mossy shale
A feature in the classic version of cosmoteer that I thought was cool was that the colors of enemy ships you encountered were randomized to add variety.
Currently, in the modern version of cosmoteer, ships owned by pirates have no visual distinction from their law abiding, non-pirate counterparts.
...But why should this be the case? Pirates are not able to pass as civilians just by looking like them; the player is easily able to recognize them by their red blip and AI ships seem to be able to do the same as they will immediately attack them as well.
also, painting in the cosmoteer universe does not appear to require any physical labor from the ships crew, you just change the color wheel and the decals change to match (probably some kind of high-tech system that mimics chameleons), so its not that they don't care enough to send crew out to repaint the ship as they can easily alter the colors from the comfort of a cockpit.
So my idea is: Why not have the colors of pirate ships be somewhat randomized, similar to how it was in classic?
I think it could make each pirate you encounter look a bit more interesting and unique rather that just the same as the normal faction ships, and it makes sense to me that pirates would want to make their ship look a little different, especially because, as pirates, they are not part of whatever faction their ship came from so they don't have to follow that faction's painting conventions.
Although, I don't think this should apply to all pirate ships, as when you see a new type of ship for the first time it is likely to be a pirate, and of course you should experience the original paint of each ship before seeing a randomized version of it.
Also, because of the more complex paint schemes in modern cosmoteer than classic, mainly the far more common use of a shadow layer, it wouldn't work to simply set all colors to random as the shadows would most likely become bright non-shadows, which would look weird.
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azure junco