Included in Build Improve Merchant and Navy Flags and Pennants

[Grey Roger]

As I mentioned here, the current French naval flag in the "Napoleonic" period is barely accurate; it was used for only a few years before the revolutionaries decided that white, being the colour of the monarchy, was inappropriate, so naval and merchant ships alike all used the national tricolour flag. However, making this happen in the game would mean you can't tell by looking at a French ship's flag whether it is a merchant or naval ship.

America is in the same position. For a start, if you see a ship with this flag...


... is it merchant or navy? That depends on whether you're playing in "Revolutions" or "Napoleonic" - it's the naval flag in one and the merchant flag in the other! It probably shouldn't exist in "Napoleonic" as by that time the US flag had been standardised to the version with 15 stars and stripes currently used as the "Napoleonic" naval flag.

It is not often necessary to look at the flag to determine whether a ship in "Napoleonic" period is merchant or navy anyway, as there are only a couple of "versatile" ships for which confusion can occur. Sloops and ketches can be both trade or war; everything else is either specifically trade or specifically war.

My suggestion is therefore to have both France and America use their respective national flags of the "Napoleonic" period for both merchant and navy ships, and to have distinct merchant and navy pennants instead for the benefit of people who can't figure out that a Fast Merchantman probably isn't a naval ship.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

America is in the same position. For a start, if you see a ship with this flag...


... is it merchant or navy? That depends on whether you're playing in "Revolutions" or "Napoleonic" - it's the naval flag in one and the merchant flag in the other!

Well, that definitely makes zero sense.

 

[Grey Roger]

First suggestion: new pennants.

Merchant:

France's merchant pennant becomes pure blue and America's becomes just stripes (copied from the "Revolutions" merchant flag). Portugal will have a striped pennant based on its merchant flag (at the moment the Portuguese merchant pennant has the coat of arms from the naval flag and the naval pennant is plain white).

Naval:

The American and French pennants are based on real pennants, both with single tails. I'll need to see how the stars on the American one look when it's stretched out.
Those, plus the ship type, ought to give would-be pirates a clue as to whether they're facing a merchant or navy ship.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Those naval pennants are quite detailed and indeed it is always questionable if those show properly.
But you'll find out, I'm sure.

I like that you're changing the Portuguese merchant pennant as well. So sounds good to me!

 

[Grey Roger]

Slight change: according to this:
Navy - Command and Commission Pennants (U.S.)
the US pennant should have a swallow tail, i.e. twin point. So this is how it will look:

The blue part with stars is supposed to be 1/4 the length of the pennant with 13 stars, but if I shrink it that far the stars are going to be even more distorted, especially if the extra stars are squashed in.

The French design comes from here:
France: Naval flags
The "interim design adopted on 24 October 1790" was probably based on the equally interim white flag which I'm trying to remove. The tricolour pennant was adopted in 1794, as was the tricolour itself as the ship flag. I've obeyed the "one-fifth blue, one-fifth white, three-fifths red" decree.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Slight change: according to this:
Navy - Command and Commission Pennants (U.S.)
the US pennant should have a swallow tail, i.e. twin point. So this is how it will look:

The blue part with stars is supposed to be 1/4 the length of the pennant with 13 stars, but if I shrink it that far the stars are going to be even more distorted, especially if the extra stars are squashed in.

Indeed that does seem to be about the limit of reasonable distortion.
As accurate as you might want to be, occasionally there has to be a compromise.

The French design comes from here:
France: Naval flags
The "interim design adopted on 24 October 1790" was probably based on the equally interim white flag which I'm trying to remove. The tricolour pennant was adopted in 1794, as was the tricolour itself as the ship flag. I've obeyed the "one-fifth blue, one-fifth white, three-fifths red" decree.

Wow, you even took that into account! Historical accuracy indeed.

 

[Armada]

These sound like sensible changes, to me. I like the look of the new pennants.

