Location! Location! Location!

[Pitman]

This is a thread for complaining about terrain in ASL.

There are a lot of things I don't like about how ASL renders terrain.

I guess the biggest one is the stairstep nature of hills. Surely there can be a more naturalistic rendering of hills for ASL? It is so often so artificial. And where are the friggin' razorback ridges? And why are so many hills "bald" hills?

I don't like how indestructible walls and hedges are. A 128L gun can fire at a wall all day long and not do anything to it? Why can't they be breached?

Desert terrain. Too many desert terrain features are unnecessarily complicated.

Rice Paddies. Couldn't this have been simplified?

Beaches. Ohmigod. We need a bajillion rules for friggin' SAND?

Roads. Sometimes I wonder if they had any *straight* roads in World War II. I seem to remember that Europe actually had quite a few roads that ran straight.

Woods-gullies. How does this get to be one of the most difficult terrain types in ASL?

Towns/villages. So many villages/towns in Europe were narrowly strung out along a main road. Good luck in finding mapboards that are like this.

Fields. How come virtually no ASL boards actually look like farmland? Why don't more boards look like the map in Operation Veritable?

 

[Hovned31]

I agree with the hill complaints. Most of the early maps had hills with no terrain on them. This drives me nuts. The lack of terrain is accurate for depicting hills in the metro Detroit area-since those "hills" are really landfills. But the hills in most places I've been from southern Ohio to Romaina tend to be covered with woods, brush, grain, etc.

 

[ecz]

I guess the biggest one is the stairstep nature of hills. Surely there can be a more naturalistic rendering of hills for ASL? It is so often so artificial.

I think the "alpine hill" optional rule is a good way to fix the problem (for who thinks that is a problem). IMO It should be much more used as SSR.

I never played desert, rice paddles, and beach. I think however these rules are sometimes more difficult and complex than the necessary.

 

[Brian W]

Because ASL has nothing to do with reality and everything to do with fun.

Of course, if ASL wasn't so much fun, maybe we would actually be out on a Saturday night instead of sitting at our computere, munching corn chips and complaining about how much fun it is.

 

[David Reinking]

This is a thread for complaining about terrain in ASL.

There are a lot of things I don't like about how ASL renders terrain.


Desert terrain. Too many desert terrain features are unnecessarily complicated.

What part of essentially flat terrain bothers you Mark?? I mean, really...

 

[FrankH.]

I see the potential for improvements to "building" hexes. I see building hexes in cities with "Alleys" and/or "Courtyards" depicted in a similar manner to how trailbreaks are depicted in woods/minefields. I also see buildings hexes within cities sometimes being considered as Inherent Terrain (save for these Alleys/Narrow Streets, etc.).

Also, Alleys might be combined with Narrow Streets. For example, a building hex (more accurately a buildings hex) might have a Narrow Street on its hexside and an Alley running perpendicular to and bisecting the Narrow Street hexside.

Just an idea.

Frank

 

[Sarjent Mike]

I much prefer mapboards that reflect the actual battle where a scenario takes place. Those that have been walked and researched by someone at that location. Probably why I have so much Critical Hit stuff.

 

[GJK]

Dean Essig has the rules for hills mapped out nicely for the CWBS of games. They look even more wedding-cake on the maps than they do in ASL, however the rules has you playing them more as rolling, gradual height increases. FWIW.

 

[Honza]

KGP's slope rules are a very good way of dealing with the 'step' like nature of ASL hills. If a hill has slopes on it as well then the LOS possibilities become more interesting and 'natural'. I think maybe Slopes should be integrated into the main rules and Hill map boards have printed slopes on them.

 

[richfam]

The depiction of terrain doesn't bother me as much as the problems that result from shoe-horning it into the small geo-boards: the artificial, repetitive patterns, the short gullies/streams that go nowhere, the nonsense road nets, etc.

I'd rather see large, non-geomorphic maps with generic – but realistic – terrain layouts... like the current historical maps, but not depicting any actual historical location. Such maps could easily be used for any number of interesting scenarios, as well as for campaign games on battles where the same small piece of terrain was NOT fought over for days at a time.

