Hex grid vs square grid

I'd like to read what people on Veeky Forums think of hex grids and square grids.

I'm designing a RPG with a heavy focus on tactical combat. All through its development I've worked with the default assumption of a square grid; recently I've started considering a hex grid, and now I'm heavily conflicted.

So here's a few of my considerations:

Hexes work wonderfully when it comes to melee engagements and the general notion of adjacent spaces. Less weirdness with angles, better visualization of encumberment in the spaces around a given combatant, and they handle better combat with creatures of really huge sizes.

Hexes are also wonderful when it comes to AOEs and ranges/distances.

On the other hand, hexes are terrible when it comes to closed spaces, small rooms and narrow corridors, since they don't have any perpendicular edges and, well, any mean you adopt to handle walls will feel weird.

Also, the optimal movement in space should consider eight directions. Hexes make all much better as long as you accept a six-directional organization of movements, but it feels a bit weird.

Opinions? Please?

So make an RPG where everything's built with hexes in-unicerse. Like, maybe it's space-age, or about bee-people or ice-people.

>about bee-people
Not OP, but that's not a bad idea. Take the Bug world homebrew that was kicking about a couple of months ago and run it with a heavier tactical focus

Basically, squares for when enclosed spaces are a thing (dungeon delving), hexes for larger, more open spaces (I used it for a mech game, personally).

Hexes work better for open areas, but are absolute trash indoors or on city streets. While squares work less well in open spaces, they still work okay. The biggest issue is deciding what to do about diagonals, and there, honestly, the easiest thing is just to treat them the same as any other move. Yes, if you think about it, the physics of it is fucked, but it works absolutely fine in play. And you could always do some sort of compromise: if you move more than 1 space diagonally, it costs you an extra point of move (but only one extra point, no matter how far you move diagonally).

So basically:
Just outdoors? Do hexes.
Just inside / in the city? Do squares.
Mix of of indoors and outdoors? Do squares, because they suck less badly in their less-than-optimum environment.

Really, both work. You have to ask yourself if your game will focus on indoor encounters (squares) or outdoor encounters (hexes).

If the answer is both, then you can't get caught up trying to squeeze your maps to fit the measurement model. Either have some kind of 50% rule so people just eyeball it via common sense, or do custom maps where each room and corridor lays out the hexes to fit but the joins between rooms are a little askew to make things fit.

I'd do the latter. It's all about your measurement model anyway... Not like the hexes have and actual reality to them. So why design your world to fit the map, when you can fudge the map a bit to fit the world?

I'll draw something up in paint later if you're interested.

This.

Is measurement an option?

Hexes all day every day.

The enclosed spaces problem is indeed an issue, though, but that's only a problem for man-made buildings.

Hexes are fine when designing a dungeon, and buildings made by other species can easily be hexagonal by default in your setting.

You could also just use squares where every second row is shifted by half a square. That's basically hexes but aligns better indoors.

>Hexes are fine when designing a dungeon
For caves, maybe, but not being able to have corridors at right angles to each other (without one constantly zig-zagging) is a pretty big issue. Also, not being able to have properly rectangular rooms...

Fuck Hex, Fuck Square. Real men use Triangle.

>not being able to have corridors at right angles to each other (without one constantly zig-zagging) is a pretty big issue
Fair, squares are easier to work with if you design the dungeon first and then impose a grid on it. However, if you work the other way around (consider the limitations of hexes first, the design the dungeon) I think you'll rarely find a situation where you NEED to have right angles. Furthermore, I'd think that someone used to hexes might complain about being unable to make 60 degree angles with squares.

It IS a limitation of hexes, true, but I don't think it's anything near a crippling one.

oh god, not a crunchy tactical wargame where everyone has four hands' worth of equipment slots.

effects based system mang.

>where we are going, we don't need handedness rules!

Both are shit. If you want to actually apply tactical value, use the fucking ruler, rather than arbitrary grid

A ruler only tests your ability to triangulate, or your patience to measure every little movement and attack, for both you and your opponent.

It's objectively the worst way to do tactical combat, and is only still alive because it'd be hard to apply a grid to wargaming terrain.

Have you considered nixing one space for one unit logic? Just let multiple units occupy a zone, let the shapes conform to the terrain, and let anyone in the same zone melee each other. AoOs if you have them just trigger when someone leaves your zone or targets someone outside your zone.

Speed and range might be a little inconsistent, but it makes some amount of sense for wide open spaces to allow freer movement and range than cramped ones. This way you don't have to waste extra rules on bonuses/penalties to represent that. You might still cap zones at a certain size (maybe 15 feet across) and default to hexes in large spaces.

An effects-based system isn't tactical. If you can abstract combat to the point where it doesn't actually matter which or how many weapons you're using because it all boils down to "you hurt him some," that's more suitable to something more narrative with no battlemap at all.

I like hexes for irregularly shaped spaces like caves and grid for towns or buildings.

There's no reason you can't use both in the same system.

I'll also mock things up with no grid sometimes and just eyeball or use a ruler to determine movement.

OP here. Thanks for all the input.

It does sound fun but it doesn't solve my problem; I already have a working system and a setting and I'm not looking to make new ones.

I already do that. But it presents problems over which hexes would be an improvement; for example, checking line o6f sight or freedom of movement in the middle of a sparse melee.

For example, image on a square grid a combatant surrounded by four enemies, one in every cardinal direction, while the spaces angularly adjacent are free. Should the combatant be able to squeeze his way thr-ough two opponents and move to one of the free squares, or is there just not enough space? I'm not talking about gameplay solutions like aoo or tumble checks, just about the representation of space. It works much better with hexes since you don't have angular andjacent spaces.