 

[Grey Roger]

From that same article about French flags, the correct pennant for all ships from 1689 until the Revolution was plain white (technically only a commander of a merchant fleet was supposed to fly a pennant, and then only if no navy ships were in sight). The flag we're currently using for pre-Revolution French naval ships is actually the royal standard. The normal naval ensign was plain white, but as that's also the flag of truce (or surrender), we could get away with a white flag with fleurs-de-lis all over it - basically, what we have now, minus the coat of arms.

 

[Grey Roger]

Well, there's not much point worrying about the proportions of the stars. Different size ships have different size pennants, so what looks right on one won't look right on another.

USS Surprise wasn't USS a little while before that. I'd started a new free-play game as an American corsair, used "Sail-to" to teleport to a ship near the starting port in the hope of spotting some pennants, and found myself facing a pirate ship instead. Since I had cheatmode enabled to allow me to try any ship available to the game, I gave myself a bunch of levels plus the "Instant board" perk, made myself immortal, then captured it. The captain was remarkably intelligent, realised he had no chance, surrendered, and was immediately given the job of commanding his own ship on my behalf. And then I was able to inspect both its pennant and my own.

The sloop of war has a significantly shorter pennant than the Bellona class warship. So the Bellona's stars look about right but the sloop of war's stars look squished. It's not the effect of the wind blowing the pennant away from me, as the main flags show.

Next question: are flags picked out from the image file by a lookup table similar to "pictures.ini" for interface pictures, or are they assumed to be 256x128 and taken from the image accordingly? Because quite a few aren't exactly 256 wide and if whatever is extracting them gets it wrong, they're going to appear with a thin strip of someone else's flag at the trailing edge.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Well, there's not much point worrying about the proportions of the stars. Different size ships have different size pennants, so what looks right on one won't look right on another.

True. So unless someone cares to give all pennants on all ships the same aspect ratio, then it simply is what it is.
Or remove all fancy detailing from pennants as a rule so it doesn't matter so much if a pennant is bein stretched or not.

Next question: are flags picked out from the image file by a lookup table similar to "pictures.ini" for interface pictures, or are they assumed to be 256x128 and taken from the image accordingly? Because quite a few aren't exactly 256 wide and if whatever is extracting them gets it wrong, they're going to appear with a thin strip of someone else's flag at the trailing edge.

If I recall, there is a definition somewhere of the "number of flags in a file", but nothing more than that.
So that "thin strip" problem can definitely occur.

 

[Grey Roger]

Not for much longer. I thought I'd better check in case I'd been messing things up rather than fixing them, as I've resized and realigned all the flags and pennants for merchant and navy, "Revolutions" and "Napoleonic". I may as well do the rest.

The English "Golden Age" merchant flag is the East India company flag. It shouldn't be, partly because not all English ships belonged to that company and partly because only company ships heading east to India were supposed to use it. English ships in the Caribbean can use the same Red Ensign as in "Colonial Powers".

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Not for much longer. I thought I'd better check in case I'd been messing things up rather than fixing them, as I've resized and realigned all the flags and pennants for merchant and navy, "Revolutions" and "Napoleonic". I may as well do the rest.

Much appreciated!

The English "Golden Age" merchant flag is the East India company flag. It shouldn't be, partly because not all English ships belonged to that company and partly because only company ships heading east to India were supposed to use it. English ships in the Caribbean can use the same Red Ensign as in "Colonial Powers".

You mean this East India Company flag?

As opposed to this one?

For the purposes of variety, I've got to admit I do quite like having that EITC one in use somewhere.

We may consider the fact that not all ships would have been part of the EITC to be a non-issue; we can pretend that they are.
Similarly, the Dutch merchant flag is the WIC one, which is the West Indische Compagnie. It looks very similar to the VOC one (Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie).
I can imagine that not all Dutch merchant ships in the Caribbean would be part of the WIC either. But that flag I DEFINITELY would want to keep....

 

[Grey Roger]

Perhaps flags which are unsuitable for national flags for one reason or another can be made into personal flags. The East India one is just asking to be used as Cutler Beckett's personal flag, for a start. The short-lived Revolutionary French naval ensign, white with tricolour in the corner, could also be resurrected as a personal flag.

