Miuramir

Make sure you've turned off player names, ratings/stars display, are not monitoring any real numbers, and have the sending of stats info off. Turning your various view distances way down may or may not help, but can't hurt.

If you're seeing that much red in the netgraph, it's probably not really your computer's problem. I'm guessing that when a spawn triggers, the game tries to force all the info down your connection at once, and your connection can't handle it all causing a net failure.

You may want to open a trouble ticket with support; I'm not sure whether dial-up is officially supported anymore, but if it is, this may need to be passed up the chain.

Is this a brand new router, or one you've had for a while? I end up dealing with a lot of wireless routers, and my experience is that they tend to get flaky after a while. I've seen all sorts of unexplainable weird behavior.

Many models are insufficiently cooled which leads to partial component failure eventually, and the flash memory is more subject to corruption than the manufacturers would like you to think. There are also malicious attacks floating around out there against some models, especially older firmware versions. Additionally, some (many?) "home" models are not really designed to put out full power on all ports when new, and their ability to properly handle long cable runs fades as the components age.

I'd recommend starting by downloading the current firmware from the manufacturer's website via a reliable connection, and re-flashing it. You've got good odds of clearing up problems that way.

Try removing all long Ethernet cables, and connecting things back one at a time. It's not unusual to have weird problems if you're pushing the effective total cable length connected to the device, which in practice may be way less than the standard or the claimed specs from the manufacturer.

If it doesn't help and it is more than 2-3 years old, if you live in an area that gets a lot of power surges, or if you live in a warm area and don't have AC, seriously consider just replacing it.

If it's shiny new and after the above stuff it seems fine, I suspect some sort of weird firewall / port forwarding interaction. Are you running a software firewall like ZoneAlarm?

Try powering everything off (computers, router, etc.), and unplugging router from outside connection. Leave it off for a while so things reset (at your ISP), and then connect things back and repower them one at a time, checking to make sure things are working at each step.

I'm not absolutely sure about the internals, but depending on exactly what variant of problem you are having, /unloadgfx may be more useful than /reloadgfx.

Theoretically, /reloadgfx should tell your graphics system to reload all texture information it's currently storing in graphics memory, from main memory or the hard disk. If you have plenty of graphical memory yet are experiencing graphical corruption for some reason this should reload good versions. In general this will be slower, as it's loading things whether it needs them or not.

Theoretically, /unloadgfx should tell your graphics system to unload all cached texture information it's currently storing in graphics memory, and then only reload what is currently in use (current zone/area/characters). This should help those with low or shared graphical memory, by clearing out cached info that's no longer needed. It will also clear out corrupted textures, since it clears out everything.

I can't actually be sure about the internals; at any given point, these may point to different functions or actually be mapped to the same underlying routine. It may in fact be handled differently on the PC and the Mac. However, even if right now they're mapped the same, it's best to use the one that's supposed to do what you want, in case they change/fix things.

In general, you'd not want to issue either command immediately before zoning, as if the textures are still loading when it tries to load them from zoning, it may cause problems. Since /reloadgfx causes a lot more loading, it's more problematic. Similarly, if the zone (area, character, etc.) textures haven't finished loading yet after zoning, you could confuse things further by forcing a reload while it's already loading.

One way to use /unloadgfx to minimize certain problems while zone loading is to walk up to the zone door (etc.), zoom in so that there's very little visible, and issue /unloadgfx. Wait a few moments for the screen to reload, which should be fairly quickly on most systems as it doesn't need to load much. Then zone; the zone load will have a largely clean slate to work with.

Another option is to use /unloadgfx after zoning. Wait until the zone has finished loading, and you can move about a bit without rubberbanding. Then issue /unloadgfx to clean out all the old zone / character models, and wait again for it to load the current zone.

If you're having serious problems or are running on a very underspec computer, you may want or need to do both, before and after zoning. Just make sure you're waiting long enough for things to stabilize.

If you're having difficulties in a complex setting (costume contest, invasion, etc.) it'll usually be more useful and faster to use /unloadgfx. On the other hand, if you're in a mission and are finding that wall textures have gone bizarre or something, pausing for a moment and issuing /reloadgfx may be more applicable.

tl;dr: use /unloadgfx rather than /reloadgfx in most situations, unless you've got a clear understanding of why you wouldn't.

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the rubberbanding is 4-5 times per minute everytime i play on my wireless, they aren't necessarily horrible enough to get me killed or anything in game, but its very annoying...

I use XP...

also currently my router is right next to my computer, the only other things that access it is my xbox 360 and my laptop when it happens to be on.

