Don't forget that aside from adding more character to the coastline, you can also add smaller islands there in places to help break up that "smoothness" aspect, much as other features too small to have been added on the original larger-area map can be added inland. What's shown as a peninsula on a large scale, might be really an island with a tidal causeway headland instead when you start looking closer, say!

I'd definitely recommend using your Atlas mapping to experiment with different styles; it's what I've been trying to do for some years now! It does indeed push you into thinking in different ways about mapping, and trying out new things in terms of how to use the program.

Welcome aboard Reddog!

Yep, following the tutorials and working through the manual's exercises is definitely the only useful way to start. Critical comments about the program you'll find scattered over the Internet elsewhere are all about people NOT doing this, and blithely assuming the program's going to be identical to the basic graphic manipulation programs they've "always" used before. IT ISN'T!!! This is actual CAD mapping and draughting software, and if you're not familiar with how that operates, you will struggle. I did, certainly, until I watched some of Joe Sweeney's videos (there weren't any others at that stage, as this was some years ago, back when it was still CC3, not the current CC3+).

As far as map scaling's concerned, forget ALL about what size you need this or that bit of the map to be once you have it printed out, as this is IRRELEVANT to the creation of maps in CC3+. What you MUST do is create a map to the actual size the map's supposed to be using the relevant real-world map units - which for floorplan/Dungeon Designer style maps are either in feet or metres (you can decide which during set-up for that map). Make sure everything fits in your map to that scaling only. If the grid squares are meant to represent 5 feet, for example, make them 5 feet square in your CC3+ map.

When you've finished the map and want to print it out, that's the first time you need concern yourself as to what size things will be in the physical, printed-out world. If you need advice on that, or anything else connected with map scaling, see this excellently thorough blog post by resident expert and Forum mod Remy Monsen, which tells you all you'll need to know and more on the matter!

To an extent, this depends on what the entities are you're trying to attach to one another. With lines for example, they have a specific thickness, and that can cause the edges at the end of one line to not align with the other, which looks untidy. Usually the only way to resolve that is by-hand minor adjustments with Attach turned off, and in some cases adding a tiny polygon to smooth out the joining point.

For things such as river lines, I rarely use Attach at all, and simply zoom in and adjust the line position by-hand after it's been drawn, to get the "tributaries" to match up into the "main river".

Attach also has its oddities, like attaching to the wrong entity or node sometimes, and that can be irritating too.

@Royal Scribe Have you taken a look at the DD3 Creatures symbol options? There isn't a gargoyle, but there is a golem that might work as one. None of the options in that have bases, and most have varicolor options (though not all that work on the whole creature, to turn it to stone, say).

Been a very long time since I did any spacecraft designs. General principles still apply though, remembering this is a self-contained, self-reliant unit, so essentially you need everything you'd have on a normal ship with a sizeable crew - they need to eat, sleep, stay clean (clothes and person; toilets as well), exercise, medical facilities, a means of controlling each system on the vessel, a means of communicating with other vessels and shore/planetary/orbital bases, a means of carrying out the vessel's primary and subsidiary functions, emergency escape facilities, emergency handling facilities (e.g. fire, flood, general damage control), a means of observing whatever is around them outside the vessel, and as you obviously already have, propulsive engines and fuel sources. This list is not exhaustive! And almost all this has to fit within the outer hull somehow.

Spherical and rounded hull shapes are a nightmare to design for. About 40 years ago, I drew out by hand a spherical free-moving spacecraft intended as a planetary defence vessel, one of a fleet, and that was horrendous, as (well, if you're me anyway) I had to keep checking how the outer circumference affected the internal space for different parts of every vertical level, and having to keep changing things because they'd no longer fit at the size intended, and so forth.

Unless there are strong reasons not to do so that make sense in-game, there's no physical necessity from our reality to have streamlined forms for spacecraft at all. Doesn't look so "Hollywood movie pretty", I grant you, but...