Slitherine

I’m toying with the idea of building a mechanism to facilitate large battle generation. Where multiple players working in teams come together for a battle on a large tabletop, but the direction of approach and timing of arrival of forces is determined strategically versus at initial set up. The (still forming) idea is that players move FOG armies on a large hex grid. I want to assign terrain types to each hex, so that when battle is joined, the terrain is reflective of the ground on the large hex grid. Two questions for the community.

1) Is it at all valuable to have the specific terrain assigned on the large hex map or just major type represented in the hex?
For example: The major types are Open, Uneven, Rough, and Difficult. But each type has multiple kinds of terrain. Open for example is Open Ground and Open Gentle Hill. I could just indicate that the hex is Open and then come up with a way of assigning what type of Open ground is present if battle is joined OR I could assign specific types to each hex specifically so that the ground is specified as Open Ground or Open Gentle Hill.

2) Second, regardless of how I do it, I’ll need a method of “reasonably” determining the type of ground in each hex. I would like to hear people’s thoughts on “reasonable” percentages for terrain types. For Example: 65% Open, 20% Uneven, 10% Rough, 5% Difficult. I understand that your answer for the percentages might vary depending on what “class” (agricultural, steppe, etc) of terrain I say the large hex represents, but I’m reluctant to give the large map a “class” and let the clumping of the results determine the ground “class”. However, I’d like to hear others peoples thoughts on how important it is to determine the “class” before determining the type of terrain in a hex.

I’m interested to hear other people’s ideas. This is mostly unformed in my own mind and would like to use this conversation to solidify a mechanism for facilitating large battles.

Thanks for the help.
Scot

Hi Scot

Why don't you assign each hex as a Territory Type found in FoGAM rules pg 139 e.g. "Developed", "Agricultural", etc. then take the amount of selections within the table and convert these to percentages for each Territory Type?

(EDIT): You may also take the compulsory selections into account when assigning percentages, if you like.

atatnet wrote:Hi Scot

Why don't you assign each hex as a Territory Type found in FoGAM rules pg 139 e.g. "Developed", "Agricultural", etc. then take the amount of selections within the table and convert these to percentages for each Territory Type?

(EDIT): You may also take the compulsory selections into account when assigning percentages, if you like.

It's probably not very apparent from my first post some of the specifics of my thinking.

Let's say that each hex represents a 2X2 foot square of your tabletop. Using mechanisms I'm still working on, armies moving on the large hex map encounter each other and battle ensues. The ultimate tabletop is 4X12 feet which represents a 2 hex by 6 hex rectangle on the large hex map. The the direction of approach of the colliding forces determines which of the 12 hexes becomes the battlefield. I would like those 2X2 foot sections of the tabletop to reflect the terrain on the large hex map to some degree.

One possible concept would be to say that the entire large map represents a territory type of Developed, Argricultural....then have different percentages for Open, Rough, etc (or Orchard, Gully, Gentle Hill alternatively) by type versus use a generic type and with consistent percentages. If you get any random clumping of results then the tabletop might end up looking decideingly agricultural (as and example), but to not specifcally specifiy the type ahead of time.

Thanks for the ideas. I appreciate it.

Scot