"SF Off-World Frontier Town Layout: Urban Planning?" Topic

Just wondering …

Are your settlements laid out with any type of order? Perhaps in concentric or grid patterns?

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Or do your towns sprout and spread out without rhyme or reason?

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Thanks,

Dan
TMP link
TMP link
TMP link

I think you have to draw a line between a layout that looks 'real' and what is playable.

I am planning a 15mm layout based on 30cm x 30cm terrain squares with enough room for AFVs and Mecha to manoeuvre and seek cover. So for me a grid pattern but with varying building height and density – the occasional open ground tile or tree/parkland/shrub tile.

Mariposa has at its core a design, Anshan is just a mess pretty much, Anvil Gate is made to be safe.

Anvil Gate

Anshan

Mariposa under construction

So to answer, it depends on how the settlement was 'born.'

Not sure that big ass city counts as a frontier town Muncehead

:D

Brilliant AngelBarracks. Some day you will also provide 15mm versions?

Sorry, afraid not.
Saying that…
I have sold the OKI wall digital files to a 15mm company, so maybe one day those will be available in 15mm.

depends on settlement;
if was along a road/trail buildings would be laid out along road sides.
if a newly settled world with those possibly nasty creatures, more likely for buildings to be laid out neatly within protective walls as saves wall materials.

the settlement shape and layout will be affected by the local surroundings, that unhelpfully placed stream/big rock/marshy ground, that those surveyors somehow missed.

regards

MMG.

I love Anvil Gate. That is such a cool town. I want my settlement to look organic like it came about through people picking a spot. I figured for my shanty town the walkways had to be big enough to get a small vehicle up to the front door to deliver stuff. And although people want to face on to the street they don't want to be looking straight in on one another's doorways so I off set them. Also I wanted to have places that would work as nooks to hide in so its got to have bends in the street. But for official buildings it will be a little more formal. That's how I think any way.

Michael,

You sold off the rights to the OKI walls or just the 15mm rights?

I like the main center to look like it started out in some from of order, then have it just go down hill from there as it goes the a rappid growth spurt.

I really like the wind turbines in Mariposa. What a nice touch!

@AB
Those are really great layouts!

I sold them to a 15mm terrain company that currently do no sci-fi but are working on some stuff.
They will be using them in 15mm.
If they ever get around to it!
The 15mm sci-fi WIPs they have done are really very very good indeed.

;)

Cheers chaps.

I like organization but I don't like making it easy to know scale distances. To that I mean I don't want everything on a 6 inch grid so it makes it super easy for guessing ranges and stuff like that.

But I like to see it make sense in layouts.

I tend towards an organic layout. Look at railroad towns: The primary structure in town is the Depot. Main Street almost always faces the depot, and most of the shopping is either facing the depot parallel to the tracks or is on Main Street. Housing, though, is usually well away from the tracks because nobody wants to hear all the noise of the depot at all hours of the day. There also tends to be an industrial district on the other side of the tracks from Main Street and the residential part of town.

There's a similar effect with highway towns, like those on Route 66 here in the US. Businesses on one or both sides of the highway, residential areas away from the highway.

Tombstone AZ was apparently planned out in grids long before it filled up. Here's the famous OK Corral in one of those semi open grids:

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Dan

Brilliant AngelBarracks. Some day you will also provide 15mm versions?

Although AB's too polite to mention it, the 'eggbeater' wind turbines and the OKI walls both work for 15mm as they are, & at a guess the solar panels will too.

They'll be in my next order Michael!

I like it AB !

Do you guys get the sense that maybe Mos Eisley followed some sort of urban plan initially, and then the planning "went to pot"?

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Dan