Might be cool to have a "order of battle" pack, or even map-based packs to facilitate mission building.
The new Slot map has me thinking about it. Be nice to have a set of A6M2s, A6M3s, D3As, F4U-1s etc that all match the location.
The same could be done for any map, and in fact, ahving them could mean changing the map's default skins to match...
tater
With my renewed interest, I've started hunting down skins for the Slot. It's bloody hard. Some (flying legends, mostly is where I look) have the unit in the on screen (webpage) description, others have the unit, date, and PLACE. There is no standard, and to really do it, I need to have an order of battle for every unit in the area at my fingertips.
Having all the skins for all the various combatants in one place would be terribly useful. Dtaes and the airfields being the critical information. I figure the skinners likely did plenty of research and know this information, and the rest of us would have to start over to figure that out.
One other issue with skins in general, they get VERY complicated in the FMB. I DLed a bunch of the 8th AF B-17 skins a while back. I was looking for one of the PTO skins I had in the FMB, and it was pages down in the list. The solution?
Skins as mods.
You can have skin mods. Move all, or almost all skins out of the game, and have only the voids. Then have "Basic Skins" or "Default Skins" as a mod with the various defaults.
TheBasic/Default packs might be theater dependent as well. Basic PTO Skins, Basic Eastern Front Skins, etc. Since skins are for the most part unique (and such a mod set could make sure they are), the idea is that by turning the unneeded skins off, you simplify finding the skins you want.
Then, for specific campaigns, you might have a set. WSBS Skins. Turn off all the others that you don't need, and turn on WSBS. Then when the campaign tells the player to use a particular skin, he needn't be scrolling through every Hawk 81 skin he's ever DLed to find the right one.
"overwrite" mods that would replace defaults (for the statics, etc) would be a different issue.
tater
I should add that another huge benefit would be that if I unloaded all the non-Slot A6M skins (for example), when confronted with the name in the FMB I'd not have to remember which were, or were not appropriate. So while I have skins that ARE for the Slot, I have to actually remember each one, every single time because the name of the skin might be the unit or something, and remembering them is a PITA
