Let’s say I have a large map of 8000 width by 3000 height. It can easily be split into 4 boards of 2000 x 3000. It seems to me that memory usages is the same for display when all four map boards are in use. Does splitting the large map have other memory savings by only redrawing each smaller board as pieces are moved only on that board? What are the advantages and disadvantages of breaking the large map into multiple boards vs one large map? If there is an advantage to be gained from breaking it up what is the general point of diminishing returns?
Regarding memory usage:
For display purposes, there’s no difference between an 8000 x 3000 board image and four boards which are 2000 x 3000. Board images are sliced into tiles when a module is first loaded. The totality of the tiles is the same size either way.
Other things being equal, a larger image uses more memory when tiling, but that’s something you do only the first time time a module is loaded. An 8000x3000 image has about 91MB of image data in it at 4 bytes per pixel, which isn’t all that much for machines these days.
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Smaller boards are easier to use in the editing tools when adding zones and positioning at-start stacks.
Another reason for small boards would be if there are scenarios that only use part of the map, as is typical in many large hex-based war games.
But I would go with a single map if you can.
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Thank you for the answers. Originally, I was just wondering if there was any “under the hood reasons” for breaking up a map since the Designer’s Guide implies one should use a large map broken into boards vs one larger map, based on RAM usage. I guess that consideration only really applies to people with 4GB of RAM, which according to statistics gather by Steam is only 5.84% of all PC. So I’ll happily do a larger map and if HEAP needs adjusting that is easily done by users.