Terrain Editor

[Easyscor]

When I bring up all the entpnt shapes in the Selection List and modify one of them (no collide), the lists scrolls back to the top first one in the list when I hit Apply. Shouldn't it remain at my last place in the list?

[Easyscor]

Suppose you realize that you've failed to set all your spawns, airspawns or GV etc to non collide. If you use the shape or type functions you can obtain the full list and change most settings but not the collisions for the whole list.

[Easyscor]

Patch 37
I tried making several bit depth versions of a 2048 Clipboard map for two different terrains and although they show in the TE and in-game, when zoomed to show the whole map, they fade to black. Weird. 1024 CBMs work.

[Easyscor]

Thank you for the flag texturing!
I did find a texture issues that affects all flags. Imagine the Stars and Strips hanging from the wrong side of the texture. Pretty much all of them will have the same problem as this one.

[bustr]

With the distributed strat do we place the strat or is that something waffle does if your terrain is accepted for rotation?

[Greebo]

You have to do it yourself. It is pretty much the same as placing airfields really except for them needing to be set to country owned rather than field owned. Try to make the placement fair for all sides and don't put a strat too close to any adjacent airfields (10 miles rings a bell). V bases or ports need to be far enough away from a strat for them to be out out of AA range of each other. Flak bases can be placed close to a strat so long as there is at least one square seperation since neither strats or flak bases are captureable. You can position SPs at strats for GV fights, except at the cities. I'd suggest placing the HQ and city well away from the front lines.

If you sent HTC a drawn map showing your intended placement, I'm sure they would offer feedback on it.

[bustr]

Greebo,

Thank you, I started out wondering how on a 10x10 map you divided it by three semi equally. I used 10x10 engineering paper and drew a 5 radi sector ring. Then set three 120 degree rays from center. Looks like you have to rotate the radi a few degrees. Then one thing led to another and I started defining topographical features along with field placement and the HQ's. I ended up with my question of who or how do you distribute the strat.

I just remembered another question. How do you determine the three un-capturable bases near the HQ and what is a good relationship of the city to the HQ on a small map now that we have the AAA bases? We want bombers to get through to the city to possibly generate combat and give the bomber guys a reason to fly deep missions correct?

I think I've resurrected a very old map I saw once. A simple giant caldera where the map is ringed by 12k-17k mountains and highlands dropping into a central bowel pond with a 1000ft center monolith and the AH3 TT with three GV bases on it. The countries are divided by feeder rivers. The midlands will be 5k-6k so heavy bombers can get off the ground with heavy loads. The HQ and strats will be up in the highlands.

Wasn't that map long ago called the ameba map or something like that??

[Greebo]

For CraterMA I drew the base and strat layout for one country in Paint Shop Pro after making radial and circumferential guide layers and then copied, pasted and rotated this set of base positions 120 degrees for the other two countries. After that I created the terrain around these bases as a series of altitude layers, which I later used to make an altitude map which I then imported into the TE.

How and where you place your strats is to some extent a question of how you want your map to play. Personally I dislike anything that makes it easier for players to hide from a fight. Disabling an enemy country's radar and darbars makes it easier to hide so I like to protect the HQ and city as much as possible. On CraterMA I placed the HQ and city as far from the front lines as I could given its only a small map and I surrounded them with three large uncapturable airfields. In the AH3 version of the map I have added pairs of flak bases next to the city and HQ as well as placing V bases near the strats to give them some radar coverage. I even routed cloud banks over all the strats so they are covered about 25% of the time.

I seem to recall 4K was the highest you are allowed put an air base in an MA map, since the thinner air stops heavily laden bombers getting off the ground any higher than that. Although the bigger bases with longer runways in AH3 might allow higher alts to be used now.

[Easyscor]

Greebo has given good advice and I can add only a little to his recommendations. I'd say think about the fights but also the types of missions a new squad to AH might try to run. Old squads will know exactly what they need for success in any aspect of the game, but new ones are something else. When I think of an MA design, I want some things to look easy, and inviting. Okay, it's a trap for the unwarry but guys love to run NOE if they think they can capture a base. It's exciting, and even if they don't succeed, they can have fun while providing a fight for the old pros. You can always count on some fool breaking dar and annouuncing an NOE attact. Even if that doesn't happen, if a country can't kill a Goon then they deserver to loose the base.

I can't swear to this, but I remember htc posted 6k as the maximum alt for any airbase. To be safe, I'd stay with 5k as max and want one or two bomber bases at that alt for each side depending on the terrain size. Make sure you have an equal number of 'high alt' bases for each side or you end up with sfma's two. One is at 6.0k and one at 6.6+k, but none for the south country are above 1.5k. btw, mindnao's A2 is at 5k and A54 is at 5.5k. The Baltic terrain had one at ~6+k but I haven't looked to see which one and how high it actually is. It exceeded the current hight limit iirc.

My personal priorities are that a terrain is fun and attractive, but that it would be hard to reset in under a day (lots of bases but there are rules for that). Then I think about the types of missions and fights I want to see, CV battles, GV battles for territory, in addition to the usual low alt furballs, etc.

Everybody will have a different concept and that's what will keep the game fresh.

[bustr]

Going with a 10X10 to see if I can help the different player styles get at each other. I'm just doing a giant fish bowel caldera with a 12x12 island in the center for TT. I think 1 cv per side will work in the pond since the island will be all cliffs to 1000ft and it's own minor caldera. I needed to know who places the strat and if there were any requirements to meet.

I'm doing a mock up in paint.net to send into HTC like Greebo suggested.

Can I elevate high enough that a 10x10 will be completely seen in the TE? Or will I have match grid points from the mock up to connect dots for the gross land features at first?

[hitech]

Can I elevate high enough that a 10x10 will be completely seen in the TE? Or will I have match grid points from the mock up to connect dots for the gross land features at first?

Simply start with your sketch as the map for the TE.

HiTech

[bustr]

Thank you....

[bustr]

Can I still leave the CV out of a task force in AH3?

[bustr]

This is why I want to leave out the cruiser.

[bustr]

On second thought, I'll leave the cruiser in. Land mode 8in slavos to TT and the GV bases will be irritating, but not as much as well aimed jabo and bombers that will visit the island. I'm hoping the small water area will make interception from the CV a standard procedure along with the cruisers sinking each other quickly. Firing against targets on the TT island will act as a beacon for bombers to sink the task group. The land spawns onto the island will make it easy for GVballers to ignore the shutdown GV base on the island or make it easy to defend. I'm hoping the CVs get parked near the island to take the place of laying down AAA bases on the island along with the radar coverage area.

I am torn between creating an access from the water by LVT up a collapsed area of cliff below each island GV base or, being a stinker and forcing it onto a c47 or an M3 bushwhacking from the next base. There are some good road systems in the 4 primary tiles from the EU tile set.

The shore line LF I'm thinking of using the super large airfeild with the attached large village. If I do that I probably need to place cross river GV spawns from the two SF airfeilds at the river mouths and spawns from one of the SF both ways to and from the LF to promote a combined forces fight into that giant complex. I'm trying to keep the numbers of airbases with GV spawns to a minimum to promote use of the c47 versus the M3 for resupply and base taking. It should make it possible for a tiny number of guys in fighters to put a break on a tiny number of guys late night sneaking fields with M3s. One good evening with a hoard would roll this map if anyone ever gets organized again and runs missions. 

Now all I have to do is build my new PC and start laying down mounds of sand in my sandbox, then sculpt them.