On Calculating Distance & Travel Times

First the disclaimer. The following information is based on 2 significant assumptions and the acknowledgement that map information could still change.

In the last contest we came across a question of travel times. Just how long does it take to get from point A to point B.

The cloth map provides us with our answer if we make the following 2 assumptions. New Britannia and its coordinate system are identical in scale to Earth. In other words, 1 degree in latitude or longitude is 69 miles.

The latest rendition of cloth map available to Founders included hexes so I ran a few numbers based on that and the above assumptions. Also the distance between coordinate lines is 5 degrees.. and about 8 1/2 hexes.

5 x 69 / 8.5 = about 40.6. In other words.. the length of a hex from one side to the opposing side is 40.6 miles across on the overland map. Others ran their own calculations and got higher numbers than I did.. based on pixels I believe but the difference was not overly significant.

Coincidentally, the map of Novia including water is around 300k square miles. Give or take.

It's still possible that either (or both) hex size or lat/lon lines could be adjusted.

As far as travel times.. you just need to figure the average speed for the mode of travel. I personally walk about 6mph.. give or take. (When I'm not forced to wait on anyone).

 

Interesting.

Would this be the accurate lore reference for travel time or would it be in-game (Earth) travel time adjusted for New Britannia time? Not sure if the two methods would provide the same answer. Also the in-game value would take into account terrain/obstacles which the distance calculation alone would not.

For example it takes me 1 minute Earth time to cross a specific hex in-game. Based on the R10 instructions, 5 minutes Earth time = 2 hours New Britannia time (1 E minute = 24 NB Minutes). So this would mean that travel from one side of the hex to the other takes 24 minutes (versus the 7 hours from the distance/walk-speed calculation).

A different hex might take 3 minutes in-game to get across because of terrain or blockages.

 

I would call it a good starting point for guestimating long distance travel times. This does not apply to actual instance size in-game but only the hex size on the overland map. Instances can vary in size depending on the need and most probably won't exceed 2 square kilometers.. which I think is the last number I've heard for instances.

I would avoid Earth/SotA time comparisons for lore in this case. Day/Night cycles are usually decided upon mainly for game balance reasons making travel times unrealistic. Travel on the overland map is a classic example of separation between in-world time and travel distance.

Actual travel times for the character will always be faster than what they realistically should be because the world represented is not to scale.