Feature request, setting liveries in mission editor

[Skewgear]

I'm part of a mission design team that wants to use fixed custom liveries in a mission set. At present there is no option to add custom liveries that display to all clients unless clients connecting to the server have separately installed these custom liveries.

 

Current behaviour:

a) Mission designers can select one of the default liveries for a unit when placing it in the mission editor. Clients connecting to the server see the selected default livery on the unit in-game.

b) If the mission designer has a custom livery installed locally, they can select that livery when placing the unit. Clients who also have that livery installed locally will see it on the unit in-game. Clients who do not have that livery installed will instead see the first default livery for the unit.

 

Requested behaviour:

The mission designer selects a locally installed livery for a unit when placing it in the mission editor. The livery is packaged in the .miz on mission save/compile. When clients connect to the server, they see the livery whether or not they have previously installed a local copy.

 

Related behaviour:

Server admins can allow clients to select their own liveries. This is not a complete solution and can frustrate the goal of the mission designer as clients may pick anachronous liveries.

 

Real world use case:

The P-51D (not the default TF-51) comes with lots of liveries. Unfortunately none of the US options with editable markings (squadron letters and airframe serial numbers, as defined in the mission editor) also have D-Day stripes. This means we have to compromise our historical accuracy goal in favour of not having 30 or 40 client slots with precisely identical markings (e.g. nose art). When we allowed clients to select their own liveries we had people in bright primary coloured Reno racers flying around, which spoils the immersion of a June 1944 battlefield.

[burritto]

This seems like a bad idea to me. EVERY time someone connected to the server they would have to download however many liveries there were during the mission load screen. trk files would become bloated.  You've already stated how what you want can be achieved - people have to download and install the custom skins. Have a skins pack that people download THE ONE time and install and then don't allow people to change the skins.  If they don't want to do that, they see the default skins. If it's only for one or two skins, this is hardly an issue, and if it's for many skins, then do you really want those to be downloaded EVERY TIME someone connects to one of your missions?

If ED did want to do this, it would be helpful to have some form of indication on the multiplayer server screen that custom skins were involved (and the size of those files), so those servers producing particularly large trk files and slow load times could be avoided.

P.S. This is the Mission Editor Bugs subforum.

[Skewgear]

4 hours ago, burritto said:

This seems like a bad idea to me. EVERY time someone connected to the server they would have to download however many liveries there were during the mission load screen. trk files would become bloated.  You've already stated how what you want can be achieved - people have to download and install the custom skins.

That's why I've made a feature request. It's up to ED to decide if they want to implement my request and if so, precisely how. They're the professional software developers who'd have to refine and implement the idea, I'm merely a consumer suggesting one potential route.

A better way to implement my idea would be to have the game check for the presence of a specified non default livery before downloading a fresh copy. That would slash loading times after the first connection - or another way might be for players to be signposted to the ED user files section if they didn't have the liveries. But as I say, that kind of detail is entirely up to ED. If they think this is an idea worth implementing I'm sure they have capable devs and PMs who can design something suitable.

I may have missed the formal feature request forum. Do be a dear and let me know where that is, if so.