Home » MODDING HQ 1.13 » Flugente's Magika Workshop » New feature: Overheating Weapons
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Re: Feature: Overheating Weapons[message #325691]
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Wed, 25 September 2013 21:20
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Zundman7301 |
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Messages:38
Registered:June 2005 Location: USA |
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I love this new feature. Its beauty is matched only by its elegant implementation. Overheating, barrel swapping, it's all very cool. I want to give Flugente serious applause for the new feature.
However, there are a few problem with the system. First, I come from a place where there are a lot of guns (Utah), and I can tell you from experience that different guns overheat at wildly different rates. Second, jamming is one of the last problems to creep up once a gun starts to overheat. Parts usually start to melt or catch on fire before then.
Here are a few visual examples:
AR-15 (Catches on fire at 14 mags, starts to starts to experience fire-rate issues at 22 mags, and begins to jam/fail at 26 mags)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kzfm4pYhIyY
AK-47 (On fire after what looks like six, 75rd drums [450 rounds total] on the ground, but still firing without jams for an additional 225 rounds.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNAohtjG14c
AKSU-74 (Wooden furniture starts to burn after two mags. Gun becomes unhandleable at 10 and 1/2 mags. No jams. --Since he's "bump firing," he claims the misfires are not jams, but a side-effect of the bump fire at high temperatures because he can't grip the gun properly.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsDNpoXxWCA [CAUTION: SOME LANGAUGE)
Glock 18 (No fire. No jams. Still working flawlessly after 298 continuous rounds).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zw-o3p4ZMtE
As you can see, AKs start to catch on fire after just two to three mags, if dumped in quick succession, but aren't jamming. The AR, on the other hand, can burn through more almost 15 mags before it starts to even catch on fire. I understand that gauging exact 'burn rates' for each firearm is a nearly impossible task, without access to the guns themselves, but from experience, let me put forward that guns with polymer and plastic furniture tolerate heat much better than those made out of wood. Further, jamming isn't necessarily the issue with overheating, although it does happen with prolonged use at high rates of fire.
So a few thoughts:
In game terms, I think having the guns' condition degrade while the guns are over-heated is a excellent way to treat them (with jams occurring naturally as the gun degrades--although jams seems to be happening very frequently now; often even when the gun is in the 90% quality range regardless of whether or not the gun is 'hot' or 'cool'--also is very unrealistic--not sure what's up with that?) In addition, the rates at which guns overheat need to be tweaked--I'm happy to offer my assistance if necessary. But if I put two mags through an MP5 on full-auto, the only thing that's hot when I put it down is the tip of the barrel--I know from experience. The gun itself is in perfect shape.
I think the current feature reducing accuracy when guns are severely overheated is accurate, and it's great just as it is.
The jamming system needs to be fixed. I know this can be done through the INI editor, but if we're really going for some sort of realism, adding jamming to overheating guns, at least in anything but the mid-to-late stages of overheating, isn't accurate. In the case of old school weapons (I mean VERY old school--WWII or earlier), overheating could cause guns to jam because the parts weren't precision made so they all expanded at different rates, causing the gun to mechanically fail. However, anything older than WWII (including the AK47) largely side-steps this problem. Just playing the game, guns jamming all the time because of overheating feels very unrealistic, and isn't anything like my own real world experience. The real danger in overheating is that the barrel and rifling can begin to deform and fail after prolonged overheating, but even then, it takes A TON of heat for A LONG time to start doing damage to the barrel. As a result, I suggest that gun overheating be used to add 'permanent' damage to guns which can't be reversed (as per under the new repair system), but that damage needs to take longer to accumulate and it currently does.(e.g.: overheating effects need to be slowed down).
In the case of guns catching on fire, I'm not sure how to model this, other than to assume that the mercs are wearing gloves, or that guns that are EXTREMELY overheated can begin to deal damage to users.
