Create a Tanoa editor session. Place two carriers, one on map and one off map. Place a playable character on each, near the island tower. Use the debug console to watch "getCursorObjectParams select 0" and "cursorObject". Start the session with each of the two playable roles, look at the island tower and note the values of the two watched expressions. The carrier that is off the map will display <NULL-object> for cursorObject while the carrier that is on the map will give a valid object identifier. In both cases, getCursorObjectParams will return a valid object identifier.

This came up when staging an operation out of sight of the land masses of a water-edged map (Tanoa). A number of game systems didn't work because they relied on cursorObject. I was able to work around the problem by modifying those systems to rely on getCursorObjectParams.