Malaya Map

[Shannon V. OKeets]

A new map segment from Rob just arrived. Here's French-Indo China.

[Shannon V. OKeets]

Malaya and Singapore.

[Shannon V. OKeets]

Sumatra

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Java

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Celebes and East Timor

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Timor Sea and Dutch new Guinea. This is the SE corner of this map segment.

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Yap, these are the Palau Islands.

Patrice! Quick! an unnamed island!

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Borneo. Did someone mention oil?

[Shannon V. OKeets]

La piece de resistance - The Philippines.

Legaspi is going to require special code. I don't think we want naval units to be able to arrive from the east and exit to the west. The port has to be available to just 1 sea area.

[Shannon V. OKeets]

A closer look at Singapore.

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11th and last in the series. An overview of the new segment.

[Froonp]

ORIGINAL: Shannon V. OKeets
La piece de resistance - The Philippines.

Legaspi is going to require special code. I don't think we want naval units to be able to arrive from the east and exit to the west. The port has to be available to just 1 sea area.

I disagree.
Legaspi is a port on 2 sea zones on the WiF FE maps, and so it has to be the same on this one.
It's easy to assume that ships arriving to Legaspi from the West are using the strait to the south. Anyway, this is an important feature of the Philippines in WiF FE and it would be a mistake to change this.

[trees]

I don't think Legaspi being on only one sea zone would be too terrible, it wouldn't be the only change from WiFFE. Under the rules you could ship the resource from either zone as there is no port or rail conection to the resource. Special code sounds difficult, but creatively drawing the sea zone boundary, say from where the yellow cursor arrow is in the screen shot above up to where the text for 'Legaspi' is and thence back west to the port would handle that. There does seem to be a remnant portion of zone boundary in the resource hex though.

I thought the mines/resource hex around Hanoi were one hex away on a draft version of the map? I could be wrong.

I just finished reading the volume of Samuel Eliot Morrison's official USN WWII history dealing with the 'Defense of the Malay Barrier' and have been looking at this area on paper quite a bit lately. More beautiful stuff here.

I used to kid people that my favorite book is the Rand-McNally road atlas, then I saw Jim Harrison wrote that line in one of his novels in the 70s. Now maybe my favorite book will be ... a WWII computer game map?

[trees]

oh, and these screen shots make me wonder if you have labelled the weather zones somewhere on the map yet? I know the program will handle displaying the weather for the impulse in the hexes, but wil the names of the weather zones be on there somewhere?

A major feature of naval maps and battle histories is the names of the many Straits in the Pacific. I wouldn't want the map to sink under the weight of too many letters but it could be an interesting bit of geography to label a couple famous ones? I mean if mountain ranges and such will be on there. These are fun on the map, maybe a 'geographical names' toggle? Maybe next time? Chrome is fun but too much bling gets tacky?

[Froonp]

ORIGINAL: trees

I don't think Legaspi being on only one sea zone would be too terrible, it wouldn't be the only change from WiFFE. Under the rules you could ship the resource from either zone as there is no port or rail conection to the resource. Special code sounds difficult, but creatively drawing the sea zone boundary, say from where the yellow cursor arrow is in the screen shot above up to where the text for 'Legaspi' is and thence back west to the port would handle that. There does seem to be a remnant portion of zone boundary in the resource hex though.

It is not the question from where you ship the resource.
The question is that Legaspi Port is a door opened into the South China Sea for the US. Changing that IS changing the game. A lot.

Moreover, you say that "it wouldn't be the only change from WiFFE", but I would like to reply that we tried hard to have all the sea area boundaries be in the same places on the MWiF map as they are on the WiF FE map, and lots of changes were done to achieve that. It's not an issue that is taken lightly.

[Froonp]

A major feature of naval maps and battle histories is the names of the many Straits in the Pacific. I wouldn't want the map to sink under the weight of too many letters but it could be an interesting bit of geography to label a couple famous ones? I mean if mountain ranges and such will be on there. These are fun on the map, maybe a 'geographical names' toggle? Maybe next time? Chrome is fun but too much bling gets tacky?

I added some famous strait / Gulfs names.
I added the main mountain ranges, deserts, marshes, and other major geographical features names on the map.

I encourage you all to submit me more.

The map is soooooooo large, that even after having added more than 1000 names, it is not yet crumbling. For the moment, there are slightly more than 2500 names on the map.

[trees]

ahh, I had never thought of using Legaspi like that, our games tend to see more action in the Bonins. Each player has their favorite strategy to kick in the door to the East Asia Co-Prosperity sphere. To me, adding more small island hexes to the Marshalls and Bonin group changes how the game is played, a lot. My P-38/Hellcat/Mariner swarm is salivating over those. I also like an attack India strategy so all the terrain there is important to me. But questions about how the map should work should be decided on geography, not favorite strategies. I'd say keep Legaspi as a two zone port and re-route the zone boundary a tiny bit to make that work out the easiest way.

[trees]

i.e. draw the boundary from Samar to the Legaspi port symbol. simple. I also kind of like the symmetry of Cebu being a port only on the South China Sea and Legaspi only on the Marianas though...

the straits on there are cool, I'm noticing more of them now. I guess I was looking at Java and thinking about the Morrison book when I mentioned that.

[Froonp]

ORIGINAL: trees

I'd say keep Legaspi as a two zone port and re-route the zone boundary a tiny bit to make that work out the easiest way.

i.e. draw the boundary from Samar to the Legaspi port symbol. simple. I also kind of like the symmetry of Cebu being a port only on the South China Sea and Legaspi only on the Marianas though...

Good idea.
(draw the boundary from Samar to the Legaspi port symbol)
Steve, would you agree ?

Here is the oiginal Philippines Map :

[Shannon V. OKeets]

ORIGINAL: Froonp

ORIGINAL: Shannon V. OKeets
La piece de resistance - The Philippines.

Legaspi is going to require special code. I don't think we want naval units to be able to arrive from the east and exit to the west. The port has to be available to just 1 sea area.

I disagree.
Legaspi is a port on 2 sea zones on the WiF FE maps, and so it has to be the same on this one.
It's easy to assume that ships arriving to Legaspi from the West are using the strait to the south. Anyway, this is an important feature of the Philippines in WiF FE and it would be a mistake to change this.

I think this can be argued strongly both ways.

It is only a minor port, so requiring the naval units based there to enter and leave through the Bismarck Sea (to the east) is less important than if it were a major port. The Legaspi 'harbor' is the indentation on the east side of the hex. There is a 2400+ meter mountain in the hex too, so (as Patrice said) to get to the South China Sea the naval units would be using the straits to the south.

What do other forum readers think about this?

Should we ask Harry?