Scales

[telzy amber]

Miniature games usually have two scales, figure scale and board scale. Board scale is ground scale and figure scale is, obviously, our miniatures scale. These two scales almost never coincide and usually cause a problem with rpg games with figures. It’s why buildings are too small. A skirmish type of game has this problem but to a lesser extent as a building can just be one room, no furniture, no WC, the building is an obstacle/cover only.

Air and especially ship games have this problem to a much greater degree.

…erm… getting back on subject depicting terrain (buildings, vehicles are usually figure scale) in figure scale is too large. Even rpg games downsize rooms or leave off objects that get in the way. One method is flat, two dimensional, buildings with flat furniture. But then we are playing with nicely sculpted, and painted, three dimensional figures living in Flatland. So some compromise is required.

Do you make this compromise situational? This action is done on a paper map but this one has walls (with all the problems walls cause) and rooms that are small (figures are not just taller, they, and their bases, take up more space. You can’t just smoosh figures in cheek by jowl). Even Sally 4th’s Rick’s Cafe Americain is far too small. Which brings up another point. What do we do with all this incredible terrain/shop shelves/display cases/diner booths… I love it but

Sorry for the rambling

 

 

[Mike]

I do skirmish, I did 6mm sci-fi skirmish and I now do 15mm fantasy skirmish.
For the most part my ground scale is close, bows cover the entire board, thrown weapons seem reasonable.

Buildings are often to scale in regards the figures height, the problem comes when you look at a figures width.
At 6mm you could easily say that 1mm = 1 foot. (seems reasonable)
Thus a 6mm figure is therefore 6 feet tall.
The issue is that 6mm figures can be from 3mm to 5mm wide.
This is of course not to scale, so a properly scaled car at say 5mm wide (5 foot) looks way too small to fit 2 6mm models in it.
The same issue happens with buildings, often they are fine in terms of 1mm = 1 foot, but then when you plonk down a figure it looks small.
Not to mention if the 5mm wide figure is on a 10mm wide base.

This seems to be less of an issue as the scale increases in terms of figures as they can be more in proportion and thus buildings seem less teeny.

so in conclusion, what was the question again?

😀

[willz]

When gaming my 28mm 18th century war-games I use 1/87th scale buildings.

 

Willz.

[John D Salt]

telzy amber wrote:

Miniature games usually have two scales, figure scale and board scale.

All wargames normally have three scales: ground scale, time scale, and force scale. Ground scale is what you call “board scale”. Time scale is the length of time represented by a turn. Force scale is the relationship between figures/counters/flags and the military elements they represent.

“Figure scale” is applicable only to miniatures wargames, and is the one that matters least. In the old days of “miniature warfare”, what wargamers would obsess about was the size of the base, and being sure that it is appropriate to the ground and force scales — for example, a regiment of 600 men in three ranks dresses at half-metre intervals should be 100 metres wide. Often the frontage would be correct, and the depth wildly out; in the previous example, the base depth would be only a couple of metres.

Nobody seems to bother much with that sort of thing any more, and it seems much more convenient to have bases all the same width.

Miniatures wargamers have typically evolved to disregard all sorts of distortions arising from the usual disparity between ground scale and figure scale. As the OP seems to be concerned about action insde buildings, one idea might be to have “blown-up” sketch-maps of building interiors at something bigger than the overall ground scale. A similar idea is used in, for example, AH’s boardgame “Thunder at Cassino”, where the town of Cassino itself is represented at a larger scale than the rest of the hill the monastery stands on.

All the best,

John.

[Rhoderic]

I don’t really accept the starting premise, that figure scale and ground scale must be defined as divergent from each other. I very, very rarely define them as such (excluding hex games and the like, which, to repeat something I recently said in another thread, is a different watershed for me). I don’t use scenery pieces that look “too small”. I find workarounds. If, for instance, something is too big to fit on the table at figure scale, then that’s just a good reason to model only part of that thing. Win-win.

“My” hobby revolves mostly around different kinds of skirmish, small-unit and vehicle/mech combat gaming. I also don’t see myself as “gaming realism”. Why must I? Rather, I game the deliberately-skewed portrayal of reality that’s common to adventure films, comic books and video games. Realistic weapon ranges? *Shrug*

I’m not claiming I can completely, unreservedly avoid having to fudge and abstract some things regarding scenery. But I see that as a simple case of stylisation rather than my having to go to the unnecessary extreme of saying “My figures are 1/100 but my ground scale is 1/2000, and every house represents a city block”.

