So you're working on a transparency acne cream that'll solve it right now @jslayton, are you? 😁

Or will we still need electronic antibiotics?⚡️💊

Or just keep on squeezing through an intervening Sheet?🌋

[And you think searching symbols catalogues is bad; at least they tell you what the thing's meant to be...]

There are learning curves with most of the mapping styles, I've found - remembering what symbols and drawing tool fills are available in each, particularly - and it does help if you're working with one, or a few together (as here), for some time. I like the Herwin Wielink style as well; it was the primary alternative to what was just CC3 when I started working with the program, and I made plenty of mistakes trying to recreate a map of part of the D&D Sword Coast region of their Forgotten Realms setting for 5e using it.

This latest shot is very impressive of your own map!

Of course, there's no guarantee the plates will be mobile (not all are on Earth, for instance), and in a fantasy setting, it might be interesting to assume they're all held locked together. Earthquakes could then happen when someone mucks about with the planet's magical field too much, threatening the stability of the whole plate structure and the entire world, say. In turn, that fixed structure might lead to lots of unusually high mountains, for instance, with volcanoes able to erupt for long periods in the same place.

However, how fixed are the plates in terms of this map? You did ask for comments regarding them, so maybe "not very"? If so, reducing the number, and making their edges fit better to the established terrain features might improve matters overall, including under the sea. Right now the edges look much too random to be believable. Obviously, if you're stuck with them as that's what your client wants, there's nothing we can do to assist with them at all!

Oh, and what's the size of the planet? Earth-like? Or smaller/larger?

With the ocean currents, are the arrow sizes intended to indicate strength as well as direction? If strength, those in the enclosed northern sea seem a bit too strong overall.

You might also want to rethink the current flows in relation to the seabed topography, and take another look at the currents towards the left edge of the map particularly. Two of the warm (red arrow) currents start abruptly very close to land for no obvious reason, and one cold (blue) one runs almost into a projecting finger of land in the north, which is very unlikely (unless there's some kind of vast "tunnel" under that finger of land that's warming the water up as it goes through, perhaps).

For the winds, it's maybe a little odd the ocean currents seemingly aren't influencing the temperature of the winds in places (again, assuming the arrow colours are temperature indicators).

The new blue anemones look like they'd also work as the tops of larger jellyfish as well, though a mass of tentacles trailing out on one side would be a useful addition for those, perhaps.

And a zombie "brains" coral 🧠 😉

Weeds are looking great too!

And that's just the size of the complete map 😉

[If so, that would be the classic mistake of using a 1:1 scale 😁]

Don't forget simple tricks like underlining or using italics (though this may not work equally well with all fonts), or changing the glow on the font (maybe using a different colour glow to represent different things, such as highlighting countries from terrain items or places). Might be worth testing dark lettering with a light outer glow, in case that could be clearer. Sometimes having a letter colouring nearly the same as the main map background (but not identical) suddenly jumps out simply because there's a light glow added to the letters.

Nice-looking map!

It might be useful to have a series of Steampunk "add-on" symbols, for things such as pipes, machinery items, odd-looking consoles and other features, ad infinitum, rather than trying to create new house, etc., symbols with the pipework, gears, and so forth pre-attached. Obviously, there will need to be new vehicles, but even there, something like a "normal" steam locomotive could be created, to which fancy pipework & co could be added to taste by individual map makers.

We've had this discussion before Mike, I fear. The reality is that most people playing board wargames aren't in the military and most never will have been, so the actual real-world map (which itself is only an abstraction of the reality anyway, of course) isn't going to be of significance for players of the game at all. Indeed for many, it will be hopelessly confusing.

The reason the last map style you showed is used so heavily in many published hex-wargame boards is it allows the game to flow easily, with players being able to immediately identify what is where, and how best to plan what they intend to try. While I can understand this brushes-up sharply against your sensibilities as a real-world field commander, this isn't how most players will think. While a field commander can look over a topographic map with trained eyes and identify the same things the abstracted game map shows clearly, hardly any game players will have that capability, which is naturally why the game map needs to so abstracted in the first place.

I think perhaps the way to approach this is to identify what the key terrain elements are that you want to reproduce in the game, bearing in mind what the capabilities are for the science-fiction forces you'll be using. For instance, if there are many units with hovercraft/GEV abilities, open ground, rivers, lakes and marshes are going to have almost no game effect for them, whereas rough ground, woods, heavily-built-up areas and steep slopes will (crude examples, but hopefully you see my point). Once you know that, you'll have a better idea what level of abstraction will work for what you need, I think.

The remainder of the Aunty MacKassa maps are now shown and discussed here.

Thanks very much everyone!

I seem to have been "living" in this first Errynor map for so long now (I started the CC3+ mapping about two years ago), it's a little strange to have reached this point. Though to be fair, I'm now so heavily invested in the next map's set, it's less odd than it might have been!