02.02.2008, 16:01
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
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