(TFT) Conical hexes - was Re: (TFT) Beware the ides of March...

[pvk@oz.net]

Seems to me the conical hexes at high altitudes is a smaller problem than
what your world map looks like. Neither seem very hard problems, though.
I'd be tempted to hand-wave the altitude problem, but I think if you do
the math it won't be hard. I would try to define the surface grid if you
want a spherical world map though.

Is your campaign ever actually going to leave the atmosphere and get into
orbits? I probably missed an earlier message about why you are wanting to
rigorously map vertically up to 80Km upwards. Anyway, calculate the
difference in hex size for a hex at sea level compared to at 80,000m above
sea level, and let me know if it seems worth caring. If so, I would
suggest that you calculate at what altitudes the hex size results in say,
one more hex per BM. At that point, if you want retentive BM's (sic), you
could figure out what you want to do - either you could shift all the BM's
slightly to make room for new ones (so ascending characters will need to
choose which hex to slide into as they cross a boundary), or you could
make different BM's for each altitude where it makes a difference (i.e.,
at some altitude, a BM would have more hexes than at lower altitudes).

Overall, it seems like a worthwhile geometry exercise and good thing to
know, but unlikely to be really practical. Forcing a planet onto a 1m 3d
hex grid seems like more effort than it's worth.

PvK
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