Fields. How come virtually no ASL boards actually look like farmland? Why don't more boards look like the map in Operation Veritable?

This has always bugged me, since I live in a small agricultural community. The idea of a "farm board" having a patch of grain over here, and another patch of grain over there, is ridiculous... and the grain hindrance rules are way out of whack with regards to AFV combat.

 

[Glennbo]

I don't have a problem with any of the ASL terrain. I don't think that more different types need to be added either. I like the boards the way they have been done, and they appear realistic enough to me.

You're talking about one of the most detailed wargames in the world here guys. I STILL have to look up terrain rules after over twenty years of playing. If you want even more complexity added to the terrain, then you're psychotic. :nuts:

 

[Honza]

I don't have a problem with any of the ASL terrain. I don't think that more different types need to be added either. I like the boards the way they have been done, and they appear realistic enough to me.

You're talking about one of the most detailed wargames in the world here guys. I STILL have to look up terrain rules after over twenty years of playing. If you want even more complexity added to the terrain, then you're psychotic. :nuts:

There should be terrain rules for nettle and thistle patches! :clown:

 

[MrP]

KGP's slope rules are a very good way of dealing with the 'step' like nature of ASL hills. If a hill has slopes on it as well then the LOS possibilities become more interesting and 'natural'. I think maybe Slopes should be integrated into the main rules and Hill map boards have printed slopes on them.

No,no, a thousand times no. To me, slopes complicate ASL way too much and are non-intuitive. Keep them off geo maps and use them sparingly on HASL's.

And to richfam, I'd suggest that the wheatfields of europe may well be different to those around your house?

I'd second the dislike of indestrucible walls and hedges tho - maybe should be SSRs that allow breaching if you think it's going to help...

 

[Robin Reeve]

I guess the biggest one is the stairstep nature of hills. Surely there can be a more naturalistic rendering of hills for ASL? It is so often so artificial. And where are the friggin' razorback ridges? And why are so many hills "bald" hills?

I remember having suggested, in a letter, that hills could contain "orchards" : the letter was returned by AH with comments. About my suggestion, the comment was : "orchards?"
I would like to see those razorback hills.
Slope rules are an attempt to avoid the "plateau effect", but they have been made so much more complicated!
A simple rule like : "LOS from a hill to a lower elevation is not blocked by a hill hex of the same level, if that hex belongs to the same hill."
But introducing stupid TEM and other 3/4 level effects makes me find slope rules really distastefull (I cannot integrate them in my cortex : I must have the LOS example at hand to try to understand them).

I don't like how indestructible walls and hedges are. A 128L gun can fire at a wall all day long and not do anything to it? Why can't they be breached?

The problem with destroyable walls is that there could be a clutter of "breach" or "destroyed" markers.
If I remember well, that reason led wire fences never to be destroyable, in KGP.
I would have an issue about walls : where are the high walls, which would go up, say 8-10 feet and that would block LOS, hide a vehicle entirely and would be crossed only as Minimum Move /Advance to Diffcult terrain?

Desert terrain. Too many desert terrain features are unnecessarily complicated.

Yes. Why make LOS from a hillock different for entrenched and non entrenched infantry?

Rice Paddies. Couldn't this have been simplified?

Yes. I am 100% with you here.
I would add Panjis to any rules' reform.

Beaches. Ohmigod. We need a bajillion rules for friggin' SAND?

Yes. I am with you here. Add seaborne assault to that (but I presume you already were including that set of rules in your thought).

Roads. Sometimes I wonder if they had any *straight* roads in World War II. I seem to remember that Europe actually had quite a few roads that ran straight.

In France, the "Napoleon roads" go straight for miles and do (oh, wargamer's dream!) intersect at 60°, in six directions.
Many, many roads do have trees along them.

Woods-gullies. How does this get to be one of the most difficult terrain types in ASL?

