MWiF Map Review - Australia & New Zealand

[Froonp]

ORIGINAL: wfzimmerman

What are the grayish asterisks in the water NE of Tasmania?

They are places where I deleted land hexes to put sea hexes.
I needed that marking to be able to delete them in the CSV files after having finished the draft drawing. Otherwise I may forget to delete them. Anyway, it is not on the map.

[wfzimmerman]

Don't forget to put the ones for Atlantis in the Atlantic.

There might also be an asterisk needed for Thera and Krakatoa.

[amwild]

ORIGINAL: Froonp

Finally, there is an issue with the forest coastline two hexes east of Melbourne's current (incorrect) position on this map that I'm not sure how to resolve. This area contains Lakes Entrance, and a series of lakes that means that the sea coast is separated from the majority of the hex's land area by lakes running parallel to the coast. If I understand the WiF rules correctly, an all-sea hexside is invadable. However, these lakes would mean that this otherwise invadable hex should probably not be invadable. Here is a link to an image of the area. It shows (somewhat unclearly) that there is a narrow lake running parallel to the sea coast along most of this hex. Does anyone have any suggestions? If someone has a better map of this region they can post from Google Earth or similar, this should better clarify what I'm saying.

From that Google Earth view and measurement, I think that this is not an issue, as it is too short to cover the whole hex, so it does not hamper an invasion.
If there was as much water inland as to hamper troops movements, hence an invasion, I would consider making the land cover a swamp hex, but I don't think the amount of wet terrain warrant it.

Froonp,

This Google Earth picture does not quite show the full extent of the lakes clearly. I have attached a modified picture with an orange line showing where the lakes run from Lakes Entrance back along the coast. The lakes actually run off the western edge of the photo. This part of the lakes is quite thin, but it is quite wide and deep enough to stop people crossing it without a boat (when they are loaded down with invasion gear so that they cannot swim), as I can attest from having spent time boating in the area.

[amwild]

ORIGINAL: Froonp

Also, Wilson's Promontory (which should be three hexes south-east of Melbourne 's current (incorrect) position isn't an island.

Where is this ?
3 hexes SE of Melbourne, there is nothing but water ?!? [&:]

The hex to the north-east of this hex has a bit of land connected by a narrow section. It wasn't entirely clear from your earlier maps that this bit of land was connected. According to my reading of maps, this bit of land should be in the hex I mentioned. It is the southernmost part of Victoria. If it is too much trouble, don't worry, It isn't all that important.

[amwild]

ORIGINAL: Shannon V. OKeets

ORIGINAL: Froonp

If you know the land, and see wrong things, please tell me where so that they get corrected before the real MWiF map is finished.

I wouldn't have thought that the Australian map would have raised that much comments [:D].
I was not very proud of the Broome - Darwin area (very very broken area) nor from my initial SE Tasmania (I did it near the end, and I was quite tired), but I would have though Adelaide & Melbourne were not that bad [:D].
Don't forget also that I try as much as possible to draw coastlines on the top of the hexmap who was already drawn before. I only modify the hex map if it is very wrong (as it was for Scandinavia, Iceland, and NW New Zealand). This sometimes lead to bay that are too wide, or too narrow, because of the hex constrains.

The difficulty with Melbourne is that the hex grid does not lend itself to the placement of the city. There are 3 hexes that contain parts of the city of Melbourne and regardless of which one is chosen for the city, a lot of the city will be in the other 2 hexes. In WIF, keeping the city, factory, and port all in one hex is crucial since they each affect game play so dramatically. Slewing the map around within the existing hex grid so one hex gets most of Melbourne is possible, but awkward. That's because the city more or less surrounds the bay. At the scale used by WIF FE, this would not be a problem, but MWIF has a finer hexgrid (smaller hexes) so some kind of compromise needs to be made between reality and the game map. And yes, this problem has come up before in other places.

In that case, since the map is looking good as I write this, keep Melbourne and its infrastructure in its current hex, but move the city dot to the far NW corner, and the port symbol to the coastline as far to the west of the hex as possible. They should practically be touching.

[amwild]

ORIGINAL: Froonp

Also, the coastline around Adelaide, Port Augusta and Kangaroo Island needs a bit of work. In fact, the whole south-eastern Australian coastline could do with a bit more work.

Here is a Google Earth shot at the Adelaide area.

What do you mean by "with a bit more work".
You mean my coastlines are too much "straight", not enough "broken", or do you think that it is the shapes that are not good ?

