Terrain Editor: Radius distance measuring tool.

[bustr]

On my new terrain with all of the airfields now sitting on some number of water fronts 19 miles apart, I wish the circle tool could be modified. The 8in gun in the shore battery has a 32k range which is 18miles. Depending on where I place a shore battery to be the most effective to defend a field, I'm setting it to drop 8in rounds on the water side runway spawn of the nearest field 19miles away. I'm compensating with numerous PT spawns and leaving out shore battery at some feilds. In other cases I've created an 18cm paper ruler and use the "S" key until I shrink the grid squares to 1cmx1cm on my screen. Then I arch the ruler to try and make the object placement. I spend as much time not scratching my monitor as trying to find a working distance. 

Possibilities because Hitech's time is at a premium.

1. - I can set a focus to the object I need to know 18 miles so that it's ring is red in the over whelming field of white 18 mile rings from other objects.
2. - I can turn off the ring for the town to only see the airfield ring.
3. - I can use the mouse to designate the field I'm working with to display only a ring for it.
4. - I can turn on a shore battery view that once I set down that object, a triangle with an arch will turn on that shows the width of gun travel, and the maximum range of the 8in rounds.

[bustr]

Here is what I was hoping was possible, I know some things are not as easy as they look. So I understand this may not be a good wish.

You can see from the screen shot I mapped the ends of the guns rotation and placed the mouse at the end of the gun's range at each point, then ran an arch. Because so many of the feilds are 19 miles apart and on the water, I'm putting in shore battery's and PT spawns to account for the 6 task groups out of each country along with your own task groups being captured. I'm getting creative not setting shore battery to allow engaging other shore battery or runways. I'm spending up to 30 minutes per shore battery laying them down, using a 1cm=1mile ruler to eyeball everything against the grid. Then running a build and hopping into the shore battery in land mode to test the range and arch.


Here is the CBM with the max range arch and barrel maximum swing stops.




You can see I'm a long way from finishing adding minimum two shore battery per field. Except for the center island, all feilds with PT spawns have shore battery set in place and tested.

[hitech]

Why not simply put circles around the shore batteries with the circle option in the right click menu of the map in the editor?

HiTech

[bustr]

1.- It turns into a white spider web lace visually clogging the work space in the TE.
2. - Most of the feilds are back from the shoreline, so the 18 mile on center for the field is fine, setting the object near the shore lines allow the 8in to hit shore battery across the slots and fields.
3. - I'm creating a 1cm=1 grid mile ruler that copies the red quarter pie area I put on the screen shot.  I can hold it against the screen to shoe horn the mosaic of gun arcs and max ranges into these 19 mile distances. I know you are swamped with todo lists.

Those circles work better for spawns and object spacing for the distance requirements of bases and strats. Something like the shore battery, it often surprises me just how off I've been relying on the circle centered from Group Masters. It wasn't as much of an issue on the last terrain and you saw the complaints because I didn't load up every field on the water with shore battery's. With 9 task groups per country, narrow water ways, and short distances to a majority of feilds next to the water. I'm forced to install shore battery at every one of those fields as a fairness thing even if one 16in salvo makes it a moot point.

You have impressed on me, adapt and get on with it since I first create that gunnery terrain and stopped pestering you for things like that.

[bustr]

doH!!

For any aspiring terrain builder, when you go into setup circles, you can chose a type object for the radii center. In the heat of trying to setup and duplicate large numbers of feilds and their objects for game play ranges, you can over look small things in the available tools from the terrain editor.

My apologies Hitech.