Finally, in the real world, it's not uncommon AT ALL for soldiers to pour their canteens over their guns when they get overheated. It actually works quite well, even on LMGs, and it would be neat if we could do the same in the game. Granted, soldiers usually pour their WHOLE canteen over their overheating firearm in order to get a significant (if temporary) decrease in temperature, so if it's implemented, I think the game ought to reflect that accordingly.
[Updated on: Wed, 25 September 2013 21:33] by Moderator Report message to a moderator
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Private 1st Class
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Re: Feature: Overheating Weapons[message #325692]
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Wed, 25 September 2013 21:35
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Flugente |
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Messages:3509
Registered:April 2009 Location: Germany |
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Well, I come from a place with very few guns (Hessen), and admit I have no knowledge of firearms whatsoever, apart from shortly playing soldier as a conscript
I tried to make a compromise between realism and playbility here. If guns were to use real-world values on overheating, this would hardly ever be an issue (I cant remember any JA2-fight where I fired 26 mags from the same gun). So overheating is much more dramatic here.
It seems to me most of these issues can be solved via data. If you massively increase a weapon's , overheating will have a much smaller effect on jamming, for example.
A huge issue with this is that we don't have any accurate values for the guns. As said, I have no idea on gun behaviour, so simply made up values. If you have better ones, be my guest - just keep in mind that overheating should still be an issue with guns. This also goes for the cooldown values.
Cooling down guns with a canteen is easily doable (needs a simple new merge type), but is that really done? Wouldn't rapid cooling damage the gun? (I have no idea, that's why I'm asking). Though it seems whacky enough to fit Ja2...
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Re: Feature: Overheating Weapons[message #325698]
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Thu, 26 September 2013 01:56
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Zundman7301 |
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Messages:38
Registered:June 2005 Location: USA |
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I completely agree that overheating should still be an issue with guns. It's such a great feature, and fun, that it would be a shame to make it "too real" (e.g.: not much of a problem).
I think balancing the gameplay with real life could be well achieved by slowing the overheating rate by 3-5x, but making damage done to the gun caused by overheating after that MUCH more severe, and making it PERMANENT (and/or fixable by a barrel swap)to simulate barrel/fire damage. I'd eliminate jamming altogether (except as a side-effect of normal "wear and tear" damage cause by the overheating itself, which seems plausible.) I think having guns do small amounts of damage to mercs per turn or SEVERELY affecting accuracy (to account for the weapon being too hot to handle) after the gun becomes EXTREMELY HOT (5-10 mags, maybe? We'd have to find the right balance), would also be a good way to model it in addition to the above.
I'm happy to go through and change the values on overheating for the different weapons based to some degree on their real-world counterparts. I wrote some of the 1.13 gun descriptions initially (in 2007 I think?, "Cousin Lester" was a creation of mine), and I've been meaning to go back through a rewrite some of the more 'vanilla' descriptions anyway. Your gun cooldown times seems accurate, for the most part. Once heated up, they DO take a while to cool back down again (sometimes 10-20 minutes).
As far as canteens go--yes. That's very real. I'm not a metallurgist, but I assume it's because the barrels are already rapid-cooled to begin with on their initial forging, so re-cooling them rapidly doesn't realign their molecular structure in any significant way (e.g.: the metal's already been changed in that way by the initial forger). Regardless, troops are trained to do it, and have been doing so since the invention of the first air-cooled machine guns nearly 100 years ago. It's still done today, and almost ubiquitously whenever a gun needs emergency cooling. In fact, when soldiers don't want to use their water, they pee on it. True story. People also do it all the time in competition shooting without a problem. I hear that rapid water cooling isn't the BEST for the gun in the VERY long term life of the gun (better to air cool), but in terms of short term functionality or damage, or even the average life of the gun, it's not a problem.
