newbie question about scale and rivers
 

Hello all,

I'm starting to create a scenario built around the defense of the Suwalki corridor (read here for more).

One of the first engagements will be a Polish / American delay vs Russian advance near the Pasleka river (here).

Question 1: Just to confirm, 1 hex equals 50 meters. Correct?

Question 2: it looks like the Pasleka river is between 18 to 30 meters wide. I want to model this accurately enough. Would this be a normal water hex or a stream hex? I think it should be a water hex, because a stream hex could be easily crossed, whilst a water hex cannot.

Question 3: Tactics. The largest Polish town near the Suwalki gap is Elblag. The Pasleka river is the largest (widest) river between Kalingrad border and Poland. There is a major highway (S22 / E28) which leads directly to Elblag. I'm thinking the Russians would send a very large reinforced convoy towards Elblag (probably in conjunction with a large airborne assault on the small city).

The scenario I'm working on is at the bridge that crosses the Pasleka river. The Polish and American forces must stop / slow this convoy.

I'm imagining the Russians might insert a special forces group in and around the bridge prior to convoy vehicles crossing. I'm also thinking there would be helicopter escorts and a ton of Russian air cover. I'm thinking the Polish and American forces would be light and fast anti-vehicle units. Is shoot-and-scoot still a used tactic? The area is heavily forested, so it kind of makes sense as a place for an ambush.

Your comments and thoughts are welcome!

Re: newbie question about scale and rivers
 

1) 1 hex is 50 metres or yards

2) If it needs a bridge or raft to cross, it should be water. Streams are fordable, proper rivers or canals aren't fordable, so would be water hexes

- you may want to set that up as a river assault crossing, so the enemy infantry get assigned rubber rafts. depends if they have say BTRS with amphibious ability or not?

3) no idea

Re: newbie question about scale and rivers
 

You could put the river in as a stream then use the "convert streams to wide rivers" button on the next page of the game editor then when it asks how wide it should be enter 1 but that tends to give you shoreline lowlands and grass borders you may not want so the alternative is put it in one hex at a time using deep water

Re: newbie question about scale and rivers
 

Have you experimented with the Venhola program? It's a tremendous help when building maps.

Re: newbie question about scale and rivers
 

Further to this as you are new with the game.

That shoreline borders I mentioned when you converted streams to "rivers" can change depending on the season you have set in your editor AND the two opponents AND the Month AND the season you have set.

So..

before you start working with generating maps and the map generator spend a day in pure experimentation to get a feel for how things work when you change month/season/opponent. The map you get when you select ( for example ) Poland vs Russia in Dec when the "season" is set to summer is quite different than the one you get when the season is set to winter and the only way to get a feel for that and an understanding of how it can work is to experiment with it. In the above example, the difference is the amount of snow on the map but also vegetation tends to browns and straw-coloured rather than greens

The Venhola Map Generator Ulf mentioned in the previous post is a wonderful tool for making as accurate a map of any section of the world you want but to get the most out of that you need to experiment. The Venhola only gives you contours. You need to add every other detail manually but for anyone trying to recreate the exact terrain, it's worth the effort.........BUT, if you don't need a perfect representation of the terrain the map generator may give you " good enough" once you know how to use it and the extended map editor allows you to cut and paste sections of the map into itself or another map ( keeping in mind it uses the height of the sections as the original so pasting something 5 levels high into something 2 levels high will give you a three-level bump up....which can be useful if you want an escarpment or steep hill.

Also be aware that on the first page of the map editor the "grass" of baseline terrain button at the top left will clear down any terrain it is place on to height zero but the one on the top left of the second page will not... it will follow the contours not clear them.

( the learning curve is steep .......)

Re: newbie question about scale and rivers
 

My scenario building instructions are simple, experiment with what and how the tools give you various terrain much as DRG has suggested, you can and will get different results based on map size, so set it 40x40, 60x60, 80x80, 100x100, 120x120, 80x150, etc. and see how the maps can get generated based on year(s) and season. Then when you find one you like modify that.

Once your good with the basic map building tools, then use venhola an generate your historic/realistic map with contours and then fill it in. It can take anywhere from 4 hours to 18 (or maybe more, depending on how dedicated and how much time you want to put into it).

But start simple first.

BTW I have one complete and one work in progress CG for MBT that the player is in charge of a Polish unit from the Warsaw Pac. I think I can have them both ready for March.