[feld]

Question: Is there an upper limit to the number of objects that you can have in a scenario? I'm at 189 shrimp and 20 or so whales and am not remotely interested in stopping yet...so far my 2 GHz PIII laptop is running it just fine. Does anyone have any experience/hints that they can share on scenarios with large numbers (~500-600+) objects?

v/r
feld

edit: 9/3/08 bgd info - clarity

*******background information follows if you're wondering why I care**********

Background: The max number of objects question comes in because I like realistic levels of false contact clutter in my littoral scenarios. For instance, a 1997 study showed that the PRC had over 200,000 registered fishing vessels. Most of these are small inshore dows or junks...but not all. So I want lots of contacts: biologics and neutrals.

I am in the midst of making a single player map for the East China Sea. Not so much a specific scenario but a detailed large region map on which to write scenarios or a campaign. Chose the region because there are several interesting ocean territory disputes in the area and because the environment, traffic lanes, and local politics combine to produce lots of potentially interesting missions on one map.

My procedure is to build the map from the ground up in layers: place names, environment (acoustics, wind, water areas), biologics, fishing areas, and merchant transit lanes. The basic idea is to put the biologics ("shrimp") where the upwelling zones and the chlorophyll are in RL, the whales where the shrimp are or migrating, and the fishermen where the fish are. The merchants get randomly distributed in the transit lanes according to an approximation of shipping density.

Anyway, that's what I'm working on and why I want to know the limit. I figure it's easier to help someone answer a question if you know the context...but you don't always have time to learn the context.