Map 500
Designer notes

Map 500 portrays a remote, hilly landscape with high, rocky mountains in the north and rolling grassland in the south.  It includes a river, mountain trails, two towns and a small airfield. Particular attention was paid to modelling LOS in mountain terrain. It is particularly recommended for scenarios involving the ferreting out of a terrorist group in the mountains or for wargaming a rugged, mountain defense against large, conventional attacking force.  

As a departure from the "color coded" style of TacOps maps, this map depends on a fairly detailed and realistic illustration of terrain which in turn allows for more subtle gradations of terrain roughness along with a corresponding subtlety in gradations of movement costs. (Rough 1 and Rough 2 may be mixed together cell-by-cell, for example, to create an intermediate level of terrain speed.)  It is hoped that the added detail will allow the player to estimate movement costs according to the texture depicted in the artwork rather than on an overly simplified color code system. 

Generally speaking, the terrain is fastest in the grassy (green) lowlands and becomes gradually slower as the terrain becomes rockier (browner) and more jagged (as shown by the sharp ridgelines).  Since mountains are most jagged at their peak, the terrain also tends to become slower as you go higher in altitude.

Coding key:

The grassy green areas are coded as clear terrain with an occasional Rough 1 cell added in, as indicated by the subtle ripples and folds here and there.  The more heavily pitted areas with the protruding (brownish) rock formations are coded entirely as Rough 1 with an occasional Rough 2 at the top of these formations.

As you move into the mountains the surface becomes rockier (browner), at which point the movement cost turns to Rough 2 at the base of the mountain range and gradually slows to Rough 3 as you move toward the higher elevations.  By the time you reach E1 elevation (as indicated by the magenta contour line) all terrain other than trails are coded as Rough 3, while the snow-covered terrain at the summit is coded as Rough 4.

There is one exception to this coding scheme.  Any naturally occuring mountain passes -- that is, the deep grooves formed by any two ridges running alongside each other -- are coded as Rough 2, not Rough 3.  This permits a reasonable amount of movement in the  mountainous areas without having to always depend on trails -- as long as the movement takes place along naturally occuring passageways between the peaks.

Roads come in three varieties -- highway (gray-black), dirt road (brown) and mountain trail (rocky paths cut into mountains).  The highway is coded as "Road."  The dirt road is coded as "clear."  The mountain trail is coded as Rough 1.

The river is coded as water, except in one spot where it is crossed by the mountain trail in the East.  This point is considered a ford and is coded as Rough 3.

All towns are coded as Rough 2.  The structures at the airport (hangars, control tower) are coded as towns.

LOS blocks were used a great deal in the mountainous portion of the map to simulate the irregular visibility you would expect to have in a jagged mountain range.  In general, anywhere there is a long, sharp ridge there is also a string of LOS blocks.  This means that any unit sitting on top of such a ridge will usually only be able to see only to the next peak, but it is possible for it to see down a long ravine for quite some distance.  There are also a number of other LOS blocks here and there, particularly where there are big bumps or irregular rock formations.  In testing, these LOS blocks seemed to present a fairly logical and intuitive system of visibility in accordance with the details of the artwork.  

This map was created using a combination of Vista Pro, Photoshop and Brushstrokes on a Mac G3, using 256 colors throughout the mapmaking process.

If you find any errors or discrepancies with this map, please let me know by writing to me at johnmck@idt.net.