Hexes also work better to measure distances, straight movement and lines of sight for ranged weapons, and for AOEs, but only as long as you stick to a six-direction movement model.

It does make sense; although, I'd like to publish this game once finished and perfected, and I feel like having two different grid systems would be ... uhm, a little wrong. It works as a houserule, a little less for a system that's supposed to be universal.
Also, I'd still have all the problems of hexes in open arenas and all the problems of squares in dungeons...

They have the exact same problems of hexes.

No.

I have and I think it would be a really nice solution too, but it presents some problems I'll have to consider, like how to hande aoo, weapons with long melee range, AOEs, large creatures and such.

Blatantly false. Just because two daggers and a longsword do the same damage, doesn't mean suddenly tactics are removed.

If anything, now you can focus on interesting stuff (the effects of the attacks), instead of crunching numbers about what weapon is best against a guy wearing a particular type of armor.

>boardgames

depends on the type, hex for large scale maps, square for room to room movement

>rpgs

>grid
>minis
>kys

>Also, the optimal movement in space should consider eight directions.
I agree with the rest of your post, but this is retarded.

Can you give any objective argument for ehy 8 directions would be "optimal"? I get the feeling you're just passing off personal preference as facts here.

>Can you give any objective argument for ehy 8 directions would be "optimal"?
I can't say for sure what he was thinking, but being able to move at right angles seems ideal, and just being able to move in 4 directions is insufficient, ergo 8 is the way to go.

I asked for an objective argument, not just a rephrasing of the same opinion.

>it would be a really nice solution too, but it presents some problems
It defaults to working well for a dungeon crawler. AoOs are just leaving a zone or targeting someone outside the zone. AoEs usually don't go through walls, so hitting one room is about the most that makes sense anyway. Range has similar limitations imposed by the setting.


Another alternative is larger zones. Let's say 20-30 feet instead. People can join melees within these zones and hit anyone in such a melee. Reach could hit people in the zone but not in melee. AoEs could hit melees or whole zones. You might need special rules for points within the zone like doors or statues (since your specific location within the zone doesn't have to matter, but can). Long ranges work a little better because the same number of hexes is a hell of a lot more feet.

Finally you can get more abstract. Rather than mapping a whole city for a chase scene you can default to hexes like you would in a field but use zone traits to make it act right. So outside of mapped main streets and landmarks you can run on roofs (faster, shoot foes unobstructed, get shot unobstructed) or through alleys (opposite, plus you can hide).

Or instead of mapping all the pews in a church they're just difficult terrain and/or cover if you're prone. Rather than having cover by line of sight, zone x always has cover from zone y. Or people in melee with this statue have cover from the balcony.

Actually is an objective argument.
You want a better one?
Imagine a man in a square room. He turns towards a wall and moves straight towards it. It's fine, right? Right. Now he wants to turn towards a wall adjacent to that one and move straight to it. Suddendly he can't. Feels weird, right?
Same with angles.
Eight directions are a perfect approximation.

>8 just seems better
>4 is insufficient for arbitrary and unspecified reasons
>an objective argument
Retard.

>Imagine a man in a square room. He turns towards a wall and moves straight towards it. It's fine, right? Right. Now he wants to turn towards a wall adjacent to that one and move straight to it. Suddenly he can't. Feels weird, right?
>mfw "it just feels weird" is considered an objective argument on Veeky Forums,
You might as well claim that 8 directions "feels weird" because it doesn't account for curved lines.

It seems weird not to be able to move perpendicular to somebody else. Moving in the opposite direction, moving in the same direction, and moving perpendicularly are the three most basic movements (four if you count both perpendicular directions). Hex grids have the first two, but then you're down to oblique movement.

Hell, just look at the cardinal directions. There are 4 of them, and adding in the primary inter-cardinal directions (northwest, northeast, southeast, southwest) gets you to 4. With hexes, there's no direct east-west movement if there's direct north-south movement. You have to awkwardly zig-zag.

>awkward zigzags
You can halfway deal with this with a 2hex speed, at least so long as choosing the intervening hex never becomes relevant (which might be the case in large scale overland movement, depending on the game).

>4 is insufficient for arbitrary and unspecified reasons
4 doesn't give you enough granularity. With just 4 directions, you'd end up frequently running in awkward zig-zag patterns to get at somebody... or running 5 spaces forward, turning 90 degrees and running another 4 spaces. And that's just ridiculous.

>You might as well claim that 8 directions "feels weird" because it doesn't account for curved lines.
Only being able to move obliquely towards doors on two walls of a room is less than ideal. Having to have half-hexes along those two walls is also less than ideal.

Are you trolling or are you really this dense?

>Hex grid vs square grid

VERSUS TRIANGLE GRID!!!

Comeone on man, its just 3, how you forget the third one, its not like we are asking you to remember and write 100 names

Hex for realism
Squares for simplicity
Triangle for all boards having the same distance between all other boarders

I prefer scale. "Regardles of miniature size the unit is 10m by 3m, measure from center of base. 1cm is 1m, or whatever."

You only need one little tape measure you can all share.

I really like Fire Emblem and Final Fantasy Tactics so I go square if I can.

I came here to post about RPGs for bug people.

Seriously, OP, if you're doing anything on a scale less than vehicles and squads of soldiers, go with square. Also, it's not 8 directions. It's 12. The 3D equivalent of a hex grid is a rhombic dodecahedral honeycomb.