Sirius wrote:In character, I would expect KI's to detect other KI's only in a 100 kilometers radius, except maybe in abnormal events such as electromagnetic storm or something which would jam communications.
But I think it's best to look at things from an out-of-character point of view, as the Age player list is an unimportant detail, and because splitting an Age into several other Ages has some pros and cons unrelated to story.
Splitting in other Ages is good because:
- if all locations are very far away with one another it's consistent with KI behavior from Pod Ages +1
- only one area is loaded at a time, which means more performance in-game +1
- ability to use the /!resetage command on a single location, so that people can reset only the part of the Age they are exploring +1
- easier to work with as you have separate Blend/Max files +1
- all locations have different names displayed in the KI, for instance: "D'ni - Ae'Gura", "D'ni - Rudenna", etc +1
Keeping everything in a single Age is good because:
- if all locations are still relatively close (like Riven's five islands), it's consistent with KI behavior in normal Ages.
- it's easier to make puzzles across all locations (say, a power source in area #1 which powers up a device in area #2)
- easier for players to know who else is playing the Age, which allows them to get help more easily (this outweights the cannon issue IMHO). (+1)
- it's a single set of file, so it means the overall weight in mb will be lower (especially if you reuse a lot of textures in each area) +1
- it's a single set of file, so it means less clutter in Uru's install folder (this really isn't much of an issue) +1
As Christian said, there is also the possibility of selective loading which is a mix of the two, (++) but since it's tricky to setup most of the time it's not even worth considering IMHO. (--)
So yeah, splitting in multiple Ages might be the best option in your case.
Red total: 2 or 3
Green total: 5
My choice is made.
Thank you everybody.
