Originally posted by maxtor
(3) Design skins for the GV's suitable for that map's terrain. In our hypothetical MA arena, desert camo probably wouldnt be used in forrest - nor would forrest camo be used in a desert.
Vehicle colors. That opens up a
big can of worms. For the M3, M8, and M16, you're SOL; the US Army picked a color that would be reasonably good in any terrain, and painted everything that color. Likewise, Russian tanks -- if we ever get the T-34 added -- were generally painted in a single green or brown color overall (the shade depending on how the paint was mixed), rarely in two contrasting shades of green or green and earth brown, and even more rarely having a three-color pattern of dark green, earth brown and yellow or brick red, with white applied as whitewash for winter. Later in the war, white aerial-recognition markings were painted on the upper surface of armored vehicles.
German camouflage gets complex. Originally, vehicles were painted Panzer grey, with or without a dark green/dark brown overspray. In 1941, vehicles destined for Africa were to be painted sand yellow with a grey-green overspray; vehicles used in south Russia were sometimes painted with the tropical pattern, as well. In early 1942, the tropical colors were replaced by brown ('dark sand') with a Panzer grey overspray. The first Tigers in Russia were painted in plain Panzer grey; when deployed in Tunis, they were still in Panzer grey, but with a dark green overspray. In early 1943, the base color for all vehicles was changed to sand yellow, with olive green and red-brown to be used as oversprays (either or both at the discretion of the unit commander).
In August of 1944, a
different sand yellow was designated for the base color, with olive green and red-brown as oversprays, with yellow, grey, or white mottling through the green/brown areas and green mottling on the yellow areas; this was referred to as the 'ambush' pattern. At the end of October of 1944, the base color was changed to a red oxide primer with sand yellow, field gray, and red-brown as possible oversprays. At the end of November of 1944, the base color was changed to olive green, with sand yellow and red brown as available oversprays. In early 1945, the colors reverted to the August 1944 colors. In the spring of 1945, a final designation of Panzer grey as the base color with olive green and red-brown as oversprays was made, although it isn't known how many vehicles were actually deployed with this coloration due to the breakdown of production and transportation. For winter camouflage, washable white paint was widely used on the Eastern front, but rarely on the Western front.
Because of shortages from 1944 on, though, many vehicles were not given any camouflage at all, being deployed in the base sand yellow, with camouflage being applied, if at all, under field conditions. Additionally, the paint that was supplied in the field for camouflage painting was delivered in the form of pastes, which were to be thinned with gasoline and sprayed onto the vehicles. Because of fuel shortages, and shortages of the spraying equipment, the paint was often thinned with other fluids and applied with whatever was at hand, resulting in a wide variation in shade for the overspray colors. Additionally, units would often use captured supplies or foreign paints or -- particularly in North Africa -- a slurry of mud slopped over the vehicle, which wore off quickly but often provided a much better match to the terrain than the official camouflage colors.
When the base colors were ordered changed from Panzer grey to sand yellow, paint was issued to units for field repainting; some units completely repainted their vehicles, while others merely applied the sand yellow as a camouflage overspray on top of the base color.
So, depending on when during the war and what theatre, it wasn't that uncommon to find vehicles that had paint jobs that didn't do a particularly good job of matching the terrain the vehicle was operating in. It
would be nice, particularly with vehicles, to have more than one skin available in a terrain (chosen randomly at launch), to eliminate the cookie-cutter tanks with identical camouflage patterns, but that's got to be
way down on the priority list.