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Is the Xbox 360 on much of the time? We found an earlier problem where the "media search" on a PS3 was killing someone's connection on a regular basis, it's possible the 360 has something similar going on.

If your router is that close, a better antenna is unlikely to help (it's more for situations where you've got the router in one room and the computer in another). Have you checked the channel options? Do you live someplace that is likely to have other wireless users nearby, or possibly neighbors with 2.4 GHz phones or the like? It sounds like something is interfering with the wireless on a regular basis.

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This is my first time playing COH through steam. I played COH on this computer about 3 years ago with no problems that was without steam. I'm currently waiting on a response from them.

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Unfortunately, there's been a history of issues with CoH and Steam. Before CoH itself came out on Steam, a number of folks had CoH problems which were resolved by not running Steam in the background while CoH was running. We were kind of surprised to see CoH distributed through them.

I'm not a Steam expert; will it let you turn off the background stuff when playing a game you downloaded through it?

Also note that the practical requirements to run CoH smoothly have increased dramatically over the last several years. A lot of returning folks seem to be finding their systems not up to the task anymore.

Something else to look at is your audio drivers; they seem old, and you've got 3D sound on which some people have had problems with.

You will generally get better results by leaving the resolution set at your monitor's actual resolution, then using the renderscale setting to reduce the rendering load & resolution.

You still have a lot of graphics options turned way up according to your output, and it may be that one of them is problematic for your old card. Make sure you've turned everything down or off that you can to test. It is also possible that the newest driver isn't the best choice for an old card, perhaps someone more familiar with the 7800 GS can chime in.

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My hard drive is less than 50% full right now. After the problems had continued for three days, I did decide to compress the harddrive, though.

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That was probably a bad idea. In general, compressed hard drives sacrifice speed for capacity. Depending on the drive, your CPU, and your other hardware, running off a compressed drive can slow things down enormously... assuming you get things running eventually, odds are that zone load times will be significantly up and framerate may also be down.

As a general rule, compress only fairly static data that is not read in a performance-critical way, and written rarely. Of course, if you're running on a cramped system where your options are "run compressed" or "don't run", you do what you have to, but that's not the case here.

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This game runs flawless except when loading.
I'm going to start turning options off in game and see if any of the fix or lessen the problem.

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The fastest thing to do is to try running CoH in safe mode for a while. If that still crashes, you've got some sort of more serious problem; if not, turn up one graphics setting at a time and see what is causing you problems.

The two things that zoning stresses are disk access and graphical texture loading. You may want to run a detailed disk check. You can also experiment with using /unloadgfx *before* zoning in your case. (Usually you use it after zoning, to uncache the old zone's graphical info.)

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I am also runing Win XP up to SP2 as SP3 don't like my computer :0Þ

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This is a warning sign. Aside from various improvements, SP3 has a huge list of security fixes. If you can't go to SP3, it might be because you're infected with something. Even if that isn't why you can't upgrade, you may end *up* infected because you're missing one or another security patch.

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Now here is the problem. Some days I run fine all day long with no lag, some days I get really bad lag but I can restart my PC and it fixes the lag, other days I lag so bad I quit for the day as not even restarting my PC helps. Before I hear "Turn down your graphics" I have tried everything. As low as I can get, as high as I can get, safe mode, it doesn't matter. I even went as far as reformatting my PC, and still have the problem.

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Have you tried using /unloadgfx after every time you zone? Some people with erratic crashes find that it helps. Your problem could be all sorts of things; start by posting your CoH Helper output and make sure you've checked your system for cooling. Odds are we'll want to see your HijackThis output as well, since there's some suspicion you may be infected.

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I think it's an EVGA, GeForce 7600 GT. The physical damage is that two of the components, look like little batteries, were blown out the top, some chemicals inside kind of foamed up through the top.

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"If any part of your computer can be described as "oozing", you need professional help. It might be the Geek Squad or it might be the Ghostbusters, but you need to do something about it *soon*." - me, in an earlier discussion about blown caps

Jokes about letting the magic smoke out aside, not only can you expect erratic failures, you may actually be damaging other parts of your computer's electrical system. Capacitors are generally there to level out the rapid swings in power demand from a video card, and if they're shot on the card, those are being passed on to the rest of the system. At the very least, you're probably shortening the life of the caps in your power supply.

If you post some more info about your system (particularly, what sort of graphics slot you have, and what your power supply is (ideally the exact sort, including the +12v rating(s) in addition to the overall rating)), what sort of monitor / resolution you use, and your budget, we can help recommend a card.

