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National Paint Schemes: For and Against

Which of these options would you prefer?

  • Keep current system: each nation has its own exclusive paint scheme

    Votes: 6 33.3%

  • Drop current system: all nations can use all paint schemes

    Votes: 12 66.7%
  • Total voters
    18
Armada

Armada

Sea Dog
Staff member
Administrator
Project Manager
3D Artist
Storm Modder
Ahoy all,

For seemingly ages now, the Build Mod has used a system whereby each nation in the game has its own specific paint scheme for use on its ships (mostly warships, sometimes merchants). This has mostly been so that players can easily identify which nation they have encountered at sea, and whether that nation is friendly or otherwise.
However, there have been increasingly more arguments to suggest that it would be better to drop this system altogether, and make all paint schemes available to all nations' ships. This is how navies operated in real life during the game's time frame, leaving the decision of what paint scheme to use up the the captains themselves.

So, I think it's about time we looked at the advantages and disadvantages of both systems, so we can finally decide what to do about it. Here's what I can think of for both sides so far, but please do suggest anything else that I may have missed:

Current System: national paint schemes
For:
- Easier for the player to identify encountered ships at a longer distance, because flags can be hard to make out
- National design of a vessel is less important for identification (doesn't apply to stock ships)
- Ideal for Arcade Mode and less experienced players
Against:
- Not realistic at all
- Difficult to define national paint schemes for some nations (Portugal has always been a problem in particular)
- Restricts use of some existing models and textures to specific nations only

Proposed System: non-national paint schemes
For:
- Much more realistic
- Offers more choice to the player
- Allows more widespread use of existing models and textures for all nations
Against:
- More difficult for the player to identify encountered ships at long range (has to rely on flags)
- National design of a vessel could be more important for identification (therefore we may need more national models)
- Would take a lot of careful planning and work to implement

Be sure to cast your vote in the poll, and have your say in the comments below.
 
Lol! Well we'll be sticking to realistic textures either way, so we shouldn't end up with fleets as colourful as that.
I do see your point, though. If we let all nations use all textures, we're definitely going to encounter some multi-coloured fleets.
The question is, how realistic is that?
 
Very realistic. Admirals never strictly regulated how the vessels in their fleets were painted. Differences in color would have been especially common in the fleets of the Napoleonic period when the predominant style shifted from ochre to white.
As for the difficulty of identifying enemy or friendly vessels from a distance, this was a problem that had to be dealt with historically, especially since vessels adhering to national hull styles were constantly being captured and changing hands. This will just add another challenging and immersive element of gameplay to the mod. Besides, a squadron of perfectly identical vessels would look rather stupid in my opinion.

Edit: Those of you who just skimmed the first post should note that national paint schemes have absolutely no basis in history.
 
Aye, I'm for changing it to be more realistic and get rid of national color schemes. As a modeler its hard to come up with shemes for countries like portugal that everyone will be hapy with. I do think It would be a good Idea to keep the current national color shemes as more common in the countries they were made for than others, simply because some (for example the french red) were not at all common in say the american navy, among others. I guess they all have to be looked at individually to determine the encounter chances

EDIT: Essentially I think that while it is a good idea to remove the national limitations on colour schemes, It is important that historical accuracy is still taken into account when considering what paint schemes should be common for what nations. currently there are some major problems with limiting to one nation. for example, the HMS Sophie/Vincejo was actually spanish built and a spanish design, though captured later by the RN. yet the ship cannot be encountered as a spanish one, because there is no 'spanish' paint scheme for it. on the flip side, I could see that if all three of the Constitution repaints were made available to Britain, France, and America, there would be a problem because not only is the acheron's scheme less common than the others, but because it would be three times as likely to encounter this type of ship for any given nation than it had been previosly, which could really lead to messing up encounter cahnces as a whole unless these things are properly taken into account when making them available for the other nations.
 
AGH, I really DON'T like seeing specific Dutch ships under French flag or something like that!

What we could do is to make this a changeable setting. Making all ships available for all nations should be as easy as disabling a few lines of code. But then you'd have NO national control anymore at all and it'd be purely period-dependent. Still, it is possible.
 
I think we'd have to use a fair bit of common sense if we do decide to scrap strict national paint schemes. Dutch-looking French ships would be pretty weird! o_O

Either way, I like the idea of catering for both preferences. Using a toggle in Advanced Options, or even an Arcade/Realistic divide would be nice.
Maybe it could be an extension of the current national encounter chances with a case switch or something.
For example, with national paint schemes ON, one set of encounter chances are used. With national paint schemes OFF, a modified set of chances are used instead.
 
That's definitely very possible. Then any texture that is vaguely generic can be freely used, but any truly specific ones could still be limited.
 
Pieter Boelen said:
That's definitely very possible. Then any texture that is vaguely generic can be freely used, but any truly specific ones could still be limited.
Click to expand...
Exactly, it could be accomplished with just some changes in the encounter chances, without any new type of code. for example the yellow and black that is now British RN only could be made somewhat common for all nations, especially for ones that would'nt have that ship otherwise. That way Dutch color schemes can stay just Dutch and the red schemes can be limited to spain and france only and so on. so I think a loosening of the strict national color schemes would be best, but not to the point where it comprimises realism. to make them more like guidelines than actual rules...:cheers
 
As long as we keep the current national chance values in an if-statement, it's fine with me. Personally I like it more strict, but I don't want to force my preference on anyone else, of course.
 
Pieter Boelen said:
That's definitely very possible. Then any texture that is vaguely generic can be freely used, but any truly specific ones could still be limited.
Click to expand...

exactly same mind, i am for the realistic one but hold the really specific paint

a good idea to add this in option choice, but it brings works to think about both side ^^

of course its the best way
 
It's not difficult, just a lot of work. Anyone can do it. Would be done similarly to the if (!bArcadeMode) code in ships_init.c .
 
Idk I'm kinda torn. Yeah, I can see the whole realism thing about letting any nation use any colors. But on the other hand, I rather enjoyed having nation specific colors.
 
or rather an option in the options menu? but that would require two different ships_Init.c files to be kept up to date
 
Well that's a thought. We already have a bunch of options like that. Why not do that? That way players can choose at the options menu whether they wanna do it.
 
Well, we'd keep the "mod off" and "mod on" code in the same ships_init.c file, otherwise people will REALLY go nuts trying to keep it up-to-date.
What we could do, since with "mod off", we still want certain ships to be unique to a nation,
is to just have the game ignore the national chance values and use the refShip.nation line instead with the mod off.
 
That sounds like it could work well. I personanally think that making nation restrictions more loose would be the best option in terms of historical accuracy. However that idea hasn't seemed to have caught on much, and its really not a huge deal to me whether there is a switch or loose restrictions, either way would be good
 
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