[zippyfusenet]

Do you make this compromise situational? 

Absolutely.

I propose that miniature wargaming is a theater of the mind activity. The GM uses physical props to create a convincing illusion of verisimilitude, so that the audience/players can willingly suspend disbelief and vicariously experience the drama of the story that is being acted out. That’s Theater Arts 101.

Theater is an art, not a science. There are no hard-and-fast rules for the director/GM to follow, you do what works best with your available resources in a particular situation. Usually, your audience/players want to participate, and will help you along by accepting your presentation.

I stage a lot of airwar games with model airplanes, which require significant compromise between model scale and ground scale. As long as I engineer the game to fit into the available playing space, most of my players accept my compromises, such as firing ranges being only two or three times the length of a model, or the entire sky having only six altitude levels. For another example pf situational compromise, I often ‘go down a scale’ to fit really big aircraft into my games. In a WWII game with 1/144 model fighters, I’ll field a formation of heavy bombers in 1/200 scale. The smaller-scale bombers fit better into the hexes that I use, so the game fits onto my table. This compromise works visually to support my convincing illusion, because the 1/200 bombers are still physically bigger than the 1/144 fighters. Using 1/300 bombers in this situation wouldn’t work as well, because they’d be too small. On the other hand, if I only have one big airplane in a game, then I’ll use a 1/144 model, because there’s room for it in the game.

On the other hand, sometimes the magic just doesn’t work. There is one player in my regular group who is a pilot in real life. He doesn’t seem to enjoy my airwar games. I think it’s because he knows better, and the illusion doesn’t work for him.

You'll shoot your eye out, kid!

[telzy amber]

Mike wrote:

I now do 15mm fantasy skirmish. For the most part my ground scale is close, bows cover the entire board, thrown weapons seem reasonable. Buildings are often to scale in regards the figures height, the problem comes when you look at a figures width.

I believe this is the majority opinion among gamers.

willz wrote:

When gaming my 28mm 18th century war-games I use 1/87th scale buildings.

Smaller buildings certainly allow more buildings making a town more townlike than a couple of buildings.

I also see I wasn’t clear as is too often the case 🙁 In a game where a element base represents, a battalion for example, the ground scale can’t be in sync with figure scale on a reasonable table. There are two choices, buildings are in ground scale so smaller than figures, the option Willz chooses, or figure scale so a town is a house and a shed.

John D Salt wrote:

“Figure scale” is applicable only to miniatures wargames, and is the one that matters least.

Aren’t we discussing this on a miniatures wargame forum? Doesn’t it therefore matter? Time scale is a fuzzy variable ‘scale’ when we are discussing skirmish or rpg/skirmish games and most ‘miniature wargame’ rules have quite fuzzy bounds/turns in my opinion.

John D Salt wrote:

what wargamers would obsess about was the size of the base

Certainly and, as I wrote, figure bulk does not not correspond to ground scale in most games.

John D Salt wrote:

As the OP seems to be concerned about action inside buildings, one idea might be to have “blown-up” sketch-maps of building interiors at something bigger than the overall ground scale.

I believe I said that… more obtusely than I should have.

Rhoderic wrote:

I don’t really accept the starting premise, that figure scale and ground scale must be defined as divergent from each other.

You don’t have to at all. It’s just that if you don’t the tabletop battlefield is really quite small. Nothing wrong with that either. Buildings will be quite large and if they are all on the edge, so as to not occupy the majority of the table, they are periphery. Again nothing wrong with that. It’s just that buildings add a bit more interest in the way the table looks and provide challenges that woods or gullies don’t.

Rhoderic wrote:

I also don’t see myself as “gaming realism”.

uh… I don’t either. I’m discussing esthetics, the way the game looks with outsized figures against terrain features.

Rhoderic wrote:

I’m not claiming I can completely, unreservedly avoid having to fudge and abstract some things regarding scenery.

Mike said much the same and I believe that opinion is the majority gamer opinion.

[MartinR]

I almost invariably use sub scale terrain, aircraft or whatever. On at least three occasions I’ve used subscale figures as well, as they were “further away”.

