Map Comments

[Oleg Mastruko]

Another smallish map comment... in Mongolia there are some orange "residuals" from where the border was placed before (obviously). I guess border got moved further to the SW but it wasn't completely deleted at its old place.

O.

[Mike Scholl]

ORIGINAL: gdpsnake

It looks on the map as if a RR exists between Hue and Hanoi but troops ALWAYS march along the grey road which is slower and two hexes longer. Is this a RR or just a glitch in the terrain?

They're curious. The "Coastal Highway" has been around for a long time, but this new
road down the Highlands dropped from the sky on 12/01/41. Maybe they are looking
for OZ or Never-Never Land.

[Mike Scholl]

A LARGE map comment. Rabaul is totally out of B-17/B-24 range from any hex
in Australia. Apparently the Japanese Fan-boy who created this map for 2x3
thought that it would make his life easier to leave reality out of the equation...

[rtamesis]

I believe that in SPI's boardgame War in the Pacific, they accounted for the map distortion by creating different zones where movement near the equatorial area, for example, cost more in terms of movement points than in areas closer to the poles.

[Mike Scholl]

ORIGINAL: rtamesis

I believe that in SPI's boardgame War in the Pacific, they accounted for the map distortion by creating different zones where movement near the equatorial area, for example, cost more in terms of movement points than in areas closer to the poles.

This probably isn't programmable in the WITP system, though it was an elegant
solution 30 years ago. But what could (and should) have been done when they
decided to go with a "projection" map was to take a good look at what Mercator
figured out hundreds of years ago. If you look at a "Mercator Projection" map
you will notice things like Greenland are HUGE compared to reality. He stretched
them to keep the sea distances accurate because the maps were made for sailors
who didn't care if the Greenland ice-cap was bigger than Antarctica's because no-
one was going to use it to wander around in Greenland anyway. It was for sailing
around Greenland, and on the waters in between it and other things.

WITP is primarily a naval and air struggle, which the designers seem to have for-
gotton. If Australia had been HUGE, it might have "looked funny" but at least they
could have kept the sea and air distances between it and other parts of the map
more accurate. The "Outback" is about as important to WW II as the Greenland
Ice-cap..., distorting the he11 out of it wouldn't have made any real difference
in game play at all. But significantly changing the ranges between Australia and
Papua New Guinea/the Bismarck's DOES. And that was what 2by3 chose to do!

[BPRE]

Hi,

It says Fushun on the map but in case you move the mouse over the base it's shown as Fushan.
Minor but in case you're aiming for 100%....

/BPRE

[guke]

Krung Thep is the Thai name for Bangkok (actually only the first part of a rather long name). On the map Krung Thep and Bangkok are separate locations which is wrong, I think.
Contrary to someone elses post it should be Songkhla and not Songkhia.
The base Siemrem Reap should be Siem Reap, Siem Reab or Siemreab (I've seen all three spellings)

Quoting myself here, because it hasn't been mentioned in pry's summary of previous posts [;)]

BTW, the full name of Bangkok is:

Krung Thep Mahanakhon Amon Rattanakosin Mahinthara Ayuthaya Mahadilok Phop Noppharat Ratchathani Burirom Udomratchaniwet Mahasathan Amon Piman Awatan Sathit Sakkathattiya Witsanukam Prasit

which translates to:

The city of angels, the great city, the residence of the Emerald Buddha, the impregnable city (of Ayutthaya) of God Indra, the grand capital of the world endowed with nine precious gems, the happy city, abounding in an enormous Royal Palace that resembles the heavenly abode where reigns the reincarnated god, a city given by Indra and built by Vishnukarn [:)]

Source: http://www.into-asia.com/bangkok/introd ... llname.php

regards,
Gunnar

[Cap Mandrake]

1) Maybe call "Lahaina"....simply "Maui"...as the airfield was, I believe, at Kahului on the other side of the island.

2) How about a Bay for San Francisco? It looks landlocked.

[Pascal_slith]

Ocean Island graphic is on the map at hex 77,89 but no beach/base was in the database. Should simply be a beach without base, supplies like in UV.

