Been trying to figure out the different scales also.
Here's my take on it
Paved road width is the base from which to start, since vehicles need a certain amount of room to maneuver through city streets, over bridges, etc.
Looking at the paved road width in PitF, it seems very close to the scale of the PitF vehicles. So let's say roads and vehicles in PitF are the same scale.
And if the object of this is to simulate real world objects, distances between them, and realistic size ratios ... then it would seem logical to have buildings be in scale with the paved road width.
One way of testing this is to grab 600m width of real world google earth terrain, and overlay it on a 600m PitF map.
After doing this, it appears the paved road width is nearly identical in both worlds.
Now let's see if PitF vehicles can move through in city streets.
I'll post an image on this ... note that some PitF buildings have been allowed to be seen in the image, which can be used to compare sizes of buildings too.
Vehicles can move through these streets, but stone fences and objects near the road need to be removed when they project into the street to far. I just coded the areas that were too restrictive as paved road to see if it is possible to use real world distances and ratios between buildings, vehicles, and paved road.
It seems it will work, but with some map making tweaks ... like removing stone fences and obstacles that make the road too narrow and/or moving some buildings away from the road a bit.
Buildings in PitF appear somewhat larger than real life when compared with paved road width ... which leads me to believe that buildings in PitF are scaled closer to the soldier scale of 12pix versus the 10pix of vehicles.
In my opinion most buildings are ok being a little smaller, but think a compromise between the two would be best.
So now we have paved roads, vehicles, and buildings all in comparative real world distances and size ratios.
Next, the soldiers. Soldiers need to be larger so they can be seen. I think this is a necessary abstraction and is best the way it is.
What about distances in the overall map compared with the distances seen measured by the game using the fire order?
Let's use the same small town example in the attached image. I think there are two ways to go:
1.If you want to portray the fields outside the town, you need to increase the size of the map to 960 meters (PitF max). That will give some field space around the map and possibly some terrain obstacles like hedges, valleys, and rises in terrain.
The advantage of having the map completely in real world scale is ... the distance in the terrain is the same as the distance the game measures, therefore simulating the real world.
2.Or keep the town's buildings and roads in the real world scale, but allow distant terrain features to be compacted in distance so that there is more in less map space (like in other CC versions). For example, 1200m of real world terrain equals 600m in the map.
The advantage of compacting the distant terrain is ... you get to have more terrain features in a smaller map and therefore less scrolling to see long range engagements. But distances between worlds are an abstraction.
Like Kursk, Operation Goodwood involved tank combat ... some of which is in open space at longer ranges. How to best portray this in CC is the question. Having lots of real world open space may involve some engagements where extra scrolling or use of the compact map view would be necessary, but the benefit would be the possibility of strategic tank formations.
