CS Game Scale - Manual Style

[umbro]

For what it's worth (probably the paper it's not printed on), here is another interpretation (borrowing heavily from what has gone before):

"We need a scale for weapons ranges and visibility" - Okay 250m per hex
"How fast does stuff move around?" - men can move on roads at 4mph - that's 40 hexes per hour. Jeeps can move on roads at 25mph, that's 250 hexes per hour. So, let's divide by ten and have a turn be 6 minutes.
"Great, now how much damage can a weapon system do in 6 minutes?"...

After this conversation comes "What about all the boring bits we skipped over? Waiting for orders, tea breaks, getting POWs back to the MPs, getting wounded back to triage, waiting for the ammo truck to get up here,...." "Let's ignore those, who would want to play a scenario with more than 10 turns anyway?"

Turns out folks did, and do. It isn't that there is a sliding timescale, but rather that the boring bits actually begin to matter. I don't believe anyone truly believes that after a 6 minute turn everyone sits around for an hour. However, after some number of 6 minute turns units do sit around for a number of hours. This "flexible" time scale allows for numerous firefights and recovery periods. It also allows for some of the newer engineering functions as it becomes possible for an engineer unit to make use of these "downtimes" to erect a wooden bridge, or lay a simple minefield.

Basically, IMHO, the "six minute scale" is for the "action sequences", the "flexible time scale" covers the "down times".

umbro