There should be a rule similar to the stream-woods hexes : if you follow the gully, you only pay the gully MFs.

Towns/villages. So many villages/towns in Europe were narrowly strung out along a main road. Good luck in finding mapboards that are like this.

I welcomed board 48 as an improvement (it is a village along a road).
Unfortunately, all buildings are wooden (Russian isbas?) and quite separated one from the other.
A typical French village along a road is a string of uninterrupted houses (= ASL rowhouses). All would be stone.
Quite often, too, a stream or small river can run along that stringed village, beyond the houses and gardens.
I do appreciate the village terrain and its narrow roads.

Fields. How come virtually no ASL boards actually look like farmland? Why don't more boards look like the map in Operation Veritable?

Operation Veritable depicts enormous fields.
Of course, they are plowed, but they remain fields.
I would like to see wasteland : a board is only about a third of a square kilometer; that really is such a small part of terrain. Why are there always roads and buildings on such maps (the latter often becoming strongholds that shouldn't be offered too often).
And I do find that Field hindrance should differ for Vehicles : a turret hit could be totally free from any hindrance, as the upper structure of a tank sticks out of the crop.
In old SL times, there were differenciated visibility rules for fields, in the case of Vehicles and of infantry.
And wheat and corn do grow at different hights. The latter would hide a vehicle easily and block LOS as a quasi 1 level obstacle.

But, what could we do to change that?

I would plead, if any change were to be introduced, say, with new boards, that they would be simple (or simplified) : one can introduce chrome without complicating things.
As I seam to understand you, Mark, you are also pleading for such "simple/simplified" chrome.

 

[Darrell Andersen]

Terrain in ASL is plenty goofy. On the other hand it is one of the dreaded "abstractions" that I can live with.

 

[jpellam]

Thats why I like bd 36

This is a thread for complaining about terrain in ASL.

I guess the biggest one is the stairstep nature of hills. Surely there can be a more naturalistic rendering of hills for ASL? It is so often so artificial. And where are the friggin' razorback ridges? And why are so many hills "bald" hills?

QUOTE]

Thats is why I like board 36. It is one of the few boards with lots of terrain on top of the hills.

 

[richfam]

And to richfam, I'd suggest that the wheatfields of europe may well be different to those around your house?

That is, of course, entirely possible.

But I can't recall anything from the accounts I've read of battles in Russian wheatfields that would suggest that the field size or layout would be markedly different from those in America... even though a Russian collective farm must surely differ in many ways from an American single-family farm.

In any case, if anyone has some handy links to aerial photos of European farms that would support the assertion that ASL's treatment of farmland on the geo-boards is even remotely realistic, I'd be glad to see them. Until then, I remain unconvinced.

 

[Tuomo]

And where are the friggin' razorback ridges?

Korea. Boards are designed. Patience.

Tom

 

[zgrose]

Fire Team from West End Games had a good take on hills where they depicted the hexsides that formed the peak of the hills. Did a better job for visualizing the terrain and helped sharpen the peaks on the map.

More bypass options would be nice too. You can walk around a building but you can't walk around a grainfield?

 

[MrP]

But I can't recall anything from the accounts I've read of battles in Russian wheatfields that would suggest that the field size or layout would be markedly different from those in America... even though a Russian collective farm must surely differ in many ways from an American single-family farm.

Russia and Europe are two entirely different beasts! And I knew as soon as I hit post that that's what I'd be pulled up on Yeah, flat US farmland probably does equate to flat Russian farmland with huge fields but that's way different to French or German or Belgian farmland. What's the average size of a field over there? 100m x 100m? 200m x 200m? That's 2-4 hexes square, although I admit that they do tend to be clustered together somewhat (although they wouldn't necessarily all be wheat as small farms tend to rotate crops more - here it's a 4 year rotation of wheat, tatties, beasts then fallow) They do tend to be enclosed a lot more than geomaps show too, stone walls, hedges, barbed wire fences make LOS between fields very difficult if not impossible. Just check out Google earth for your favourite battlefield......

Good discussion

Ian