SG2 terrain

Brian said:

I have played in about 5 SG games and all of them had a _lot_ of
terrain. I would estimate that 75%+ of the board was in forest or hills
of some type.

This seems a little overkill for most areas in the world that I have
been in. Most areas (except national parks, forests, etc.) have less
than 25% of their area covered by plant terrain. 

Tomb:
Do you live in a midwest state? This statement matches most of
Alberta/Sask/Manitoba, but not Northern Ontario. Northern Ontario is
largely forest and hills. Southern Ontario (not Urban) is largely
forest, hills, and cleared fields (I'd guess at 50% clearance,
accounting for rock upthrusts, trees, sloughs, swamps, lakes and ponds).
In Alberta, you could do a whole game board with one yellowish felt and
NO other terrain in some places. Even in Southern Ontario, cleared
regions are likely to be hilly (Welcome to the Canadian Shield). Depends
on your geogeny. If you're on a sedimentary plain, then you tend to not
have hills. If you're on Canadian Shield or somewhere near a plate
boundary, you tend to have hills and mountains (continental collisions
also produce these). Lots of offworld sites with thin atmosphere have
loads of craters from meteoroid impacts. Go to some of these online
sights and take an area about 1km x 0.5km. If you picked it from some
areas, this would involve multiple hills... (use the orthophotos as
other models often obscure details by picking limited # of altitude
levels).

In cities, it may be different. Downtown would have a _lot_ of building
terrain. But it would also have _long_ corridors and large areas of
empty space. It would be interesting to see a SG game in an urban
setting (anyone willing to take up the challenge for ECC?).

Tomb:
Considered. But moving large volumes of foamcore buildings seemed to be
space expensive. And wood is too heavy. I've got hardboard, but I'd need
to make breakdown buildings. Coming from Canada, this is a bit of a
challenge. Grey day required an entire stationwagon plus whatever Los
came in.

But in a suburban/rural setting, how much ground cover by plants/trees
is necessary for a good game? 10%, 25%, 30%, ...?

Tomb:

Depends on taste. SG2 has infantry fire ranges up to 40-60". Vehicle
fire longer. If you have clear fire lanes... people will shoot. Infantry
tends to move 6-7" per movement. Cover spaced further than 10-12" tends
to allow shots at infantry in the open leading to more losses.

PS:
For the record, we ran Change of Orders in about 4 hours and it was
using a platoon on each side split into fireteams, plus some individual
figs (Sgts/officers/snipers) and then later some vehicles. It seemed to
work fine. Ultimately, for a con game, I'm not in favor of players
having only 1 manouver unit as suppression or bad luck can ruin the
game. I think 2-4 manouvre units per player is good.