Figured I should start a new thread for my CraterMA terrain project rather than resurrect the old one. I've been working on and off on this MA terrain for about two and a half years now and have just finished redoing all the terrain textures to the latest style.
While I'm bug testing prior to submitting it I thought it would be a good idea to ask this forum for feedback. To that end I have drawn the field numbers, initial country borders and spawn points on the current in-game map shown below. Also if anyone wants to try the terrain offline you can download the files from this link:-
CraterMA.zip (4,679kb). Just extract the files to your ahiiterr folder. Note it needs to run for about 45 minutes for all the cloud systems to fully deploy.
To avoid balance issues I've gone for a symmetrical field layout, although each country's clockwise half is not a mirror image of its anti-clockwise half. The bases are at around 2K high near the crater rim dropping to near sea level at the coast. The island airfields are at 1k. There is a high number of bases for a small MA terrain, 33 per side.
The central crater rim is about 15K high. It splits the countries at the centre of the map and acts as a deterrent to planes griefing tank town in the middle of the crater. Three mountain range “spokes” radiate out from the crater and form the initial country borders. These mountains are about 9K high but are split by numerous valleys. You can cross the range between any two adjacent fields without making a major detour and never need to climb to more than 3-4K. A cross-range NOE goon run typically takes less than 10 minutes.
The rivers and lakes are currently just there to add some visual interest. However, if and when HTC clear the bridge objects for MA use I may later incorporate some river crossing GV spawn routes. All the strat objects are within a 20 miles of an uncapturable base, which should make it harder for players to milk run them.
The ground war is centered around V base hubs which in turn spawn to most of the airfields. There are also coastal spawn paths that end at the city, HQ and mainland port. The defending side has spawns from its three uncapturable fields to the V base hubs, so these strategic bases are likely to see a lot of action.
Tank town has four of the tank town industrial zones clustered together and is bordered by lakes to compress the action to a small zone. Each tank town base has several closely spaced spawns which will make camping difficult. All the tank town bases are covered by a permanent low smog which combined with the high crater rim will make it difficult to take out the hangars by air.
Each country has two large islands near the borders with an airbase, a V base and a port on each. With shore batteries on all the island bases and PT spawns in the narrow channels either side these are going to be tough to take by CV and are fairly isolated from mainland airbases. The third central CV can be used to retake an island if necessary.
Some screenshots of the terrain, click to enlarge:-
Tank town, with a TE screenshot showing the spawns:-
Border mountains:-
Rivers, lakes and coastline:-
