Something for the Pacific Tile Set - 4

[bustr]

Last night I realized I had been dragging my feet on this Oceania terrain while I was playing in the Melee arena watching a base capture stall for over 2 hours.

The terrain last night was a 2048x2048 10x10 sector with irregular land masses and irregular ocean areas upgraded from AH2. The bases were setup per the requirements to have an equal number in each country but, this created a need to place some bases in long lines with the nearest alternate bases 1 and slightly more of a sector away. It was good for the old hoard days of 300 player nights to slow down the steam roller. Last night it helped perpetuate a stalled base capture in one corner of the terrain. Coincidentally creating the only real opportunity for a fight for the rooks and boring because it was stalled which helped rooks log off it appears.

I decided that I'm stalled with Oceania as it is even if I have some spectacular mountain ranges no one will ever see. It was excellent practice for me in rapid creation of mountain ranges though. Looking at Oceania the 2048x2048 center of the terrain is undeveloped 500ft elevation land masses and can be clipped directly out of the heightmap file to create an Oceania V2 2048x2048. In the back field areas I will have to massage some land for the HQ\City\Strats, but at this point that is a very simple proposition.

I'm looking at setting down all airfield objects on the islands at the minimum allowed distance of .75 sector versus 1-1.25 sector we see on converted AH2 terrains. And the center triangular island I will duplicate NDisles with the airfields being 12 miles from each other with only a map room on the field. I will do the same in terms of the map room for all other small airfields I place on islands. I have to make a new 1:1 blueprint file to determine base placements and GV spawns.

Here is the area of the 20x20 sector terrain I will use to create the new Oceania smaller terrain. The red square boarder is an 1:1 2048x2048 map area, and the red circle shows the land masses(combat area) will be equal and balanced.


Oceania 4096x4096.


 


Oceania v2. 2048x2048.


   

[bustr]

With a three sided arena placed on a square terrain space, one country will have a slight disadvantage with how easy it's HQ\City will be accessible to the enemy. I can place two ports in each country with both split CV\BB task force. Which means being able to place the HQ\City\RDR\TRPs strats outside of 22miles or the BB will have a field day. I think this space is big enough to support 6 BB roaming around looking for trouble.

[DmonSlyr]

I like the layout here. I think cutting off the back islands was a good idea. I think the island should be pushed together just little closer. It would create closer battles during the off hours. Would recommend that the middle island be only 1 base at a little higher alt. Or make the islands just outside of the middle island closer together and let that island be the center for the furball action. I do think they overall layout is good.

[bustr]

I'm still working the blueprint and thank you for your observations, I've got it from here.

I decided to put 3 ports into each country and they will be CV\BB. The terrain is always a 4096x4096 area or 20x20 sectors. If you choose a map size for a 2048x2048 10x10 sector work area, the remaining half outside of the CBM map window will be the wasteland you fly over when you go out of bounds. I will set a wall boarder of some sort to keep task groups from sailing out of bounds or being hidden there. I just set a gray scale boarder on the new 4096x4096 work space that pops up out side of the clipboard map view window of 2048x2048 to enclose the smaller terrain space. I still have to locate the city and strats along with a few vBases to help setup a spawn path to connect the countries. Then the real fun of remembering the hoops I jumped through to create the unsigned heightmap RAW file that the terrain editor will import and pop all this land up for me.

Dots
Orange - airfield
Yellow - port
Asterix - HQ

[bustr]

Laying out bases will end up dictating changes to your land masses, and once you get them all marked, eliminating some base locations as obvious dead ends. Those three peanut shaped islands and the long island next to them, I removed three airfields for redundancy opening a blind spot to sneak in a task force and take a base near the HQ or strat. "If" the terrain stays up longer than a day. I still have to assign base type tags and Country-x colored numbers to each base. There does not appear to be a need for flack bases lately and the 163 base will be next to the HQ\City. I've placed the HQ\City outside of 16in range. It's obvious I'm going to be up to waders in shore batteries and PT spawn placements with all the CV\BB loose on this small of a terrain. Still haven't come up with an idea for the center of the central island for the tank furballers. I'll make the island a plateau so the airfields can't be taken by sea out from under the furballers.   

