How big would you estimate a full offline installer to be?
I'd think quite easily over 3GB, unless you get really good compression. My folder, with mods, is 3.78GB. Not gonna get much smaller than 3GB. So, 100 times a day * 3GB = 300GB/day. Haha, not like everyone running the installer is downloading the whole mod. However, it does present something. People run the installer a lot because they only have to pull a couple files at a time, and whenever they want to run it they have to connect to a server. Personally I think releasing an up to date offline installer would be nice, something compatible with all OS's, maybe even in a DVD iso format that could be distributed to others. Maybe as a torrent if bandwidth is an issue, and just have Hunter and some others be permanent seeds for it. Have an offline installer plus the updater installed, so you can update as soon as it's done. I think it's headed in that direction already, it's just a matter of making sure whatever's created can be reliably available. But I know I'd really like to just be able to hand my friends a disc, and say install this, run the updater, and you're good to go with the best the SCP has to offer. I think that this would cut down on bandwidth costs in the end. Picture this scenario.
A random guy loves Freespace 2 Open, and wants all his friends to play it. Currently the way to get it is to download it live. So he's download about 4GB of files so far. He gets 5 friends to play, and they all download it as well. There's 20 GB more downloaded. If the first random guy had a dvd iso, he could have just burned it off and given it to his 5 friends, saving everyone bandwidth and time at the expense of a few cheap as hell dvds. Since I'm guessing the SCP is being advertised almost solely by word of mouth, I have to imagine that the people who are spreading The Good Word about it could be giving away discs, if they were available. I know I would.
I know the installer has a ways to go before it could be used for this, but I think it's making some real progress.