Modifications to MWiF Scandinavia Map portion

[Shannon V. OKeets]

I am not sure if you have all my votes correct since they were spread out over several posts, so here is an update (in the order you last showed the list). Where I write "no opinion", it means that I am not casting a vote yea or nay.

--------
Tampere (35,47) (Borger) Yes, it seems incorrect that all the Finnish units have to arrive in Helsinki
Gothenburg (41,38) (lomyrin) Yes
Finnish Borderlands 1a (33,52) (Borger) No
Finnish Borderlands 1b (34,52) (Borger) No
Finnish Borderlands 1c (33,54) (Borger) Yes
Lake Femunden (34,38 E) (Borger) No opinion
Lake Mjøsa (Mjosa) (36,38 E, NE) (Borger) No opinion
Vänern () (c92nichj) Yes
Vättern (40,40 SE) (c92nichj) Yes
Karlskrona (44,42) (lomyrin) Yes
Boden Fortified (27,46) (Toed) - 6 fortification hexsides with benefit of ½, not 1/3
Boden (27,46) (Borger) : Rename Luleå (Lulea) Yes
Bodø (Bodo) (26,41) (Borger) Yes
Kirkenes (21,51) (ullern) No
Tromsø (Tromso) (21,46) (Borger) Yes
Turku (37,46) (Borger) Yes, but as minor port not as a city
Railroad Gothenburg-Stockholm () (c92nichj) Yes
Iron ore of Gällivare & Kiruna 1 (26,46) (Borger) Yes
Iron ore of Gällivare & Kiruna 2 (24,45) (c92nichj) No
Strait from Copenhagen to Malmo (45,38 E) (c92nichj) Yes
Strait from NW of Helsingbor to Helsingborg (NW Malmo) (44,38 E) (lomyrin) Yes
Clear hex (34,39) (Borger) to Mountain, No
Clear hex (34,39) (Borger) to Forest, Yes
Clear hex (22,48) (ullern) No opinion
Clear hex (40,35) (ullern) No
Coast south of Vaasa 1a (33,45) (Borger) No
Coast south of Vaasa 1b (35,45) (Borger) No
Coast south of Vaasa 2 (36,45) (Borger) Yes
Glacier Svartisen (26,41) (Borger) No
Mountain hex (35,37) (Incy) Yes
Sognefjord () (Incy) Yes
-----------------

Repeated here are the 3 places where I qualified my vote with comments:
1 - Tampere (35,47) (Borger) Yes, it seems incorrect that all the Finnish units have to arrive in Helsinki
2 - Boden Fortified (27,46) (Toed) - 6 fortification hexsides with benefit of ½, not 1/3
3 - Turku (37,46) (Borger) Yes, but as minor port not as a city

[Shannon V. OKeets]

Oh, and yes, please shorten the list where a consensus has been reached.

[wfzimmerman]

ORIGINAL: Shannon V. OKeets

[
The sand in Vitemoula (spelling?) is of a strange granularity. If you scuff your feet while walking along the dry sand, kicking streams of sand along in front of you, the sand on sand interaction produces a whistling sound. Hence the term singing sands.

I also saw black sand on the southern part of the island of Hawaii (a.k.a., Big Island). Solid black sand, somewhat course, making up an entire beach. It's volcanic rock, in the form of very small pebbles, that haven't yet been broken up by the wind and waves into 'normal' sand. That beach has since been mostly (perhaps completely?) destroyed by more recent lava flows.

There is also a beautiful green sand beach on the Big Island IIRC.

[Froonp]

And by the way, the thing about the mountain hex. Does your comment mean it's vetoed?

No, it's not, I've got no more rights than you to veto something. For me, only Steve has these rights. I was just expressing that I voted NO to this. I've got the privilege to be able to cast a vote immediately when a new suggestion is made, I was doing that.
In message #79 I included :

Clear hex (Resource) (40,35) (ullern) : Change to Mountain.
3 Voters : 67 % YES, 33 % NO.
Terrain / Norway

The 33% is me [8D]. The 37% ae you (ullern) and Borger [:D].

[Peter Stauffenberg]

ORIGINAL: Froonp

And by the way, the thing about the mountain hex. Does your comment mean it's vetoed?

No, it's not, I've got no more rights than you to veto something. For me, only Steve has these rights. I was just expressing that I voted NO to this. I've got the privilege to be able to cast a vote immediately when a new suggestion is made, I was doing that.
In message #79 I included :

Clear hex (Resource) (40,35) (ullern) : Change to Mountain.
3 Voters : 67 % YES, 33 % NO.
Terrain / Norway

The 33% is me [8D]. The 37% ae you (ullern) and Borger [:D].