From my comments in the OOB:

There are also far too many militarily significant bases, i.e. port or airfield size 1or greater WITH supplies and fuel, lying around the South Pacific and Southeast Asian islands. Many should be reduced to simple beaches (port and airfield 0) or at a minimum a port level 1 with no supplies or fuel.

Finally, there is much too much fuel on hand in most ports, including major bases, EXCEPT for PH and the US West Coast ports. Considering 1 fuel point = 1 ton of fuel, PH should have about 600'000 (the approx. 4.5 million barrels on hand on Dec. 7th). As the West Coast had about 44.5 million barrels available, at least Los Angeles should have 950'000 fuel points available. (Sources: PH Attack Hearings (see website at www.ibiblio.org) and "The Pacific War Revisited" by Bischof and Dupont). The major Australian, New Zealand, DEI, Malayan (Singapore), and Indian bases also have too much fuel on hand. I'm working through the official histories and other sources for more exact corrections.

Ocean Island has been missed as a beach/buildable base. It's on the map graphically (see hex 77,89). And Nauru was an important source of phosphates for Japanese agriculture, so it should have a resource production industry.

[Pascal_slith]

As to the map errors in general, all 2by3 had to do was buy the National Geographic map collection on CD or DVD and they would have had no problems with correct names, locations, etc. There are a few really nice 1930's and 1940's maps on the NG discs.

[Hipper]

Hi Folks apologies if this has been pointed out before but there should be a base at hex 31 26 , called Cox's Bazaar

A) its a great name.

B) its where all the offensives in the Arkan started off from and it had at least 4 airfields in it otherwise the home base for offensives in the Arkan have to start off from Dacca on the otherside of the Bramaputra

Cheers

[Tanaka]

Interesting Alaska Comments:

fb.asp?m=689653&key=nome




ORIGINAL: kew

I hate to nit-pick here but I'm from Alaska and I'd like to know where this road is from Anchorage to Nome. n fact I don't think there's more than a three hundred miles of road on the Seward Penninsula (where Nome is) The info below was teken from the Nome/VC website

Highways: No road system connects Nome to any major city.
Nome-Teller: 72 miles west, Nome-Council:73 miles east
Nome-Taylor:87 miles north
Rail:None

They've talked about building one for years. I don't think there ever was one built during the war. I've flown there a few times to go hunting and I've never seen anything from the air that remotely resembles an old road.

I doubt that any Japenese player would invade the USA from here and use the roads to their advantage, but just for the sake of realism is there any way to get the roads taken out of the game in the next patch?

More Alaska discussions:

tm.asp?m=697996

[guke]

ORIGINAL: Mike Scholl

[This probably isn't programmable in the WITP system, though it was an elegant
solution 30 years ago. But what could (and should) have been done when they
decided to go with a "projection" map was to take a good look at what Mercator
figured out hundreds of years ago. If you look at a "Mercator Projection" map
you will notice things like Greenland are HUGE compared to reality. He stretched
them to keep the sea distances accurate because the maps were made for sailors
who didn't care if the Greenland ice-cap was bigger than Antarctica's because no-
one was going to use it to wander around in Greenland anyway. It was for sailing
around Greenland, and on the waters in between it and other things.

This is not entirely correct. In Mercator Projections not only land areas but also
the sea is shown much larger near the poles. Thus, even if a Mercator project-
ion was used in WitP, Sea areas near Australia would be larger than in reality and
all distances except right on the equator would be wrong.
What Mercator did was to "stretch" his map towards the poles in order to keep
the angles right (which is indeed very helpful for navigation).

It is impossible to create a correct map on a two-dimensional surface.

regards,
Gunnar

[Montbrun]

Guke,

Not true on a smaller scale - I do it every day - but at the WitP scale, yes, your statement is true in the fact that distance distortion must be accounted for by applying a scale factor based on the earth's ellipsoid shape...

