Mike Scholl
Posts: 9349
Joined: 1/1/2003 From: Kansas City, MO Status: offline
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Brad Hunter Matrix has used a projection for the map. The "base-line" appears to be somewhere 2-3 hexes West of French Frigate Shoals, running North-South. At this point "North is North." As you procede further away from this "base-line," the map is more skewed, as it should be for this projection. Unfortunately, with "real" maps, the error in distances is greater the further away that you travel form the "base-line," if a scale factor is not applied. I make maps for a living, and I'm not quite sure what has been done with the WitP map. I've noticed that the distance between Wake Island and Midway is too short..... The real problem with the "projection" is that as Mercator discovered, you have to stretch something (land or water) out of shape to keep the distances true for the other. This projection has chosed to try and keep the land elements pretty much to recogniz- able sizes while stretching or pinching the water areas in between. Unfortunately, the War in the Pacific was primarily a Naval and Air war, and the distances between the land bodies are far more important to the flow of play than the land areas themselves, Australia, while still badly done in terms of interior transportation, is realtively the right shape. Which unfortunately makes the water area between NE Australia and Papua- New Guinea far to large..., the Coral Sea has become an ocean that can no longer be crossed by historical means. It would have been far better to have stretched southern Australia out of shape (not much likely to happen there, especially in the outback) and made the Coral Sea more accurate. Another poor design choice that is and will con- tinue to cause trouble.
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