I thought military vehicles were designed to be off road as well as on road?
In fact I distinctly remember having a picnic totally ruined by a convoy of armoured vehicles once even though we were more than a mile outside the official practice zone! :P
Well. Yes. But they can go faster on the roads. Closely space trees are not easy to get through. Trying to knock them down is hazardous, the root ball can flip a tank over as it comes up. If they are closer than about 6 feet or bigger than 6 (hardwood) or 18 (pine) inches. Forget about. Steep slopes not so good. Lots of mud and steep slope. Bad. Ice. Worse. Artillery blows down the trees. Infantry likes woods. Infantry: Don't go into woods or town without it. Bad fields of fire. No long range fields of fire.
Modern tanks can go pretty fast cross country but the pigs in the late 70's to mid 80's were 10 - 20 kph off road at best. We would usually road mark at about 20 kph, even on the Autobahn. Slower if you are getting shot at. Perhaps 3-5 km/hr.
Maybe I should get Buzz (my downstairs neighbour, and an engineer at the Bovington Tank Museum in Dorset) to take me for a ride one day to get a better understanding of the machines involved.
Its about 15 miles away from where I live, and I've been there lots of times. Admittedly, they do have some of the oldest working tanks in the world. I think there's one there that they bring out on open day to trundle around the play area that was built in 1916.
I'll ask Buzz next time I see him. Might have to wait a bit, though. We seem to both be pretty good at this staying indoors business!
Also some interesting channels: Mark Felton, ships. Military History Illustrated, tanks, armoured cars, Drachinifel, ships. Military History is by an Austrian, he also translates on his channel German and equipment manuals with text in both German and English. And he shows book titles. The other two are British I believe.
After about 2 hours, this is where the 300m contour line are at. Also visible, for my orientation is a 400m contour line. The shot shows the map area where there is much to be done. I fear I am facing 10s of kilometers of lines to draw. Each 100m line will be on its own sheet. The bright colors are for me to be able to find where I am at because sometimes I switch elevations when I can't find an obvious continuation of a given elevation. I think the lowest contour line will be 200m and it may be pretty easier to get done. The highest is at 900 or 1000m and those too will probably be quickly accomplished. There's a crossover point when the lines start to cover a smaller area and progress increases. Not soon though.
I actually skip a lot of nodes. But the audience is incredibly detail oriented. I was thinking about doing contours every 50 meters but I am not going to do that.
Except for those lines that I know are closed contours, everything is going to be straight polygons and they will not be shaded. I have never had to try simplify, but I might give it a go after I finalize roads, rivers and before I do to many contour lines. Most lines are not single paths either.
Simplify is a good plan. You can set it to a low number and see very little difference between the before and after shots, and it will remove duplicated nodes so you know you have max detail for min node count.
Day 2 (I think) of mapping contours. There is a real thrill you get when you finish following a contour through many twists and turns and either come back to your starting point or reach a place where the printed elevation is the same elevation you started on, like 400. Sometimes when I lose the contour, I go back to where I started it and go the other direction. Sometimes I just go someplace else for a while. The ones above and below it will help you find it. And I might skip around to see where the highest elevations are (in this case yellow (900m), but a bit hard to see) and the lowest (200m). Th black box is where I have a gap in map coverage, but it is where the title will go.
@Sue, at the display scale here, it looks like I am following every nook and cranny (and sometimes I want to) but in places there are relatively long places where it doesn't do that, but its kinda hard to see.
Contours will be from 200m to 900m at 100m intervals. If I get ambitious, I might do 50m intervals, but I'm not sure I want that level of detail because I am trying to knock people out of their comfort zone a little bit with the 3km hexes and assuming that the units, regardless of where they are placed in the hex, have occupied the best available ground to do what they need to do. But that is what playtesting is for. The most contour levels I have had on a map thus far is 16, again at 100m intervals. For a smaller geographical area and smaller units (platoons/sections instead of company/battalion) I'd do 10 or 20m intervals.
Here's a close up view with the hexes turned on at pretty close to actual size (each hex is 3km top to bottom and about 6cm). Elevation here is from 300-700m. The second shot has the vegetation turned on. The final game will have the background be either a faint green or maybe light brown or fields (if there is a fill that is not too clunky and I don't have to do them individually).
I'd stick with the interval you've got right now and see how it looks. That way, you don't waste any time by drawing extra contours all for nothing if it looks just fine with the 100 m interval.
I'll finish the 100m intervals and then get some playtesting done. Greater detail does not always equal greater fidelity or fit the needs. The US player is the 11th ACR Regimental Commander, he gives orders to battalions (squadrons) and monitors the execution of companies/troops/batteries. (In the US squadrons are British tank/cavalry Companies and platoons are British Tank/cavalry Platoons). US Regiments are brigade in size, but sometimes in the British Army are battalions. The Soviet player is the 8th Guards Army Commander, controlling divisions and monitoring Regiments/Brigades, but in this case for some play balance, he will go down to the battalion/separate company level. As a company commander I was very concerned about the terrain at the 10 or 20m interval. As a division staff officer I was not so concerned with it, which is why I am using the 100m interval as a starting place.
There's certainly a pleasure and satisfaction to contour tracing like this, which can become quite hypnotic. I speak as someone who used MS Publisher to create such maps for years before discovering CC3, so everything like this then was drawn using polygons you could colour and edge as you pleased, and where every node (visible automatically all the time) could be more or less infinitely adjusted to suit. I do miss that nodal visibility in CC3+, where it's often so hit and miss as to whether you can even guess where the node is - yes, I know there's something fancy you can do to get them to show, but I can never remember what that is...