I've never served in the military, so that's cool you did your time. Props to you for gutting it out
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Private 1st Class
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Re: Feature: Overheating Weapons[message #325705]
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Thu, 26 September 2013 04:40
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Zundman7301 |
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Messages:38
Registered:June 2005 Location: USA |
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Also, I read somewhere on here someone suggesting that cooling rates could very by day/night and weather cycles. That's actually very true. If it's 50 degrees F at night(~10.0 C), but more than 100 F during the day (~39.0 C), you're talking about a BIG difference in the heat exchange rate. You could probably get that AK to cool a third to half again as fast in the cooler air. Once the temp breaks about 100 F, guns stay much hotter, longer, especially if there's no humidity. I don't know why exactly, but I'd bet it has something to do with the air density. Could be a neat feature, but I understand it might be a nightmare to code, so I wouldn't blame you for one second if you didn't want to implement it. If you did, desert sectors come to mind as a place where guns could have cooling problems.
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Private 1st Class
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Re: Feature: Overheating Weapons[message #325718]
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Thu, 26 September 2013 12:52
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Faalagorn |
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Messages:154
Registered:February 2012 Location: Poland |
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Based on what Zundman wrote, how about taking the (approxiate, since we can't easily measure them) values from the real world and then divide them by some constant (preferably tweakable in the INI) to fit the game. It's kinda similar to how one tile = 10 meters for the purpose of gun range calculations.
Also, as far as I understand the new repair system - the normal threshold is what can you do having an access to just the mechanic tools, and no additional materials (no new barrel and gun parts), while the advanced repairs do have access to replacement parts/creating a new parts yourself - that's why it's initially restricted to locals (that we assume have an access to wide variety of tools, parts and raw materials) but if the user decides, engineers and technicians can do it as well, most likely assuming that they can obtain or create replacement parts and not only repair the existing ones.
So, in my conclusions, overheated guns doing a 2nd type of damage is reasonable, as it'll "permanently" damage the part, that can be repaired, albeit only by the advanced repairs (by effectively replacing barrel or damaged part).
As far as jamming goes - it seems that it could be solely damage-dependent, as it seems that the direct overheating of a weapon does not affect the probability to jam, but indirectly it does, as it damages the weapon.
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Staff Sergeant
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Re: Feature: Overheating Weapons[message #325756]
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Thu, 26 September 2013 21:33
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Zundman7301 |
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Messages:38
Registered:June 2005 Location: USA |
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As a matter of fact, if implemented correctly, it should make the game more difficult. I can't speak for Flugente, because it's his feature, but if he decides he wants to do it and a few tweaks are made, it would definitely have an effect on the way the game is played.
Want to use that Colt M4A1 like a LMG? Well, now you can't. At least not for long. You can try and dump all the Beta C-Mags through it you want, but after two of them, your barrel will start melting down, and your gun is toast. Now you have to plan and use weapons for the roles they were tactically intended for. LMG's can swap barrels in the middle of combat for a set amount of AP's, assault rifles can't, so if you start melting your AR down, you're going to have to switch to your backup weapons and now you're out an AR--tough luck if your weapons are special ordered from BR's and you're out on patrol. Still want to use three mercs with LMG's to suppress an entire sector of 64 soldiers? Can't do that, either. Because even an LMG will melt through their barrels if you sustain fire long enough (unless you bring another merc along with a backpack full of barrels, but that's the point.) Now auto-fire and suppression become limited tactical choices that have to be balanced with all your other offensive options if you want to win the day. An additional result would be that pistols and SMGs now become more necessary as side-arms, because if you find yourself in a position with your pants down and you have to burn out your barrel (some soldiers do), at some point you're going to have to fall back on another weapon. Overheating is a huge reason different weapon classifications exist in real life (AR v LMG, etc.) They change the flow of battle, and the way you have to fight to win.
I just read this morning that the German Army is having problems with their G36's. After about 200 rounds of rapid fire, they become wildly inaccurate and ineffective beyond 100-200 yards(!!!!) until they cool down. So, if implemented, the G36 would still be a great AR, accurate, with a built-in scope, etc, but you're not going to be able to pour the fire through it like it's a machine gun for very long unless you want to destroy its efficacy. That's going to affect which mercs you decided equip it with, and what role they (and it) will play in your squad.
Would be a blast.
