Terrain idea, comments and advice needed

[oboe]

Bustr, you're just talking about the vertical scale, correct?   Are you Ok with a 256 mi/sq MA that is not real world scale, but only 1/5 scale?   The height of the highest peak in the Caucasus Mountains is 18,000+ ft, with most other peaks in the 12-15,000 ft range.   I'd want to stay as close to real as I can, unless I have to make game-play concessions.

I have virtually no experience with the terrain editor, so most of what you said I could barely follow at this point.  But, I'll get there, assuming the overall design makes sense and is worth doing.   

BowHTR, there are a couple of Black Sea terrains (one summer, one winter) but they seem to be special event terrains.  Nothing for the MA.

If this one doesn't work out, I can try another land area.   And at the very least I'll learn something about making terrains...

Thanks guys

EDIT @Bustr: I guess if the range is around 15,000 ft give or take some, and my scale is 1/5 real world, my Caucasus Mtns would be around 3,000 ft, with the highest around 3700 ft.   That may end up working, except - the altimeters in the aircraft are real world, so maybe my vertical scale should be real and only the horizontal 1/5?

[bustr]

Play with it and find a happy medium. Until you build some mountains, and think looking at them in the terrain editor, wow they look proportionally great. Then place an airfield near them and up from that field offline, you will not know what your proportions really look like. You may be surprised at what a 12,000ft mountain looks like offline.

[NatCigg]

I like the idea, my terrain is the great lakes divided 3 ways.  opening up the strait is a fantastic idea to keep all boats on the same field.  you can try to ask about cv limitations but i did not get a answer.  logically you will be responsible for learning where cvs can go (then tell me ).

First, you need approval from HTC before you do much more beyond novelty.  Then go at it. from my experience playing withe the terrain is a dicey situation. save before practice because youll never get it back the way it was.

 

[ghostdancer]

Technically you can attach 3 fleets per port. We do that all the time in the SEA terrains. For the MA though it is one fleet per port.

I don't think it ever has come up if there is a limit to how many fleets you can actually have in a terrain. The most I have ever placed is 28 fleets over on the SEA marianas terrain.

[bustr]

Hitech had me attach a BB fleet to each CV port on my last Melee arena terrain. I'm doing that again with my new terrain and 3 ports per country. It is a 10x10 terrain with a water theme, so 6 fleets per country will give the bomber guys targets. With the current Melee numbers, you can't go wrong putting alot of things in a 10x10 arena to get in trouble with if you balance the distance between airfields to allow a rapid response. On my new terrain I've focused on placing airfields 3\4 sector apart as much as I can.

My last terrain if you look at the effective combat area, is only a bit bigger than a 10x10 on a 20x20 arena work space. With my second terrain I lost control of my scale and actually built a 20x20 terrain for the Melee arena. That is why I clipped out the center 10x10 and am continuing on as V2.0 on a 10x10 work space. You have to first and foremost gain an understanding of your scale versus what you are trying to provide for your players and what you can really expect your players to put up with.

10 years ago we needed 20x20 terrains to slow down the uber hoards with feilds 1 to 1.5 sectors apart. Today 1 sector is really pushing the smaller number of players with their attention span. Small numbers need quicker action.

[ghostdancer]

Oh, some HTC now has changed it to one CV and BB is acceptable for port in the MA, good to know.

Yeah 1 sector (25 miles) should be max is still 1/3 sector .. 16 miles roughly the closest between basis for the MA?

[bustr]

I'm using 19 miles as 3\4 sector. The 13 miles is a very specific setup I'm emulating on Oceania .v2.0 from the center island of NDisles. Those three airfields are 12 miles and it was an object swap of one 1x1 vBase for 1 1x1 small airfield on NDisles. 13 miles works because I've isolated the island at least 19 miles from the nearest airfield.

I posted about using one off of the objects called factory objects from the object list. Do you know if it is permissible to use a few of them on my central island in the tank furball area to add some places to hide behind and get into close quarters combat? They are the standard factory objects on the TT 2x2 object and strat objects so are in use on any Melee terrain. I just want to create a complex in the center of the tank arena caldera to make it worth running around in it.

