thanks for the reply's. Render, I don't think I can use that method of shapes, the setup I have now is just a test scenario, imagine if a hexagon could appear anywhere on the sphere.

Basically what I'm doing right now is:

getting a 2D array of id's which represent the hexagons.
loop over the array, convert 2d array indexes to 2d hex coordinates
find the percentage of this coordinate in relation to a map size (px = hexX / (hexW * arrayW), py = hexY / (hexH * arrayH))
find the point on the sphere using this percent and the 2:1 ratio (sx = px * 360, sy = py * 180)
convert this angle to spherical coordinates
create hex polygon at this coordinate.

there is no texturing going on here. Hexagons are individual geometry in 3d space.

so yeah, unless somehow I can do hex to spherical to polar coordinates, or something like that, treating it like a texture map which has been creates for a sphere. Its not going to work.

on thew topic of spherical texturing, does anyone know how to take a flat image (like the one I posted) and move the pixels so the tops and bottoms are expanded and the middle is squished, so that it maps correctly around the sphere?

Thanks for the help.