The heightmap features a perfectly circular outer area that slopes into an ocean that surrounds the map, and up to a sharp ring wall. The center is symmetrical rough terrain

Right now only the height map is ready. It could work pretty well with a very simple texture. One potential is to simply resize the height map and use it for texture.

The map still needs metal and geo.

Anyone have any ideas for improvements? I was thinking void water might be interesting to use for this.

Make a map is my tip.

Right now you have a sphere gradient with mirrored perlin noise in the middle. That isn't a map, it is babies first heightfield.

How to improve:
Think about what a game plays like:
Got it?

Ok.

All those slopes will make building impossible for many structures without a lot of teraform.
make flat areas for bases

Pathways between the rock

Get rid of the central gradient and craft some terrain elements that are interesting for gun emplacements or ambush attacks!

How much of the map is wasted in that sphere gradient you call a beach? A good deal

load that badboy into springmapedit

you'll see that it's a bit too noisy; not much of the map will be flat or even within buildable tolerances

heres what it looks like in-editor with slopes

edit: looks like a deep-dish pizza! i'll try and run some filters and make it playable.

I personally kinda like the idea of forcing construction to remain only on the outer edge.

Despite his bluntness, Smoth has a point. I've been playing with some various approaches to using procedural generation- such as the perlin noise- and I think I may have something that will be far more interesting than this crude map.

You're welcome to play with the pizza map, but I think I'll experiment with something a bit different.

right on; just keep experimenting. i'll suggest again that you get springmapedit though as it gives you a lovely visual reference to what you're making (but its not 100% necessary)

good luck; happy to help if i can.

pizza tonight for dinner

Pizza with flat pepperonis in the middle? That would be win. Just sayin.

instead of using funny spiked terrain to limit construction, did you think about using Lua?
AllowUnitCreation() --> "unitDefID, builderID, builderTeam, x, y, z" plus some isPointInRectAngle / isPointInCircle checks should be all you need.