Map ideas

[Buzzardo]

I thought I'd start a new thread about maps before we overwhelm the minis Kickstarter thread with a discussion of maps. I was replying to a message in that thread when I thought a new thread might be wise:

Originally Posted by selenite

I'd like new maps that aren't G3/S3. An urban map, a mountain one, maybe a river delta. Something with a different feel. Urban is my first choice. Battles normally happen in places worth fighting over.

Or on the way to those places, if someone is trying to keep their home from turning radioactive. Thus, rural maps become interesting, too. I'd love to see a set of two maps with one heavily urban map and one mostly rural map. The latter might be mostly forest or mostly swamp or mostly open but criss-crossed by both streams and roads. Maybe a single map board could be printed on both sides, to hold down cost a bit.

What other ideas do we have for maps? Someone mentioned mountains, but we don't have that terrain type in Ogre without some kind of rules expansion. (I'm not averse to such rules - just noting that we don't have those rules at present).

[Mack_JB]

I've used the maps from ASL with the Pocket Edition, and D-ASL with ODE. Hard to find though, and scenarios need tweaking.

[rjg173]

An ocean map with a series of islands, or a beach on one edge for major GEV/LGEV/PGEV assaults. Of course, LADs on Hovertrucks would be nice for that scenario.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by rjg173

An ocean map with a series of islands, or a beach on one edge for major GEV/LGEV/PGEV assaults. Of course, LADs on Hovertrucks would be nice for that scenario.

This is actually harder to do with the existing overlays than some of the other suggestions.

[GranitePenguin]

Didn't we have this discussion already? I recall talking about water vs land, etc.

Now where was that thread...

[Buzzardo]

Originally Posted by GranitePenguin

Didn't we have this discussion already? I recall talking about water vs land, etc.

In the middle of some other conversation, I think, back around the time of the original KS project.

Originally Posted by GranitePenguin

Now where was that thread...

Now you know why I made this thread; 'twas easier than thread archaeology and thread necromancy.

'Sides, this way, we can have a discussion focused only on maps (not counting tangents about - squirrel!) :)

[HeatDeath]

This was it:

http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?t=140903

There's a lot of really good stuff in there.

Elegant solution:

North half: vast majority is water. Scattered small islands, but not so many or so large that they can't be turned to water with the existing water overlays. Existing overlays allow this to be geomorphed to anything, and the creation of interesting coastlines or small islands.

South half: vast majority is city, with some parks and waterways. Existing city overlays allow this to geomorph to anything.

One of the cool things about a map like this is that it gives a dynamic theme for it's expansion. One of the coolest things about the Assault Packs as publicly tested is that they're not just "<Terrain> Assault Pack." They have really dynamic titles and themes - they're story hooks, with terrain and units and scenarios to support the stories, instead of the other way around.

And a map like this would provide a really dynamic title and theme for it's expansion: "Ogre: INVASION!". The scenarios and included units could be centered around the theme of establishing beachheads or last-ditch defenses against Dunkirk-style encirclements. A half-map of mostly water would even allow, with only slight reworking, the official publication of "Icepick".

Put me down for two of these as well. :)

[Buzzardo]

Oh, it was purely about mapping. Good thread, too.

I still like my idea of a city with a lot of water (San Francisco, Seattle, New York, etc.).

Thanks for dredging it up.

[wolf90]

These are totally on my radar!

D.

[Bowser]

I'm sure that I've posted about this somewhere back in prehistory, but . . .

I'd really like to see new maps or at least new overlays with some new terrain, which of course means a few new rules. And that's the rub, that's what would stand in the way the most.

Nevertheless, I would really, really like to see mountains as a new terrain type. This has been on my radar ever since "Iron Mountain" appeared way back in Space Gamer #12. Yeah, I'm that old. Mountains allowed "Iron Mountain" to put limits on units that don't usually have limits on them and I loved it.

Along with mountains, cliffsides (up and/or down) hexside overlays might go along with the theme.

A third terrain type that follows would be a "rough" or "broken" or "foothills" terrain: not quite mountains, but not just open plains either. This would be harder to make rules for than the mountains would.

The above would be in my "first tier" want list for maps. Following from there would be:

shallow water (i.e. fairly near the shore)
medium ocean depth (i.e. continental shelf-like)
deep ocean

Which, of course, leads to KRAKEN! (But that's a whole different topic!) @:^) (C'mon, Tristan, here's your opening!)

I know that all of this could be done as simply a scenario-specific rules option, but at least the land stuff would finally make a fairly complete terrain set. Y'see, I've had dreams of ultimately mapping all of Europe as one gigantic Ogre map . . .

(Let see . . . Take the map from SPI's old War In Europe and assume that each of its 25-mile hexes is one "normal" G.E.V.-style ogremap. Use the terrain type from the WIE map as the dominant but not exclusive terrain type for the smaller scale ogremap and . . . Well, you get the idea.)

Sigh. There are times that I wish some of my old ideas would simply fade away and leave me just a bit less compulsive . . .


P.S. I fully endorse the idea of using a new map to provide the "theme" of an expansion. This is a really great idea!