100% is not displayed

can you repair these things?

One problem that is still here is that sometimes guns can be found/dropped with actual status much higher than max displayed status (like 75%/0%), and they act like they are ok.
Is it posssible to add some check/fix to the code for such situations?

• Dirt was an artificial extra parameter that was already covered by gun status (at least in my and other players' opinion).
• Cleaning dirt was an instant action that we did by pressing a button. Anybody that ever had to clean guns knows that this takes time and is not done in the middle of a firefight.
• Dirt added to an already high chance for gun jams.

• Gun status is composed of a dirt value and a repair threshold (if ADVANCED_REPAIR = TRUE in Ja2_Options.ini, default and highly recommended). If advanced repairs are off there is only the dirt value.
• The dirt value reflects how dirty the gun is. The repair threshold reflects actual damage to the gun. So if your gun shows 100% it means that is has no damage and is perfectly clean.
  If the gun shows for example 87%(98%) it means that its status is composed of 11 points dirt and 2 points damage.
• Only special NPCs or mercs with Technician trait can repair the repair threshold (if MERCS_CAN_DO_ADVANCED_REPAIRS = TRUE in Skill_Settings.ini). No change.
• Gun status can go down when you fire a gun. No change.
• The chance that gun status goes down is affected by the NaturalDirt value of the sector and the current weather. Fighting in the desert in a sandstorm is not advised...
• Gun jams are more likely to happen when the gun status is low. No change.
• When gun jams happen there is a chance that the gun gets damaged. The chance for damage is higher the lower the gun status is. So keep your guns in good condition and they will work reliably.
• Dirt can be removed with the help of cleaning kits. This requires the "Repair Items" assignment from now on. Gun cleaning goes 5 times faster than gun repair but you still have to spend enough time on that assignment to make it count (MINUTES_FOR_ASSIGNMENT_TO_COUNT in Ja2_Options.ini). There is a new option "CLEANING_RATE_DIVISOR" in Ja2_Options.ini that affects the number of cleaning points a merc gets. In order to clean guns the merc needs to have a cleaning kit anywhere in his inventory. You can only clean up to the repair threshold, not beyond. Gun cleaning has priority over general item repair.
• Cleaning checks all guns of all mercs in the sector. So a single merc could clean all guns on his own. This can come in handy if you don't have many cleaning kits. Of course it's faster if more mercs share the workload.
• If you do not have a cleaning kit you can still clean your guns with the normal repair routine and the help of a toolkit but this is much slower than using cleaning kits. Consider this the "backwards compatibility" for people who refuse to buy cleaning kits.

• Always have cleaning kits with you. (that's pretty obvious...)
• Keep an eye on the dirt modifier of guns in the advanced tab of EDB. Some guns have pretty high values there which means they get dirty faster. The M16A1 is a notorious candidate for example.
• Ammo can also affect the dirt modifier.
• Looted weapons with a high repair threshold are now worth to quickly be cleaned and used against your enemies in the next battle.
• Try to keep the gun status above 85%. Below that the guns jam a bit too often for my taste but that has always been this way.
• Always have at least a sidearm with you so you can switch guns when your primary weapon jams/breaks.

• DIRT_SYSTEM
• FULL_REPAIR_CLEANS_GUN
• SECTOR_DIRT_DIVIDER

Since you asked for feedback, silversurfer, here's my two cente:

First of all: I like your changes and they do make sense, so no problem there generally.

I feel weapon's condition degrades too fast. I don't like playing with militias, so what I usually do is leave a single merc in every sector I need to keep (mostly towns and sectors with a lot of loot), but him in sone room without a window and ambush all the attackers when they come through the door. Gamey, I know, but I don't see an alternative, since I simply don't like militias. Long story short: I was defending Tixa with Shank and he went through two rifles (Mini-14 and M4, I think), each starting out with 85+ condition. With the Mini-14 he couldn't even get through half a mag before it jammed so badly he had to drop it. I know it's a desert sector, but he never left the armory next to the bathrooms...

