New Un-named World map

[Durakken]

No picture right now, but will be soooon

Here's the current idea... World is made up of 5km to 80km bodies of land that orbit a glowing crystal.
Each of these bodies have their own mono climates and resources...

Right now I'm looking at these types of land structures...
Woodland
Meadowland
Mountains
Swampland
Hot Desert
Cold Desert

... And the resources I'm looking at as caring about are...
(probably definitely in metals)
Lead
Tin
Bismuth
Zinc
Iron
Copper
Mercury
Silver
Gold
Platinum

(debating metals)
Alluminum
Nickel
Titanium
Iridium
Gallium
Mythril

(probably definitely in other resources)
Salt
Coal
Clay
Quartz
Granite
Magic Crystals
Fresh Water

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Here's the question I have that I'm sure you guys can answer a lot quicker than I can find... of the above resources could you tell me how they a grouped up in nature... For example I know Silver and Lead are mined together, and about what percentages they are found in out of 100% of those particular groupings?

Also, anything you think I'm missing from this list?


This info will help put the final touches on the base creation of the map which is created via a program... which is why it's not posted yet. Once I have this info... and an idea of how I'm going to represent it with, as far as I know, just colors, then I'll post it ^.^

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Edit: Remembered I had this already. This a picture generated by the algorythm I made for this...
The White circles are the land masses, save for the one in the center that is the "star"
The image is 4000x40000, but the map will be 1000x1000. The circles are the same sizes as they will are at the completed size.

And since I have this up I might as well ask, do you think that there should be more of the medium larger circles? I made that change, but I'm curious what others think...

[Durakken]

So here are the Generated Base Maps for the map I'm working on...
Please tell me which one you like best

Green = Woodland
Grey = Mountains
Pale Green = Swampland
Yellowish Green = Meadowland
Very Pale Yellow = Hot Desert
Light Blue = Cold Desert
Yellow thing in the center is the "star"

The numbers are how much of a given resource is in that area...
They are ordered, from left to right, top to bottom, like this
Tin
Copper
Iron
Nickel

Lead
Zinc
Bismuth
Mercury

Silver
Gold
Platinum
Mythril

Water
Salt
Coal
Crystals

The first map has significantly more Platforms... around 1200. All the others have 500.
Also do you think any of the sizes need to increase or decrease in number?

Sorry for such large file sizes (~4MB)
edit: removed images for sanity!

[Durakken]

So... Here's what I settled on for a base map.
The red lines are national borders.



Gonna edit and remove those other images above cuz they're big...

[Azélor]

Nice concept. I asked a handful of questions about resource placement a while back. But had few answers sadly, even covering only the most significant resources (from my point of view and yours too apparently).

http://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/25366/147
http://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/25084/147

Somebody mentioned me that Gold and probably other heavy elements, formed in the cores of the stars. The placement of the gold veins on Earth is mostly random.

Other that you might be missing natural gas and uranium, since they play an important role in today's energy production.

[Durakken]

I looked up a lot of info to create and narrow that list and decide which goes with which... There are 4 basic groups because there are roughly 4 groups....

Tin, Copper, Iron, and Nickel are mined in the same areas it seems or from the same ores so if you mine copper you're going to get tin and if you mine iron you're going to get nickel and if you mine either your going to run into the other and they're found in the eluvial areas which are more or less the coasts... There is reason for this in the case of the iron, has something to do with coast deposition of minerals more so than you can't get iron anywhere else since it is all over.

Lead, Zinc, Bismuth, Mercury are in similar situation where mining Silver will lead to mining Lead which also leads to Zinc and Bismuth. These are found more in volcanic regions (hot springs) from what i can find where they're heated and pushed up through the crust so you only need to mine a little ways down. Mercury isn't found with other stuff, but has the same conditions involved with where it is.

The 3rd group is the precious metals and of the 3 Silver is found with the volcanic metals exclusively it seems and Lead is mined with it... because Lead is pretty much everywhere and there is a lot of it. Gold and Platinum (groups) are in both groups but in tiny amounts.

As far as importance with these groups... Tin, Copper, Iron, and Zinc are the most important, but Zinc and Tin for the Copper alloys, but Zinc is hard to come by due to some properties and its mostly in some other ore so most people didn't know about it or didn't know it could be alloyed for a long while and when people did figure it out it was still hard to do. Iron and copper are obvious because of weapons.

Nickel I forget what it's used for, but if I remember right it is some sort of alloying property it has, but it was obviously more used as a precious metal. Bismuth was used as a cheap replacement metal and also to alloy with Iron...weird considering it's comparitive rarity.

Lead is found every where and used in a lot of things. Depend on how you look at it whether you see how important it is to civilization, but it's been used with everything in some way... useful, poisonous, plentiful... It looks like a mixed bag, but honestly I don't know of anything that can't be done without it and it didn't rush anything it seems and because it's plentiful and cheap I'd say it is probably more of a low value metal overall.

Mercury has 2 uses... for mining gold and silver...and for medicine and fake medicine in the past ^.^ So the value of Mercury is largely based on how much you value the precious metals.

Gold, Silver, and the Platinum Group metals are worthless in all but the modern age. So even though 2/3 were known before the modern age their only significance is that they were used for money and decoration... and I could go into how that is really telling of our species' characteristics, but meh.

The last group is just more or less random, constantly being created, or plentiful... or ie. miscelaneous
Water is obviously important...
Salt is found everywhere (I don't think very mountainous areas though because salt would wash away) and the significance is food preservation and currency.
Coal I would bet that you have a better guess at where this shows up because you need to track climate throughout time, you need to find marshlands millions of years ago, then find out where they are in the present...

As far as natural gas and uranium... Doesn't exist or is viewed as harmful in my world so didn't include it.... but yeah, uranium follows the gold/platinum group thing and the gas follows the coal model save for natural gas can also form underwater.

Really, if I just wanted to know "important" resources I'd go Iron, Copper, Tin, Zinc, Salt, Coal... Everything else is either too plentiful or worthless to anyone but us modern day people. I also considered Rock types, but decided on those grounds after looking at how they formed. It's not that they're unimportant or don't exist or whatever... it's that they're everywhere and anywhere you dig is as good as any other. Salt is included only because a Salt mines aren't everywhere, and they rep a different way of getting the salt than just taking sea water and putting it in the sun ^.^


The above is my estimation of the situation and only broadly useful... Though it seems that without a lot more expertise it is nearly impossible to get better information.

[Durakken]

Oh yeah, as far as the next stage... I need to do local area maps... not sure how to do unique looking baren terain when that's what a lot of those are. Right now i'm working on where the species are and the basic back story. I don't want a lot of depth as I'm trying to stop myself from making a huge complex world so i can actually finish a project v.v