My only rule of thumb is that the terrain should be taller than the figures, or it looks silly. Amusingly, in the painting of Blenheim in the National Army Museum, the cavalry tower above the peasant Hovels, so maybe even that rule can be relaxed…

As noted above, it is all an illusion but the size of figure is largely irrelevant, as long as you can jam it into the required space. They are just pretty 3D counters.

"Mistakes in the initial deployment cannot be rectified" - Helmuth von Moltke

[willz]

MartinR wrote:

… As noted above, it is all an illusion but the size of figure is largely irrelevant, as long as you can jam it into the required space. They are just pretty 3D counters.

That is correct wargaming in any scale is just a concept, why do most of us use figures and not coloured counters or blocks of wood to game with.  I have used these for campaign games to move armies, divisions, regiments across large areas.  Then battled smaller encounters on the table, the use of regimental blocks when linked with supply, movement, communication, orders makes a fascinating game.

I think the main reason we game with figures is because we like the look of our painted armies marching across the table and we have to trade spectacle for reality balanced against space, time and our concept / take on what we want out of a wargame.  I have not played a computer wargame (please feel free to post any information you have on computer wargaming), why do we as a collective group of gamers not use computers all the time to play our games?  Again I suspect it is all down to the visual appeal of our armies marching across the table.

Willz.

[Deleted User]

I’ve even stopped measuring distance for range and movement so I’m the lowest of the low on the scale debate. I’d love to have everything 1:1 but there is some appeal to have mismatche scale, visually and practical reasons like being able to pick up figures and ID them.

[John D Salt]

telzy amber wrote:

John D Salt wrote:

“Figure scale” is applicable only to miniatures wargames, and is the one that matters least.
Aren’t we discussing this on a miniatures wargame forum? Doesn’t it therefore matter?

I was under the impression that this was a wargame forum, without qualification. I do not share the common British prejudice that board wargames are somehow not “proper” wargames.

The fact that it matters less than any of the others does not, of course, mean that it doesn’t matter at all.

telzy amber wrote:

Time scale is a fuzzy variable ‘scale’ when we are discussing skirmish or rpg/skirmish games and most ‘miniature wargame’ rules have quite fuzzy bounds/turns in my opinion.

Any of the scales can be vague or unstated, and sometimes even variable. Personally, I find it very hard to suspend my disbelief (taking up zippyfusenet’s excellent point about theatre) if this is the case. The result may still be an entertaining game — I have no idea what any of the scales are supposed to be for Chess, Epaminondas, or Hnefatafl — but it doesn’t convince.

As we’ve discovered from previous discussions, some wargamers are even happy with the idea that their figures are not scale models, which as a member of the Airfix generation I find deeply odd.

telzy amber wrote:

John D Salt wrote:

what wargamers would obsess about was the size of the base
Certainly and, as I wrote, figure bulk does not not correspond to ground scale in most games.

Mmmyes, but “figure bulk” just dictates the number of figures you can get on a base. Another bizarre miniature wargamerism I find profoundly odd is the habit of talking about “25mm rules” or “1/300th micro-armur rules”, as if the functioning of the rules depended in some way on the size of the figures.

telzy amber wrote:

John D Salt wrote:

As the OP seems to be concerned about action inside buildings, one idea might be to have “blown-up” sketch-maps of building interiors at something bigger than the overall ground scale.

I believe I said that… more obtusely than I should have.

It must have been so obtuse as to be almost reflex. Try as I might, I can’t see how to get that from what you wrote.

All the best,

John.

[Mike]

John D Salt wrote:

I do not share the common British prejudice that board wargames are somehow not “proper” wargames.

I must be uncommon. As a British gamer I do not have this opinion.

[telzy amber]

John D Salt wrote:

telzy amber wrote: John D Salt wrote: As the OP seems to be concerned about action inside buildings, one idea might be to have “blown-up” sketch-maps of building interiors at something bigger than the overall ground scale. I believe I said that… more obtusely than I should have. It must have been so obtuse as to be almost reflex. Try as I might, I can’t see how to get that from what you wrote.

telzy amber wrote:

One method is flat, two dimensional, buildings with flat furniture. But then we are playing with nicely sculpted, and painted, three dimensional figures living in Flatland.

A flat two dimensional building is a piece of paper with a drawing of a floor plan on it. Flatland was a novel  https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=flatland&ref=nb_sb_noss_1  I used it as an example of wargame figures on a piece of paper.

