Quick question about hex & map scales

[Elessar2]

I believe Europe is 25 statute miles per hex. World is 40 statute miles? If the latter scale is correct however, it should take 625 hexes to cover the world East-West, but instead is only 297 hexes. [25,000 miles divided by 40] I may be missing something obvious, or am using the wrong scale (maybe it's 50 or even 60 for World).

[Captjohn757]

Ah, the size of the hex question surfaces again. Unfortunately, there isn't a simple answer to your question. It's easy enough to overlay hexes on a sphere, but attempting to project the results onto a flat, rectangular map on a global scale is problematic. The hexes would have to get fewer as you go north if you're only looking at circumference in an east-west direction; given your suggestion of 40 miles per hex, the Tropic of Cancer (23°26′11.3″ north latitude) would have just 571 hexes, representing a circumference of 22,847 miles. As has been noted multiple times in this forum, tiny land masses (the Truk atoll, for example) have to grow significantly out of proportion to even exist on a map of the scale used in Strategic Command. And there are other discrepancies that pop up --- movement allowances, artillery and aircraft ranges, etc. Bottom line: scale doesn't matter as much as playability and there is no such thing as a great circle in Strategic Command.

[Elessar2]

Yeah, which is why I have been looking at a Mollweide or Equal Earth projection which would avoid vanilla's Mercator distortions.