Map: Map making for hire

[RightDeve]

Originally Posted by Imp

. . . . .
Plock, Poland - the city river & oil refinery, was going to do 2 maps one with refinery on the left then copy that part & do another with refinery on the right. Map base height should probably be 10 so need to be close to river to see into.
. . . . .

How to set the Map Base Height in the map editor? And, will that help in creating elevated building?

[Imp]

Set the fill range to a high level, select the terrain you want in this case level 1 hill & press the fill button. Do a few times across the map till its all at that level.
With hills the map edges may still show slopes in which case save it & reload it & that will get rid of them giving you a flat map.

Turns streams into deep cuttings & makes LOS into rivers much harder, you can spend a bit of time making some gentler sloping terrain into it in places using the asterik key & or marshes. i.e. set some hexes to 2 4 6 8 for a gentle slope.

I ocasionaly do it on the odd hill esp if a road is going up it or for raised, sunken road & raillines.

No you cant do it managed it once somehow using the asterik key & a multi hex building.
The trouble with raising the height of the building is you produce a hill & hence slopes so for urban enviroment ruins LOS for any adjacent road unless thats what you want.

Save your map before messing with the asterik key it can sometimes cause problems forming a ripple & producing invisible slopes elsewhere.

[Mobhack]

The * key is for minor adjustments, like 1-3 or so height units. It adjusts base ground height.

A hill is 10, and a slope is 5 units.

There are no multi-story buildings (and never will be) - a building hex is a built up area is all. Built up area hexes have a standard height add - 2 or so, less than trees IIRC which is considered in LOS calculations. (Which is not reported in the mouse over, as that reports base ground height).

So all the * key does is add a micro-ridge or micro-depression if you use it to add 1 or subtract 1 or maybe 2 from base ground height.

Andy

[RightDeve]

Originally Posted by Mobhack

The * key is for minor adjustments, like 1-3 or so height units. It adjusts base ground height.

A hill is 10, and a slope is 5 units.

There are no multi-story buildings (and never will be) - a building hex is a built up area is all. Built up area hexes have a standard height add - 2 or so, less than trees IIRC which is considered in LOS calculations. (Which is not reported in the mouse over, as that reports base ground height).

So all the * key does is add a micro-ridge or micro-depression if you use it to add 1 or subtract 1 or maybe 2 from base ground height.

Andy

I remember somewhere in this forum an example of elevated building that Pyros created. But unfortunately, the knowledge to create that type of building is a secret that he didn't reveal in the thread itself. The thread is a kind of quiz where Pyros asked could you make this one?
I have contacted him via PM long ago but unfortunately he said wait until I have spare time for SP.

And when I refer to elevated building, it is a multi-hex building, because it's impossible to create a single-hex elevated building in SP.

After all tinkering and frustration with the map, the best I can do to create an elevated building is to surround a single (or two) hex hill (usually the height >=30) with multi-hex building. That way, the hill acts as a "supporting" pole for the surrounding building. Because the hill itself is not possible to be crowned a building, I placed an impassable or rough hex to compensate it's cover/concealment attributes.
But using this technique, it is unpleasant in the eyes to see that bulging "cap" in the middle of the multi-hex building. Also, the height of the surrounding building is not the same (always lower, much lower) than the "cap" itself.

Fortunately, this technique eliminates "slopes" that would appear if using traditional hills under the building. And so, the resulting "elevated multi-hex building" could have a completely flat road surrounding it, and thus no LOS obstruction in an urban environment. Moreover, I have tested it myself, that units trying to "climb" the "edge" of this elevated buildings will have their movement point reduced a lot, compared to just entering a flat building.

Someone might dismiss this idea of elevated building as nonsense. But regarding the nature of modern urban areas, I do believe these "high-rise buildings" are closer to real life in modern combat than what it is previously in World War II. This is especially true for Artillery Observer, Sniper, ATGM, portable ground-to-air missiles, that's prevalent in modern warfare.