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Private 1st Class
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Re: Feature: Overheating Weapons[message #325761]
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Thu, 26 September 2013 22:09
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Flugente |
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Messages:3509
Registered:April 2009 Location: Germany |
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FaalagornBased on what Zundman wrote, how about taking the (approxiate, since we can't easily measure them) values from the real world and then divide them by some constant (preferably tweakable in the INI) to fit the game. It's kinda similar to how one tile = 10 meters for the purpose of gun range calculations. Sure. Just send me the current Items.xml and Weapons.xml after you've obtained and entered all those values. And don't forget the ammo type modificators.
Cooling gun with canteens is an easy-to-to merge type. Most work would be adding that merge to the gazillion guns.
Factoring in temperature on generating/losing heat can be done easily. I did not do that because it seems insignificant to me in a small country like Arulco, with a more or less constant climate. Also, the current sector heat system has like 3 different values
Code clarifications: Guns aren't damaged by heat directly. Heat merely increases the chance that a gun takes damage from firing (this is evaluated every shot). Same for jamming, guns don't jam because of heat, it merely increases the chance that a gun jams. The gun taking damage/jamming are the only kind of malfunctions we have (apart from rather impressive ones with GLs/RPGs). The merc taking damage because his AR is burning seems rather outlandish to me. Adding extra permanent damage when overheated would break the basic concept of the repair threshold - if a gun has of 10, this means that there's a 10% chance that if it's damaged, its threshold gets lowered too. Not 10% + f(temperature).
The enemy never suffers from jamming guns. The AI doesn't know how to handle it, and I don't know how it could - it can either waste bullets trying to fire, or drop the gun - at which point it flees. It would also suffer tremendously from guns in bad conditions.
What I could add, however, are global modificators for jam threshold/damage threshold/cooldown, similar to OVERHEATING_TEMPERATURE_GLOBAL_MODIFIER.
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Re: Feature: Overheating Weapons[message #325766]
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Thu, 26 September 2013 23:48
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Zundman7301 |
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Messages:38
Registered:June 2005 Location: USA |
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Flugente
Code clarifications: Guns aren't damaged by heat directly. Heat merely increases the chance that a gun takes damage from firing (this is evaluated every shot). Same for jamming, guns don't jam because of heat, it merely increases the chance that a gun jams. The gun taking damage/jamming are the only kind of malfunctions we have (apart from rather impressive ones with GLs/RPGs). The merc taking damage because his AR is burning seems rather outlandish to me. Adding extra permanent damage when overheated would break the basic concept of the repair threshold - if a gun has of 10, this means that there's a 10% chance that if it's damaged, its threshold gets lowered too. Not 10% + f(temperature).
Is is possible to add a new condition? (e.g.: If heat = X, then increase to 100? If not, changing the global modifiers so that guns take damage every shot, 100% of the time once they hit a certain heat level is almost as good. Some damage would be temporary, some permanent. Seems plausible.
Temperature factoring could be a neat bonus. Certainly night/day cycles are a possibility. Whether or not Arulco has temperature fluctuations big enough to matter is really a matter of fiction. It just depends on what we want to say it is (SOME range is plausible) I'm personally ambivalent. I think it's fine either way.
Cooling guns with canteens would be a great addition. If you can do it, I think it would add a great element to the system.
I'll take a shot at the .xmls. Ammo modifiers would probably only change with the cold-loaded and tracer rounds, and much more so with the later than former, but I'll do some research on the others and get back to you. --Can you send me a crash course in the way the values are calculated so I have an idea of how to adjust them?
