"The Structures dilema" Topic
11 Posts
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UshCha | 08 Oct 2022 11:01 a.m. PST |
I have run a number of threads lately on Hedges, reviews and about wargame fundamentals, life the universe and everything. Terrain is an inherent apart of war gaming at least for me. If that is not right everything else fails, unrealistic terrain give and unrealistic boring game whatever the rules. It then comes back to fundamentals about what the players decide is a fundamental tenet of their war gaming. Perhaps a little digression is worthwhile (and not unusual on TMP). We did a show pre-covid with MAN logistics trucks (used by NATO countries). There was an unexpected issue; they looked too large for the terrain. They are in volume terms close on 8 times bigger than a tank. Now our ground scale is 1m to 1m and the models are 1/144. The fields at real ground scale look a bit small, but not so bad that you can't get your head round it. However put a vehicle that is twice the length and 8 times (ish) of the volume of a tank and it starts to look daft. Worse still the MAN truck is close to 100yds long on the ground, it's getting worse than the roads which are a bit on the small size at 50mm at ground scale which is stupidly wide for many 2 carriage way roads. So to me, and it's subjective of course, real scale models of large structures can become absurd and spoil the game. Now back to the thread, if vehicles are too big it can be doubly so for buildings and terrain. An N scale bridge may look great to a war painter, concerned with just visual aspects but as a gamer it's a disaster. I looked at a simple canal bridge (UK canals are general very narrow) only 2 narrow boats wide (5 to 6m width of water) and the bridges only a bit wider than the canal. However at 1/144 scale the canal is 7 times to wide and the bridge 343 times too big volume wise. Now that is true of all the models but it becomes more evident the bigger the model. Allowing for the slope a 1/144 canal bridge would be around 200mm long, further than a RPG 7 can shoot at ground scale; this makes for a daft boring game. So what can be done? Well our solution being gamers is to make simple much smaller representations, about road width, but much lower and shorter. They are way off scale but indicate what they. They are not artistic excessive detail just does not improve the situation, but that to us is a very secondary issue the game comes a long way first. I was discussing this issue with Alex of Shipyards and we thought it might be a good excuse to help us all if we released some .STL files of our simple terrain pieces for a small fee to save folk having to scratch build such things. Again these are not for war painters who above all see pretty models as the end, and games a very big second. Where do you stand on scale structures? |
jwebster | 08 Oct 2022 12:47 p.m. PST |
Yes, absolutely a problem where the ground scale is not the same as the figure scale. As you said, the solution is a compromise based on aesthetics, and everyone's opinion on aesthetics is going to be different Another side of this is that you might want different terrain for different types of battle – skirmish terrain might be different from that for a bigger encounter. That 200mm bridge might be exactly what you want for a 1:1 skirmish John |
etotheipi | 08 Oct 2022 2:04 p.m. PST |
So … if you use models of different scale, they look like they are at different scales? |
Col Durnford | 08 Oct 2022 2:49 p.m. PST |
The old problem where a SMG can not fire from one side of a house to the other. If it just doesn't look right, it puts me right off the game. |
Bunkermeister | 08 Oct 2022 5:11 p.m. PST |
My rules use a sliding scale. 50 meters is 5 inches. 100 meters is 10 inches. 250 meters is 15 inches. 500 meters is 20 inches. 750 meters is 25 inches. Everything after 100 meters is 1 inch equals 50 meters. Using 1/72nd scale figures. This way a soldier can shoot farther than the length of his halftrack. And other weird scale problems are mostly solved. Mike Bunkermeister Creek |
UshCha | 08 Oct 2022 5:56 p.m. PST |