John D Salt wrote:

Mmmyes, but “figure bulk” just dictates the number of figures you can get on a base. Another bizarre miniature wargamerism I find profoundly odd is the habit of talking about “25mm rules” or “1/300th micro-armur rules”, as if the functioning of the rules depended in some way on the size of the figures.

Figure bulk is important because it physically limits how many “units” (units being a figure or a stand of figures) may be within a terrain piece. Map/board games are different. A counter representing a division can be the same size as one representing a battalion. The boardgame Drang Nach Osten is an example https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/6942/drang-nach-osten A hex/square/”area”/point limits how many counters or how many stacking points each counter represents may be present at that location. Boardgames are much more flexible in depicting terrain.

I apologize for assuming miniature gaming versus boardgaming.

 

 

[Thorsten Frank]

willz wrote:

I have not played a computer wargame (please feel free to post any information you have on computer wargaming), why do we as a collective group of gamers not use computers all the time to play our games? Again I suspect it is all down to the visual appeal of our armies marching across the table. Willz.

I feel qualified to answer this because I play video games since 1984 (but played the first time on a neoghbour´s Atari VCS back in 1981), computer wargames since 1986 (SSI´s Nam was the first but not the last), board games since 1988 and minature games since 1990. As always, that´s my personal view on the topic:

-community: often overlooked but certainly one of the most fun things. Even LAN parties don´t reach that point of social contact that a group of friends have. Especially that the mentioned LAN parties are (or better were) full of competion to the point of angry people. I can´t speak of what happens on competetive wargames though.
But it´s always nice to play a game with a few beverages and simply have fun.

-modability: you aren´t satisfied or completely disagree with some rules – simply change them (if everyone involved concurs). One of the first things we changed were the infantry rules from Battletech/Citytech. And I still say that. That´s a thing mostly impossible for computer games even if you´ve got some programming skills or connected with so much work that´s it´s hardly worth for.
And while some video games live from their ability to be “easy” modable it´s often still lot´s of work.
And what I´ve learned over the last 35 years: never underestimate the stupidity of game designers. Even companies that supply really “hardcore” wargames/simulations make sometimes errors that amaze me.

-diversity: there are so many aspects to the hobby. You´ve got modelling, painting, building terrain, think about how to make this more effective for you personal style, reading books about your games and and plus having fun and play it. Railway models may come close – but one has to be interested in railways and how they work (but I´ve got to admit that both hobbies intersect and I know two people personally doing both – much to the dismay of their wifes).
And this diversity applies to the themes of the produced video games. You have virtually hundreds of games for WWII in every style from shooters to hardcore simulations of small battles. Modern Warfare, Napoleonics and ACW have a good selection too. Lot´s of Fantasy and Science-Fiction ones – and here the problems begin. There is NO game out there that furthers a play style like Dirtside, Horizon Wars or Tomorrow Wars  for example. Not a single one. Most are influenced by Star Wars or even licensed games. Fantasy? You´ve got lots of games for high fantasy or even some “low” fantasy ones since the Game of Thrones craze. Games based on D&D and the like. If you want to play something in a Conan sword&sorcery style? Currently only a handful games. And them not even really good. Or to come back to historical scenarios, there are quite some good ones out there for medieval, dark age and classical antiquity – but if you ask for some specialized scenarios, like colonial warfare 18th/19th century, medieval Indian or Persian warfare, Mongol storm, Russia 16th/17th century or medieval? The selection is limited or non-existent.
Last year I´ve searched for a game that has something of the Varangian state building in early medieval Russia or the Kievan Rus – nothing.
Early this year I´ve searched for a game depicting the Border Reivers…. Border WHAT?
You´ve got quite a selection for every single theme on the miniature or board wargame market.
Well, my mind does understand it – which company will invest millions into a computer game nobody or only a handful people does buy. But emotionally I´m angered (and I would have liked to use another word).

"In strange grammar this one writes" - Master Yoda

[telzy amber]

Thorsten Frank wrote:

willz wrote: I have not played a computer wargame (please feel free to post any information you have on computer wargaming), why do we as a collective group of gamers not use computers all the time to play our games? Again I suspect it is all down to the visual appeal of our armies marching across the table. Willz.

