couple of the threads which came up and need an answer before I next play.

I'm brand new to "BoP" (PS3 version) and as a long time fan of "IL2" on the PC I've been pleasantly surprised by the game so far, having not had much in the way of expectations for this console outing.

I popped online for the first time this morning, to see if I could figure out how to set up a game in preparation for one I am supposed to be hosting this evening and I might be missing the completely obvious, but I couldn't see an option to set up a private room for just the friends in question.

I ended up setting up a lobby and then looking at the buttons for inviting from my friends list. It looks fairly straight forward, but in the ten seconds it took me to check it out, someone had already joined my lobby!

I obviously wasn't actually playing at that point, so I quit the lobby. (Sorry if that was you by the way. How rude eh?) But it seems to me that while I'm inviting my players tonight, the lobby is going to filling with folks who won't ultimately be invited to play. Not their fault for goodness sake, but am I missing the way I am supposed to avoid this happening? And if not, can I kick the names in question (I am going to feel really bad about that!) to make room for my invited players?

How do you experienced hosts handle this?

Many thanks
Badger