The tactical rules suggest using a hex grid as one possible way of handling the individual scale, but frankly, I've always found indoors areas split into hexes to be clunky at best. You encounter the same problem in cities -- a gridwork of streets inevitably involves at least one street that zig-zags from hex to hex as it cuts east-west or north-south, against the nice clear lines going the other direction. Anybody who's ever fought a BattleTech battle in a city grid knows exactly what I'm talking about -- it costs double movement to go in one particular direction because you're constantly changing facing.
Buildings are largely the same way -- the inside of a building is composed of rectangles. Particularly stylish architecture may have more complex shapes, but they almost never fit well into a hex grid. Lest you think I'm anti-hex grid, let's look at the other obvious option.
A square grid works better in representing conventional architecture, but leads to a problem with diagonal movement -- do you allow it or not? If you do, how much does it cost? Unless you're willing to do the ludicrous amount of math required to properly calculate the MP (there's a reason you rarely see radical symbols in RPG rules books), you end up either not allowing it (overcharging your player's movement) or not allowing it (massively undercharging your payer's movement). Its not an insignificant different, either -- allowing a player to move into a diagonal square is a 41% boost in movement speed. This problem of diagonals is largely why Hex Grids are so darn popular.
So square grids lead to problems, hex grids also lead to problems. That leaves one major category: going off the grid entirely. If you've lived in the BattleTech table-top world long enough, or gone to many conventions, you've probably seen BattleTech miniatures rules being played. These are the gorgeous tables set up with neatly delineated hills and trees, tiny painted 'Mechs marching through the woods. The intersection of Inner Sphere Avenue and Warhammer Boulevard. Miniatures handle distances beautifully, and provide obvious and intuitive views of the battlefield that symbols on a battlemat simply can't match. So why aren't we using them all the time?
Production is hard. With a battlemat, I draw a line and magically, there's a wall there. I draw a dotted line, and there's a chest-high wall, in case we need to play Gears of War: Tharkad. I can create entirely new buildings in seconds, and fill them in easily. With miniatures, I need a base, some cardboard or foamboard to represent that wall, which needs to be cut and stood up. If I'm lucky, I have some kind of kit for quickly assembling a building from interlocking pieces, but that's expensive and limits me to the bits I have. I've even run using Lego pieces for terrain, but frankly, it breaks the mood.
I'm going to experiment a bit with the first few sessions, but I feel that some variant of the terrain rules are best version for the game. The rules define a human as occupying a space 1 meter by 1 meter by 2 meters for the purposes of stacking and arrangement. In the past, I have often had a great deal of luck simply mounting plastic army men of the kind they sell by the bag at the toy store for a dime a unit onto standard US pennies (which are conveniently about 0.75" in diameter.) These pieces give me a scale of three quarters of an inch to 1 meter, or about 52.5:1, giving my 5-foot by 5-foot gaming table about 80 meters to a side of virtual surface -- more than enough to fit most complexes I'd have my players running around.
Unfortunately for me, it seems those plastic army men have gone out of style, so I don't expect to have them mounted for the first session, but I have no doubt I'll find some equivalent.
In terms of actually building the facility, I have a few options. In Null Set (FASA 1672, p. 44) there is a layout of a Class-B HPG facility. The layout is very simple, not intended to be a terrific challenge. It may be the correct size for a small engagement. I am unsure how long an average turn of A Time of War will take at this stage, so I'm inclined to err low until I know for certain. Also, I don't expect the Denver station to be a particularly complicated facility -- unlike on other worlds, the Adepts and Acolytes can likely simply commute in -- the building doesn't have to be self-contained, which means that it just need to be more or less a bank.
At least this first mission should be a stealth operation, so direct combat should be pretty minimal, and I can use averages for Attributes and Skills. I'm a little bit under prepared, but I think with the proper plot hooks in place. Oh, right. Plot hooks... I should go write those.
Now.
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