OK, so with FS in need of mappers, and me in need of some answers, I thought I could create this thread for a dual purpose: to a) get my questions answered, and b) provide a repository of answers for other mapping beginners. So without further ado:

             GETTING STARTED

How do I get started?

   Captain Obvious: "Read the other stickies in this forum."

How do I unpack my FS resources and where do I put them exactly to use them with the BF Editor.....the one that's been registry tweaked to install even w/o BF2 installed?

   Zyth: "I haven't used the registry tweaked version thats floating around so I'm not 100% sure.  I assume that since BF2 isn't installed the editor will be installed in the 2142 directory.  In this case you would simply navigate to Electronic Arts/Battlefield 2142/mods/FirstStrike/objects and unpack all the zips there.  For example:

Electronic Arts/Battlefield 2142/mods/FirstStrike/objects/common_client.zip
Electronic Arts/Battlefield 2142/mods/FirstStrike/objects/common_server.zip

would be unpacked to:

Electronic Arts/Battlefield 2142/mods/FirstStrike/objects/common

You should end up with the following folders in your object directory(if you unpack everything):
common, effects, kits, roads, soldiers, staticobjects, vegitation, vehicles, water, weapons"

How do I make a space map?

   Safe-Keeper: "I have been told that the easiest way is to simply copy a space map and take it from there, rather than making one from scratch."

             TEXTURES AND UNDERGROWTH

Is there a way to get undergrowth and overgrowth generated on hills to face straight upwards?

   UnCo: "Set normal scale to 0."

Do trees placed as static meshes make the map run slower or take more disk space than trees placed using overgrowth?

   UnCo: "There shouldn't be any difference because static objects are simply listed in the StaticObject.con while when the map with overgrowth is loading the game calculates where to put the trees then simply remember those locations. So really if anything overgrowth probably uses up an extra byte or two of RAM (and we need to be careful of those bytes used ) and increases the loading time by an insignificant amount of time (a fraction of a second). Basically there shouldn't be any difference."

Why are my textures all of a sudden shiny?
   Un-Co: "Turning on EnvMaps cause a terrain layer to become reflective."

             VEHICLES

How do you lock vehicles to teams?  I thought it was only a matter of turning on TeamOnVehicle.  However, when I went to test it the map crashed.
   Safe-Keeper: "It is TeamOnVehicle. However, it only seems to work with some vehicles, for some reason. I've locked a Mortar Freerunner and it works fine. Locking a Combat Speeder, however, causes the game to crash with a "Debug assertion failed" error box when an imp jumps in. Hoping someone can elaborate."

I have unzipped the vehicles folders and put them in one but when i come to create a vehicle spawn point it does not show any vehicles at all.
   Safe-Keeper: You can't put vehicles on the map directly, you have to place them as ObjectSpawners. Set the editor to Level Editor, place a Control Point, right-click where you want the vehicle, and choose "Place ObjectSpawner" or something like that. A window will pop up with no choices, hit cancel. There should now be a cyan box where you right-clicked. Select it and choose vehicle type from the Tweaker bar.

             OTHER

How do I make trees and the like appear on the minimap? I tried moving them to 500 meters height, didn't work. Will lightmapping the map fix this?
   Blitz: in the type in command area at the bottom there are 3 drop down boxes, type in renderer---------min cull distance-------5000
   Safe-Keeper: You also need to set staticMeshRenderer.noLods to 1 and lightmap at least one object on your map. This will turn the overgrowth into static objects and make them appear on the minimap.

How do I turn my map into an objective map? Ie. "Destroy all of this unit type (deflection tower, corvette or whatever) to win"?
   Imperial (on IRC): it's basically just like pushmap. the vehicle needs _team1objective at the end of the name or _team2objective. that's it. so, if you want imps to need to destroy a gallofree, name the gallofree "gallofree_team2objective", and if the imps destroy it, game ends. It's not super secure, but it's pretty good

How do you make that the "come back or you will be shoot" thing do not kill you?
   Safe-Keeper: From memory, at the end of GamePlayObjects.con (I think) there is a paragraph of code telling the game how to handle out-of-bonds rules for the map (which areas are out-of-bonds, how long you can stay out-of-bonds, etc). There should be a line basically asking whether or not out-of-bonds should be enabled. Change this from 1 to 0.