Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Terrain Editor => Topic started by: gatso on December 28, 2002, 01:17:28 PM
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I've been messing around with the TE for a while. Made a few small maps to make sure I know what I'm doing. Have got everything working on a small scale so time to go big.
MA maps: As far as i'm concerned have got to be as balanced as possible. So your looking at 3 sections that are identical, something along the lines used in AKdesert. I know what I don't like about AKdesert so I've designed a concept along the lines of what I would like to play on.
I've not submitted it to HTC yet, I want to work out the Elevation data and strat placement first.
Comments, no matter how trivial would be appreciated before I open the TE and it gets hard to modify.
Gatso
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Showing base placement and zoning for a single country. Other countries would be identical.
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Finally a close up of the base placement. Z indicates a zone master field by the way.
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I like it.
NUTTZ
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Very Nice!
Is it your intention to split the "middle" island 3 ways? If so, I was wondering if you have enough room.....
dh
(just learning TE)
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Originally posted by Horn
Is it your intention to split the "middle" island 3 ways? If so, I was wondering if you have enough room.....
Yes and yes. Although it doesn't look like a very big space on paper you have to remember each sector is 25 miles wide, each side of the triangle that that island makes is 100 miles long. It's plenty of physical room to get all 15 bases in. It'll be a bit like a larger version of 'furball island' on NDisles, at least thats the intention.
Gatso
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Another thing I think I need to do, Either combine the lower 2 zones or split the top left zone to try and get roughly the same number of fields in each non-HQ based zone. Just something I thought of while writing the above post...
Gatso
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Originally posted by gatso
Yes and yes. Although it doesn't look like a very big space on paper you have to remember each sector is 25 miles wide, each side of the triangle that that island makes is 100 miles long. It's plenty of physical room to get all 15 bases in. It'll be a bit like a larger version of 'furball island' on NDisles, at least thats the intention.
Gatso
ahhh, cc, thanks -- I like the look of it.
dh
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The neat thing about this is that at 1st glance it does not seem symetrical..............
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Looking good
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Originally posted by hitech
Looking good
thats a good sign
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HT must have been in a good mood :)
Early days yet.
I've got the elevations sorted for each land mass though...
'Water not 0' gave me a headache until I took a break and a solution popped into my head while having a cup of tea :) so thats not a problem anymore. I'm giving making at least some of my own tiles a shot too, seems silly not too. So far finding directly overhead photos of appropriate bits of countryside is harder than making the tiles themselves. hehe.
Got the TE to make a map while I was checking elevations. Makes it look 'real' compared to the above working drawings.
Gatso
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Originally posted by gatso
Another thing I think I need to do, Either combine the lower 2 zones or split the top left zone to try and get roughly the same number of fields in each non-HQ based zone. Just something I thought of while writing the above post...
Gatso
Doesnt mean you have to use it!!
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Gatso is ur map using default ground textures ?
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Looks good to me, m'dear. Main things I dislike about AK desert are the extreme elevations (way too much high terrain and not enough low terrain) and the extreme changes in elevations over-used (something I dont like about the central island in NDisles, btw).
I wouldn't be worrying about the numbers of fields in each sector within a country being equal, as that also adds a strategy twist. As well as certain points within a sector being of prime importance to attackers, it also makes certain sectors within a country of more or less interest to attackers, if the numbers of bases within each sector are not identical.
Can I put in a plea for some patches with decent amounts of cloud? Including some largeish overcast areas floating around? And clouds at varying altitudes? Including some places where the clouds will run into the terrain as the terrain rises? That'd mean the possibility every now and then of ground battles in the fog, or trying to hit targets that for a short while can't be seen... :-)
Esme
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I'd rather stick my own in Freeze, its on the list of things I need to find out. Making some now, finding them pretty easy. Hardest part is finding appropriate overhead photos. All credit to Nuttz' tile making 101 thread.
Green is good but snow might be fun too... maybe work it like the top of a globe so the center island is like an ice cap and it gradually gets warmer (greener) the further towards the edge you go... I'm playing with some stuff and I'll see. Nothing decided for final yet.
Gatso
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Maybe devide each country in zones with different terrains.
Make Desert, Forrest, Snow.
Would be fun for sure
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Esme, What would you classify as 'too high'? As I've got it set up at the moment most of the terrain is 0-6k with peaks of 10k, The very center of the middle island is a large plateau at 6k. I've got a couple of really high hilly islands and a couple with soft rolling terrain and the big main islands got both.
