Georgia On My Mind. . .

[+Baltika 84]

Defending the Motherland, 31 IAP out of Zernograd

 

 

 

Taking a stroll along the Black Sea Coast

 

 

 

Hiking up into the Caucasus Mountains

 

 

 

Feeling the chill up here. . .

 

 

 

Long way from home, over Orumiyeh Lake

 

 

 

 

Here's the whole shooting gallery:-

 

 

 

Core tileset is Polak's PR Desert, with some Russian fields by Baltika.

 

Still an alpha, lots of airfields to be flattened.

 

Next up, going downtown over Tehran with the Israeli Air Force. . .

Edited October 2, 2011 by Baltika

[dsawan 624]

Hey, looks nice. At first, i thought you meant the state of georgia, USA.

[Lexx_Luthor 57]

Does look nice. Flat flats and steep mountains all in one swift map. Love terrains like that. Mountains near the sea, 2nd to last screenshot, are special goodness. Did you have to take any special steps to avoid water running up mountains?

 

Hey, looks nice. At first, i thought you meant the state of georgia, USA.

That map is best with loaded B-47 and F-86Dora. Collision set to hard.

[Slartibartfast 153]

Looking good...

[+PureBlue 71]

Great work mate, love the mountains.

Now I can fly some anti-terrorism anti-separatist missions there. CAS and special ops up in the 3000-4500m range

[+Baltika 84]

Cheers, all.

 

Gotcha dsawan, using that song title for that wrong-footer was precisely what I had in mind

 

Lexx, I have done my usual thing by creating a whole stack of extra transition tiles from the core tileset so that autotexture will get it right where multiple tile types collide. For Orumiyeh Lake in Iran and Lake Van Golu in Eastern Turkey, I have created specific lake textures which autotile only at the precise altitudes of those lakes. Each of those lakes is big enough that you get a good large flat area which TE will autotexture in that way - provided you create enough transition tiles for the surrounding tile types. There are a few glitches off-screen which will be fixed the usual way - hand tiling in TE once the core cities and airfields are plotted and tiled. As you probably know, you can't use the sea level function on high altitude lakes as it sets their altitude to zero, which creates a massive hole in the landscape - not pretty.

 

Cheers PureBlue, I take no credit for the textures, which are all from Polak's PR desert - other than my basic Russian fields - happily they run in parallel lines for tens, if not hundreds, of kilometers in reality. Gotta love life down on the old collective farm.

 

And yeah, I know this basic terrain bumps right up against your unbeatably superlative Anatolia terrain, and probably will overlap a bit with PFunk's upcoming Black Sea v2.0, but my focus will be on the Russia-Georgia-South Ossetia War of 2008, with a sideline into the rumoured plans of the Israeli Air Force to "extend" their training missions in Turkey through the Georgian Air Corridor, across the Caspian Sea and into Iran to strike the Iranian nuclear facilities. OK, I will have to be a bit creative with the last bit given my map only goes so far south, but you get the general idea.

 

Indeed, I read an interesting conspiracy theory recently to the effect that the Russian invasion of Georgia in 08 and the consequent destruction of the Georgian military capability and facilities was precisely to prevent such an operation being mounted by the Israelis, who had already secured permission to use certain airbases in Georgia.

 

Whether that's true or not, it certainly makes for an interesting scenario, if IAF air units are already on station in Georgia when the Sickle and Hammer falls. . . With potential to drag NATO and the US into the conflict given Georgia's overtures to the West. . .

 

Or, we could go historical what-if and have a Prague-Spring style uprising in Georgia in the 60's, for a purely red-on-red conflict.

 

Anyway, in keeping with my new development model, I'll release this for fun when it reaches flyable beta stage.

 

Slainthe,

 

Baltika

Edited October 3, 2011 by Baltika

[+Brain32 265]

Very cool

[Canadair 16]

Oh Georgia. I was there at the end of '08 war for firefighting. wish you could include Kars airport..

[+EricJ 4,199]

Great work mate, love the mountains.

Now I can fly some anti-terrorism anti-separatist missions there. CAS and special ops up in the 3000-4500m range

 

One of the joys of flying the Afghan map is that when I do fly the map I do it all the time

 

Nice map!

 

matter of fact krfrge may be of assistance with building camps and stuff, as I've requested it for the Afghan map.

Edited October 3, 2011 by EricJ

[+allenjb42 4,230]

Great map! Looking forward to flying it.

 

Love the Russia/Georgia and the Israel/Iran ideas. Some other scenario ideas that spring to mind:

 

1) 1970s - Pre-revolution Iran + USA + UK vs Soviets - mid to late'70s jets, maybe a US carrier battle group in the Black Sea, a Soviet amphibious invasion of northern Iran, British jets (Buccs, Vulcans, TSR2?) operating out of Iranian bases and ranging north to strike Soviet targets well behind the lines.

