No we aren't talking about a Welsh close harmony quartet... I do shower you know...
No, instead we are going to touch on a topic that we know the gaming community would love but we know its probably going to be too difficult to implement.
I'm talking about setting your own mech colour.
I'm also going to touch on the reasons for colour schemes right off the bat.
Yes, we do very occasionally get King of the Mountain events that allow or disallow certain colours of mechs. The thing is they are novelty events as opposed to having a logical reason for most cases... here, let me show you.
Imagine an event where certain mechs, based on colour, get a massive dodge bonus purely on account of their colour scheme being relevant. What kinds of things could we have?
Desert Warfare: You've seen the artwork, the Krampus would be an obvious choice in a desert fight.
The Megazome would be correctly coloured too, as would the Buchis, although its darker tone running into brown rather than tan would also make it a reasonable candidate for...
Woodland Fight: Browns and Greens; Dread to Dreadnought, Shocklite to Corsair. Any natural colour. I'd say the Christmas Tree was a shoo in.
Frozen Wastes: Obviously white is the new black here, and the Boreas is an obvious choice. But you can go all the way down to the humble Imech to do well in this terrain.
Night Fight: Dark colours rule here... Antithesis and Orestar are prime contenders. But any dark colour that will lend to shadow could go easily here, such as the Fext or the Glaccus.
Urban Brawl: Greys are the preferred nondescript colour in this landscape, from Magnus down to Nifthel and Buccaneer.
But then we have a lot of mechs that just stand out in whatever terrain you put them in. All of those red ones for a start like the ever groovey Ant or the Disco Inferno. Do we say they fit in urban surroundings due to red brick houses? Or do we start heading into the territory of lava fields.. not out of the question in a place as big as Mecha Galaxy.
But there are some mechs that you just are going to have too much of a problem fitting into a fight. The Big Purple Dild... Dilophus. The Pyrophorus. Any of the big cat mechs. You could have a fight at a Mardi Gras and they might be hard to spot there. Maybe even desert warfare as the long as you include Priscilla, Queen of the aforementioned terrain...
But since we are on the subject of bright colours, perhaps we should touch on some of the psychology of colour... just before we start to petition Chef on a more regular basis to allow us our own squad colours.
Nephilax: Yellow and black stripes... there's a reason why this shows up in nature as 'extreme danger, do not poke with a stick'. You start seeing these in somebodies light formations in bag numbers and you are going to doubt yourself. That's what I'm talking about when I refer to psychology.. is it the mech or the colour you notice?
Speaking of yellow, there's a running joke here about my loathing of the Potatotron. At the end of the day its a 100 ton niode mech and deserves some respect. However when I see it, it's just... 'meh' on a larger scale. I have to wonder of its the fact that a straight yellow paint job just makes you think of construction machinery?I mean, look at this... stone cold killing machine, or an advanced JCB construction machine? Is it dangerous, or is it something you are just going to overlook as something less than dangerous?
And finally we get to those custom paint jobs we want to be able to apply. Yes, there are some pretty cool looking mech out there that catch the eye and make you take notice from other franchises, and these would look very snazzy on the battlefield...
But we can also adulterate them slightly to confound the enemy.
These two mechs have essentially the same colour scheme... but if you wanted to draw somebody in to give you a defensive win in a Clan War...
Are you more likely too attack:
This... Or this?
That can add a whole new level of psychology to our warfare.
One final thought... I
pity the poor sod who would have to program an acceptable colour scheme for the Highland Regiments...
Submitted by David McCallum #701548