What is Land to a TG?

[MachNix]

I'm working on finishing up a new MA terrain and having some problems with the Task Groups (TG) crossing land areas.  I'm trying to add some sandbars/shoals/reefs and some shallow areas that the TG should not be able to cross -- or rather I don't want them to cross.  Adding some points that where 2 feet high (to avoid having to make an entire grid square land) did not work and the TG was still able to cross.  The TG was also able to cross when the elevation set to 35 feet and the entire grid square was land.

Does any know what is used and what the limits are for TG to detect land?

I really don't want to have to design and conduct experiments to figure it out, and guess I will just throttle back on the eye-candy if there is no answer.

[ghostdancer]

It is not the elevation of land that matters but the actual size of the land. Basically there needs to be enough land present to trigger the message waypoint touches land when you set the TG way points.

I am not sure off the top of my head the minimum you need but I know anything under a grid square in the TE is not enough. We ran into this problem a lot when working on Pacific terrains.

[MachNix]

Thanks for the response.  A full grid square in the TE did not work but it is possible the TE grid does not match up with the grid used for TG way points.

A possible wish:

1. The land/water values run from 255 for land and water ranging from 254-very shallow to 0-deep.  A single dot shallower than 200 (that is 255 to 200) within a grid square will trigger the "Waypoint Touches Land" message for TG way points.

[ghostdancer]

I did discover during some testing I did that the CBM map and actual land don't ever exactly match up. So with small islands you might think you are drawing a way point across them but you are not. Also as said it takes a certain amount of land. If remember right it took me like doing 5 cells long by 2 or 3 deep to get the blasted way point touches land to trigger. But not 100% sure on since that was testing I did over a year ago.

Hate to say it there is no real easy way to get your shoal idea to work. Well unless they are very large shoals. Doing the coral ring around say Tarawa never worked out for me. I could always get a task force to plow through it and the island if I really worked it.

[MachNix]

The 5x1 area that holds the field, town, and a couple of shore batteries does get recognized as land.  But I wanted to put a coral ring around the backside to keep task groups from being able to spawn LVTs from that side.  I guess the options are either go ahead and make the coral rings, add some shore batteries to make short work of any TG plowing through the area, and hope HTC makes some changes some day on the way land is defined; or just forget the whole thing.

The ability to do detail shorelines with shallow areas is a nice addition but it looks like we still only get to play with big blocks of land.  Too bad you could not get your Tarawa idea to work.