Moving bases around on a finished terrain other than tweaking distances to fit the rules is almost impossible for the existing land masses if you have to maintain the same numbers of bases per country. Melee arena terrains the land masses less dictate the bases as the bases and the distances 19-25 miles dictate outcomes. Yes you see on maps bases almost 2 sectors or 45-50 miles. I'll venture that was a base placement with no where else to go to keep the number of bases on all three sides even.
The Fester terrain you would do better to see if Hitech will generate a make map of the terrain with icons enabled in 4096x4096 because that terrain is a 20x20 sector. Then create a 2048x2048 bitmap where 8pixels will equal 1mile in the terrain editor. 4096x4096 is just two 2048x2048 or 10x10 terrains. So 1mile on the Fester 4096x4096 map will be one mile just like on your new 2048x2048. Grab the parts you like and copy\paste into your new 2048x2048. Fester pretty much made the three country layouts the same, so keeping to that will help you now adjust the base icons around to fit the 19-25 mile rule for airfield placement. Once you have your 2048x2048 bitmap adjusted to where you want the bases to be and your land masses are how you will want to see them. I can take that bitmap and convert it into a heightmap file that the terrain editor will import and give you basic land masses of 500ft elevation and oceans. Then you will have to sculpt away, or I think L3DT has a free version that only makes 2048x2048 heightmaps the terrain editor can import. L3DT will allow you to do the sculpting and has more tools to aid in that 3D construction effort. The AH3 terrain editor will let you do everything, in some ways it's like carving a copy of the David statue out of butter with a spoon.
You can get a copy of Easyscor's terrain building pdf for the Melee arena distances for everything. Then start trying to fit everything into the new smaller space 2048x2048. That's what I did with OCEANIA because at 4096x4096 it was just too big. Below is a screen shot of my master 1:1 blue print map of the 4096x4096 OCEANIA with the 2048x2048 cut out I turned into the current version I'm setting up bases on. The smaller terrain is a bit different because 2048x2048 forced it to be.
Original oceania before I realised it was too big.
2048x2048 cutout from the exisitng work for ocenaia.v2.
Current version with land finsihed. This is a CBM map I'm using to map spawns.
This is why you can't just change a map like Varicu and others so cavalierly throw out there. Those rings below are distance rulers you use in the terrain editor to make sure you are following the airfield distance rules. In my case predominately 19 miles and everything is fit equally to the terrain. It's easier moving vBases, ports and strats. Or adding new Flak bases. Building a new terrain will be easier, Waffle made his adjustments to buzzsaw look easy because he created the original heightmap file in L3DT. So he adjusted that and re-imported it under the existing terrain tiles to save time on terrain tile re-touchup painting. Moving air bases around has a domino effect where you have to touch more than just the few you want to move. And then you have to touch up everything you touched along with possibly re-sculpting the terrain in the 8sq miles around the new locations.
Even after I finished creating the whole terrain, once I lay in the bases, I always have up to an hour of touchup with each field that has GV spawns so GV combat is not bogged down in trees or the micro terrain. And the new bridges with a river I'm placing at some fields between the field and the spawns, sometimes another hour or so making sure GV combat will work with it and making the river look like a river. Sure, someone can just modify the Fester terrain.......
*Note to self, I think I put that city in the wrong location.