Carnage and Glory is a Napoleonic wargame played with miniatures on a wargames table but all combat effects moderated by computer. Miniatures are moved by the players, then measurements are taken and entered into the computer. Casualties and morale effects are taken and any on table effects, recoils/routs, are done by the players.

I have seen beautiful games with lovely sculpted tables and units firing having teased cotton with flickering tea lights within the cotton to simulate the smoke of firing.

After all movement you wait till each distance is measured between each unit and entered into the program. I do not recall if the program decides which available target is actually fired upon or if the player has a choice. Centralized data entry with more than a single measurement point for each unit. Actual results are almost instantaneous of course but it is read out, and enacted, sequentially for each unit.

 

[Don Glewwe]

My (less than) 2-cents:

I find that the size of buildings/interior spaces is far too large, not small, because of the ground-figure scale ratio. RPGs may, of course, differ (being usually(?) confined to a single venue), but skirmish wargames (in my very limited experience) employ a ground scale that is vastly inferior to the figure scale (usually 1/56).

Hand-to-hand combat aside, the inclusion of any sort of missile combat presents a problem when the ground scale differs from that of the minis (and associated terrain made to ‘look correct’).  Weapon ranges that defy rationality when combined with terrain features made to accommodate figure scale spring to mind.  Figures (like vehicles) can amplify such problems, as when an SMG cannot fire the length of a large AFV.

Missile combat aside, the aforementioned base sizes of out-of-scale minis creates problems within the game when single figures need to negotiate ridiculous 10′ zones of control in order to move/position themselves on the tabletop -both in relationship to other figures as well as terrain features.

As to the ‘Theater’ aspect of gaming -which I admire- there is what I have come to consider the ‘translation of visual information’.  A player viewing a game (be it board or miniature tabletop or computer screen) receives information necessary to make decisions in the game.   Displays (both of environment and forces) provide that information.  IMO, the less ‘translation’ a player needs to make in order to convert that information to something usable in the decision process, the better.

For tabletop miniatures, this means fewer ‘this really means that’ translations.  In Zippy’s example: The Spitfire looks to be only 100-mini-scale-feet away…how can I miss?  …or: It’s only across a backyard garden, what do you mean it’s out of SMG range?  …or: In ground scale it’s a 40′-long wall, how come I can only fit/cover three men of the squad and the rest die in the open?

 

I consider myself a model builder.  I consider gaming to be modelling an event.  I try to make the stuff I use in my games be as good a model of the things they represent, but err on the side of modelling the event.  Modelling stuff is different – I love to do it, but don’t insert it where it doesn’t work.

[Whirlwind]

Mike wrote:

I must be uncommon. As a British gamer I do not have this opinion.

One of the (many) things I really like about this website is its equal respect for all forms of wargaming.

 

[Whirlwind]

telzy amber wrote:

Do you make this compromise situational? This action is done on a paper map but this one has walls (with all the problems walls cause) and rooms that are small (figures are not just taller, they, and their bases, take up more space. You can’t just smoosh figures in cheek by jowl). Even Sally 4th’s Rick’s Cafe Americain is far too small. Which brings up another point. What do we do with all this incredible terrain/shop shelves/display cases/diner booths… I love it but

I don’t think of it as a massive problem.  I can live with simplified buildings and tunnels and such like as long as they give an impression, at the right command level, of the kind of problems particular commanders’ face.  If you really want to do a house clearance in full detail at the right scale, that is a very doable project because you don’t need to cover very much ground and you could easily do it in 15mm at the same figure and ground scale (and this kind of thing takes a long time).  But if you want to simulate a company attack, then the loss of definition of the ground is a good thing, so you can concentrate on company commander type stuff.

[Don Glewwe]

I can live with simplified buildings and tunnels and such like as long as they give an impression, at the right command level, of the kind of problems particular commanders’ face.

 

Hear hear.  The key is in providing the player the visual information necessary (with the least amount of translation) to make the decisions demanded by the game.

[willz]

Cheers for your replies Thorsten and Telzey, interesting information.

Willz.

[willz]

Deleted User wrote:

I’ve even stopped measuring distance for range and movement so I’m the lowest of the low on the scale debate.

I like to play games where you fire without measuring (ie weapons can shot the whole length of the table) it makes an interesting game, works well in WW2 games.  You can’t out guess your opponents fire intentions and every one is in range.

 

Willz.

[Deleted User]

Yay I have a friend.

