Question of scale

[Charbe86]

Now I know that FSA models are 1:10000 scale, but what about the board and scenery?  Does anyone know what the scale is meant to be?

Edit:
So I did some rough maths, involving a lot of assumptions, and came up with 1"=300Km or 180 miles, very approximate.  Given that earth is 40 million km from venus at their closest, does that seem right?

[Landlubber]

Now I know that FSA models are 1:10000 scale, but what about the board and scenery?  Does anyone know what the scale is meant to be?

Edit:
So I did some rough maths, involving a lot of assumptions, and came up with 1"=300Km or 180 miles, very approximate.  Given that earth is 40 million km from venus at their closest, does that seem right?

I don't math very well, but that seems like it's probably correct. In Firestorm Armada (and someone please correct me if I'm wrong here), I think the actual ship models are just a physical marker for the starship; the starship's actual location is a tiny point at the top dead-center of the flight stand. Hence why everything in Firestorm Armada is measured peg-to-peg. Halo: Fleet Battles follows the same general rule, I think, in that all measurement is done to and from the center of the elements' flight bases. Although I think Halo might be 1:20,000 in scale.

Much different from Dystopian Wars, where the scale is 1:1200 (although it's a rather heroic 1:1200!), so the ship models I think represent the ship's actual footprint on the ocean surface.

[Charbe86]

The rulebook does state that the models are purely cosmetic, and that if they were inscale with the board they'd be ridiculously small, which is why everything works off the peg.  I ask the question because there is no mention of the board scale, and I've been immersed in hard scifi recently, and I've been trying to work out what sort of area an FSA battle takes place over.  My current theory puts it on a similar scale to expanse, or eve, whereas I'd previously thought of it more in line with the Honor Harringto series. 

[Landlubber]

Hm. I'm not sure--again, I don't math very well. 

[Charbe86]

Math went like this:
Plantoid is 4"-8"
Pluto is the largest planetoid in our solar system at, very roughly, 2400km
Therefore 1"=300km
That would mean the longest side of a board 21,600 km
The shortest distance between any 2 planets is approximately 40,000,000 km

[Ryjak]

A long time ago, I used Pluto as an 8" Planetoid to develop Board Scale, and at that scale, Earth is almost exactly 48" wide, so I think it's a good Scale for distances.  However, at that scale, a game Turn must be a very long length of time so physical projectiles can travel that far in a Turn.  Then again, maybe Torpedoes can reach a reasonable fraction of c in a short period of time, and the scale is large while the Turns are fairly short.

It might make more sense to figure out a time scale per turn you like, and then figure out Board Scale based on the distances.

Hey, where's that sub-mariner to tell us how long a modern ship-on-ship combat is expected to last?

[Charbe86]

I agree, nothing else will make sense unless you establish a time per turn first.  I've been thinking about it, and I think the best thing to base that scale on would be boarding.  Boarding is the only single turn action that can't be abstracted to the point where time is meaningless, and I don't think we can work backwards from a full battle wihout more fluff. 

[Ryjak]

Boarding is VERY abstract in FSA too.  How do the Boarding forces get from one ship to another?  And once they're across, they now have to fight in the equivalent of a dense urban area; FSA ships are huge (Cruisers are almost 1 kilometer long! ). Even if it's a surgical attack, fighting through several hundred meters of unfamiliar corridors and rooms.  That can take a very long time... or hardly any time at all (if the event is one-sided).

[Charbe86]

I thought the rulebook said that boarders used small shuttle craft.  I still think boarding is going to provide the most accurate indication of scale as it is the only aspect of the game effected by ship size