A few MA terrain questions

[Greebo]

Hi everyone, it has been a long time since I posted in the terrain forum but I have recently started playing with the editors again with a view to maybe updating CraterMA. I have some questions I am hoping someone can answer:-

What are the current MA icon settings? i.e GV v GV, Aircraft v GV and so on. I seem to recall there was a dynamic range setting depending whether the GV was moving or under cover, is this correct?

Are icons visible through clouds?

Realistically, given a clear line of sight, what is the maximum range a good player in a tank can hit another moving or stationary GV?

When placing GV SPs around a base the suggested distance to the map room used to be 3 miles, is this still current? Also is there any suggested minimum distance between a pair of GV SPs at a base?

When building cloud fronts in the editor are there any guidelines for MA terrains, i.e. "don't exceed XXXX sprites/face counts etc" or is it just a case of checking FPS in the game with and without the weather?

[JimmyD3]

Greebo, I will try to answer your questions to the best of my ability.

The current MA icon settings for GV/GV only exist for friendly GVs. If your in a GV there is no icon  for enemy GVs.

Plane/GV 3750 yds, with engine off that drops to 600 yds.

Icons are not visible through clouds, however when using "padlock" they are.

I have hit tanks at distances in excess of 4200 yds.. In most cases however i twill be less than 3000 yds

I currently have my incoming gv spawn points set at 3 mile. The default is 5  miles. I try to keep at least a mile between spawn points as a minimum. Most of the time I try to keep them at 1 1/2 to 2 miles apart. I don't recall who started it, but I have been adding a short spawn from the base out towards the incoming spawns for defensive purposes. These are centerd between the incoming spawns and 1 1/2 to 2 miles from the Town Map Room.

The Cloud Editor is an enigma to say the least. As you know the amount of cloud cover can impact the FPS, although I have not noticed and major issues on my maps. I did discover one anomaly, for practical purposes I have found no problems with clouds or fronts as long as you stay with the Cloud elevations settings, which can be difficult as the pop-up menu does not let you see the full text defining the parameters.  Finally, hard fast rule, you are allowed 1 and only 1 layer per map. I learned that the hard way. I wont bore you with all the details suffice to say, strange things happened, icons disappearing at 15000 ft on all aircraft and the only way to reset it was to re-log.

Hopefully I helped you a little bit. 

[Devil 505]

Greebo, PM Brooke about the cloud editor. He's made cloud files for events that work with breaking the icons.

Also, be aware that cloud layer level is kind of just a suggestion to the editor. The cloud base may actually be 1-2K higher than what you want. 

[Dadtallica]

In about 10 years when I am in the retirement zone, I definitely plan to make maps assuming and desperately hoping the abilities, still exist. Of course I have it downloaded forever so I can always make my own off-line until I’m blue in the face but hopefully we keep this thing going until everyone on the planet is dead. If we do it just right, the sun will take care of everything for us.

 I remember trying out mapmaking way early in my time here and I loved it, but I never got anywhere with it because I just didn’t have the time… at the time.

I would love for one of our amazing cartographers to start recording video diaries of building a map from start to finish. And I don’t even mean from start to finish in one video I mean your session videos whether it’s ten minutes or three hours, the progression and evolution is more important than a detailed textual tutorial. Mostly because I could save it and have it for later but also because the tremendous work you do should be displayed and contextualized for the people here wishing for more to be done. As if y’all needed something else to do. lol

Either way please keep doing what you all do. I’m glad you let us all have input on these maps and make sure we all have a wide variety to enjoy.

[Greebo]

Thanks for all the answers guys. I was never able to GV in the game due to motion sickness so this is very helpful to me.

The reason for the clouds and icons questions are that I am planning to put three airbases around the central crater as a fighter town with three V bases just inside them for a central tank town. The problem with this of course is TT and the V bases getting constantly bombed from the nearby airbases. So what I plan to do is place a permanent cloud front (volcanic steam from the caldera?) at about 3,000 feet over the central V base area with very dense knots of cloud covering TT and the three V bases. My hope is this will make it difficult to take out the V bases with level bombers from the local airbases, although I suspect blind carpet bombing with low alt Lanc formations might become a thing. Also very high alt bombers might still be able to target the V bases if they can see them through the bomb site before the clouds come into visual range. The clouds won't stop dive bombing or low level attacks but should make it harder for aircraft to line up targets in advance, especially as I plan to ring TT with a small caldera that will top out close to the clouds.

CraterMA's SPs are currently 3 miles away from the map rooms but I feel I placed some of the multiple inbound SPs too far apart, so I'll bring these together a bit.

I'm going to start by placing the new crater bases, adding the small TT caldera and creating the crater's cloud front. Assuming I can get this to work how I want (without FPS issues etc.) I'll then redo the rest of the map and post updates in here as I go.

[popeye]

The reason for the clouds and icons questions are that I am planning to put three airbases around the central crater as a fighter town with three V bases just inside them for a central tank town. The problem with this of course is TT and the V bases getting constantly bombed from the nearby airbases. So what I plan to do is place a permanent cloud front (volcanic steam from the caldera?) at about 3,000 feet over the central V base area with very dense knots of cloud covering TT and the three V bases. My hope is this will make it difficult to take out the V bases with level bombers from the local airbases, although I suspect blind carpet bombing with low alt Lanc formations might become a thing.

