Matrix Games Forums

Shouldn't cavalry units be treated the same as vehicles when it comes to entering hexes that contain houses/buildings, etc?

Haven't seen too many horses inside a house lately...other than a barn.

The horses can wait outside while the men run through the houses. A tank needs a much wider gap to pass through than a horse. Being in a building hex doesn't necessarily mean being inside the house.

I'll accept the second part of your answer, but not the first. There is no discernable movement loss to the cav unit when it enters a house/bldg hex which would have to happen if they were to dismount go then mount.

As I think of it, would 12 horses take up less space than 1 tank? If the answer is no, then the second part of your answer wouldn't work either.

Just a thought on this, no big issue but I did chuckle when while playing LV I saw some Soviet cav units blaze through a village forgoing the road system.

We have 2 situations:
1) The unit stops in the hex. Then the men dismount and take up positions inside the house. The horses can go anywhere.
2) The unit is passing through. Then the riders pass along the sides of the house, through passageways that may be much to narrow for a tank, one after the other.

In both cases horsemen have ability of passage and occupation much superior to a tank.

Look at the scale of those buildings. They appear to be about 20m square or 400 square metres (3600 square feet)

The average size of a WW2 era wooden house would not be greater than 100 square metres (900 square feet) and most likely very much smaller than that in poorer countries.

Clearly, the building icons represent either a very small building in a very large space or a cluster of small buildings. A litle imagination can be applied here.
<img src="tongue.gif" border="0">

We have to use some space warping. A unit in a building hex is mainly supposed to be interacting with the building object, in the case of infantry hiding in it, in the case of vehicles crashing into it/being obstructed by it.

Hey All:

The scale of the unit icons themselves are 2 pixels/ft. This is about the smallest you can do the units and have any detail at all. As it is the smallest detail you can get is 6" (1 pixel) this means a man's arm is 6" a gun barrel is 6" a rope on a tent is 6".... you get the idea.

If you apply this scale to a hex that is 88 pixels the distance between parallel sides would be 44'. Instead the distance represents 25 yds. or meters or about 75'. Or about 1 pixel/ft. This can be confusing.

I assume that the buildings follow the same scale as the icons. So what you have are buildings and units that are double the size they would be if kept in scale with the hexes.

I don't know if this helps visualize the scales... I still get messed up when I'm deep into a game. I find myself using the unit scale to judge distance instead of the hex scale.

My 2 cents of Euro:

You can go to General Preferences - Unit Icon and change the value there. The units can be sized a lot smaller. The default is to allow players a better view of the units.

PS - Major: a small correction if you don't mind - 3 foot +/- = 1 meter.

[ January 21, 2002: Message edited by: RichardTheFirst ]</p>

Yes, Richard, and a square meter = about 9 square feet, just like Major said in his post <img src="wink.gif" border="0">

OOOOOPS SOOOORRRRRRRY <img src="smile.gif" border="0">

Let's get this straight:

1 foot = 30,5 cm, so
1 meter = 3,28 feet.
1 square meter = 10,7 square feet.

<img src="smile.gif" border="0">

Penetrator: nice calculator you have <img src="biggrin.gif" border="0">

Well sir, I don't have a degree in physics for nothing!

When I think about these hexes, a house icon would have things that aren't seen. A dog house, a porch, garbage pile in the back yard, a well, an outhouse. LOL Lots of things to provide shelter.

A so-called clear hex to me may have small brush, dips, rocks, etc.

To me, the icon represents the dominant feature in the hex, not the *only* thing in the hex.

It is somewhat mysterious how cavalry can go into a wooden building and bicycle infantry cannot.

Man! The Finns got the shaft when their elite formations have those weird bicycle units.

That thing about bicycles makes no sense to me at all. The last time I checked it was pretty easy to get a bike through the door, but the horse just didn't want to go in at all. <img src="smile.gif" border="0">

In ASL it says that the buildings represent a cluster of structures throughout the hex, not a single building; that a terrain feature is the dominant type, not the only type. Anyone who's walked an uncultivated or unmanicured area will notice that there are clear and dense spots in any area -- even one as small as 50 m. sq. (250 sq m.). I sometimes think we try to take every icon in the game literally and they're really scaled for show.

It does, however, make me wonder about vehicles passing through. In the city I live in there are alleys and building separations that would easily allow an A1 Abrams to pass through. The building convention is just that: a convention to allow a generalization of obsticles. I do think some of them come out weird, but hey, it's a game and we have to make some allowances, don't we?

Originally posted by Challenge:

as small as 50 m. sq. (250 sq m.).

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HUH? <img src="eek.gif" border="0">
Professor, get out your calculator again! <img src="biggrin.gif" border="0">

[ January 22, 2002: Message edited by: Major Destruction ]</p>

Heheh... Who here needs a course in maths/geometry?

Allright, who can tell me how many cubic centimeters there are in a cube one kilometre per side?

Well, from what I remember of Germany, the first floor of most of the buildings in villages were barns! <img src="smile.gif" border="0">

More seriously, a tank is a single, large object. The dozen or so horses are a lot of smaller objects that can be spread throughout the hex.

Originally posted by Major Destruction:

HUH? <img src="eek.gif" border="0">
Professor, get out your calculator again! <img src="biggrin.gif" border="0">

[ January 22, 2002: Message edited by: Major Destruction ]

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Okay, so what's an extra zero amungst fiends.
<img src="wink.gif" border="0">

I guess Penetrator will tell you it' s a little more or better a little less than a zero. We have hexes, not squares! <img src="wink.gif" border="0">
By the way, how do you say 1.000.000.000.000.000 in English? I confess I have always problems with the bigger numbers for IIRC there a slight differencies:
a German Million = an English million
a German Milliarde = an English billion
a German Billion = 1000 English billions (=??)

[ January 23, 2002: Message edited by: kgvm ]</p>