New screenies, Mediterranean coast is mostly done:
Sorry for the links, but no matter what I do (site I try, file format I choose), images simply aren't recognized as such by the Matrix server for me.
Crete
Egypt
Istanbul area
Sicily
I've been using Google Maps, having copied and edited a hex grid to superimpose on top of any screenshot. But Google has apparently taken away the ability of a desktop PC to rotate the map, which is an issue because
SIPRES decided to use a non-Mercator projection, which as I said above makes things more accurate, but any land towards the edges must be "tilted" to align with where the North Pole is. I basically have to realign the maps in my head to match. Thankfully there is little work left to do on West Coast of Europe (where he had already done most of the coastlines). It actually is pretty fun, kind of like one of those mega jigsaw puzzles... I did find some minor errors in the scale here & there (the Med is apparently a bit smaller than advertised), nothing which should affect things too much.
Understand-there is a TON of work left: just map-wise next will be West Africa, then the Middle East, Norway, then E. Russia. There are 17,000 land hexes to fill in on the right side of the map, and I'll have to draw them one. at. a. time. North America afterwards. THEN have to put all the cities in, as well as terrain features (Russia itself will be a bear, pardon the pun), weather, borders, input all cities and such into the database. **THEN** I can finally get to editing the fun stuff (units and such)-editing the scripts over will be hours of bliss I am sure... Finally it will require a LOT of playtesting.
I have an issue tho, and it has to do with the tiles. There are 48 "cross" tiles in the editor, ones which ostensibly have land/sea edges diametrically across from each other, 2 sea, 2 land. The issue is that almost all bulge wayyy out, or way in, making any coast drawn at the matching angles a crooked mess of bays and bluffs. I'd redraw half of them to be much more straight, but not only would I have to do the default 24, I'd also have to do the matching ones for the alternate weather/climate, 12 total tile files, which means 288 tiles to edit, where the ones with the same number would have to match each other. Sigh. Or just live with the lumps, come up with creative ways to minimize the distortions.
May likely go with seasonal turns of 10/8/6/8 Winter/Spring/Summer/Fall, alternating turns, which would give you about 48 turns per year (as I said in another post it can be frustrating to get crap weather on your turn when your opponent got all sun, but the Axis player using simultaneous turns has a big advantage knowing what the weather will be for the Allies, and can adjust his choices accordingly).
Tech will likely use the 1/1/1 max 3 chits system I've been playtesting on vanilla, but 2 chit techs will take an average of 40 turns to go up a level, which may mean making turns longer (14/10/6/10 days will give ~40 turns). Not sure how catchup, sharing, and spying would impact that, given that those bonuses are 1 point each. I believe I can turn off ally sharing, unless I feel that the Western Allies (the main beneficiaries) should keep it. One way of reducing the "Everybody has the same tech" syndrome would be to reduce how many MPP's can be invested total.
One thing that occurred to me the other day was naval search on such a big map. So far on both vanilla scales naval combat tends to be a slugging match, since it's pretty hard to avoid being spotted (I know I use my subs as scouts a lot, esp. in the Med) combined with transports zipping around once they know where the enemy is, often able to embark and dock on the same turn. If however I can make it that even with naval cruise (where I may indeed reduce the movement boost there) transports would have to stop in the middle of the Med, then things might proceed more like World In Flames, with air, sub, & ship scouting looking for the convoys & task forces (along with some lucky spying spottings)
TLDR: stay tuned, but don't expect an alpha for at least 6 months. At some point I may recruit someone to edit the scripts.
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