Brad

[Mike Scholl]

Gunnar. You are correct in that I was over-simplifying Mercator's solution...,
but if you will look at the map 2by3 has foisted off on us you will see that they
made NO use of Mercator's methods. All of the "stretching" and "twisting" oc-
curs in the sea areas (where the air/naval war was actually fought) instead of
putting as much of the necessary distortion in the interior of places like Australia
or New Guinea (where little or no action takes place). Mercator made his adjust-
ments with specific goals in mind, whereas 2by3 seems to have given little or
no thought to the "purpose" for which their map was created.

[Cap Mandrake]

There appears to be a canal across the island containing Puerto Princessa in the PI (TF's plot a route right through the island)

[Cap Mandrake]

ORIGINAL: guke

ORIGINAL: Mike Scholl

[This probably isn't programmable in the WITP system, though it was an elegant
solution 30 years ago. But what could (and should) have been done when they
decided to go with a "projection" map was to take a good look at what Mercator
figured out hundreds of years ago. If you look at a "Mercator Projection" map
you will notice things like Greenland are HUGE compared to reality. He stretched
them to keep the sea distances accurate because the maps were made for sailors
who didn't care if the Greenland ice-cap was bigger than Antarctica's because no-
one was going to use it to wander around in Greenland anyway. It was for sailing
around Greenland, and on the waters in between it and other things.

This is not entirely correct. In Mercator Projections not only land areas but also
the sea is shown much larger near the poles. Thus, even if a Mercator project-
ion was used in WitP, Sea areas near Australia would be larger than in reality and
all distances except right on the equator would be wrong.
What Mercator did was to "stretch" his map towards the poles in order to keep
the angles right (which is indeed very helpful for navigation).

It is impossible to create a correct map on a two-dimensional surface.

regards,
Gunnar

Well there is always 3d [:'(]...ultimately the hexagon is a 2-d shape and any 2-d map will have distortions, even on a small scale.

Here is NASA's way cool "J-track 3d" Java applet to plot satellites in orbit. You can click and drag from SF to Sri Lanka presto change-o. Imagine if the satellite plots were on the surface and were instead TF's...which were clickable (or had mouseover data) [:D]

"Shift-click" to zoom in
"Ctrl-click" to zoom out
Left-click and drag to rotate the globe


http://science.nasa.gov/Realtime/jtrack ... ack3d.html

[Lemurs!]

Hi all,

I do not remember where i saw this but i remember a boardgame that tried to solve the same map problem.

Their solution was to have map sections or slices that were each quite accurate and then had connection points to the next slice. You didn't miss anything, there were no transit zones, it just had a seperation between each slice.

Mike

[guke]

ORIGINAL: Mike Scholl

Gunnar. You are correct in that I was over-simplifying Mercator's solution...,
but if you will look at the map 2by3 has foisted off on us you will see that they
made NO use of Mercator's methods. All of the "stretching" and "twisting" oc-
curs in the sea areas (where the air/naval war was actually fought) instead of
putting as much of the necessary distortion in the interior of places like Australia
or New Guinea (where little or no action takes place). Mercator made his adjust-
ments with specific goals in mind, whereas 2by3 seems to have given little or
no thought to the "purpose" for which their map was created.

Mike,

If you compare the size of Australia with the size of East Asia for example,
Australia is much too large already.

But I actually agree with you in principle, the map is indeed very strange.
the distance distortion seems much too large even for a Mercator projection
around Australia while the distance distortion in the far north looks much little.
Maybe instead of picking a standard projection 2by3 simply drew the map the
way felt it would best for playing?

regards,
Gunnar

[Mike Scholl]

Gunnar. Unfortunately I've been coming to the same conclusion that the map was
drawn "the way... it would be best for playing"... the Japanese. Virtually all the
"too short" portions seem to occur in areas of the initial Japanese expansion like
SE Asia, while almost all of the "too long" distances seem to occur in areas where
Allied resistance jelled like the Coral Sea.

I've often wondered why they didn't chose to make the whole map "hexagonal shaped"
with a flat at the top and bottom and a bulge in the middle (sort of building in the global
spread at the Equator). I don't think there is any law that says a map has to be rec-
tangular, and it would have certainly eased the need to stretch or twist things.