 

2) 1980s - Soviet invasion of post-revolution Iran. Maybe part of a wider WW3? Clancy's Red Storm Rising was supposed to knockout NATO so the Sovs could seize the Persian Gulf oil fields and Harold Coyle's Sword Point pretty much plays out this scenario without the european war first.

 

3) Operation Warlord - Rather than a campaign, maybe a set of single missions covering the action in Richard Herman's Force of Eagles?

[Guest Pfunk]

Looks better than my Black Sea terrain does right now.

[+PureBlue 71]

Thank you very much for the praise Baltika

 

As others suggested this map will allow many different scenarios.

If I may suggest 2 more airfields for the Turkish Side; Malatya (7th Airforce Base) where F-4 squadrons are based, and Batman (2nd UAV squadron base)

 

And please check where Duhok is, it should be further east.

I will try to build some camps that could be used here and perhaps Afganistan

 

[+PureBlue 71]

Forgot to add:

If you decide to include Malatya Airbase, watch out for the game's Mission Generation limit. The game has trouble generating flights/target objects, in the outer %10 of the Terrain map.

For example if the map is 1400x1400 kilometers, the airfields in the outer 140 km parts will mostly not generate flights.. Something to do with waypoints/targets being ignored in this region.

It's a different concept than The Wall limits.

Edited October 9, 2011 by PureBlue

[+Baltika 84]

Hi PureBlue,

 

Thanks for the tips re airbases. Batman AB is already in, and there are working airfields plotted at Erzincan, Elazig, Diyarbakir, Sanliurfa and Kiziltepe (MQM MARDIN). Have just been checking the lat/long co-ordinates of Malatya, unfortunately by my calc it is about 105km West of Trabzon's longitude which puts it about 65k from the Western edge of my map, which is behind The Wall. I can squeeze it in by shifting it a good few km to the East of it's real-world location, if you think it's not to be missed out and don't mind sacrificing that accuracy. Unfortunately, target plotting and tiling is too far advanced for me to expand the map or shift it around.

 

Good spot re the location of Duhok (or Dahuk, depending on which map I read). Looking at it again, all the Iraqi cities are a little bit too far to the West on my map. I suspect I plotted them close to relatively flat areas to allow for city tiling and airbase placement, but now you point it out I agree they are a bit too far off the mark.

 

Back to the drawing board. . .

[+Baltika 84]

This has been mentioned before, and I don't think we'll see it any time soon, but it would be nice one day to see SF2 use the MSFS/CFS style world map, so that work on individual maps could be incorporated into a global world map.

 

Just an idea

[+PureBlue 71]

Great!

About Malatya, I think the main F-4 base in the region, would be very useful in any future campaign designs. Because of the game limits, you'd have forgo accuracy, but oh well. Just putting it more to the east would be just fine.

What size is the map?

Edited October 10, 2011 by PureBlue

[+Baltika 84]

Progress update. . .

 

Tiling work mostly complete, some corrections as I go along.

 

About 40% through flattening airfields.

 

Let myself go and bought TK's F-14A skinpack DLC - fits right in to this scenario

 

 

CAP over Orumiyeh lake, Northwestern Iran, near to the border with Turkey:-

 

 

 

 

Lining up for final approach to TAB1 Mehrabad International, Tehran:-

 

 

 

Getting there, slowly but surely

[+Baltika 84]

What size is the map?

 

 

Oh yeah, 1000km x 1000km, no upscaling for this one to keep the rugged mountains as accurately modelled as possible, so TK's usual 66% RL scaling applies.

 

Even so, this neck of the woods is plenty big enough to fly around in

[dsawan 624]

Nice pics Balitka. look forward to this for sf2.

[+Baltika 84]

Thanks

 

I must admit I am pleased with the way this one is turning out:-

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[+EricJ 4,199]

Nice...

[+Crusader 2,082]

oh yah ..

[+Baltika 84]

Oh Georgia. I was there at the end of '08 war for firefighting. wish you could include Kars airport..

 

Kars is in, no worries

 

Anyone else got any suggestions?

[Wrench 9,795]

all the city tods for those tiles need a TOTAL rebuild! (used them on the iran/iraq, and irag2003 terrains) they don't 'fit' within the city limits (have to get on to the town planning council, methinks! )

 

but it's looking pretty good!

[+Baltika 84]

all the city tods for those tiles need a TOTAL rebuild! (used them on the iran/iraq, and irag2003 terrains) they don't 'fit' within the city limits (have to get on to the town planning council, methinks! )

 

Good point Kevin

 

In fact, the whole terrain needs some TOD love, but I regard that as a second sweep issue, after HFD, TFD, and targetisation ARGH

 

Would help if anyone had Polak's Texturelist.ini for his PR desert terrain, means I wouldn't have to reinvent the wheel for all his cool buildings. . .

 

Anybody know where it might be?

 

Slainthe!

 

Baltika