Also, some questions regarding the new repair system: Does this mean that you need MEC to clean guns now? Gun-cleaning skills drilled into recruits are a far cry from actual engineering skills, so I would really object to a situation where low-MEC soldiers take hours cleaning there guns.

What do you consider the "default" setting in your new system? If set to only allow Perko and Arnie to actually repair weapons, doesn't that completely invalidate all the engineers?

Biggest problem: Guns jamming can very quickly lead to the gun being ruined (dropping to 1%) - does this affect the dirt status only or does this reduce the threshold to 1% as well? The latter would be terrible, because this would mean a rifle in pristine condition could very well be utterly destroyed in single Tixa defence.

Vincent J. Claymore wrote on Wed, 28 December 2016 00:22

I feel weapon's condition degrades too fast. I don't like playing with militias, so what I usually do is leave a single merc in every sector I need to keep (mostly towns and sectors with a lot of loot), but him in sone room without a window and ambush all the attackers when they come through the door. Gamey, I know, but I don't see an alternative, since I simply don't like militias. Long story short: I was defending Tixa with Shank and he went through two rifles (Mini-14 and M4, I think), each starting out with 85+ condition. With the Mini-14 he couldn't even get through half a mag before it jammed so badly he had to drop it. I know it's a desert sector, but he never left the armory next to the bathrooms...

How many bullets did you fire? I tested with several weapons including a MP5K and MG36 in semi-auto and auto fire where I fired at least 10 full clips without the gun building up too much dirt. I experienced a few jams which should be normal if you empty multiple mags in a row in a "clean" sector. I got the MG36 to overheat which increased gun jams but that is an intended feature of the overheating system. I have to admit that I didn't test in a desert sector but your feedback gave me an idea. Building interiors should usually be cleaner than outside so I might just halve the dirt penalty inside buildings.

Vincent J. Claymore wrote on Wed, 28 December 2016 00:22

Also, some questions regarding the new repair system: Does this mean that you need MEC to clean guns now? Gun-cleaning skills drilled into recruits are a far cry from actual engineering skills, so I would really object to a situation where low-MEC soldiers take hours cleaning there guns.

The game uses the same formula for cleaning that it used for repairing the status in the past which includes the Mechanic attribute. I didn't change that but you have a good point. Gun cleaning isn't rocket science so I guess I will modify the formula so that MEC plays a lower role and DEX is the main factor plus a little EXP. With that change mechanics will still get a bonus.

Vincent J. Claymore wrote on Wed, 28 December 2016 00:22

What do you consider the "default" setting in your new system? If set to only allow Perko and Arnie to actually repair weapons, doesn't that completely invalidate all the engineers?

MY default setting is MERCS_CAN_DO_ADVANCED_REPAIRS = TRUE. This isn't what the standard 1.13 GameDir is set to at the moment but players can easily change that. It's only required to repair actual item damage (repair threshold) so you can still run around with a 95/95 gun which will work fine or you change the option or bring your guns to one of the NPCs.

Vincent J. Claymore wrote on Wed, 28 December 2016 00:22

Biggest problem: Guns jamming can very quickly lead to the gun being ruined (dropping to 1%) - does this affect the dirt status only or does this reduce the threshold to 1% as well? The latter would be terrible, because this would mean a rifle in pristine condition could very well be utterly destroyed in single Tixa defence.

Every time a gun jams it might take some amount of damage (0-5 points) so if you keep firing a low condition overheated gun you have a good chance to break it. Chance for damage is minimal if your gun happens to jam while it's still in good condition but if you keep pushing the status downwards it will eventually take damage. If you stress a gun hard from 100/100 you might end up with a 50/85 status for example. That's what's intended and I don't plan to change it. The system is not designed to allow sector defense with a single merc against an army. If you plan to do that you better provide multiple weapons he can use and clean afterwards.