I felt that the peninsula to the north of Kangaroo Island was a bit small. Again, I'm just being picky, so ignore me if you want. The hexes already contain everything necessary.

[amwild]

Here is another picture of the Ninety Mile Beach/Lakes Entrance area with the lakes and swampy area marked in orange.

As you can see, there is quite a large stretch of coast that would be impassable to an invasion force.

[Manic Inertia]

WiFFE has desert-mountain hexes, which - despite me never having actually been in such places myself, is obviously a realistic idea. Where I have been, however, like many of you I imagine, is in 'forest-mountains', and I always felt that their absence on the hex maps was a sad thing.
 
Even at this late stage in its development, might not those parts of MWiF that are being newly mapped benefit from such an addition? I'm totally ignorant of what would be involved in design terms, but I do know that there are many hexes that can't comfortably be designated as either highland or forest, aren't there, especially in places like Norway, or Tasmania, or the Urals or the Rockies? Is it possible to make such hexes distinct from say, the mountain hexes of the Himalayas or the forests of Laurentia? Can I hesitantly guess that the changes needed are relatively straightforward?

[Shannon V. OKeets]

ORIGINAL: Manic Inertia
WiFFE has desert-mountain hexes, which - despite me never having actually been in such places myself, is obviously a realistic idea. Where I have been, however, like many of you I imagine, is in 'forest-mountains', and I always felt that their absence on the hex maps was a sad thing.

Even at this late stage in its development, might not those parts of MWiF that are being newly mapped benefit from such an addition? I'm totally ignorant of what would be involved in design terms, but I do know that there are many hexes that can't comfortably be designated as either highland or forest, aren't there, especially in places like Norway, or Tasmania, or the Urals or the Rockies? Is it possible to make such hexes distinct from say, the mountain hexes of the Himalayas or the forests of Laurentia? Can I hesitantly guess that the changes needed are relatively straightforward?

Ah, no.

Adding a new terrain type has the following consequences:
1 - the terrain for every hex in the world would have to be reviewed to see if it should be of the new terrain type.
2 - the movement and combat effects for every unit type (70 at current count) would have to be reviewed.
3 - the play balance for the game given the changes in movement and combat would have to be reassessed.
4 - the game would be radically different from WIF FE in a fundamental way.

[Fred98]

Melbourne should have a lot of cloud cover over it. [:D]
 
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[delatbabel]

Something else to consider -- having lived in Australia as well as NZ and parts of North America as well as visited Europe.

What Australians call a "river" is not the impassable barrier subject to flooding that it is in the northern hemisphere. In fact most of our rivers would be called "creeks" in the USA or Europe.

Down here, the word "river" means something that has some water in it nearly all of the time. "Creek" means that it may or may not have water in it, but usually has some water in it, or at least a damp bottom, in the winter. Then again, the Todd River, near Alice Springs very rarely has anything other than dry sand in it, and the Todd River Yacht Club has boat races using boats with holes in the bottom so the crew can stand and run along the dry sandy bottom carrying their boats (the annual regatta was cancelled one year when the river did actually have water in it).

So as far as carrying a penalty for troop movement and combat, most Australian "rivers" aren't your average Volga or Danube.

Some rivers and river systems that do actually have water: The close reaches of the Swan and Avon rivers near Perth (drawn to the north of Perth but actually runs around the south of the city). The river whose name escapes me, running in the south west of WA (near Bunbury). The Murray-Darling system, running from near Adelaide across the Victorian/NSW border, and also up through western NSW to Queensland (although most of the northern tributaries of this, say the forks SW of Brisbane are quite narrow and dry for most of the year). The Hawkesbury/Nepean system running around Sydney (drawn in pretty much the correct place), mostly because of the ravines that it runs through. The Brisbane river, running through Brisbane. Also pretty much any of the top end rivers, say anything drawn on the map north of a line running west from Mackay.

The Darling system (forks north of the Murray at the hex 5 east from Adelaide) is very seasonal. In the summer or during a drought, it can be no more than a trickle. In the winter it can flood to 2-3 miles wide. However most parts of it, except during a flood, are very shallow and can be easily waded across by a man, or driven through with a suitable vehicle (say 4WD truck or tracked vehicle).

Not sure how you'd represent this in game terms but if MWIF has a distinction between "major" and "minor" rivers then I'd rate every river on this map as "minor" at best.