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I have decided to open this thread because my posts in the Map and OOB comments thread have been drowned out by the numerous comments about OOB topics.

I think that Australia could be depicted better than it is on the WitP map. There are, in my view, some problems with the current map at the moment:

- The routing of railways is very innacurate.
- Darwin is shown connected by a railway/highway link, which is not correct.
- Some rail/highway links are missing.
- Some of the terrain is innacurate, although most if it is reasonably correct.

I realise that these problems do not have a huge effect on gameplay, although the way that Darwin is connected to the rest of Australia may have a considerable effect on its defence and maintenance. But these things bug me a great deal since WitP is meant to be a historical simulation. There has obviously been a great deal of care taken with the various OOBs, ship and aircraft stats etc., so why not expect the same level of accuracy in the map? Especially since Australia takes up such a large chunk of the map, and is an important, if not central, part of the theatre.

I decided to try to make an improved Australian map, and I have completed a first draft, which I am adding to this post. This map is only a rough, low resolution map, and it is a work in progress. A lot of it was drawn very quickly, from only a few sources, and there will be many small innacuracies in exact rail/road routes, terrain types etc. It is simply meant as a suggestion as to how the map could be changed. A better and more accurate version could be made later.

I am hoping that this map can provide some raw material into a process of improving the WitP map, at least as far as Australia is concerned. I believe that the actual appearance of the map in the game can be modded, as well as the bases, but it seems to me that the rail and road routes themselves are hard coded and would need to be modified by Matrix. I have no idea how willing they would be to do this.

Here is a short list of the mods that I have made:

- Rail and road routes corrected, and some new ones added where I think they may be important.
- Terrain modified (not much different from the current map, but I think mine is more accurate, although some of it is still calculated guesswork).
- A few new bases are shown, although I don't really know if it is a good idea to add new bases.
- Added a few rivers.

The bases that I have added are:

- Broken Hill: If resources represent mining output, then I think that this location should be a source of some Australian resources.
- Katherine: The terminus of the railway south from Darwin. I am not sure about this, the railway may have been exteded further by the time of WW2, so I will look into this further.
- Cloncurry: Terminus of the railway going west from Cairns.
- Geraldton: Terminus of the railway north from Perth.

I have only added these bases for illustration. it might not be a good idea to add more bases to Australia.

So - Am I just wasting my time in proposing changes to the Australian map?

As I said above this map is probably not very accurate as I drew it very quickly. Feel free to suggest further improvements, or point out faults with what I have done already. Any fellow Aussies interested in hepling out?

I'm with you on this, good effort.

On a related note, why does New Zealand not produce anything? It's not all nervous sheep surely.

If you are going to this effort, how about Exmouth Gulf farther up the coast from Geraldton? Used as a sub base until 43.

Looking into it.

PS your map is what caught my attention, good work.

Bloody good effort. I know that the current map of Australia has put a lot noses out of joint, and I for one would be the first to agree with your post.

Thats excellent work there...PS excellent Spifire there Raverdave )

Please don't forget Thursday Island, which is on the wrong (north) side of the Torres Strait in the current map. Also, another possible base is the airfield complex at Coen, on the York Peninsula about half way between Cooktown and Thursday Island.

Don

Do we really need to add more bases? It's complicated enough as it is IMHO

kaleun - surely if they were militarily significant in reality they should be in the game, no?

Not that I have any idea personally as to what's what ...

ORIGINAL: Captain Cruft

kaleun - surely if they were militarily significant in reality they should be in the game, no?

Not that I have any idea personally as to what's what ...

Problem with a new sub base as someone suggested above is, that it would require a level 8 (not sure about that), 9 or 10 port to work like a sub base, but I doubt that all sub bases had such significance to surface vessels...

It's port size 8 to get torps, 9 to get mines.

Unless you have a tender (AS or MLE) that is ...

I am all for having a more accurate Austrailia. As for adding in bases, well if they were important to the war then they should be there. I beleive that if they can add in a genric base for Austrailia so that you could ferry planes why not add the actual bases that may keep you from having to use "gamey" tactics to do what was done in the real world.

Keep up the good work.

TANSTAAFL!

