CA147 SciFi Bases style missing from 2019 installer

DaltonSpence

I've got a mapping guide for the the March Annual of 2019 but no template or drawing tool style. Does anyone know what happened to it?

Loopysue

The Mapping Guide says the templates should be in the Floorplans section. Are they not there?

DaltonSpence

Sorry, I assumed because it was SciFi it would be in the Cosmographer section. Silly me. It was the picture of the crater base that made me think outsides, not insides.

Loopysue

No worries. Images are far more powerful in the realm of subliminal suggestion than we like to think they are.

DaltonSpence

A couple of things I found out by experimenting with this template today.

1. The Mapping Guide only describes how to set up a surface base. The smartest way to build a base on a world or moon with little or no atmosphere is underground to protect it from cosmic radiation. There are even different "Effects Presets" entries for Aboveground and Underground bases. The only difference between them seems to be a "BACKGROUND GLOW" sheet underground with no description how it should be used. Is there a tutorial about designing underground SciFi bases? 
2. The main crater rim on the annual's Moonbase maps that misled me proved to be just large enough to fit around the one acre dome of my Martian "Gas" Station. Go figure. Also the transparent dome symbols have a default diameter of 107 feet so divide your dome's actual diameter by this number to scale the symbol appropriately. (For a one acre dome that would be 235.5 feet. Multiply this by the square root of the number of acres you want the dome to cover.)

Loopysue

You should be able to scale the domes quite a lot without noticeable pixel issues.

DaltonSpence

A couple more thoughts on using this style that I hope will be helpful:

1. Using my preference for a mostly underground base on worlds with no or little atmosphere I decided to use Dungeon style level naming in the wizard with the "Outside" sheet containing everything on the surface. Exterior/Interior views will be controlled by a hotspot switch that would show and hide layers as appropriate. The hollow text labels the currently active view while the solid text is the hotspot switch to the other view. The code for the hotspots are as follows: 

   +--Sheet: HYPERLINKS ----------------------
   |
   |Action: 2d hotspot: color 6 (magenta) layer 296 (LINKS EXTERNAL)
   |    line style 0 (Solid) fill style 1 (Solid)
   |    line width 0.50000 tag # 534944 pen :0.000 mm 2nd color 6
   |Hotspot rectangle lower-left  335,15
   |                  upper-right 415,40
   |Action macro text:
   |SSHOWA
   HIDESHTF ROOFS*
   HIDESHT SYMBOLS DOME
   GOLAYER LINKS INTERNAL
   HIDE LINKS EXTERNAL
   |
   |Action: 2d hotspot: color 7 (purple) layer 297 (LINKS INTERNAL)
   |    line style 0 (Solid) fill style 1 (Solid)
   |    line width 0.50000 tag # 534948 pen :0.000 mm 2nd color 7
   |Hotspot rectangle lower-left  332,42
   |                  upper-right 418,65
   |Action macro text:
   |SSHOWA
   GOLAYER LINKS EXTERNAL
   HIDE LINKS INTERNAL
   |
   +-----------------------------------------

2. My next problem is that the dome needs to be accessed by tunnels through the crater rim. That means they have to be invisible on the Exterior view and visible on the Interior one. I've decided to put the FLOORS and WALLS of these tunnels on the LINKS INTERNAL layer to do this. (Well they are "links" to outside the crater. ) I haven't decided about the outside buildings yet so I have no maps to show you.

Monsen

This is one of the great features of macro hotspots. Once you can't get away by just hiding/showing a single sheet or layer to change the view, having a button that handles it all automatically is just lovely. Love seeing people use them.