I would also recommend a review of your cooling and power. It's not clear what combination of electrical and heat damage caused the original problem.

Make sure you're plugged into a good surge protector at the least (and remember that they wear out after a few years); if you're in an area with erratic power, a UPS is well worth the investment. Visually inspect the capacitors on your motherboard and, if possible, in your power supply (don't open it up, but see what you can through the vents with a flashlight). Note that on many motherboards there will be a row of capacitors near the CPU; these frequently end up hidden by the exhaust ductwork if you have one of those plastic ducts to direct airflow. Anything else with signs of bulging, oozing, or venting indicates you've got problems elsewhere in your system.

Check to make sure that the airflow in your case is working with, not against, the cooling on your card. Software can't "cook" a properly functioning and properly cooled card; if running it at full power causes heat damage, you're not cooling it correctly. If you've got a semi-enclosed or fully-enclosed card, make sure you've cleaned it out properly; they can accumulate a surprising amount of gunk where you can't see it.

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I made Trolls with Martial Arts and Energy Melee, who will now have wildly out of character powers that I can't get rid of. I would GLADLY trade these in to give them pistols, guns, or Hurl/Hurl Boulder. In fact, I would GLADLY give them MORE ranged attacks that are MORE powerful, as long as I could pick which ones to make sure they still make sense. Concept means a lot to me. This patch is KILLING my concepts.

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I'm not necessarily disagreeing with your general problem; I'm still firming up my thoughts on the various changes. However, in your specific case, why not use /Super Strength? It sounds like it'd be a lot more troll-like than /Energy Melee anyway, and with Hurl as an actual ranged power they may be less likely to use Shuriken from their Martial Arts/.

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my ONLY issue is when i play on the wireless... I I RUBBERBAND HORRIBLY.. meaning atleast 4-5 times per minute...

everything else is completely smooth, and it doesn't do this on ethernet cable connection

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This may not be a hardware problem (although better hardware may help, depending). Disclaimer: while the basic theory in this post is generic, some of the details assume US devices / regulations; if you live elsewhere YMMV.

WiFi is a shared medium. Even in the simplest of cases, the available bandwidth is divided amongst the various well-behaved users. Two people on a channel will get at best half the performance each. For sporadic loads such as web browsing this isn't that noticeable, as the odds both users click on another page at *exactly* the same time aren't that high; but for gaming or large file downloads, it's noticeable.

If there are multiple access points on the same or adjacent channels, it's even worse; the other computers and access points are effectively jammers from your standpoint, and vice versa.

Then there are all the other devices that also use the ~2.45 GHz ISM band. Microwave ovens are the classic culprit, and one of the original reasons why the band exists for small-scale use and isn't controlled by a megacorp; no one wanted to deal with the interference. But wireless video senders, cordless phones, Bluetooth devices, car alarms, baby monitors, and all sorts of other things operate in the same general band as WiFi, and can cause varying levels of problems.

There are also structural issues. Metal fire-stops in walls, metal pipes, and so on can degrade a signal far faster than ordinary walls, which are themselves considerably more opaque than open air. ~2.45 GHz is well-absorbed by water and fat, one reason it's used for microwave ovens; people in the way can make a surprising difference in signal strength. Mounting the access point high up near the ceiling may help performance if there are likely to be wandering absorbers in your setting (roommates, friends, family, pets, etc.).

If you are using the default channel for your access point, the second thing you should do is change the channel. (The *first* thing you should do is activate the security and give it a secure password. Having a neighbor using your unsecured WiFi to BitTorrent will kill your gaming even if they're not malicious.) Most access points default to channel 6, and it's in the middle of various other things; it's by far the most likely to be interfered with. Note that while there are channels 1-11, there's a fair amount of "bleed" between channels. Classically, you used to consider that there were only three "effective" channels that were far enough apart to count as isolated: 1, 6, and 11.

However, in a modern setting with a lot of access points (such as an apartment building where everyone has their own, non-cooperating access point), three isn't enough. You may find that you'll get better results on a less-standard channel like 3 or 9 if the main ones are full.

Better access points have the option to install upgraded antennas. This can improve things a bit, but will rarely by itself make a significant difference; in conjunction with moving to an otherwise unoccupied channel it can be significant. If your primary problem is distance or wall penetration it will make a larger difference than if it is interference.

Some newer access points use MIMO techniques as part of the 802.11 draft-N, with (typically) 3 antennas. I've been pleased with the performance of the D-Link DIR-655 access point even in fairly dense radio environments, for instance.