I suspected you might like the WIC one, and anyway that's West Indies company, which is perfectly entitled to be in the Caribbean. Moreover, the whole point of such companies was that they were to get monopolies over their respective regions, which means it is quite possible that all Dutch merchant ships in the Caribbean were WIC, or at least most if not all of the bigger ones.

England in "Early Explorers" has the same problem that France now has in "Napoleonic", which is that its merchant and navy flags are the same (basic St. George's cross). Worse, both have the same pennant, three lions. That's going anyway because it would have been a royal banner. Merchants are getting a variant St. George cross pennant. Warships are getting a green and white pennant with a Tudor rose. (If the game supported different flags on different masts, the Tudor rose one would probably have gone on the mizzen while the St. George's cross went on the main, but as the game doesn't allow that, the Tudor rose has to go somewhere else.)

 

[jsv]

England in "Early Explorers" has the same problem that France now has in "Napoleonic", which is that its merchant and navy flags are the same (basic St. George's cross).

I think Dutch in Early Explorers suffer from the same.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

The East India one is just asking to be used as Cutler Beckett's personal flag, for a start.

Of course Beckett already gets this COMPLETELY MADE UP one:

Perhaps flags which are unsuitable for national flags for one reason or another can be made into personal flags. The short-lived Revolutionary French naval ensign, white with tricolour in the corner, could also be resurrected as a personal flag.

We still have a row left, don't we? That is definitely an option.

I suspected you might like the WIC one, and anyway that's West Indies company, which is perfectly entitled to be in the Caribbean. Moreover, the whole point of such companies was that they were to get monopolies over their respective regions, which means it is quite possible that all Dutch merchant ships in the Caribbean were WIC, or at least most if not all of the bigger ones.

I originally wanted to have the VOC one, just because of it being by far the most famous, but had to admit that the WIC one does make a whole lot more sense.

England in "Early Explorers" has the same problem that France now has in "Napoleonic", which is that its merchant and navy flags are the same (basic St. George's cross). Worse, both have the same pennant, three lions. That's going anyway because it would have been a royal banner. Merchants are getting a variant St. George cross pennant. Warships are getting a green and white pennant with a Tudor rose. (If the game supported different flags on different masts, the Tudor rose one would probably have gone on the mizzen while the St. George's cross went on the main, but as the game doesn't allow that, the Tudor rose has to go somewhere else.)

History is just too complicated to replicate truly accurate in a game, isn't it?
You're doing a great job at getting as close as possible though!

 

[Grey Roger]

I think Dutch in Early Explorers suffer from the same.

No, the merchant flag is basically a standard Dutch flag with orange instead of red, while the naval flag is similar to the multi-striped Dutch naval flags of other periods, again with orange instead of red.

And here's the result:
http://piratesahoy.bowengames.com/potc/Grey Roger/flags.zip

 

[Pieter Boelen]

And here's the result:
http://piratesahoy.bowengames.com/potc/Grey Roger/flags.zip

Thanks again!

 

[Grey Roger]

Update: here's "shppnt1.tga.tx", revised after trying it out on Golden Hind. I've also remade the complete zip file on the FTP site to include this version.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Update: here's "shppnt1.tga.tx", revised after trying it out on Golden Hind. I've also remade the complete zip file on the FTP site to include this version.

Thanks! Will include that in my game this weekend for sure.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

@Grey Roger: Finally got round to adding your flags into my game.

Just checking on the following:
- What are the "bonus" pennants in the early periods? And why is that red so bright-ish?
- Why does the Spanish pennant on shppnt.tga.tx look different from the others? Not sure which of the two brightness levels would look best in the game....
- Why do shppnt5.tga.tx merpnt6.tga.tx still have the "fuzzy" borders while you added very straight ones to the others?
- Is it on purpose to have the the French pennant in merpnt3.tga.tx in apparently a different shade of blue compared to the other ones?

Other than that: Good stuff! Thanks for working on this.