[Updated on: Thu, 26 September 2013 23:54] by Moderator Report message to a moderator
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Private 1st Class
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Re: Feature: Overheating Weapons[message #325767]
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Thu, 26 September 2013 23:56
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Flugente |
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Messages:3509
Registered:April 2009 Location: Germany |
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Zundman7301Flugente
Code clarifications: Guns aren't damaged by heat directly. Heat merely increases the chance that a gun takes damage from firing (this is evaluated every shot). Same for jamming, guns don't jam because of heat, it merely increases the chance that a gun jams. The gun taking damage/jamming are the only kind of malfunctions we have (apart from rather impressive ones with GLs/RPGs). The merc taking damage because his AR is burning seems rather outlandish to me. Adding extra permanent damage when overheated would break the basic concept of the repair threshold - if a gun has of 10, this means that there's a 10% chance that if it's damaged, its threshold gets lowered too. Not 10% + f(temperature).
Is is possible to add a new condition? (e.g.: If heat = X, then increase to 100? If not, changing the global modifiers so that guns take damage every shot 100% of the time once they hit a certain heat level is almost as good. Some damage would be temporary, some permanent. Seems plausible. That is what already happens. The higher the temperature/threshold ratio, the higher the chance of damage.
Zundman7301I'll take a shot at the .xmls. Ammo modifiers would probably only change with the cold-loaded and tracer rounds, and much more so with the later than former, but I'll do some research on the others and get back to you. --Can you send me a crash course in the way the values are calculated so I have an idea of how to adjust them?
Ammotypes have a single tag: determines the extra heat generated. 0.5 means +50% heat when using this type of ammo - so if the gun would normally generate 100 pts of heat, it now generates 150.
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Re: Feature: Overheating Weapons[message #325778]
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Fri, 27 September 2013 01:48
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Faalagorn |
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Messages:154
Registered:February 2012 Location: Poland |
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UriensMeh, its a micromanagement feature that just slows game down, doesn't make it any harder. I've seen this discussion before at least twice. I'd simply suggest to externalize drop condition of items for each level and people can play it as they want.
Another suggestion would be adding an INI option to effectively turn off the repair systems altogether (i.e. make all the items at 100% condition, then you would only have to worry about overheating, unless you turned that off as well). I'm nowhere against it, even though I would not use this (I adore micromanagment in JA2 . Sure, it would render tool kits and engineer perks less relevant, but hell, it's already like that if you disable dirt system (cleaning kits) or food system (food & water and the new background modifiers) - and they can be turned off no ptoblem. The only thing that probably prevented from considering doing so, is that the repair is vanilla, so every hardned vetered knows it should be there, but I don't think this should be a limiting factor - if someone don't want to bother repairing items, or want a different kind of gameplay where you don't have to worry about repairing, then why not?
FlugenteFactoring in temperature on generating/losing heat can be done easily. I did not do that because it seems insignificant to me in a small country like Arulco, with a more or less constant climate. Also, the current sector heat system has like 3 different values
Remember that 1.13 isn't limited to Arulco - there is nothing against making a mod campaign located on a north pole, or even a map with a campaign with a magical portal that allows you to instantly travel from a polar sector to a desert . Also keep in mind that 1.13 also supportes UB, and Tracona's climate is widely different than Arulco's.
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Staff Sergeant
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Re: Feature: Overheating Weapons[message #325779]
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Fri, 27 September 2013 02:00
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Flugente |
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Messages:3509
Registered:April 2009 Location: Germany |
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Faalagorn
FlugenteFactoring in temperature on generating/losing heat can be done easily. I did not do that because it seems insignificant to me in a small country like Arulco, with a more or less constant climate. Also, the current sector heat system has like 3 different values
Remember that 1.13 isn't limited to Arulco - there is nothing against making a mod campaign located on a north pole, or even a map with a campaign with a magical portal that allows you to instantly travel from a polar sector to a desert . Also keep in mind that 1.13 also supportes UB, and Tracona's climate is widely different than Arulco's. Which is meaningless, as the stuff is currently hardcoded
But yes, can be done similar to the dirt system's sector specific natural dirt system.
Then again, the next thing you people want is sector specific temperature forecasts, taking into account the rain showers :umbrella: . Resulting in a need for additional 256 * 24 temperature values. Don't deny it, thats exactly what you want here. It never ends with you people :rant2: :heavy: :coffee: :moosegrin: :bluegrin: :wave:
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