ORIGINAL: Frederyck
ORIGINAL: c92nichj
The same should go for captured ships.
Absolutely. A captured TRS (or other unnamed vessel) always presents lots of difficulty, especially if it is present in a Seabox along with ships of the old controller. It is so easy to overlook it and forget whose side it is on. Naturally, in a computer game this is easier to remember as the game forbids you to use/move etc ships that aren't really yours, but if it was possible to switch colours, so much the better.
I already plan to help remove some of the confusion about the ships by having two sets of sea boxes for each sea area. The Aixs has a set of 5 sea boxes and the Allies have a set. So you will always know which side a ship is on regardless of the color. I intend to place neutral ships where they are likely to align (e.g., Italy in Axis).
WIF has no provision for recoloring units that are loaned to another player, only lend leased units. That system colors the central third of the unit according to the source country. CWIF has provision for coloring the bottom third of a unit that is lent, the color of the source country, and I haven't changed that code (it is only a line or two). While I am on this subject, the vertical stripe for flying boats no longer exists. Instead, flying boats have their naval air factor inside a blue rectangle.
So, let's set the flying boat issue aside as solved. That removes the complication of vertical and horizontal stripes on the same unit (i.e., a loaned flying boat).
There seem to be several different pieces of
information we would like to convey using horizontal stripes:
1 - lend leased units
2 - loaned units (which major power moves the unit - may be temporary)
3 - aligned units (which major power controls the aligned country and therefore the unit)
4 - captured units (originally owned by another nation but now in the employ of a major power)
Examples:
1 - usually USA planes to CW or USSR
2 - CW units in France during 1940; Italian units in USSR; German units in Africa
3 - Rumania, Hungary, Finland to Germany; Netherlands, Belgium, Poland to CW; Manchuria, Korea, French Indo-China to Japan;
4 - Bearn to USA, Yugoslavian CA to Italy, French sub to Italy, Danish and Norwegian naval units to CW
As the code
currently stands the solutions to these 4 caases are:
1 - central stripes added to unit to indicate the source country (they might want it back)
2 - bottom stripe added to unit to indicate controlling country (the control is only temporary)
3 - the original colors of the unit are unchanged; the countries themselves get half flags of the controlling major power to indicate their possession is through alignment
4 - the original colors of the unit are unchanged; I actually have been making changes to the code to accomplish this during setup of the later scenarios; it is a real pain because the country has either been conquered completely or partially and its units have been marked as removed from the game. I have to perform CPR on them to get them back. I have been preserving the original color scheme because I like the visual of the CW having naval units from a wide diversity of countries under its control.
That's the problem, the goals, and the current status.
Ideas? I'm going to work on other stuff while you thrash this out.
