Placement Radius

[reaper 0]

Just got back from a weekend LAN meet with a couple of friends.  We were bored with the MP missions in the game, and the ones we downloaded beforehand weren't very good.  So the rest of the weekend we plaed missions that we made up using the editor.

The mission we played that brought this problem up was one that we made up.

What I did was place one of us in the center of the island, with a placement radius that covered the island, to simulate a downed pilot needing rescue.

The other guy was placed in a base, with an OH-58.  The objective was for the downed pilot to figure out where he was, place a marker on the map, and the other guy to pick him up.

I also put a shilka, several AA soldiers, all with a placement radius covering most of the island, as well as enemy armor patroling the roads to make it more challenging.

The mission was pretty d*amn fun the first time we played it.  The problem was, the placement radius isn't very random in picking the placement.  There were three places it would place me, one in particular it picked just about every time.  All of the positions were in the southern part of the island, and very close to each other.

In a test I did just now, I tried something similar, and noticed that it seems to vary the placement depending on the direction the unit is facing.  It always places it behind the direction it's facing.  So if the unit is facing north, it places it south of that position.  If the unit is facing west, it places it east of that position, and so on.

Does anyone know of a better way of randomly placing a unit on the map.  I tried putting together a crude script to do the job, but rather than spend the whole time working on it, we just went on to other things.  I'll experiment with it some more tomorow after I make up for lost sleep during the weekend.