If they as standard objects are benign to players FPS placed down on the terrain field, then I'm wondering if I couldn't use them as a cover for GV spawns scattered around to protect GVers from spawn camping.

[ghostdancer]

We have placed individual objects before in the SEA terrains from the HTC created objects that come with the TE. There is no technical reason you can't do it and as you said since it is an object created by HTC it should be perfectly safe and need no additional vetting. However, I don't know if they are good with doing so for a MA terrain or not. I don't know why they wouldn't be but I think you would have to shoot them a PM to find out if they are okay with it for the the MA.

All I can say is it is fine for the SEA and works without an issue. So more of a policy decision for the MA.

[bustr]

I got a PM back, we don't add the static individual factory objects onto Melee arena terrains.

[hitech]

Btw map sizes no longer need to be a power of 2, but now can be any multiple of 32 I.E.

32 64 96 128 160 192 224 256 ......

The editor only lets you select power of 2, but you can edit the xxxxxxx.mdm file. I'ts just a text file.

Also I like you terrain concept so far.

HiTech

[oboe]

This is how far I've come.  All bases should be between 3/4 and 1 sector from each of their closest neighbors.  I got stuck planning the spawn points into other bases, and started studying how other people have set them up.  I'm not sure what works best for MA.  Some mapmakers chose a very complex network of bases supporting each other within the country's original territory, with just a couple of attack routes into opposing countries.  Buster's BowlMA is very interesting with some deep strike spawn points into adjacent islands, and some fields with no support at all. 



Does this still seem workable and reasonable?   I'm trying to keep major airfields on real life locations like Kiev, Ankara, Stalingrad and of course I stuck the refinery complex on Ploesti.  No question about that one!

[ghostdancer]

Looks good but I am not sure but it looks like from your icons that you might have rotated some bases. If you didn't ignore this if you rotated any bases (outside of ports) don't do so since it can cause issues that the TE test function won't catch. And as for ports have snap on when you rotate them so that they can only 90 degrees. So that they face, up down, left, right.

[bustr]

Look at your feilds from the perspective of triangles supporting and attacking each other as your fronts move. The deep strike spawns on bowlma were to give a country being rolled a chance to sneak a Ft. Apache at the worst moment for the country on the roll, or to just get things moving into the heart of Indian country. One late night a squad mate snuck one of those deep bases and we had 2 hours of fun defending it from everything. Both sides otherwise would have had a boring evening with the low numbers.

Airfields without spawns are also 3\4 sector from the nearest airfield promoting more air combat to take it along with requiring c47s. A few brave individuals have driven M3's 19 miles to the town. I listened to the concerns of furballers and GVers while being still PO'd at what happened to the HQ and city with the Fester map in AH2. Still I made three strats available on the main island of each country. From time to time some really fun GV fights happen in the center island because you can capture the tiny vBases with an M3 by de-acking using your 50cal and running in troops.

Pull up bowlma offline and look at it again thinking triangles of attack and defense from every three feilds as you move through a country. At the top of each island the spawns create long battles later at night.

[artik]

Also, is it possible to create rivers wide enough for PT boat traffic?  I'd like the Dneipr and the Don Rivers to support spawning of PT boats and be passable by boat for long reaches.  But that might mean bridges are necessary, and they must be crossable.  I know they are in towns, but can you span rivers with crossable bridges outside of towns, in the hinterlands?

I noticed this question only now.

Yes, there is a parameter river_width [1] you can define. Also I suggest to render only major rivers, probably level 1 or 2 using river_level option [2]

[1] https://github.com/artyom-beilis/makeahmap/blob/master/config.ini#L182
[2] https://github.com/artyom-beilis/makeahmap/blob/master/config.ini#L209

But notice you'll need to re run the makeahmap and import the terrain data again.

[ghostdancer]

Artik how is river width affected by map scale?

Say if the map scale was 1 to map scale 2.5. Is the river width the same or is decreased (1:1 vs 1:2.5)?