About this hex I have no strong feelings. I can easily live with it being a clear hex and
one benefit of this is that the Germans need to be careful about a British invasion near
Stavanger to capture the resource. When the resource is in clear terrain it's not so well
defended and the German will need to garrison Stavanger and the resource.

Remember that Germany had as many as 400.000 soldier at the most garrisoned in Norway (most in the north fighting Russians), but also quite a lot in the south.

I travelled through the Jæren grasslands SW of Stavanger and remember that even today we can see all the German anti-invasion obstacles they put in the shoreline. Many of them designed to prevent armor from entering. It shows that the Germans were very very concerned about an invasion taking place here. I remember from my work in the military, where the Norwegian army were evaluating the different terrain along the Norwegian coast about its suitability for invasion. This was done in case of a Soviet invasion of Norway so the NATO Allies would know where to counter invade to liberate Norway. I know that the Jæren grasslands were pretty high on the list for suitable counter invasion areas.

So I'm changing my vote for this hex to NO. After listening to the good arguments against it from Froonp. [:D]

I believe we can find lots of hexes on the MWIF with different terrain types inside them in the real world. And we can only choose ONE terrain for the MWIF map. So we have to make compromises from time to time. And I believe in such situations that how we want the game play to work should supercede accuracy. Therefore Froonp's argument of keeping the Norwegian resource a clear hex instead of the more correct Mountain (or forest) is in my opinion a good one. We can easily live with the hex being clear and it's not that wrong.

I also agree with Froonp's argument about having 75% YES to implement a change. I would say with one exception. That is if we have 3 votes only. Then a 66% YES should be enough for implementing the change.

I also agree that changes with 100% YES who have received 4+ votes are taken away from the list and implemented. That means that the list is shorter and easier for the rest to read through. I also believe we can take out from the list some propositions where there are alternatives and it seems one alternative is getting all the YES votes and the other all the NO votes.

Therefore I propose to remove from the list the following suggestions:

Clear hex (Røros, east of lake) 1 (34,39) (Borger) : Change to Mountain.
5 Voters : 20 % YES, 80 % NO.
Terrain / Norway

I have also suggested to change it to forest and this suggestion gets all the yes
votes. So I withdraw the suggestion of making it mountain.

Coast south of Vaasa 1a (33,45) (Borger) : Become land hex with most of the hex being sea.
4 Voters : 0 % YES, 100 % NO.
Terrain / Finland

Coast south of Vaasa 1b (35,45) (Borger) : Become land hex with most of the hex being sea.
4 Voters : 0 % YES, 100 % NO.
Terrain / Finland

I propose these two suggestions are removed too from the list. These were originally proposed by me under the circumstance that we could NOT change the European scaled map in Finland under any circumstance. But it seems we can do that and therefore the Coast south of Vaasa 2 is the preferred change to make and it's getting all the yes votes.

Glacier Svartisen (26,41) (Borger) : Move the ice 1 hex SE. This glacier should be placed close to Swedish border.
5 Voters : 40 % YES, 60 % NO.
Terrain / Norway

After comments from Ullern I think we have agreed to keep the glacier where it is and
change the coast line instead so it doesn't have the east-west peninsula look into the sea. Look at the coast lines near Svartisen from the maps provided. If you change the coast lines it doesn't look like this is the Bodø hex. Well, this will be done better if Bodø is placed on the map as a port. Ullern proposes the forest hex just north of the glacier.

So I propose we remove this suggestion to move the glacier and focus on changing the coast line instead in the hex. [:)]

Lake Femunden (34,38 E) (Borger) : Remove.
5 Voters : 40 % YES, 60 % NO.
Lake / Norway

I made this suggestion under the condition that it was NOT possible to add lake Mjøsa
to the map (because the European map scale should not be altered). For me it seemed strange that the unimportant lake Femunden would be added to be map while the biggest lake Mjøsa was omitted. But it seems we CAN make minor changes to the European map and it's proposed to add lake Mjøsa.

I therefore see no reason to remove lake Femunden so I propose we can remove this suggestion. It's true that Norway has more lakes than Finland, but on the MWIF map it would be very strange to see Norway without a single lake. So keep lake Femunden and hopefull add lake Mjøsa.

