LRS color overhaul & modding colors

[Arisaya]

Alterecco & I were having a discussion on IRC today regarding sovereigns & alignment, and we happened to come up with this:

There are two parts for this:
1: Modding functionality
In the sovereign element, you would be able to define 3 different colors for its active states: Friendly, Neutral and Enemy. (Active states being for objects that are not dead/wrecked)
ie, like this

Code: Select all

<sovereign unid="&svTest"
     colorFriendly="0x00, 0xFF, 0x00"
     colorNeutral="0x00, 0x00, 0xFF"
     colorEnemy="0xFF, 0x00, 0x00"
     alignment="constructive order"
     name="Test Faction">
</sovereign>

If no value is specified, then it would default to the in-game value.
2: In-game functionality
All dead objects would be marked as Grey (probably something like 0x888888) by default. As they are dead & thus inert. As such we decided my original plan to have colors for dead objects as well was rather silly & would just complicate things.
Perhaps neutrals could be given something of their own? (ie blue as suggested in the example above)

[alterecco]

I think this wold be a really nice thing to see in one of the future versions. Having the LRS being more color coded would definitely improve the strategic element of the game, as well as ease some situations (being able to read more information from further away).

[Ttech]

Colouring dead stations and ships might be helpful, especially if your going by a dead station (e.g. destroyed by Xenophobes) you would have to figure out what was what in the map. Slight clolour might be a good idea - transparency.

[ThePrivateer]

I'm all for the LRS colours -- it bugs me insane when a Neutral guy I have ticked off is killing me -- but my LRS tells me it is a green ship, which makes me think it is good when it approaches me... >.>

Also, when your allegiance changes to Neutral ships (or different factions) they should change colour. It makes the game instantly better in so many ways.

[RPC]

Actually, the lRS coloration is going to be more important now that point defense weapons have been added. Sine this class of weapons fire indepenently from the player's input, the LRS would be a great indicator that it would fire. It would especially be helpful for Point defence against Molotoks as I wouldn't know if the PD weapon would fire when it encounters a Green LRS Molotok.