While it could be caused by various esoteric problems or failures, this sort of thing can also be caused by bad or loose cables and connectors. Make sure all the monitor's cables are securely attached on both ends, and are not kinked or frayed, that your video card is properly seated and locked into its socket and that the cables aren't putting undue strain on it, and that the power cord for the monitor is firmly in place.

You may also want to try borrowing a video cable from someone else temporarily and swapping it in to make sure that's not the problem.

While you're at it, you may want to carefully clean the gunk and dust out of your computer's case, as overheating causing video card failure is also possible (CoH makes the video card work much harder than many other things). A lot of the US is getting warmer lately, and heat-related failures are on the upswing.

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I haven't tried yet, but does the interface allow you to enclose the search term in quotes, so that you only get exact matches?

[/ QUOTE ] I just double checked to be sure, and quotes don't seem to do anything at all to the search.

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I'm not finding it at the moment, but I seem to recall a patch note or comment that they were removing the ability to do quoted searches for performance reasons. I hope this is brought back; we seriously need more powerful search tools for the MA to remain easy to use going forward. (And in the long term, being able to specify more exact searches should cause *less* of a performance drain.)

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Hall of 15 Minutes of Fame?

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Why not? The same could apply to the Dev Choice badges, otherwise we'd be looking at potentially hundreds of DC arcs within a year or two. "Retiring" the DC/HoF status to something as easily-searchable but not with the "current" sentiment makes sense IMO.

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They said in one of the interviews that they were shooting for about 1% Dev's Choice, which superficially sounds like a fairly elite group. However, by that metric, we should be closing in on a *thousand* Dev's Choice *already* (I believe arc IDs are already over 100,000, but it's hard to say what fraction of those are actually valid).

It really seems that the Devs didn't think the scaling through on all this. Some of us have been pointing out for some time (since early Open Beta in my case) that better search tools would be terribly important, that an interface capable of handling over 10^5 arcs would be essential, and that their review system both for the good stuff (Dev's Choice, etc.) and the bad stuff (pulling arcs that violate ToS, etc.) was going to need to be more robust than they seemed to be prepared for.

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I suspect most people who defend the MA on the grounds of the "new content" it delivers, are nothing more than people who want to be PL'ed through the whole game. They simply can't be honest about this, or the devs would know how really badly they screwed the pooch with this one.

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Well, *I* suspect that most of the people complaining about this sort of thing are making unsupported generalizations based on their own limited perspective, but hey, it's not like either one of us has hard data to back up our suspicions Like you, I can only speak for myself. I have no *intention* of being PLed, that defeats the whole point of playing the game; in fact, I've turned off exp several times on various characters so I could experience more of a plot that was interesting.

Personally, I love the MA as a revolutionary feature that allows us to NOT HAVE TO REPEAT CONTENT. Seriously, the primary flaw of most MMORPGs is that you have to kill (ok, arrest) the same limited set of monsters over and over, repeat the same plots, fight on the same maps. I've only been playing for a bit over a year, and haven't experienced all the content once yet; but I've already started to notice that some parts are getting pretty repetitive.

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I used to hate getting to level 41 and having to go to PI to get missions, because virtually all the teams there were farming teams, and the bloodsuckers who ran them insisted on payment. Now this behavior has spread to virtually every zone, and all Miller can say about it is how the MA has "wildly exceeded their expectations" (or some such nonsense).

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This baffles me, because it doesn't sound like anything I've experienced either before or after the MA. It also makes no rational sense. Paying someone to skip the game... that's like buying concert tickets, and then when you show up, paying some shady guy you met in the parking lot to go in and listen to the show for you, while you sit bored in the lobby counting ceiling tiles.

When I think of the early 40s blueside, I'm thinking the really neat Portal Corp. missions, the 40+ set of RWZ missions, some Cimerora missions if I hadn't played those out in the late 30s, hopefully a few ship raids. None of those have gone away, and all you have to do is talk to your contacts; no need to pay anyone. But, *in addition* to all that, if you're on your 27th toon or just want something different, you can go into the MA and play something completely original, with new foes that challenge you to think more carefully about tactics, with interesting storylines that you've never seen before, or just something lighthearted and silly because you've had a bad day and don't feel up to saving (or ruling) the world.