Bunkermeister – we use a similar correction idea, so short range weapond shoot across a road as they did in real life. |Even if the road on theground is wider than the range of the weapon (The Pazerfaust 30 and 60 are some of the worst effected). However the issue gets worse as the structure gets larger. The canal bridge analogy for us would mean a minimimum of 10" for short range which would be far too much for me to be comfortable. etotheipi not exactly, a bridge would conform to the road width of a typical model it would be wide enough to cross. perhaps wide enough for a 1/2 ton Landrover but not enough for a tank; so its weight classification would be somewhat obvious. It would be much lower and shorter, than the real thing, sufficient length contraction cannot be achieved by just steepening the approach ramps. Best would be to say a "hybrid" design. Certainly folk who like scale modeles would not like it, it is by definition a very "compromised desighn" optimised for play not art. Even the hybrid has some additional, serious abstraction issues, for instance a boat passing down a river or canal would not subjectively "get under" the bridge. This has not arrisen for us, as I cannot think of any scenarios we have played that have had this issue, but that is just us. Large rivers do not fit comfortably on a wargames table. Plus without other distortions rivers are very difficult to represent. My local rivers often have water levels well below (6ft)the surrounding land, well past (for me at least) the limit I would to want to model by sloping up on the table then dropping to basic table height represent the depression, but again we each have to decide the compromises we can accept. In the same vein I don't use modelled trench systems, just 2D markers, the compromises of on table trenches are too high for us, so 2D is more acceptable game wise than the artistic solution. Again the fundamentals of what the player is prepared to compromise on is key. It may be we need to concentrate more on these very basic fundamentals than the rules themselves, as they may raise more imprortant reasons to accept or reject rules. Whether to hide or not hide figures for instance may be the most fundamental reason for a player to accept or reject a set of rules. |
robert piepenbrink | 08 Oct 2022 7:25 p.m. PST |
You know, this must be just about the 50th anniversary of the first time I was involved in this discussion, and it really hasn't advanced at all. Short of 1:1 games with figure scale matching ground scale, you're going to get distortion which is usually especially obvious and irritating in man-made structures. You can mitigate it a bit by using smaller buildings and making them somewhat subscale--a 20mm cottage in lieu of a 25mm manor house, say--but taste is critical--and, as the Romans said, not a basis for argument. If anyone finds a solution and not just a preference, please let me know. |
Oberlindes Sol LIC | 08 Oct 2022 7:44 p.m. PST |
I'm going with preference along the lines of Robert Piepenbrink's and perhaps Ushcha's posts. I run science fiction games, so my aesthetics can be a bit looser, which is an advantage. "Looks OK" is what I usually try to achieve with respect to models of troops, "ground" vehicles, space vehicles, buildings, and vegetation. |
Zephyr1 | 08 Oct 2022 9:13 p.m. PST |
"If anyone finds a solution and not just a preference, please let me know." This probably isn't a solution, but I'll throw it out there anyway, as there is no perfect solution, and it might offer a compromise one can live with: > Have a "map table", where the {abstracted?) terrain is set up, and the majority of game play/movement occurs. (Basically, the set-up you are playing with now.) > When it comes time to resolve the combat portions, set up a "local" table (with all the "in scale" terrain shown on the 'map table' section) and fight it out. Yes, some extra work in having to deal with separate/multiple tables, but everything doesn't have to be crammed onto one large table, and fighting on a "local" table means you have a larger area to use more "realistic" weapon ranges. (Note that you are still using the same scale minis on both tables, it's just that you are transferring them to a larger area to resolve actions.) I hope the idea I've presented is understandable… ;-) |
UshCha | 08 Oct 2022 10:44 p.m. PST |
So for those of us who are prepeared to compromise art for reality, do you scratch build your hybrids, buy or print them? |
Gauntlet | 10 Oct 2022 5:26 a.m. PST |
I think this is fairly simple, bridges don't really need to be in scale. My rivers are usually wide enough that the bridge is longer than a tank, but beyond that it doesn't really matter. It doesn't look like the real bridge but it still doesn't look stupid because there are in fact bridges in real life that are shorter than a tank. With buildings, I keep the height scale accurate and just make them 1-2 small rooms. Much smaller than most real buildings but still doesn't look weird on the table because small buildings do exist. |
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