[Black Wolf]

Could this be possible, perhaps as a box in the ships properties in FRED? It'd mean you'd be able to define colours on the Radar without altering the teams. So perhaps if you had a multi species Taskforce, you could mark the Vasudan Friendlies as a colour not already used by FS2 (Red Green Yellow (bombs) purple (Unknown) Grey). Available colours are things like Blue, Brown, Olive etc. or perhaps Darker/lighter shades of Green and Red to denote various factions within an an alliance, ie. Shivans could be your standard Red and HoL forces could be a Darker Red. Ideally, some sort of RGB input'd be nice, but I don't know if this'd be harder/possible.

It's not a big change, but it would serve to jazz up the radar slightly without needing to modify the way it works by much. As it is, it gives very little information - Using this method you'd be able to give at least a little more.

[Terorist]

This could get it very cluttered if you're not careful, but it might concievably be useful... perhaps some differentiation between non-combatants and/or escorted ships?

Just don't put too many different colors in there! If you do, there's no point in glancing at the radar anymore if you need more than a split-second to get a clear idea of the positions.

[Petrarch of the VBB]

Sounds like a bloody good idea to me.

[Lightspeed]

give the current target an extra colour, and highlight mission goals with other colours. Wonderful idea

[pyro-manic]

Sounds good, but keep it down to about five or six colours at the most - red, light and dark green (hostile/friendly and allies), purple (unknown), white (objectives or escort list ships), grey (civilians/nodes/neutrals, etc.).

[karajorma]

With Kazan's teams code this might become a moot point. You could simply put the vasudans in a team friendly to terrans and hostile to shivans and get the same effect.

[Black Wolf]

But you wouldn't be able to see it as such. It'd mainly be useful for light/dark red/green, to indicate forces that were different, but on the same Team. EG - the GTVA has joined forces with the EA in inferno to Combat the Shivans. GTVA ships are standard Green, EA ships are dark green. Shivan ships are Standard Red, and the ancients who stumble into the battle and kill EA, GTVA, and Shivans are Dark Red.

BTW, the White for escort ships is something I'd not even thought of, but it would be a good application.

[Lynx]

If we could do it per ship that'd be cool.

[Flaser]

I think even multiple colors wouldn't be a problem.

After all in a battle you're already sorting tagets on your own...however there is merit in thoughts about keeping it simple, IMHO this should be a FREDDERs job, so on a design level no such restrictions should be used.

Highlightin objective ships and escorted ships would be a major addon.

If you could tag in the hotkey menu ships with a color would add some extra control for pilots....although a true radar management screen that would allow selecting and giving orders to units is my dream, but that's quite far fetched compared to how modable the HUD and the displays are by the moment.

[StratComm]

Don't forget that blue is used already; when ships warp in.  Good for pinpointing approach vectors of newly arrived bombers, so I definately wouldn't mess with that one.  The only implimentation I'd see as useful is a secondary red/green that is still red/green but easily distinguishable from the standard ones.

[karajorma]

Originally posted by Black Wolf
But you wouldn't be able to see it as such. It'd mainly be useful for light/dark red/green, to indicate forces that were different, but on the same Team. EG - the GTVA has joined forces with the EA in inferno to Combat the Shivans. GTVA ships are standard Green, EA ships are dark green. Shivan ships are Standard Red, and the ancients who stumble into the battle and kill EA, GTVA, and Shivans are Dark Red.

Why? I doubt any code that gives you new teams is going to stick to only giving you a choice between red, purple and green.

Just ask Kazan (nicely) to make it so the colour for each team can be defined from a table.

The benefit of doing it this way if you wanted to have a mission where the Ancients suddenly switch sides you just need to hit them with a change-IFF SEXP. If you do it via a box in the ship properties they would remain that dark red colour even if they decided to join up with the GTVA.

Besides doing it through FRED sounds like a really big duplication of effort since the new team code will do virtually the same thing anyway.

[Galemp]

This isn't going to work; light and dark colors on the radar are already used.

The colors of the radar blips get darker or brighter depending on how close they are to you; a wingmate would be in gright green but a distant installation would be in dark green. Same goes doe all the other colors.

Therefore we already have red, yellow, blue, green, purple, and grey blips on the radar, indicating their affiliation with you. I say leave it as it is.

[Flaser]

We don't have yellow, brown, turquize, beside for special ships (escort list, objectives) a two color dot could be used or just a super high hue version of their color.

Beside only 2 color are used by the time - one for objects close, and one for objects farther away.

We could have  dozen of shades, it wold be the campaign designer's task to choose colors that are easly distinguishable.

[Hippo]

sounds like a good idea, but jump nodes and cargo use the grey dots...

[Lynx]

Red for the ultra-evil ones and orange for the less evil ones:drevil:

[pyro-manic]

Orange is in there already, for "Neutral" targets, but it looks too much like the red on the HUD....

[terren]

why not new shapes? make bombers square, cap ships triangles, fighters circles and cargo hollow circles.  or is this more work then making new colors.  I know it wouldn't change the radar apperance as much as loading it with 20 new colors would.

[Bobboau]

becase nobody knows how that works

and blue is taken alredy by ships leaving subspace

[Kazan]

neutral is mageneta

yellow is tagged

[Turnsky]

Originally posted by Black Wolf
Could this be possible, perhaps as a box in the ships properties in FRED? It'd mean you'd be able to define colours on the Radar without altering the teams. So perhaps if you had a multi species Taskforce, you could mark the Vasudan Friendlies as a colour not already used by FS2 (Red Green Yellow (bombs) purple (Unknown) Grey). Available colours are things like Blue, Brown, Olive etc. or perhaps Darker/lighter shades of Green and Red to denote various factions within an an alliance, ie. Shivans could be your standard Red and HoL forces could be a Darker Red. Ideally, some sort of RGB input'd be nice, but I don't know if this'd be harder/possible.

It's not a big change, but it would serve to jazz up the radar slightly without needing to modify the way it works by much. As it is, it gives very little information - Using this method you'd be able to give at least a little more.

personally, all you need to know is where the enemy is:nod:

a good way to spiff it up would be to add "ping" lines (ala Aliens motion-tracker) to the radar display..