From an objective standpoint, you're clearly wrong that this has "spread to virtually every zone", as anyone can easily check. I spent quite a bit of time in CoH this weekend, including several hours in PI between fine-tuning my missions (and yes, I run the MA in windowed mode so I can still talk to people) and some street-hunts for Tina Macintyre. I'd estimate the total number of broadcast messages on any subject at less than a dozen an hour, and most of those were people looking for teams for MA content. I also spent noticeable amounts of time in the RWZ, Steel and Talos, and lesser amounts of time in a wide variety of zones across three different servers. *None* of the zones I were in, (and almost all of these were zones with an AE building) had any sort of serious problem, and I can't recall anyone demanding or soliciting payment for anything at any point.

Note that sometimes the game will get confused if you don't have enough different sorts of a category in certain levels. There are several Standard enemy groups where the level range is buggy, and in some cases act differently dependent on which side you're playing.

If someone complains that they are not seeing the numbers or types of enemies they expect, unfortunately you need to ask them to give you their difficulty, team size, level, and side to be sure it's not a bug. It is entirely possible at the moment to end up with a mission that plays perfectly fine unless you're in a specific 5-level range on one side, but for that specific case it's bugged and a significant fraction of the enemies end up too low, too high, or just missing.

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Next year we could have 100 Dev Choice arcs.

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They said in one interview that they were aiming for about 1% Dev's Choice. By that metric, we should be well over 100 Dev's Choice already. I think that's unrealistically high; 1% of the well-written, fully-developed arcs, perhaps.

I noticed this and liked it, but unfortunately it's apparently either a bug, or has been reconsidered. According to patch notes the current patch on Test puts them back up to 25 (available at 22) as in traditional stores.

You cannot create a truly custom, true sniper at this time. You can reuse existing snipers with some care, and you can create a custom mob that is somewhat better at spotting things than typical by giving it a Primary or Secondary with a toggle Perception power that they can use.

<font class="small">Code:[/color]<hr /><pre>
Range at which they can see you
Type Base Stealth Invis Smoke
==================================
Minion 45 10 x 4.5
Per. Min. 72 38 18 24.3
Lt. 50 15 x 5.0
Per. Lt. 75 40 20 27.0
Sniper 149 114 94 ?
</pre><hr />

As can be seen, a custom Lt. with a Perception power such as Targeting Drone is enough better than a standard enemy that it may give you the effect you want, but is still inferior to a real Sniper. (Table was constructed by cross-referencing various wiki and Red Tomax pages, so if there's someone who has corrections, please post &amp; explain.)

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So many possibilities...does the hercules titan do the same thing?

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It did; IIRC this was apparently caught in Closed Beta, with a patch early in Open Beta that mentioned it. The alarming thing is that their QA / bugfix process didn't generalize "This mob that merges with itself to create Ubermob kills the player if they're an ally, perhaps we should check all mobs that merge to an Ubermob".

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Any word on when (or if) these costume parts will be available to custom critters in the MA like the Cyborg Pack is available?

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At launch. I logged into an account that had purchased most of the MA costume unlocks already, and was able to create MA NPCs with the witch parts, high collar cape, etc. immediately, without purchasing anything else with tickets. My guess is that it comes with whichever one has the Cyborg pack in it.

Note: When you use the code included with the AE box, after selecting the account to apply to and then selecting the booster you want with it, the next screen you get will have a reddish box with "That code has already been used" or something to that effect. Despite the apparent error, in my case at least it *did* apply the Magic Booster correctly, and I was able to pull up costume pieces on a new character within less than 5 minutes.

In short, don't panic I suggest that the store message be updated to something that sounds less like an error, however.

P.S.: I got mine via Amazon release-day shipping option, free for me due to Prime. I'm quite happy with how it worked out and hope they allow this for any future boxed issues.

Bug: Magic Booster

Objective: The "Witch Leather" top (Upper Body / Tight / Chest / Witch Leather, Witch Leather pattern) is *significantly* lower-resolution than the nominally matching "Witch Leather" bottom (Lower Body / Bottoms / Witch Leather, Witch Leather pattern). This may well extend to other items, this is just the first one I noticed.

Please see screenshot displaying bug for an example. Click on picture to view full, and look at the waist seam for a particularly obvious and jarring example.

It's more a matter that this is a known bug since at least early Open Beta, and has been discussed many times here and elsewhere. There are several open problems with animations, and hopefully we'll get some dev attention at some point; but considering the game-damaging problems we're still dealing with, this sort of thing is presumably a low priority.

See MA Unique Maps on the wiki for a useful list. According to that, only the Zig Breakout and Mercy Island Landing Pad maps are known to be forced to night mode. Indoor maps don't care, and outdoor maps use the current game time of day/night and adjust as you play.

I'd love to have the ability to set, say, the RWZ map to forced-night, because the atmosphere with the searchlights is much more interesting. Maybe in 2.0.