Yeah I 100% agree with you that the map wasn't so great. I built it in like a week with sub-optimal planning while working on mods and other things lol. Technically it was supposed to be a completely rough "draft" of the map for testing purposes, and my plan was to add detail later on. Buuut I got a little carried away with some areas, so it has a sloppy mix of some detail and basically no detail. Basically working under time constraints in a nutshell.
I love your ideas for a forest/jungle map, and the theme is something I've wanted to explore for ages Some of the original backstory of the mods took place in a jungle, and I always wanted to recreate that bit of the story in one way or another.
I'm not really sure how I'd implement the trench mod in that case though. I'm honestly considering just totally leaving it out of some builds, as it comes with its own set of gameplay problems, despite how interesting it can be. I might implement it the way you recommended, but I'm not too keen on having only predefined exit holes. Now would what be really cool (and terribly tedious to do) would be to pre-build ALL of the tree roots, and then cover them with dirt, so that you could dig around the trees without causing them to float, and it would give the underground areas a bit more substance beyond the normal "sea of dirt with a random structure in the middle".
But anyway, I really like the idea, and it's much more plausible to make now I think thanks to all the tree bricks that have come out. Back when I was really working on these mods heavily, those trees didn't even exist.
I can't say when I'll actually have to work on it due to my classes, but I certinally should get to working on planning and designing it.
And thank you for the suggestions!