33 bases to a side including the un-capterable with 3 ports per side that will have CV&BB task groups.

HQ - yellow asterix.
Strat - red
Un-captureable - blue
GV - white
port - yellow
airfield - orange

[bustr]

It takes me longer to remember whole how to generate the RAW heightmap import file than it does to convert the blueprint to a 16bit gray scale png file, then convert that to a RAW file for import.


Here is the 10x10 sector oceania v2 terrain clipped out of the center of the 20x20 oceania v1. It took about 5 seconds for the heigtmap file to be imported and popup all of the land masses at 530ft ready for me to start sculpting.


 

[bustr]

I forgot you have to rotate the heightmap RAW file 90 degrees to the right before importing it. The screen shot from the previous post would not line up with the 1:1 blueprint file layer for the base locations. Well these 2048x2048 terrains are a lot quicker to move mountains around and sculpt them. What you can't see in this screen shot is the land at the edge of the arena runs up to 20,000ft as a band just out side of map window. A 6 mile diameter brush with the raise hill tool set to 2000ft\sec quickly pulls runoff canyons as you can see.

[bustr]

That was easy, and pretty much now I've used up the paint in elevation band tool. These islands are small enough hand painting won't be an issue.


Border elevations and painting finished, next the islands.





Southwest corner of the terrain from the outside above the 20,000ft edge that rings the terrain. The remainder of the 4096x4096 space is ocean.

[bustr]

While you are working one thing, you will find things that need to be adjusted on the fly. Working the center island I noticed the channel to the closest islands were a bit narrow. Made them wider by cutting out a ring. The island is the three small airfields from the center island on NDisles where everyone furballs all night. The airfields are 13 miles apart, on NDisles the airfields are 12 miles. I've put in a central tank furballing area. The crater walls are 7,000ft while the mountains on the center island of NDisles are 12,000ft. Those three airfields will have the map room placed on the grass near the tower like the ones on NDisles. The white squares are placeholders for the airfields I will eventually place in those spots.


Cutouts to widen the central waterway.





Central furball island.


   

[BowHTR]

Looking good Bustr!

[ghostdancer]

I like what you are doing along the edge of the map. Nice idea.

[bustr]

I have a love\hate relationship with ports. They come with their own small bay area and can park both the CV\BB task groups in it at the same time. But, a port needs a logical location to protect the ships from the weather. That's where you get creative. In this case I blew the side of a volcano out cutting a deep water bay.

I'm getting the hang of using the agrarian tile sets with toads, huts and agriculture feilds. I'm using a blending of tiles to make a road system to the port. Looks a bit more realistic from the air. The GVers will just Leroy Jenkins through the trees.

You can see the three mile circle I will use for the three GV spawn placements into all that farmland. The farmland should mask the spawns enough to cut down on spawn camping.






The new volcano and port location.





Blown out mountain side.


 

[bustr]

While you are sculpting your terrain, don't be afraid to test ideas. I was arsed by a player about destroy-able bridges. And there are three available as static objects. Hitech has no problem using them if they are indestructible. So I had to do some testing on an undeveloped land mass.


Bridge testing.

[bustr]

The bridge testing lead to Hitech mentioning he didn't mind bridges acting as choke points for GV combat. That ended up with me trying to develop an idea on the center furball island for GV's using bridges as choke points. Just remember, don't be afraid to blow away bad ideas after several hours of development if they are a bad idea. With the terrain editor, you often can't tell if an idea is a stinker until you finish a whole work area as the only way to see the problems.


After a few hours I ended up with this. Problems showed up quickly in that the highest elevations at the start of those cracks was about 2000ft and deep cracks don't work out with the current bridges.











So I ended up using the elevation tool to stamp down a 10 mile diameter circle to 25ft, then from the base of the out side 1900-2000ft cliffs, creating a bowl starting at 500ft down to 25ft in the center. The cracks turned into canals and worked with the requirements for the static bridges. The first screen shot shows my blowing away several hours of work in a few seconds. And the second screen shot shows the better developed cracks and water ways and a few hours of finishing work left for later. All this because I tested some bridges.


 

[ghostdancer]

Nice technique.