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rkr1958 -> RE: By the Numbers: Another Solo Global War AAR (9/1/2020 5:28:46 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: cfinch
for scripting Finland "northern front" - the soviets had garrisons on the border and the Finns were more or less only concerned with reclaiming their lands. so allow the Finns to move no further than 1 hex from their original borders (or even only into original borders) thereby forcing at least 1 or 2 garrisons to hold the rail hexes that would be ZOC'd (near Salla)
i think this would more or less follow historical pattern (the 1 or 2 garr would really be spread over a much larger section of the border but so would the Finns - more at a brigade level)
the Finns had zero interest in attacking russia (maybe there were some elements, on a roll of 10 once a year maybe the government changes? +1 or +2 if Leningrad is taken). They survived as an independent country post war due to this
Those are sort of my thoughts too on this script.
MWiF is a fantastic game and I do like having the same hex scale for the entire map. I'm not sure many folks have made the connection, and I really hadn't until recently, but there are 360 columns (0-359) and 195 rows (0-194) of hexes.
Since columns correspond to longitude this means that the (horizontal) width of each hex is equivalent to 1-deg of longitude. That is, 360 hex columns mapped to 360-degrees of longitude.
Now to determine the (vertical) height of each hex required that the most northern and southern points on the map be pinpointed. For the north we have 4 map references that I can find which are: (1) Point Barrow, (2) Cape Bathurst, (3) Spitzbergen and (4) Novaya Zemlya. These references, respectively, have latitudes: (1) 71.4 deg, (2) 70.6 deg, (3) 78.75 deg and (4) 74.9 deg. So if I just take a straight average of these I get 73.9 deg. Given the artistic license involved in making the hex map let's just round up to 75 degrees latitude as the northern border of hex.
Now for the southern border I took three reference points: (1) Cape Horn, (2) Macquarie and (3) South Georgia, which have latitudes, respectively, of: (1) -56.0, (2) -54.5, (3) -54.1. So let's say the latitude of the southern border of the map is -55 deg latitude. This means that the 195 hex rows span approximately 130 degrees of latitude, which gives us a (vertical) height of 1.5 degrees of latitude per hex.
Lets take hex height first. The equivalent distance of 1.5 degrees of latitude is almost invariant to where you are on the earth. I say almost because the earth isn't a perfect sphere. It's an ellipsoid with a equatorial radius of 6378 km, or 3963 miles, and a polar radius of 6357 km, or 3949 miles. However, assuming a sphere and the equatorial radius, 1 degree of latitude is approximately 111 km, or 69 miles. This means that hex height is approximately 166.5 km, or 103.5 miles, no matter where you are on the map.
Now width is a bit more tricky. The equivalent distance between 1 degree of longitude does matter where you are on the earth even assuming a perfect sphere. Specifically, when assuming a sphere, 1 deg of longitude equals 111 km, or 69 miles only at the equator. At 40 degrees in latitude either north or south 1 degree shrinks to 85 km, or 53 miles. And at the poles, the distance shrinks to 0. Fortunately, the map doesn't go all the way to the poles. At the northern map edge (75 deg north), 1 degree of longitude equals 29 km, or 18 miles. At the southern edge (55 deg south), 1 degree of longitude equals 64 km, or 40 miles. Coincidentally,
the latitude of Moscow is 55.6 deg north which means that the with of a hex near Moscow is 64 km, or 40 miles.
Ok, I admit to not only going down but getting very lost in a rabbit hole. What does all this mean and where am I going with it. Let's get back to Finland and Murmansk. Murmansk is almost 69 deg north latitude, which means that a hex width near Murmansk is only 40, or 25 miles. While the height remains 166.5 km, or 103.5 miles. That's quite a bit of distortion as moving 1 hex east-west, which is a distance of 25 miles, is treated the same as moving 1 hex north-south, which is a distance of 103.5 miles.
The map distortions, unit scales (i.e., armies/corps/division) and game scope (i.e., strategic) make it very difficult to accurately reflect or model the war in this region with MWiF. To wrap up, therefore, I don't believe it's such a bad thing to script things that far north to force them to be a bit more realistic.
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