"Buildings vs Built-up-Areas" Topic

I'm designing a modular hex system for 6mm & 10mm WW2 games and considering whether I should use individual buildings or BUAs.

My thoughts so far:

1. Vehicles would be able to move through BUAs (abstracted roads) but not individual buildings.
2. If using buildings, a hex wouldn't be able to have building and a road, so the road hex in a city is 100% road, which is really weird if the hex represents 50m of ground.
3. Differences in how it looks to have models sitting on top of the various terrains.

I know most people don't use hexes, but the buildings vs BUAs still seems like an interesting conundrum.

How large are your hexes?

Take a look here:
link
and here:
link

MajorB

Those are amazing hex-based solutions – and some excellent craft work displayed on those pieces also.

Gauntlet, with most game rendering of terrain, those pieces can be considered "representational", and as you're hinting at, our military models and figure bases are much larger in size, than to the actual footprints they would occupy in real life for the game scale being played.

One solution I enforce in my tactical-level games – is for players to state (and usually I ask), what their observation posture is for units within occupied built-up areas or wooded terrain. So I expect the players to clarify if they're within the terrain's cover, or if they're at its edge observing out of it – which would then enable direct fire, but also means these elements/vehicles are potentially exposed to enemy spotting opportunities too.

Clarifying unit intention/exposure within a hex of area terrain, then lets you scoot the terrain around as needed, to accommodate models that are too big for their own good. ;)

To my thinking, the key determinant would be -- what is the ground scale vs. model scale (in your game)?

If the ground scale is within perhaps 3-5 X of the model scale, I would be inclined to go with individual buildings, but if the ground scale was more than about 6-8 X I could see BUA hexes as the better solution.

Case 1: If I'm using 1/300 miniatures, and a 1/1000 ground scale …
(1 M on table = 1 KM in game, or 1" on table = 25 yds in game)
I would typically prefer to see and work with the individual buildings.

Case 2: If I'm using 1/300 miniatures, and a 1/2000 ground scale …
(1 M on table = 2 KM in game, or 1" on table = 50 yds in game)
then I am just starting to enter the zone where I might prefer just a kind of generic BUA rather than individual buildings.

At least that's how I'd see things. Once I get past about 6 to 1 ratio of ground scale to game scale, I find that individual buildings and roads are too badly distorted vs. game scale, with 100m wide "alleys" between 10,000sq ft "hovels". Just doesn't make sense when infantry combat is at "medium to long" range across the street.

Your tankage may vary.

-Mk 1

Excellent feedback, especially Mark I about the factor between real scale and ground scale. I'm leaning toward 50mm hexes representing 50m or 100m. With 1/285 models that's going to be 3-6x factors off.

I've also considered the road width issue. If 2 hexes is 200mm it's absurd that firing across a road is already in the "medium" range for rifles.

As Mark says, it depends on you ground scale. Squad Leader used to have 40m wide roads, and it was always pretty goofy.

My hexes typically represent 800 – 1000m, so the terrain in those is pretty abstract. Various classifications of BUA work for me – open (eg Russian villages), standard (eg European villages with brick/stone buildings) and city (as in stone/concrete buildings with cellars, sewers etc).

Gauntlet wrote:
"3. Differences in how it looks to have models sitting on top of the various terrains."

Whichever way you decide to go, definitely consider removable buildings, with the footprint marked beneath if individual buildings.

50mm hexes (2") seems very small.

Cheers,
John

Why do 50mm hexes seem small? The smaller they are the better movement resolution you have.

It's large enough that even at 1/144 scale you can fit a king tiger.

It wasn't a criticism. It's just that hex based terrain I've seen in the past has been based on much bigger hexes. I'm really interested to see how it goes.

Cheers,
John

One point to consider is that, depending on period and theatre, heavy or large vehicles might find it difficult to move through some built-up areas. Certainly a problem in recent campaigns with, say, some Afghan villages. The Defence School of Transport at Leconfield even built a mock Afghan village out of old shipping containers to train drivers to assess more carefully where they could and could not get their vehicle through safely.

Even though in WW2, commanders might not be overly worried per se about damage to buildings in the path of an advance (unlike, say, forces not wanting to alienate Afghan villagers unnecessarily), individual crews would still be very concerned about getting their vehicles stuck or damaged, notwithstanding Hollywood's love of tanks charging through brick walls… So a Daimler scout car or Universal Carrier might happily drive into and through even an old, close built Italian village, but a Matador towing a 5.5" might have issues, and a German in an Elefant is probably going to try to drive around the village unless there is a very clear, fairly straight path through.

You pays your money and you take your choice. I use a hex system but only for hills. Roads building etc. are not hex based they don't work for me. I make villages like shown. Ground scale is 1mm represents 1m i.2 1/1000, the models AFV's and Buildings are 1/144.

Key thing this portrays is tanks can't shoot sideways in lots of places while moving as this would damage the barrel in narrow streets.

As the building sort of represents buildings there actual location relative to each other is key and hence they are on a fixed base. The buildings are removable and the base though folding flat locates the building and represents the upper floor making it easy to record what floor the element is on. Of course with so many buildings its vital they fold flat at the end of the game. This many houses otherwise would be too many to store and even this is not all my building but may be 75% of them.