[deephorse]

Mike wrote:

John D Salt wrote:

I do not share the common British prejudice that board wargames are somehow not “proper” wargames.

I must be uncommon. As a British gamer I do not have this opinion.

Nope.  I don’t share that prejudice either.  I have a large collection of mostly SPI boardgames which have given me a lot of pleasure over the years.

Play is what makes life bearable - Michael Rosen

[Patrice]

I play RPG-minded 28mm skirmish.

I scratch-build houses etc. at approximative 1/56 scale …although I recognize I tend to make some slightly smaller (but not much) to avoid taking too much terrain.

However our shooting/firing ranges are very much shorter than true scale. At 1/56 scale a real battlefield would be gigantic. Short shooting ranges may not be mathematically realistic, but (I think) do allow a realistic feeling: when the enemy is at the other end of the gaming table he is out of range, then you feel that action will begin when he comes nearer.

Another aspect of the question: even with houses at correct scale, we have small villages (not many houses) but still supposed to be a “town”, and small ships (whatever the period), etc. And we tend to have mixed troops with different small groups/squads/units who would not normally act together at such level, there seems to be a quite generic acceptance of this in most skirmish games, although called “skirmish” and theorically 1:1 you can have a large choice of very different small squads together in many popular rulesets, medieval or FIW or BoB or SCW etc.

http://www.argad-bzh.fr/argad/en.html
https://www.anargader.net/

[Norm S]

In the early days of wargaming, when Featherstone, Grant and others were establishing the ground work for a wargame hobby, there was a sentiment that relative scale mattered and that associated precision of everything mattered. The frontage of a man gave the frontage of a unit and walking speed against distance covered  gave us turn length (the bound!) and weapon range and ground scale could be tied in to figure ratio of say 1:33 or 1:20 etc. It was all very ‘right’ and we even worried that having got all of that right, we had to excuse ourselves and mention that of course vertical scale could not be tamed to match all of this other precision.

Later designers put greater emphasis on  ‘abstraction’ and over time we seem to have loosened much of the earlier  constraint and are now much more relaxed with a design ethos that it should simply ‘look and feel right’, rather than being exactly right.

Gamers often play with terrain at the next scale down to their figures, or at least use buildings with a small footprint and are okay with the compromise of  2 – 3 buildings representing a village or small town, though this works less successfully in skirmish games, where individual figures that are bigger than the door way can actual serve to undermine the visual and belief.

[Darkest Star Games]

Scales for me vary based upon the type of game/command level.  If I am playing a skirmish game I am very much interested and invested in what happens to the individuals and so prefer a more detailed game (and thus with more realistic scales and ground scales), whereas if I am acting as a Division or Corps commander I am more concerned with the overall command decisions and not so much about the individual soldier (and thus I am fine more abstract scaled for time, figures, and ground scale).

Now, it would be very nice to play 15mm skirmish with fully furnished buildings or appointed spaceships, but you wouldn’t be able to move the figures around due to not only the base widths, but the lack of the figures being bendy at all and being able to fit around the furniture (nor even fit your fingers into the play area!)  I know some people that skirmish with GI Joe figures as they can make extremely detailed play areas, put the figures in various stances, and generally make things much more simulationistic.  True that they need a massive play area, but it works for them.

"I saw this in a cartoon once, but I'm pretty sure I can do it..."

[Phil Dutré]

Matching vertical figure scale and horizontal ground scale for indoors is very difficult. As an exercise, draw your own livingroom or kitchen or bedroom to scale so that it would match with a 25mm = 1m75 ground scale. Then see how many 25mm figures you can actually put in that space, and compare it to how many real people can be present in the real space.

Part of the problem is that typical 25mm figures have different vertical and horizontal scales themselves. They are much too bulky compared to a real person. Add a base, and it’s almost impossible to put as many figures in a space as you could do in the similar-spaced room in real life, let alone having space left for ‘manoeuvres’. In large battles it matters less because one figure is supposed to represent multiple real men, in outdoors skirmish wargaming it also matters less because you have enough space anyway (e.g. a combat between 10 people on each side staged on a football field vs one in your kitchen).

As has been pointed out, there have been times that wargamers were obsessed about this sort of thing.

These days, most published rulesets don’t care that much anymore about the coherency of all the different scales, and use more of a top-down abstraction rather than bottom-up.