Personally I like the hills of Mindinoa, lots of terrain which can be used to fight around and hills for goons to hide behind. Having said that SFMA is pretty flat and there are some great GV battles so I'm trying to put a bit of both in.
Gatso
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Freeze thats pretty much impossible I'm afraid. there are only 7 main tiles to work with. :(
2 types max. I like snow/green but we'll see.
Gatso
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Gatso mainly avoid fields over 6k or so.
Also before you put the objects down for real, give me a call, might be able to prevent a few mistakes along the way.
Mainly having to do with zone numbering and field numbering.
HiTech
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Originally posted by gatso
So far finding directly overhead photos of appropriate bits of countryside is harder than making the tiles themselves. hehe.
Gatso
Images (http://www.spaceimaging.com/gallery/default.htm#)
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I really like it, Gatso :).
My favorite MA map in use now is NDisles because I really enjoy naval battles. The near utter lack of such is my main complaint with the pizza map, way more so than all the funky elevations. So the reason I've been trying to learn the editor is to make a big map along the lines of NDisles, with lots of scope for many CVs and multiple CV battles. Looks like you've beaten me to the punch, however, which is fine with me. This way I get to play it sooner :).
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Originally posted by hitech
Gatso mainly avoid fields over 6k or so.
Also before you put the objects down for real, give me a call, might be able to prevent a few mistakes along the way.
Mainly having to do with zone numbering and field numbering.
HiTech
Absolutely 100% Will do. Everything I've been doing so far has been very basic stuff. As soon as I think i have to take decicions that I think are essential to the terrain I'll give you a call. I've taken notice of a lot of early posts you've made about other peoples terrains and I'm hoping to get all the basic stuff and a few semi advanced items out the way before I submit my concept which I'm hoping will blow your socks off :D
I really am hoping I can get this to work. I know a few people have posted concepts that are good in the initial phase but have not been seen through. Hopefully I'll be different. I don't want to submit this concept 1/2 done and 1/2 thought out. I have an understanding how much work creating an MA terrain is so it may be a week or so before I'm happy with what I've thought through.
I have your phone and address, Do you have an email that you would like me to submit this too? gatso@99thastag.com will reach me directly.
Weazel, Thanks for the link.
Gatso
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Bullethead,
Yup, that was pretty much the reason for attempting this. All the small maps have their good points. I want to try and get all the best bits of each onto a single map.
I like AKdesert, It is unique in some aspects it offers and I don't want to copy it directly, that would be boring. I want to create a terrain which is different.
CV battles are a bit restricted on AKdesert, probably one of my main gripes with that specific terrain, hence the attempt at breaking up the terrain into large islands.
At this stage I'll consider any sensible suggestons how my concept can be improved but you haven't got long to make those suggestions.
Gatso
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gatso said:
At this stage I'll consider any sensible suggestons how my concept can be improved but you haven't got long to make those suggestions.
Well, the only thing I wonder about is why the big, outer islands for each country don't have a port? Why not put one on the end of the peninsula that protrudes toward the center of the map, into that channel between the next 2 inner islands? Did I say I love CVs? :D But that's just a nit. Drive on!
If you need somebody to go around and make sure all the spawn points work, let me know. I'm especially talking about remote GV spawn points. The pizza map has quite a few of those that are in bad places, either on very steep slopes that you slide helplessly down, or in the middle of 500 acres of huge boulders you can't drive through, or both.
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Gatso, with regard to my remark about elevations, the thing to bear in mind is aircraft performance. Bombers don't climb as well as fighters, so some people think that the solution is to have high-alt airfields for them. The trouble with that is that bombers then have difficulties actually taking off at the high-altitude places. The things are designed to start off at the bottom of the atmosphere, work their way up, then come back down again. If they were designed to start off from high altitude (and even 3000ft ASL is unusually high altitude for an airfield! 0-1000ft is more like it) they'd be designed and built differently.
By all means put in a few high-alt airfields, but if you do, please make them rare. But what would be better IMO would be to have just VH's up at high altitude, give those wanting some ground action more chance of setting to without too frequent interruption from those pesky pilots... :-). High-alt terrain - sure; I've had plenty of fun trying to struggle over mountain ranges with buffs or paratroops in the past, but taking off on mountain tops? No!
