pryoung
Member
Yeah, but at that point you're not really playing ASL anymore, or at least you're using the terrain defined in the ASLRB in ways it probably wasn't designed to be used.WaterRabbit said:You can call a level 4 hill 40m or 400m for all I care. However, when the hexes hit the map, LOS is determined as if it were 40m or less. For scenarios that use cardboard and maps this doesn't matter much. However, if you start to play around with miniatures (i.e. chapter J) then this becomes much more important -- especially if you want to do "true" LOS with laser pointers and/or periscopes.
In any case, I interpreted Don's original question to be one of determining elevations on a map compared to the historical terrain, ie, how to translate that terrain into a playable ASL map. Sure, it's ultimately based on some form of reality, or more accurately, one person's view of reality. But it's all been abstracted, heavily, for playability purposes. Trying to extrapolate backwards, to determine, eg, the scale for elevation changes, is looking for standards where they don't exist. I'd stick with my earlier example: the terrain as laid out on an ASL map is determined by trying to match the effects of the historical terrain on the battle more than by trying to match the map exactly. Certainly HASL maps should be closer to the actual terrain than the generic boards (RB certainly depicts Stalingrad more accurately {not "realistically"} than Board 1 does) but you're still stuck trying to squeeze all the terrain into nice little 40 meter hexes.
Pete