[John Treadaway]

The Slammers games I do (Slammers the Crucible) are what I’d term ‘mostly’ in scale. Buildings are 15mm or thereabouts (some are model railway ‘N guage’: see below) but not chosen for foot print but merely for availability and convienience of purchasing options.

Ground scale is ‘mostly’ 1/100th: shooting HMGs (or the equivalent) down the length of a 36ft table at Salute raised some eyebrows a few years ago (and you really did need a laser pointer!) but it works.

Other games? Well, if I’m playing Star Fleet Battles (though it’s been a decade or so) or Silent Death, say, no one expects the ‘ground scale’ for a space ship to be realistic, do they?

John Treadaway

www.hammers-slammers.com
http://www.hammers-slammers.com

"They don't have to like us, snake, they just have t' make the payment schedule" Lt Cooter - Hammer's Slammers

[Whirlwind]

nice photo John!

[John Treadaway]

Thanks Whilwind! That one comes from here http://www.hammers-slammers.com/c2013_1.htmhttp://www.hammers-slammers.com/c2013_1.htm

but there are lots more in the gallery pages: http://www.hammers-slammers.com/galleries.htm

The Salute 2013 ones have a lot of scenery sized comparrison shots like the one I showed. Like this:

John Treadaway

www.hammers-slammers.com
http://www.hammers-slammers.com

"They don't have to like us, snake, they just have t' make the payment schedule" Lt Cooter - Hammer's Slammers

[Rhoderic]

John Treadaway wrote:

if I’m playing Star Fleet Battles (though it’s been a decade or so) or Silent Death, say, no one expects the ‘ground scale’ for a space ship to be realistic, do they?

I’m stating the obvious, but spacecraft combat in Star Trek and the various films, TV shows and video games that inspired Silent Death is hardly realistic, especially in regard to range. Spaceships close to a scant few kilometers of each other, and fighter craft to a few dozen meters, before weapons go hot. It’s not realistic, but it doesn’t have to be because it looks good (admittedly in a childish “pew pew” kind of way, but that’s a large part of the attraction of space combat games anyway), and it has become an established, appreciated convention of “visually presented” sci-fi.

So if I was to play a game of Full Thrust or Starmada on a 4′ X 4′ table with 1/3000 spaceships like those from Brigade Models (for instance), there’s nothing misrepresentative of the way it’s done in the fiction I’m seeking to emulate to define “ground”/space/table scale and model scale as being the same.

It doesn’t suit all space combat fiction, of course, but it works for much of it. If – if – I’m seeking to emulate a more hard sci-fi setting, then I’ll accept a divergence in table scale and model scale. But hard sci-fi miniatures gaming is mostly a deception anyway, so I don’t see that as a primary objective.

[Brian Handley]

No I first must delcare my bias I am at the simulation end of the wargame hobby.   Inevitably whatever you are simulating, be it flow modelling or warfare there are limitations.   To me there is an optimum of about 5 to 1 on figure to ground scale.  Ground scale to me is a critical requirement.  Theater of the mind is OK but it becomes improvisation, it may be OK, but to some it lacks the craft put into a Shakespear play.   Without a Groundscale a Machine gun cannot outrange a rifle in the practical military sence so you canot model basic tactics.    If that is not your thing then perhaps its imaterial.   Figures would idealy be at groundscale but as said even that is not practical.  Its more about what items are key.   In our own games we play with 1/144 tanks on relatively open battlefields so the key is modelling sight lines and ranges similar to real wolrd maps.   At 1/144 figure and 1/1000 ground scale we can represent generally all linear features (walls, hedges, roads, streams and rivers all be it oversize, but as has been said buildings are much harder at this scale.  We can just about model the road pattern in an urban area that is not VERY dence, but the houses are far to few.  The best we can do generally is put on houses with no gardens packed a tight as practical.  Its the equivalent of a wall function in Flow modeling, the Mesh is far to corse to model the boundary layer,  you use a function knowing that in some cased this is fine in others its a daft assumption.   It depends what you define as key parameters in your simulation.  To me its always the game, the modelling aspect is simply for me a 3D board with tolerable reperentations, which  makes understanding the situation quickers and more accurate.

In some wargames the needs of accurate groundscale are subsumed by the desire to put modles on the table that in the real world would not be in such close proximity, neither is right or wrong they represent different requirements folk have for ther gaming.

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