Is 99 a hard limit or is it more of a "suggested" limit?
It's more or less a hard limit.
I suspect that the econ value of hexs are stored in a two digit array. Once you try to go to a three digit number, weird things happen.
I've gotten 100 to work before. But you have to watch it. I once tried more, and the hexs wound up with wierd numbers in game. For example, I'd assign 200 and when I'd log on I'd see 34. Things like that.
Of course, zero is a perfectly acceptable number. If you want to make most of the map worth zero and a few "important" hexs worth 99, you could probably convince people to fight over a few hexs to keep their shipyards going.
Or you could take a page from Skull and Jone's old CW servers, and assign all the VCs. The map wasn't worth any victory points; They'd PM you some instructions for your side and if you wanted to earn any VCs then you had to go do what the instructions said. Protecting or taking (random) high-econ territory did you no good.
-S'Cipio
-S'Cipio