I have to say that whilst the MA isn't generally my cup of tea - it's not what I have a sub to AH for - I quite like the Mindanao terrain, because there are some nice large bays where one can do a spot of ocean patrolling in B17s or suchlike, looking for enemy CVs - and the CVs have plenty of room to try sneaking up to enemy territory unseen. Flying over and through the mountainous terrain is fun, but I dislike the mountaintop airfields - due to teh performance issues noted above, they just make things too easy for fighter pilots and too hard for bomber pilots.
Now, if we could just have bomber airfields at sea level and drop fighter airfields about 5k BELOW sea level... ;-) (chuckle...)
Y'know, it might even be an idea one day for someone to do a terrain of this sort with GVs primarily in mind, then add in airfields in sensible places and amounts. That'd encourage more of a ground war, which gives the JABO ers something to keep em ocupied whilst us buffers types can try striking the logistics of the foe, AND it'd make airfields more prized. Could also lead to teh interesting prospect of a side losing its last airfield but still having enough VH sites to fight back and recapture a field, maybe...
Esme
PS. If you had high mountains andsnow in the centre, then a temperate zone, with deserts around the outside, it'd be rather like the Discworld, setting of a comedy/fantasy series by the author Terry Pratchett. Heck, once I DO get to grips with the TE, I might just give that a shot... just so's people could bomb the village where the character that my nickname comes from lives... :-) Hmmm... that upside-down mountain in Uberwald might be tricky to model...
Esme (any relation to Ms Weatherwax being purely the result of not enough dried frog pills affecting the readers mind )
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why the aversion to high-alt fields ?
I think it mixes up the plane set a bit when there are higher fields.
6k isn't even that high.
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Esme, thanks for replying in depth. RE discworld, I'm a bit of a fan, I actually looked at the map as one of my starting points for doing all this lol! Unfortunately it hasn't really got the right distribution of land water to make a decent MA map :( shame. Might make an interesting project though.
It's an interesting point about V fields, Putting them as some of the highest bases makes a lot of sense to me at least.
I think I understand most peoples reasononing RE the high alt fields thing. Without posting the elevation files (which I'm not going to do) I can really show you all what exactly I've got in mind but to give you an idea there are 3 fields that I would classify as 'high' for each country on my plan at the moment as well as a few medium alt. Final altitude of these will I guess depend on whatever happens after I get in contact directly with HTC.
Thanks for the effort in making suggestions guys. I appreciate it.
Gatso
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why the aversion to high-alt fields ?
was kinda' hoping HT would tell me his thoughts on this...
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Originally posted by Wlfgng
was kinda' hoping HT would tell me his thoughts on this...
http://www.hitechcreations.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=51021
Pokie
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Wolfgang.. the reason is also clearly stated in one of my earlier posts above. Correct me if I'm wrong, but Aces High is supposed to provide us with reasonably realistic simulations of flight models for WW2 planes, yes? Well, those planes were designed to fly from airfields most of which were under 1000ft above sea level (ASL), never mind 6000 or more!
The atmosphere a couple of miles/three kilometres up is greatly different to that nearer sea-level. Colder, less dense, lower pressure - all of which affects both the amount of power which can be generated by a piston engine and the amount of lift generated by a wing up there as against down here.
Now, OK, so the MA isn't ever likely to be anything other than walloping each other with simulated WW2 weaponary (rather than a good simulation of WW2 combat - for that you need good organised scenario games), BUT - think about game balance. Fighters have higher performance than bombers in the first place, and so can more easily take off from high altitude than bombers can. The MA has classically been fighter-bomber heaven and a pretty pointless place to fly bombers bar once in a blue moon for a number of reasons - the more fields at ridiculously high elevation that a terrain has, the greater the advantage given to fighters. The bombers - if they can take off at all - cant climb much higher, and the fighters dont have to claw their way up to them if they do manage to survive to get up to 25 or 30,000ft.
In a nutshell, putting in very high altitude fields just exacerbates fighter dweebery, and makes anything else even more pointless.
Isn't it about time we got away from that at least a little? If terrains can be designed so as to encourage more GV action and more bomber action, thus giving us all more variety, isn't that a good thing?
Esme
PS: "6K isnt even that high" - in relation to what? What's the altitude of the highest airfield you can find in the real world? (It's in S America, IIRC) What are the retrictions placed on aircraft visiting that field, and why? 6K isn't all that high to FLY (although 1930's airliners often flew at about half that altitude - no cabin pressurisation), but it's damned high to TAKE OFF from!
