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Old 02-08-2018, 09:16 PM   #11
Mack_JB
 
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Default Re: Making Maps: Showing off and getting help

Hmmm, nine black Ogres ... running roughshod across the land ...
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Old 02-09-2018, 10:07 PM   #12
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Surely there are more rail lines in these areas? I'll have to go look myself now.

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Old 02-10-2018, 06:36 AM   #13
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Middle Earth
Hmmm, that's an interesting request. I can't do the whole thing, but there are a couple areas I could look at. Erebor and Ithildin are the ones that seem most appealing to me.

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Surely there are more rail lines in these areas? I'll have to go look myself now.

Phil
Arg! you are totally correct. I know where most the lines should be on the Utah lake map, but I need to go looking for rail lines in Texas. It currently has a rail yard on the map but no rails aside from that.
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Old 02-10-2018, 11:24 PM   #14
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Any thoughts on where I should do next?
Thermopylae, although landscape has changed in 2400 years.
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Old 02-11-2018, 07:51 AM   #15
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Thermopylae, although landscape has changed in 2400 years.
Many of the old SPI quadrigames have maps that are roughly the same scale as GEV (roughly 1-2 Miles per hex): Modern Battles Quad I and II; NATO Division Commander; North Africa Quad; Westwall Quad; Island War Quad; Berlin ‘85 (for a REAL city fight); Wacht Am Rhine (Battle of the Bulge); Westwall Quad; and Battles for the Ardennes Quad.

Games like the Napoleon at War quads are at a nominally lower scale (1 hex equals about 500m), but the maps look about right for GEV.

Other SPI games with different scales but still good GEV-style maps - Cobra, Army Group South Quad, and the Central Front series (particularly BAOR).

Oh and Hell’s Highway by Victory Games for a constricted Market-Garden style operation.

The main issue with translating these games is that they usually have more types of rough terrain. I suggest interpreting the maps by treating the lowest level of rough terrain as clear and the other layers as woods. I’d also probably ignore towns but treat cities as GEV towns. If that produces too open a map, convert all rough terrain to woods, swamps or towns as appropriate.

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Old 02-12-2018, 05:02 AM   #16
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Representing mountains with craters just feels wrong.

On the other hand, I'm actually unsure what part of the mountains will stop tanks. some parts are sheer cliffs, while others are merely steep slopes. Can a tank go up a 60 degree incline? how steep is too steep?
I agree using Craters to represent mountains ruins the aesthetic of a map. They also take up an entire hex, which if they were Ridge like terrain would not. That alone greatly alters a Maps layout. In some areas you would want hex sized Mountains in others Ridge sized. Even if it's only a cosmetic difference, having terrain that looked like mountain ridge terrain would be worth introducing to the game.

I'd like to see a Mountain represented as a darker colored Ridge terrain already in the game and have it declared as impassible terrain to everything.

This especially got my attention even though I've been hoping to see mountain terrain for a long time with the debut of OGRE on STEAM especially when using the Scenario Creator. A Mountain terrain that is impassible to all units would be a great addition to the game.
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Old 02-13-2018, 10:14 AM   #17
ericthered
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Surely there are more rail lines in these areas? I'll have to go look myself now.

Phil
And they should be updated now, with the railroads, some terrain touchup, and utah lake has two different road sizes now.

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Thermopylae, although landscape has changed in 2400 years.
and your wish has been granted: Thermopele

Thermopylae is a surprisingly simple map. Once again mountains feature prominently. Greece has a surprisingly large number of orchards. Much of the forested area is actually orchard, particuarly that not marked as mountain. The orchard area also tends to be on hills even some mountains, so I don't feel bad representing them as rough terrain. An additional piece of mountain trickiness is that the railroads both have several tunneled sections.

Thermopylae the village is on hex 1912, near the south extremity of the bay, and is so small it doesn't show up with any notable effect. The rubble represents open pit mines.

This map looks really good for the type of asymmetric match-ups ogre is famous for. The classic option, given the location, is to give a superior force a time limit to cross the mountains and access the roads going south.

Its got choke points, but I note that one single point won't hold everything. Unless you want to commit to open battle just south of lamia, the big town, but that's a different fight.

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This is actually a really hard request, because the maps tend to be grandiose in size and I don't have all the tools for a real world location.
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Last edited by ericthered; 02-13-2018 at 10:40 AM.
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Old 02-13-2018, 10:06 PM   #18
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I'm not sure how to do mountains properly.
Mountains could just be terrain where INF has M1 and nothing else can go unless there's a road, and 2X or 3X cover for INF. (If you need mountains with existing terrain rules try ridge hex sides around swamp. Any fool that drives an SHVY over the ridge can get stuck.)

If you've got access, I think one of the (on hold) Assault Packs had rules for mountains and cliffs.

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I'm not sure how urban an area needs to be before marking it as city. On this map, dense suburbs are marked as city. Is that the correct interpretation?
My take on it is a hex dominated by multi-story concrete structures for most of the hex is a town hex. It's got to provide 2X defense vs nuclear weapons to vehicles just driving on the street. If the hex features lots of multi-story parking garages its town.

If parking is free, in flat lots, to me that's not town. There's no cover for INF, and nothing to slow down a tank. A city like Phoenix - which has only a maybe three blocks of downtown, but flat sprawl for miles - I think should be clear terrain - all those 5-lane and 7-lane avenues, and no basements. (South Mountain Park and the Sierra Estrella to the southwest are at least rubble-and-ridge.)

I like to call most suburbs forest. With tac-nukes flying around, houses are about as durable as trees, and INF can duck into a basement for a bit of extra cover.

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Is the map too small? I know this area well, and I found myself wishing I could include certain neighboring regions, like all of the northern city, and the fields to the south that make it possible to go around the lake. Is this a special case, am I thinking too epic in scale, or does ogre really like big maps?
It really depends on the scenario. A lot of the charm of Ogre is that you can play a game over a lunch break on a small map with a handful of fast units, or a scenario with a strict time limit goal, or play an INF slog on a huge map over a weekend. With those big lakes be sure to bring some GEV-PCs.

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Does anyone have any areas they'd like me to do next?
Boston could be interesting. It's tiny, so you can fit a lot of interesting stuff on one map. No mountains. South Boston to East Cambridge, maybe west to Longwood should be town. The rest is a mix of some clear suburbs, forest, swamp, the harbor, and the Charles (river up until Watertown - that can't be more than two or three hexes, then a winding stream that seems to go everywhere). The harbor has some rocky barrier islands and peninsulas, including one trace Italienne fort. Give us lots of bridges over the Charles and Mystic rivers, but not too many other roads inside of 128. The road system is just not that good to begin with, much of it is buried or built over. An LT wouldn't fit through the underpasses on Storrow Drive. GEV pilots might have fun in the harbor tunnels or on the Pike, but they'd be helpless if attacked. Maybe set up some bonus targets for MIT, HMS, the SSC in Natick, and Hanscom AFB.

Last edited by dwalend; 02-14-2018 at 08:15 PM.
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Old 02-14-2018, 06:25 PM   #19
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Boston could be interesting.
I'll second that comment!

D.
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Old 02-15-2018, 12:49 AM   #20
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Default Re: Making Maps: Showing off and getting help

I remember someone posting a map for a scenario called "Blowing Up Duluth". This was before Tom's OGREMap program was available (I think.) Anyone remember this? I've lost track of it.
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