And what if you don't want it to be flat?
Why flatten Vandenberg? Or such a pearl like Andoya?
well if you don't want the terrain to be modified you can set a keyword or a flag and the terrain does not get overridden, or the other way around, it doesn't matter much. Anyway it can also be about sub items which are surely flat: buildings, runways, pads... I know you know cities skylines, think about it as the mechanism I have in mind...
Yes - for that you should consider having either a special moon elevation model (since it is not the real moon, but an artistic interpretation of the moon) or making the base a vessel so having the interior meshes underground causes no rendering problems.
you can always make the base a vessel to avoid that, but they won't appear in the base list with all the relevant consequences, but, most important, what about runways and pads. that's the real topic. I need a flat terrain to land on a runway... that's what the big issue is. It's not a problem to make a building, translate it to a vessel and put it on the ground... even though it will be subject to statevectors update which is not good, the land texture won't be there if you want a smooth terrain that matches the terrain underneath etc.
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I honestly don't see why the 3 areas I marked here cannot be 3 flat areas. It would mean to have the possibility to make the base with just a cfg file without touching a single elev file, preserving the original earth with all the good that comes with it (conflicts and everything related).
What kind of issues could be there with such a system? I can't see any potential problem, but just benefits...
In the end what is needed is just a tool that allow to flatten a certain area at runtime, that's it.