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we have three fields over 6k that are serviced by United and are mostly private planes. pipers, gliders, jets, etc..
it's usually much cooler up here (20deg or cooler) than nearby lowlands so it's easier for them to take off loaded.
On very hot days they do limit takeoffs however.
oh.. and there's a Corsair pilot that drops in now and again.
http://www.airnav.com/airport/ASE
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thanks for the info though. HT's point about loaded bombers is well taken.
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In the next TE couldn't there be a type of field for bombers only that had extra long runways and no FHs?
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Kevin14 said:
In the next TE couldn't there be a type of field for bombers only that had extra long runways and no FHs?
No need. You can build one yourself--you're not limited to the pre-defined field groups. All the pieces to build fields are included as individual objects. So just put them down in the configuration you want and save it as your own custom shape group, so you can then plunk down the whole lot just like one of the included airfields.
But you'd have to be very careful with extra-long runways because objects can't be on or cross grid lines. So to make a runway longer than those currently available (some of which are longer than 1 mile and only fit inside a grid square at an angle), you'd have to use 2 runway objects very carefully placed so the grid line was on the seam between them.
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Originally posted by Bullethead
Kevin14 said:
No need. You can build one yourself--you're not limited to the pre-defined field groups. All the pieces to build fields are included as individual objects. So just put them down in the configuration you want and save it as your own custom shape group, so you can then plunk down the whole lot just like one of the included airfields.
But you'd have to be very careful with extra-long runways because objects can't be on or cross grid lines. So to make a runway longer than those currently available (some of which are longer than 1 mile and only fit inside a grid square at an angle), you'd have to use 2 runway objects very carefully placed so the grid line was on the seam between them.
Gatso why not trying this?
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Regarding high-alt airfields (for the last time)..
1. A Corsair is a fighter, not a bomber
2. Light aircraft are just that - light. Bit different to fully laden Lancasters, eh?
Regarding Kevin14s query about longer runways... I'd love to see more variety in airfields, particularly I'd like to see some well-camouflaged ones (which were common), and aye, some larger ones for large buffs trying to take off in overload condition. I'm curious as to why you'd like to see 'em, Kevin... not because you are thinking they'll make high-alt takeoffs easier for buffs, I hope? (They would in those cases where the terrain off the end of runways cant sensibly be taken off from, but as pointed out earlier, high-alt fields help fighters a darned sight more than they help buffs, overall. A point I havent made earlier is that if a buff is to attack one of those high alt fields outsuide of light flak range, it has to climb even higher than it would over a sea-level base. yet another disadvantage for buffs).
Esme :-}
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Originally posted by Bullethead
...use 2 runway objects very carefully placed so the grid line was on the seam between them.
I did this on a test map several months ago (just to see if it could be done) and it works very nicely. It makes getting a formation of Arados into the air a whole lot easier!
As far as strat goes, they were still just two separate abutting fields. I'm sure someone who knows what they're doing can turn them into one big field.
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Originally posted by Esme
Regarding high-alt airfields (for the last time)..
1. A Corsair is a fighter, not a bomber
2. Light aircraft are just that - light. Bit different to fully laden Lancasters, eh?
Regarding Kevin14s query about longer runways... I'd love to see more variety in airfields, particularly I'd like to see some well-camouflaged ones (which were common), and aye, some larger ones for large buffs trying to take off in overload condition. I'm curious as to why you'd like to see 'em, Kevin... not because you are thinking they'll make high-alt takeoffs easier for buffs, I hope? (They would in those cases where the terrain off the end of runways cant sensibly be taken off from, but as pointed out earlier, high-alt fields help fighters a darned sight more than they help buffs, overall. A point I havent made earlier is that if a buff is to attack one of those high alt fields outsuide of light flak range, it has to climb even higher than it would over a sea-level base. yet another disadvantage for buffs).
Esme :-}
Well thats not my main arguement, just an idea, but as far as I can see making fields for bombers only could help a great deal.
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This map shows alot of promise.
How are things coming along?
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Originally posted by Exile
This map shows alot of promise.
How are things coming along?
Nice to have a vote of confidence :) Check back in say... oh I dunno...
2 Weeks
;)
Gatso
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OK... 2 months maybe ;) Factories next followed by roads & convoys :) Then it's just cosmetic stuff :)
Gatso
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and then u host a H2H or will we get a fair chance to see it in the MA ? :):D
(crossing fingers)