Featured.

Drawing from a chat with other mapmakers and admins, a potential "low-hanging fruit" improvement to the aesthetics is to add DNTS, particularly to make the rocky areas stand out more:

https://springrts.com/wiki/Mapdev:splatdetail

The wiki is a bit bare-bones so if you are looking for more guidance hit up the #zkmap channel or look at a map which has it (any recent TheMooseIsLoose map probably uses it; as a specific example, the rainbow rocks in the Shimmershore shallows are achieved using DNTS).

If you just don't want to look at it any more I know TheMooseIsLoose has applied DNTS to other people's maps in the past on request/consent; other mapmakers in #zkmap might also oblige.

"Let's make a map that has strategic depth" they said

It's weird that there is terrain in the sand that's not visible at all without using the altitude overlay.

quote: I really, really dislike the depth of the water in the middle - it allows amphbots to shoot both surface and water weapons, at same time. It also makes placing shipyard a convulted experience.

I cannot think of a really amph viable map other than this atm.
At the same time it wouldn't be possible to make the shallow water less deep without removing ship pathing (this would basically work against the idea of the map).

-> I wont be changing the water to remove amph dual-weapons.
Ship was never meant to be a viable option in 1v1, but might be considered in sth like 3v3.

quote: It's weird that there is terrain in the sand that's not visible at all without using the altitude overlay.

I would change this if it wouldn't need manual painting and a lot of testing to apply the different textures on specific pathable spots.
The main problem here is that there are pathable spots for spider/bot and veh which needs smooth transaction between veh pathable to bot pathable to unpathable(spider).
The only way i can think of how to properly do this would be to make 2 screenshots with 1x bot pathing and 1x veh pathing and trying to apply the texture according to e.g. magic wand from Gimp.
But this will need some testing, free time and will propaly not work as smooth as i imagine it to be.

-> wip

quote: There depth of the pond is also difficult to judge.

This is a problem which I am unable to properly solve because idk how to change the water to something transparent/ water which allows seeing the height, but I will remove sub pathing in mid so there will be only 2 depths in the water.
This should allow land factorys to contest the water better, because they wont be slowed that much anymore.

-> Changing depth to shallow water & Ship/amph pond

Well, instead of considering the water being more shallow, it could be just made deeper. Not much a problem for amphs, less convulted experience for placing ships, no double weapons for amphs, large land unit can still walk (slower) and shoot, flea can't. No big deal, there is whole upper side for land.