[Woolie Wool]

Since I have some interesting ideas for deep recon missions and other creative uses of truly extravagant distances (with cutscene-based autopilot, of course), I decided to test the radius at which the desertion warnings will kick in.

I set out from the GTD Gayatea (no, that is not a typo) in a Horus, turned time compression up to 64x and engine power to maximum, and went out into the lonely void. I was smitten detonated by God Command about 600 kilometers out.

This leads to the question--why not make the radius 6,000 km? Or 60,000? Or 6.0 x 10¹⁰⁰? Or not there at all? Or user defined? Having a hardcoded radius at which point you're blown up, despite the fact that objects can exist outside it, seems silly. Why not make the limits user defined, either as a definable radius (which can be eliminated by setting it to zero) or using a bounding box like asteroid fields, allowing a specific area to be carved out of space that is defined as the field of battle?

Besides, a single wing trekking out millions of kilometers in an enemy system to scout enemy movements is just really cool in ways that red-alert missions cannot possibly match.

[jr2]

Sounds cool to me... I always wanted a look at those 80 Saths...

[Nuke]

i always thought the desertion message/limited range was just a cheap fix to hide the limit on data types. you could change all the floats to doubles, but that will just hike the memory requirements and slow processing.

[Snail]

Sounds cool to me... I always wanted a look at those 80 Saths...

You mean 6 SJDs?

[Hades]

Jr2 you know the Sathanas fleet at the sun is a background?

[Snail]

Jr2 you know the Sathanas fleet at the sun is a background?

Plus a few SJDs for the sensor blips. And I think it's obvious too.

[jr2]

Oh, rly?  Hmm.  I'd considered that before, until I found the SJD model.  So, I thought that that must be what I saw.

[Trivial Psychic]

How about a "set-desertion-radius" sexp, which allows the mission designer to designate the range?  Setting it to -1 would eliminate the range altogether.

[haloboy100]

How about a "set-desertion-radius" sexp, which allows the mission designer to designate the range?  Setting it to -1 would eliminate the range altogether.

why not zero?

[akenbosch]

then you would be "smited" instantly, for going 0 mters away form the battle zone. why not set it too 999,999,999,999,999,999,999? it would take a whole day to fly that far unless your max speed was realy high

[haloboy100]

then you would be "smited" instantly, for going 0 mters away form the battle zone. why not set it too 999,999,999,999,999,999,999? it would take a whole day to fly that far unless your max speed was realy high

Bah. I am and idiot.

I say, screw the whole thing. If it only affects the player, then i see no point in it.

[Woolie Wool]

then you would be "smited" instantly, for going 0 mters away form the battle zone. why not set it too 999,999,999,999,999,999,999? it would take a whole day to fly that far unless your max speed was realy high

Either -1 or zero would probably work (e.g. setting the time limit in an FPS deathmatch to zero means no limit). I guess it depends on what kind of mathematics FS2 uses to calculate such things.

[Nuke]

it would be useful for implementations of newtonian physics though. for those instances where youre going ludicrous speed

[jr2]

We need to whine to a coder...

[Mars]

The coders are having some issues at present... I wouldn't wine, and only ask them for a feature if you think it'd make a big difference...

You could try implementing it yourself 

[karajorma]

I think nuke posted the basic reason the limit exists anyway. I've not checked if he is correct but I definitely remember reading that the reason for the limit was to keep the game's footprint down.

[colecampbell666]

Make it dynamic?

[Woolie Wool]

I think that since the footprint is being reduced greatly for 3.6.10, can we not afford a little more memory for a larger mission radius?

[haloboy100]

I think that since the footprint is being reduced greatly for 3.6.10, can we not afford a little more memory for a larger mission radius?

Ok, i guess I'm the only one wondering, but what exactly is the point of the desertion radius anyway? i meen, what player is actually going to fly as far as to get repeatedly spammed by command and eventually get blown up?

[colecampbell666]

Since I have some interesting ideas for deep recon missions and other creative uses of truly extravagant distances (with cutscene-based autopilot, of course), I decided to test the radius at which the desertion warnings will kick in.

it would be useful for implementations of newtonian physics though. for those instances where youre going ludicrous speed

Sounds cool to me... I always wanted a look at those 80 Saths...