[MarkSheppard]

So it looks like:

Stock SSI SP2 Scenarios are uncompressed at 689kb.

SP2 Scenarios saved with the in-game editor have their compression turned "on" and are arranged like "SPCAMO" scenarios and I can use some of what I created to edit SPCAMO scenarios there.

Given that the original concept was for SP2 to be run with a disc in the CDROM Drive (to show movies and to act as copy protection); and given the original requirements:

486 DX/2 66 MHz
8 MB RAM + 1 MB SVGA Card
2x CDROM Speed (330 kb/sec)

They possibly ran some tests with computers using the original Steel Panthers I requirements (486 DX 33 MHz) to see how well it would run on the older hardware and figured out that having the game read uncompressed scenarios from the CDROM drive was faster than trying to have the slower PC decompress scenario files.

They probably figured from an "emotional" perspective, people would tolerate slower load times for save games or user created scenarios on older hardware.