Map of Mars

[Gidde]

I think that any map of a terraformed Mars is pretty much doomed to have some serious river violations. That said though, 60 years to full terraforming and population? If you are going to use a timescale that small, then I'd actually delete all of your "natural" rivers and replace them with existing formations or man-made canals etc. 60 years (and much of that would have had to be taken up with terraforming the place) doesn't seem to me to be enough time for riverbeds of the type we're familiar with to get carved out.

Guess I've pretty much outed myself as a "hard" sci-fi lover hehe. If you're going for something softer, you can probably disregard all that and chalk it up to the Force or some such

[Sapiento]

The Esturary Police do not like this map (and the River Police should be here shortly with a binload of warrants).

However, despite the fact that I am the sole officer of the Estuary Police, I dig this map very much! The Central Empire seems to be on the wane -- I bet there's a cool story behind that. This map makes me want to buy a ticket on the next steam rocket and get up there to explore!

I think your water gives too much of an impression of ice. It can't be ice, because you have rivers ... but we all know Mars has a polar cap and so I think the first impressions here is of ice. I think bevel effect hurts it; in fact, the bevel is a bit obvious all the way around.

Thanks. Maybe I can organize a ticket for you.
I used metal textures for both water and land (some steel and copper) which was my intention from the beginning - a map made from metal. The bevel effects - well, maybe to much, but I wanted the parts where different metals meet to be visible, like some form of unclean marquetry, otherwise the metal idea would not clearly be visible.
Concerning the 'rivers': many of them are canals dig by the ancient Martians and not natural - you may have noted that some of them are completely straight.
A visitor from Earth in this universe would have known the oceans of Mars before, because good telescopes could make out the details quite good.

I think that any map of a terraformed Mars is pretty much doomed to have some serious river violations. That said though, 60 years to full terraforming and population? If you are going to use a timescale that small, then I'd actually delete all of your "natural" rivers and replace them with existing formations or man-made canals etc. 60 years (and much of that would have had to be taken up with terraforming the place) doesn't seem to me to be enough time for riverbeds of the type we're familiar with to get carved out.

Guess I've pretty much outed myself as a "hard" sci-fi lover hehe. If you're going for something softer, you can probably disregard all that and chalk it up to the Force or some such

Canals, canals, canals! The humans met native Martians (left upper part of the map) who have a long history of rises and falls, and who once built the great canals. The last empires are crumbling and city states become the dominant form of government.
And hard sci-fi is always good!