Gathering the information on the battle proved more difficult than was anticipated. The first major problem that was encountered was in obtaining a map of the island itself. The West Point Atlas was of no help; the same holds true for the Army's official history. Finally, a day spent at the map section of the New York Public Library yielded two maps that were suitable. The maps showed both terrain and vegetation.
This led to the second major problem. The scale of the game had to be changed considerably from what was first desired. Originally, Saipan was to be designed on a scale of 600 meters per hex. It simply would not fit onto the map sheet. Eventually, the scale had to be expanded to its present size of 900 meters per hex. This was not especially desirably from a game mechanics point of view, but it worked.
A good order of battle for both sides was obtained in the book Saipan, published by the Marine Corps. However, once the order of battle was established, another problem arose. The composition of units in terms of both manpower and materiel vary greatly, particularly in the Japanese formations. Fortunately, a study had been done in one of SPI's Kampf booklets giving a complete breakdown of the make up of Japanese units. After this data was compiled, it was simply a matter of sitting down with a pocket calculator and computing Combat Strengths. Various Japanese units had artillery integrated into them rather than organized into separate formations. This is accounted for by the larger Japanese units in the game - mainly the 3-4-8's. Another thing that had to be factored in was the weaponry of the Americans. This is the main reason that Marine units are stronger than Army units. They were liberally equipped with automatic weapons, had heavy weapons companies attached to their battalions and were equipped with, of all things, sawed-off shotguns. These proved quite effective in the battle. The only real "fudge factors" in the game is the amount of Ground Support Points. To be honest, play testing determined those strengths. Whatever worked was used. It should be noted, however, that the ranges of the artillery units are accurate.
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