Large Battle Maps

So, with the theory that the purpose of technology is not only to ease current tasks, but to introduce improvements anywhere possible, I want to open a discussion around larger battle maps. With these data points: Default maps are set to 25 x 25 squares (35 ft. x 35 ft. in D&D/PF terms). Most creatures with sight, or even special sight abilities such as darksight, echolocation & tremorsense go out to 120 ft. (in game rules) or more. The shortest long range on all ranged weapons in 5e is 60 ft., if you ignore the net (which you should). Technologically, we're talking MB range static images transferred once to each client, in an age where we can suck down gigabytes in minutes. Other than playing with page settings to tweak the multipliers, and end up losing fidelity on the map when zoomed into the appropriate size, or the tokens when zoomed out, how are others dealing with larger environment encounters? I'd like to see my players taking long range shots with their bows, finding limits to their spells due to ranges, etc. Range & maneuverability are important in tactical situations. I had thought of opening a suggestion to pursue improvements in large map handling (I'm talking 120 x 120 and up @ 72 DPI) & performance, but figured maybe someone has a great solution already?

This could gather some valuable tips so I'm hoping a good discussion will come of this opening... just before then, there is a typo in your default map settings... a 25x25 map is 125 feet in standard dnd terms, not 35 (sorry to be that  guy). Many maps these days take a 10'/unit setting which would make it 250 but just for general purposes I agree with the 5'/unit suggestion.

So long as this is a discussion about how to overcome the limitations imposed by the interface, I don't think this is a problematic post. When we start suggesting changes to the underlying infrastructure, it might get moved to the Suggestion forum. You can have larger maps, even ones over a hundred units in each direction. However, where we give, we must also take away. On a map that size, I would forgo dynamic lighting and Advanced Fog of War. Regular FoW should be fine. I would also suggest limiting tokens on that page wherever possible. Also, you would likely see better performance by slicing your background map into 4-8 pieces, and making sure it is a jpeg with a fairly high compression. You can also improve performance slightly on very large maps by turning the grid off and using the measurement tool to control range and movement.