I also propose the following that after Froonp has revised the list by removing the 100% scores for implementation and the remove above suggestions I wrote about that we clear the votes for the remaining suggestions and people REVOTE for them. Hopefully we can get 6+ votes for each remaining suggestion on the list. I also have a feeling that some people may have changed their votes for some suggestions and hinting about it in their messages, but Froonp may not have seen it and changed the vote. It's now not possible to see who voted yes and who voted no. So a person can not correct a mistake if there was a mistake.

By simplifying the list to only contain the remaining ACTIVE suggestions on the list then I think a revote is the fastest way to do it. It will ensure that not "old" votes remain after we have discussed pros and cons for a suggestion. I don't think the list will be so very long so I think all of us contributing here should be able to cast their votes again.

Can you make this new list to vote onFroonp?

[Peter Stauffenberg]

ORIGINAL: Shannon V. OKeets
1 - Tampere (35,47) (Borger) Yes, it seems incorrect that all the Finnish units have to arrive in Helsinki

I agree with you that it's quite important for Finland to have an alternative city to
place reinforcements.

I also notice that Norway can only place reinforcements in Oslo, but that doesn't matter because Norway will usually be wiped out in the Spring of 1940 or remain neutral if Germany is not attacking. So there aren't many units that would need to arrive. But Finland is an active country for a long part of WW2 and would definitely have several units arriving as reinforcements.

With Tampere as a city then Finland can continue to fight even though Russia has engaged Helsinki and try to outflank it. It forces the Soviet player to send units in the direction of Tampere to prevent Finnish reinforcements to relieve Helsinki. I'm thinking now more on the end-game than the Winter War. During the Winter War I think Finland will agree to an armistice before seeing it's army destroyed and Helsinki captured.

3 - Turku (37,46) (Borger) Yes, but as minor port not as a city

I agree with this too. Especially if Tampere is introduced as a city. Then Turku can be a port only. Tampere can not be introduced as a port because it's not a coastal city.

I was thinking about the Finnish rail net. It doesn't go through the hex where Turku is located, but the real rail net is going through Turku. Should we therefore extend the rail line from Hanko to Turku?

Look here for a link to the rail net in Scandinavia:
http://www.alleuroperail.com/eurorailwa ... ia-map.htm

[c92nichj]

that it's quite important for Finland to have an alternative city to
place reinforcements.

I also notice that Norway can only place reinforcements in Oslo, but that doesn't matter because Norway will usually be wiped out in the Spring of 1940 or remain neutral if Germany is not attacking. So there aren't many units that would need to arrive. But Finland is an active country for a long part of WW2 and would definitely have several units arriving as reinforcements.

With Tampere as a city then Finland can continue to fight even though Russia has engaged Helsinki and try to outflank it. It forces the Soviet player to send units in the direction of Tampere to prevent Finnish reinforcements to relieve Helsinki. I'm thinking now more on the end-game than the Winter War. During the Winter War I think Finland will agree to an armistice before seeing it's army destroyed and Helsinki captured.

This will affect the game play quite a bit and Tammerfors is nowhere near the size required for a city on the map. There are other cities that are larger than Tammerfors was during WWII, I think that we should keep the 100.000 inhabitants rule, a hex containing a city means prohibiting Blitz and giving -1 on the die roll in addition to being a supply source and giving the opportunity to add reinforcements.
So to keep the playbalance I would not want to add any cities to Finland.

[Ullern]

Hello all.

I am gonne propose to correct the western part of Norway. The picture down below shows what I mean. The picture to the left is the current status of the map with Mjøsa, the picture to the right is my suggestion.

What do you think?

Patrice made the picture for me. Thank you very much Patrice!

[c92nichj]

I would not want to add Mjösa and would like to remove Femunden as both those lake a very small. Neither the Swedish lake of Siljan nor Hjälmaren are represented on the map both of them are bigger than Mjösa and much bigger than femunden.

For comparision the lake of Vänern is more than 25 times the size of Femunden and more than 15 times the size of Mjösa.

[Ullern]

If you think so, why not add Siljan or Hjälmaren?

[Manic Inertia]

• Hi Ullern.

 
Let me start by stating that;
 

• I have no idea how to create or edit maps, so my thoughts and comments should be viewed with that in mind, and the maps above are fantastic, awesome, brilliant, and have fired my enthusiasm for MWiF beyond where it already was, which is some acheivement, let me tell you!
• However, with respect, I wonder whether all that superb detail is going to be potentially confusing, particularly all the tiny islands off the norwegian coast: the straits hexsides seem somehow lost amidst all that detail, and where I have no doubt that the changes to the rail lines are extremely well informed (and consequently a very good idea), the fine detailing of the coasts might be better if it remains a little more simplified.