An option would be to disable hangar-killing bombers at the new local fields.

Also, weather front Type 10, Cumulus Mediocrus is very dense and might be a good deterrent to high-level bombers.

[Greebo]

An option would be to disable hangar-killing bombers at the new local fields.

Also, weather front Type 10, Cumulus Mediocrus is very dense and might be a good deterrent to high-level bombers.

I did consider disabling heavy bombers at the local fields but didn't think this would be allowed in an MA terrain. Just thought it might cause confusion to players unable to select a particular bomber even though the bomber hangars are up at the field. Has anyone else disabled anything non-standard (apart from the Me 163 and RV-8) on an MA terrain?

I'm not too bothered if very high altitude bombers can take down the hangars at the V bases as it will take a while for them to get up to altitude and they could still do that in the same sort of time if the central airbases didn't exist. Its more constant repeated attacks from the local airbases I am trying to discourage. Also I don't think I can have a high altitude weather front directly above a low altitude one, there has to be a 40 mile gap between two fronts.

I have been playing with the cloud editor today but have run into a problem. I created some custom clouds in the "cloud" tab of the editor and named this "Caldera Steam", setting it up as cloud type 12. Saving this created a couple of files in the terrain's "chconfig" folder; "Caldera Steam.cpa" and "cld12.cld". Moving to the "Weather" tab in the CE I set up a front using my "Caldera Steam" cloud type and hit "Submit". I then saved the weather which created the "awa" file in the ah3terr folder. After exiting the CE I used the TE to build the terrain. The problem is the custom weather does not appear in the game, fronts created using the CE's standard types 0-11 clouds work fine though. Anyone know what I am doing wrong?

[popeye]

I did consider disabling heavy bombers at the local fields but didn't think this would be allowed in an MA terrain. Just thought it might cause confusion to players unable to select a particular bomber even though the bomber hangars are up at the field. Has anyone else disabled anything non-standard (apart from the Me 163 and RV-8) on an MA terrain?

How about surrounding the local fields with hills heavy bombers couldn't take off?   Nothing against the MA rules, but might generate some <cough> complaints, though.   

[Greebo]

Its not a rule as such but there is an MA guideline about checking runways are clear of obstructions and I'm leery of doing too many things that would get the terrain rejected. Even having the central V bases this close to the airfields is something Hitech might object to which is why I am trying to mitigate it with the clouds.

Going back to disabling heavy bombers at the central fields, if there was an arena clipboard "message of the day" set up to explain to players logging in that these three fields have been set up that way then maybe Hitech could be persuaded to go for the idea. Its not a priority though, unless I can figure out how to get the CE to do what I want the reworked map won't happen anyway.

[Dadtallica]

Its not a rule as such but there is an MA guideline about checking runways are clear of obstructions and I'm leery of doing too many things that would get the terrain rejected. Even having the central V bases this close to the airfields is something Hitech might object to which is why I am trying to mitigate it with the clouds.

Going back to disabling heavy bombers at the central fields, if there was an arena clipboard "message of the day" set up to explain to players logging in that these three fields have been set up that way then maybe Hitech could be persuaded to go for the idea. Its not a priority though, unless I can figure out how to get the CE to do what I want the reworked map won't happen anyway.

Except for all the runway trees! Lol

[Greebo]

I have had no luck trying to get the custom cloud types I create in the Cloud Editor to appear offline in the game, assuming until now that as others have done this the problem must be me. However it now seems likely that everyone else has just been using the default cloud types 0-11 and that the CE's cloud type creation functionality is broken. Before I post a bug report to that effect can I ask if anyone has ever created a new cloud type or have they just used the standard types 0-11 in their terrains?

[JimmyD3]

I have not created a new cloud type, but have used what is available. While I have not used the Cloud editor in a while, I do not recall being able to create new cloud types. I'll have to look into it. Brooke is the hot shot that I have always turned to, he knows the editor much better than I do.

[Greebo]

Thanks Jimmy, I have already PM'd Brooke and he told me he has just used the standard types 0-10 in his terrains so I am fairly sure now its a bug.

The Cloud tab in the CE is plainly put there to enable users to design their own clouds and it does work, but only within the editor itself. I can see the clouds I have designed when I tick the "Render Cloud" box and the CE creates a new cloud type that I can then use for a front. Saving the clouds creates the necessary files too, its just the game does not recognise them.

Time to post a bug report I guess.

[Eagler]

Just a guess but my thoughts are that how clouds seem to affect a bunch of stuff new ones aren't permitted for simplicity sake.

Eagler

[Greebo]

I think if Hitech wanted to prevent people from making new cloud types with the Cloud Editor he'd have just removed the Cloud tab entirely, not kept it and prevented it from working. It is also possible that new clouds types could be banned for an MA terrain but no one has said this is the case. The only potential issue I can think of is someone making an enormous cloud type that is so resource hungry it tanks players' FPS. The clouds I want to create though will be much smaller than the huge 30+ mile square fronts the CE ships with and so should use less resources, not more.

Even if it turns out new cloud types are not allowed in MA terrains fixing the bug would still be useful for those making them for event terrains.