Possible new eastern front maps - some food for thought

[Pursuivant]

There are a vast number of modded maps which range from acceptable to very good, as well as a number of retextured maps which make no-so-good stock maps (i.e., Singapore, Pearl Harbor, Sands of Time) look wonderful. Modded textures for spring, autumn and winter/summer also vastly expand the number of maps available.

For new maps, I believe that a Kharkov map is in the works by a Russian mod team.

What I'd prefer over new maps, though, is getting the details right on the existing maps. A simple change, which might actually reduce the number of objects, would be to create simple block-sized building objects then rework the map plates so that there are more city blocks and fewer individual houses.

I'd also like to see the some of the older maps get a facelift. Sevastopol and Stalingrad had buildings or building complexes which were important to the campaigns fought there, which should be modeled in the game. Right now, there's nothing that makes those cities distinct.

Especially for Stalingrad, I'd like to see the city center reworked so that it looks a lot more urban, and has some of the more important buildings associated with the battle, such as the Grain Elevator, the GUM Department Store, Pavlov's House and the big factory complexes like the Dzerzhinsky tractor works or the Red October steel plant. The German airfields surrounding the city could also be better modeled.

As for size, I think that the maps are the right size.

While it might be possible to make Eastern Front maps bigger due to relatively low population density, most missions there were flown at low level, so you need more eye candy. And, realistically, the forces involved on the Eastern Front were enormous, so a realistic mission might have hundreds of objects in it, which slows things down even more.

By contrast, a Pacific Islands maps can be enormous. They're mostly water and a few barely populated islands, and most of the air combat fought over the Pacific took place at middling to high altitudes.