One distinguishing feature of these high-rise buildings is that they could provide LOS over and beyond flat buildings, trees, knoll, etc.

After all, if SP could model a 3D battlefield with rolling hills and height difference, why there should be no such High-rise building modeled for use in urban warfare.

The PBeM test that I did to these maps showed that most urban tactics that's been long held in SP need to be revised. A whole multitude of new options and obstacles is present. Think about hiding MBT's from high flying attack helicopters. About the dangers of those snipers and ATGM commanding the entire urban area that your already restricted moves in urban area is even more restricted now, especially for tanks. What about combat that involves "climbing" high rise building that's sure to suck up a mighty lot of movement points. And much more.

The map attached shows exactly what I'm saying.

Thank you.

[Cameronius]

Originally Posted by RightDeve

Oh, crap! I just loaded the map attached in a fresh install of SPMBT, and it turned out to be the wrong one! (I wonder if we can edit our long submitted post in this forum ??)

Okay, here it is, two maps in a single zip file. The smaller one of them I have actually "tested" in a PBeM with good results regarding the effects on ATGM and sniper role.

I'll have a look at this tonight.

[Cameronius]

Here is Pyros' method for making tall buildings. He showed me this when I was helping him with his ANZAC Campaign. Attached is a map download with an example.
1- Choose your building size and location.
2- Use desired terrain height(100 in my example) to cover area building will occupy. Slope hexes should be covered by building.
3- Cover heightened terrain with impassable terrain.
4- Place building in desired location.

In my example the outside edges of the building are at height 95, inner hexes of the building are 88. Hexes immediately surrounding are at 0.

This technique provides you with a tall and impassable building with no surrounding slope.

Hope you find this helpful.

[RightDeve]

Well, I found those clear hexes immediately surrounding the building to be mostly non-zero height. Tried leveling them individually using the asterisk key but then the entire building hex reported zero height. This confirmed my earlier conclusion that an "elevated" building in WinSP map requires the so-called "height-supporting hex" that must be a non-building hex; without this "support pole", the entire building hexes would yield zero height. Maybe you misread the height report (on the top red bar) of those surrounding hexes. Sometimes you need to move/scroll the map a bit for it to report the height correctly, like after altering the height using the asterisk.

This is what the map looks like (with my two "elevated" buildings on the right). It seems that using multiple "supporting poles" would reduce excess height reduction on the building hexes. Using just one support pole (the building on the center), the maximum height for the building hexes is 87. When using three support poles, each 200 (building on the right), the maximum height for building hexes is 170.

[RightDeve]

Originally Posted by Cameronius

. . . . . . .
This technique provides you with a tall and impassable building with no surrounding slope.
. . . . . . .

I just realized that high-rise buildings indeed should be impassable to vehicles. Without impassable hex under the building, a player could cheat by ramming his tanks into one of those "elevated buildings", creating an almost impenetrable tank fortress hundreds of meters above the surface. This is only worse if that player uses an engineer tank so that this tank won't be immobilized.

To create this, lay a carpet of impassable hexes in the area the building will be placed. Without raising anything yet, place the building hexes on top of that impassable carpet, but leaving one impassable hex open (usually on the center); then raise this open impassable hex using the asterisk key, to make it the "supporting pole" for the entire high rise building complex.

[Cameronius]

Originally Posted by RightDeve

I just realized that high-rise buildings indeed should be impassable to vehicles. Without impassable hex under the building, a player could cheat by ramming his tanks into one of those "elevated buildings", creating an almost impenetrable tank fortress hundreds of meters above the surface. This is only worse if that player uses an engineer tank so that this tank won't be immobilized.

To create this, lay a carpet of impassable hexes in the area the building will be placed. Without raising anything yet, place the building hexes on top of that impassable carpet, but leaving one impassable hex open (usually on the center); then raise this open impassable hex using the asterisk key, to make it the "supporting pole" for the entire high rise building complex.

Good to see that you are experimenting. The map editor can be quite tricky, but by trying different things you can usually come up the a compromise that will achieve you tactical goal for the scenario design.