Mind you there's also the appalling swearing when you find you've accidentally mis-traced a contour so it now doesn't match up with where it started, which I see Mike has thoughtfully chosen to gloss over here
Wyvern that's because it's too frustrating to talk about. What's really bad is if you are assuming success and doing a filled polygon that's stretched all over the map, get back to the start point, right click to finish and watch the fill go out toward the map edge instead of in toward the polygon center.
For various reasons I don't use the contours provided in a map because there are not enough of them, I find it difficult to change the color, but I like the idea of being able to backspace.
I know I can create my own drawing tools and or modify the tools but it orient work well for me. So I rely on brute force and ignorance.
Day 3 of N devoted to contours. Some progress as can be seen. Difficulties arise when the contour line you are following disappears into a sheaf of them. Still, moving along. The dark blue is the 300m line, yellow the 900m line. The others are mostly not in any order, except light blue is the 400m line and Green is the 200m line. Maybe I should normalize them sheet be sheet so they go up from color 1 (black) at the upper left of the color palette. It would be easier, but is somewhat against the path of Brute Force and Ignorance.
Thanks for the CTRL+F pointer Sue. Smooth lines are more problematic, but often I run into problems where one entity overlaps another, and I'm trying to shift a node I can't see to get it to line up with the edge of the entity I can (or vice-versa if by chance I've managed to click on the node). That and the irritation of the "doesn't automatically redraw" aspect when you're trying to move or delete the same nodes on an entity that has both a solid polygon shape and a hollow outline one...
Mike: Yep, high vertical cliffs are a nightmare when contour tracing, especially when you can't work out which contour is which at the other side of the cliff. And the filled polygon thing! My worst experience happened early on with CC3. I got about 3/4 round a very complex contour line after about 25 minutes, all going well, needed to zoom out slightly, the Autosave pop-up came up, I clicked "Save", and the polygon closed itself! At least MS Publisher lets you save any time you want without doing something this catastrophic!
Still Plugging Along. starting to look like a topographic map, except for the garish colors. Some areas look too blank, generally below 300m. (Green is 200m represented only by two realitiely small lines on the northern part of the map. Either I am missing them or I need a 250m contour line.
The center north area bugs the most. It is not flat by any means, but it is in the river valley and with 100m contour lines it looks like a parking lot. It may have made more sense to start the contours at 250 meters, maybe 150, but the lowest I found was 170. I am sure I have not drawn every contour line, though. When I lose them, I go off somewhere else and then come back to them. At any rate, finish the 100m intervals and reevaluate.
Comments
I thought military vehicles were designed to be off road as well as on road?
In fact I distinctly remember having a picnic totally ruined by a convoy of armoured vehicles once even though we were more than a mile outside the official practice zone! :P
Modern tanks can go pretty fast cross country but the pigs in the late 70's to mid 80's were 10 - 20 kph off road at best. We would usually road mark at about 20 kph, even on the Autobahn. Slower if you are getting shot at. Perhaps 3-5 km/hr.
Its about 15 miles away from where I live, and I've been there lots of times. Admittedly, they do have some of the oldest working tanks in the world. I think there's one there that they bring out on open day to trundle around the play area that was built in 1916.
I'll ask Buzz next time I see him. Might have to wait a bit, though. We seem to both be pretty good at this staying indoors business!
He's being paid to stay home right now. I think it's slowly doing his head in, but he's being really good to me - as quiet as a mouse.
Also some interesting channels: Mark Felton, ships. Military History Illustrated, tanks, armoured cars, Drachinifel, ships. Military History is by an Austrian, he also translates on his channel German and equipment manuals with text in both German and English. And he shows book titles. The other two are British I believe.
'
I'm thinking about the number of nodes its going to cost you.
Except for those lines that I know are closed contours, everything is going to be straight polygons and they will not be shaded. I have never had to try simplify, but I might give it a go after I finalize roads, rivers and before I do to many contour lines. Most lines are not single paths either.
@Sue, at the display scale here, it looks like I am following every nook and cranny (and sometimes I want to) but in places there are relatively long places where it doesn't do that, but its kinda hard to see.
How many contours are you going to do?
Here's a close up view with the hexes turned on at pretty close to actual size (each hex is 3km top to bottom and about 6cm). Elevation here is from 300-700m. The second shot has the vegetation turned on. The final game will have the background be either a faint green or maybe light brown or fields (if there is a fill that is not too clunky and I don't have to do them individually).
Mind you there's also the appalling swearing when you find you've accidentally mis-traced a contour so it now doesn't match up with where it started, which I see Mike has thoughtfully chosen to gloss over here
[Or maybe that's just me?]
You swearing? Never!
You can reveal the nodes by hitting CTRL+F. Same for switching them off. This only really works for smooth lines, though.
For various reasons I don't use the contours provided in a map because there are not enough of them, I find it difficult to change the color, but I like the idea of being able to backspace.
I know I can create my own drawing tools and or modify the tools but it orient work well for me. So I rely on brute force and ignorance.
Happy Easter!
Thanks for the CTRL+F pointer Sue. Smooth lines are more problematic, but often I run into problems where one entity overlaps another, and I'm trying to shift a node I can't see to get it to line up with the edge of the entity I can (or vice-versa if by chance I've managed to click on the node). That and the irritation of the "doesn't automatically redraw" aspect when you're trying to move or delete the same nodes on an entity that has both a solid polygon shape and a hollow outline one...
Mike: Yep, high vertical cliffs are a nightmare when contour tracing, especially when you can't work out which contour is which at the other side of the cliff. And the filled polygon thing! My worst experience happened early on with CC3. I got about 3/4 round a very complex contour line after about 25 minutes, all going well, needed to zoom out slightly, the Autosave pop-up came up, I clicked "Save", and the polygon closed itself! At least MS Publisher lets you save any time you want without doing something this catastrophic!
So maybe complete the ones you have and then look at it again?