Thanks DiveCrewCanada and Young Grasshopper for the information. It’s good that this project is being carefully thought out ahead of time, since advance planning and testing on a large-scale project can be very helpful in avoiding problems and making the project go smoothly.
The various points I raised in my earlier post basically come down to two issues: tipping and crowding. For whatever they might be worth, here are some thoughts on both issues.
The prototype Malta section you’ve created will be a good test-bed for the tipping issue, and this test can be done using just two sculpts: an infantry sculpt (preferably the Japanese one, because it’s the tallest and therfore has the highest centre of gravity) and a submarine sculpt (preferably the German one, because it’s the narrowest). My suggestion would be to systematically place the infantry sculpt (by itself, without a chip under it) on every square centimeter of the land areas to see where (and how steadily) it stands up. Ditto for the sub on the water areas, oriented at different angles relative to the waves and positioned both on crests and in dips. These tests would provide useful information to you on which elevations are workable and which ones aren’t. Basically, if the Japanese infantry unit can stand up by itself somewhere, then every other land (plus air units) will be fine there too. And likewise, if the German sub can stay upright on water parallel to a wave, then every other naval unit (plus air units) will be fine there too.
The crowding issue will be harder to test on the Malta blow-up box because, by definition, a blow-up box provides extra space for a crowded territory. A better approach might be for YG to take advantage of the next time he plays Global 1940 to take some close-up photographs of the land territories and sea zones which, during the course of play, end up with the kind of huge traffic jams that I’ve illustrated below, using some screen shots from some of YG’s videos. Basically, the thing to look for would be big clusters of units in small territories. With a collection of such photos on hand, the question to analyze would then be: would the contemplated 3-D landscape, which is projected to have 10% non-usable space for unit placement, be able to handle this kind of crowding situation in such-and-such a territory? Land is probably a bigger concern than water in that regard. Large territories that see little military action wouldn’t be a concern; the main thing to focus on would be the smaller ones where huge battles tend to take place. Those would probably be the ones where it would be a good idea to aim for a flatter terrain shape and a minimum (or a complete absence) of those 10%-type non-usable terrain features.