Btw. keep in mind that semi-auto fire has a lower chance for gun jams than auto fire.

In the case of the Mini-14 it was half a magazine (<15) that caused constant jamming. Mind you, this gun doesn't even have full-auto or burst fire. I thought it was linked to Shank's poor skills, but now I now it was due to the sector being classed as desert. If you can indeed code the interiours of builidings to behave differently, that would be a really elegant solution to the problem. Alternatively, could Tixa be changed from Deseert to Urban?

This is what I figured and what I am going to do, simply because of the limitation of smiths in Arulco and the massive drain on your logistics of ferrying around rifles through the country just to have them repaired. It does, however, completely undermine Flugente's original intention behind the advanced repair system, doesn't it? I think the better (and best, imho) solution would be a small addition to the current skill system, seperating lockpicking skills from proper engineering skills and fortification skills. As things stand currently, the "real" reason Perko and Arnie remain unused is because the game gives you too many cheap/free Engineers to start with.

Just one other thing that came to my mind... does it really make sense, that you can never fully "clean" a gun just because it is damaged? What I am trying to say is that if a gun in perfect condition starts acting up when it gets 15-20% dirty - why would a smaller amount of dirt cause the same amount of trouble for a gun in a slightly damaged condition? If the first condition of the gun is really the cleanliness of the gun, shouldn't that always go up to 100% after a full clean?

Okay, I am okay with the system as it is currently. Basically what I don't like is that freshly looted guns are now more or less useless. If I defeat a group of enemies and give best of the looted rifles (drop all being activated, of course) to a merc (usually at 80+/90+), I am almost guaranteed jams before emptying the first magazine. Happened to Shank with two seperate guns, happened to Razor, happened to Hurl, I am paying attention to this now and I just find it a bit odd that the Arulcan army doesn't seem to stock a single weapon that would realistically survive even a medium sized confrontation.
I guess the way to adress this is to clean/repair every gun before using it, but that doesn't explain why every single one of Deidranna's soldiers seems to run around with a filthy. damaged gun to start with.

• Jam damage thresholds have been added to Item_Settings.ini - as long as a gun's condition is at or above the threshold for its type it will not take damage when it jams.
• When the gun is below the jam damage threshold there is a random chance that it will take damage. The random number will be compared to:
  
  <DamageChance> + (100 - condition) / 5
  
  <DamageChance> comes from Items.xml. The formula makes sure that the lower the condition of the gun the higher the chance for damage gets.
  Also the possible amount of damage is higher the lower the condition of the gun is although there is a rather low cap of 5 points.
• natural dirt level of a sector is halved when the shooter is inside a building (room)
• formula for calculation of cleaning points available to a merc has been changed to:
  
  ( (effective MEC + 3 * effective DEX + 50 * effective EXP Level) * 1000 ) / ( CLEANING_RATE_DIVISOR * REPAIR_SESSIONS_PER_DAY )
  
  This means that EXP level is now 5 times as important and DEX is now 3 times as important as before. Even a loser with 0 MEC, 50 DEX and Level 1 can now effectively clean his gun, not as well as an average merc but at least he can.

JAM_DAMAGE_THRESHOLD_PISTOL	= 50
JAM_DAMAGE_THRESHOLD_MP		= 75
JAM_DAMAGE_THRESHOLD_SMG	= 70
JAM_DAMAGE_THRESHOLD_RIFLE	= 40
JAM_DAMAGE_THRESHOLD_SNIPER	= 45
JAM_DAMAGE_THRESHOLD_AR		= 65
JAM_DAMAGE_THRESHOLD_LMG	= 60
JAM_DAMAGE_THRESHOLD_SHOTGUN	= 30

There is no "Clean Guns" action anymore. Dirt is now part of gun condition (explained above). To remove that you need to put the merc on repair assignment and either have a cleaning kit (preferred) or toolkit in your inventory. Be aware the cleaning with a cleaning kit goes much faster than the usual repair with a toolkit.