Word from Developers is that this would be a major piece of work affecting play balance and a host of other things. I've been told to keep it on the list but as a low priority. Please feel free to keep the discussion going so if we decide to take the plunge everything is worked out.

ORIGINAL: WhoCares

ORIGINAL: Captain Cruft

kaleun - surely if they were militarily significant in reality they should be in the game, no?

Not that I have any idea personally as to what's what ...

Problem with a new sub base as someone suggested above is, that it would require a level 8 (not sure about that), 9 or 10 port to work like a sub base, but I doubt that all sub bases had such significance to surface vessels...

Exmouth Gulf was just a size 1 base at most (the mosquitoes were bigger) , but had a tender there and fuel barges. Size 8 not needed, just a human player variable.

I do like the Look of the Improved Map idea for Austraila, and I was woundering if we could get Portland on a River and turned into a Port like it was In the War, and Astoria as well, the Columbia River is and Was a Magor arty for shiping and ship building in WW2.

Good work, well done!

The line extended south from Katherine to about another 3 hexes (Source "The never-Never line, the story of the North Australia railway")

I don't think we need more bases, the key ones are there.

The track from Wyndham goes to Broome, with a spur of about 2 hese to Derby. But that track was never caable of being used in a military significant way. I would be tempted to leave Wyndham, Derby and Broome unconnected. This means they need to be reinforced/supplied by ship, which is accurate (maybe they could produce some supply, but not much). Any military force in those bases needed to be supplied by sea. Even today it would be problemmatic to supply more than a Bde in Broome, Derby or Wyndham using the road to Darwin (and it is MUCH improved since then), and in the wet season no supplies can reliably get through.

Cheers

Rob

ORIGINAL: Kid

Word from Developers is that this would be a major piece of work affecting play balance and a host of other things. I've been told to keep it on the list but as a low priority. Please feel free to keep the discussion going so if we decide to take the plunge everything is worked out.

Wouldn't this just affect games against the AI? If it is a PBEM game wouldn't it be possible to make these (and other inaccuracy) modifications?

I'm glad that some agree with me about the need to improve the Aussie map.

I don't know much about military bases in Aus during the war, so the bits of information given about them so far in this thread are very valuable. If anyone has useful information in this regard please let me know.

Considering the message from Kid, I think that we should do the following:

- Come up with a basic Australian map, with just the terrain. This should be fairly easy to do by using my first version as a starting point and improving it. Eg. I just guessed which areas should be considered 'cultivated'.

- Add in the rails/roads and the big towns/bases that we know will/should be included.

- Try to come up with a concensus as to what (if any) extra bases should be added, their size and potential size, and just how the remote bases should be 'connected' (road/trail/nothing).

If we get a map which we can all (or mostly) agree on, then we might have a chance of getting something done. I am not sure why these changes would have such a profound effect on play balance? Perhaps you can provide more information on that Kid? Maybe if we know what those effects might be we can build in some compensation somehow. I am also willing to help out with the process as much as you need.

I also agree with the comment that it might be a good idea to include some 'generic' bases to represent capability if adding a lot of 'realistic' bases would introduce too much of an opening for gamey tactics. e.g Lots of little bases would need to be protected against small Japanese landing parties?

Sometime in the next couple of weeks I might go into the State Library in Melbourne and look for good sources of Australian maps of the interwar and war era. I don't know what they have but it might be useful. If anyone located in Melbourne is interested in helping out they can join me, or if someone has some good war era maps of Australia that they can email to me that would be very useful as well. My map is based on some online maps that I found but they are mostly from the 20s and low resolution.

Regards,
Andrew

I'll add my vote to the new Australia Map.

Also can someone tell me what the Northern Territory produced in the 1940's?
In WITP Darwin chugs out a substantial 300 resources.

Just looked at Aus. government website.

The population of the entire Northern Territory is listed as 8,000. of the then 7 million odd Australians. Must have been working hard.

They also provided ~1,000 enlisted men out of a total of 726,000+. So they had no manpower either.

Here's the site. Nice enlistment stats.
http://www.awm.gov.au/encyclopedia/enlistment/ww2.htm

Cheers
Top Cat