 
 

[c92nichj]

To add a lake to the map it should atleast be big enough to cover a hexside otherwise it does not have any impact on gameplay, Hjälmaren probably is big enough for that but I doubt that Siljan, Mjösa or Femunden is big enough.
See below a picture of the lakes.

[Peter Stauffenberg]

ORIGINAL: c92nichj

To add a lake to the map it should atleast be big enough to cover a hexside otherwise it does not have any impact on gameplay, Hjälmaren probably is big enough for that but I doubt that Siljan, Mjösa or Femunden is big enough.
See below a picture of the lakes.

That is true, but look at the number of lakes in Finland and northern Sweden. I think they are oversized and maybe too many. But I know they may be placed there for game purposes. Hampering those 4MP inf units etc. Mjøsa can easily prevent movement east-west along 1 hex side. It's about 120 km long and definitely wide enough that you can't place a bridge (during WW2) to cross.

[JagdFlanker]

had these in my 'map collection' so i figured i'd post them just in case they can be of any help to the discussion. great job!

[JagdFlanker]

and...

[Froonp]

had these in my 'map collection' so i figured i'd post them just in case they can be of any help to the discussion. great job!

I have these maps too (post #94) in my own 'map collection' too [:D]
I used the one to the right to draw the coastlines that Nills (ullern) showed here to you (post #88).
My opinion is that those new coastlines I drew are far far far more right than the first ones.

Also, Manic Inertia wrote :

However, with respect, I wonder whether all that superb detail is going to be potentially confusing, particularly all the tiny islands off the norwegian coast: the straits hexsides seem somehow lost amidst all that detail, and where I have no doubt that the changes to the rail lines are extremely well informed (and consequently a very good idea), the fine detailing of the coasts might be better if it remains a little more simplified.

I did this this way for my pleasure only. The graphic artist will do it the way he sees fit. I suppose he will use inspiration from my coastlines to save times, but I think he'll redrawn them completely.

[Froonp]

To add a lake to the map it should atleast be big enough to cover a hexside otherwise it does not have any impact on gameplay, Hjälmaren probably is big enough for that but I doubt that Siljan, Mjösa or Femunden is big enough.
See below a picture of the lakes.

An hex is between 70 to 100 km from side to side, depending on the place. In Scandinavia, it is closer to 70 km per hex. So, a lake to be placed on the map should be as long as the lengh of an hexside of an hexagon measuring about 75-80 km across. I did not calculate how long this makes, but I think that a 50-60 km long lake (Femunden as I seem to measure in on Google Earth) can be on the map to cover 1 hexside.
I don't known where Hjälmaren or Siljan are, but I'm ready to make them to the map if they are long enough and if it is possible given the rest of the things that are on their place on the map.

[Ullern]

I completetly agree with everything said about lakes above, also Nicklas' comments really. Because it's just so easy for a Norwegian to want to have both Mjøsa and Femunden on the map.

I vont cast any vote. But Patrice comments made me think of another way to measure size of lakes, that are maybe just as relevant:
How long are the lakes? (Ie. what chance that they block an axis of advance.)

Here is what I found:
Femunden 55 km
Mjøsa 90 km
Vättern 130 km
Hjälmaren 70 km
Siljan 40 km

Vänern I didn't measure beacuse it so unbelivably big

[Shannon V. OKeets]

ORIGINAL: ullern
I completetly agree with everything said about lakes above, also Nicklas' comments really. Because it's just so easy for a Norwegian to want to have both Mjøsa and Femunden on the map.

I vont cast any vote. But Patrice comments made me think of another way to measure size of lakes, that are maybe just as relevant:
How long are the lakes? (Ie. what chance that they block an axis of advance.)

Here is what I found:
Femunden 55 km
Mjøsa 90 km
Vättern 130 km
Hjälmaren 70 km
Siljan 40 km

Vänern I didn't measure beacuse it so unbelivably big

I agree the the length of the lake is more important than its surface area. Also the shape and placement. If you look at the map posted earlier showing German troop movements, it is clear they went around Mjøsa to the east and west. Lakes are really only on the map for 2 purposes: (1) to make it pretty, and (2) to affect game play. For the latter, it is a question of for which hexsides is movement prevented, or for very large lakes, an entire hex becoming a lake hex.

[Froonp]

Hjälmaren 70 km
Siljan 40 km

Where are those lakes ?