The blog post On the Function of Zebra Stripes has me rethinking my paint schemes. It all boils down to breaking up your outline. When stationary, irregular and low-contrast shapes break up your outline. While moving, highly regular and high-contrast shapes break up your outline. Camouflage makes you harder to spot and dazzle makes you harder to hit. Each map has its own color palette and geometry, so it stands to reason that the cammo for one map will work poorly on another map. Since level selection is random, it doesn't make sense to use cammo. Since you should always be moving, cammo seems even less useful. Do any of you have experience with the Dazzle paint pattern? Does the Dazzle effect actually work in MWO? Does it seem to work better on certain 'mechs or weight classes? Do certain color combinations work better than others?
It just makes me want to kill them that much faster. Simple fact is that we arent lions or tigers or bears, we're humans. Our eyes can pick apart the differences and outlines better than most animals can. They can see clearer and farther yes, but with a moving "dazzle" effect our eyes have the advantage. Theres a reason our hunting and military camo isnt based around this style of protection. A giant atlas covered with bright pink, green and yellow with weird camo patterns running around just hurts my eyes, and therefore, i hunt them down exclusively. Kind of the opposite effect really.
I tend to think Blood Orange is best color, regardless of the camo scheme, cuz it sorta negates the glow from incoming damage so enemies have a harder time picking up which component to help focus on. As far as Dazzle is concerned, meh. Most effective camo I've used in a legit setting is Tiger with grey/yellow/brown, on Canyon, in a sniper 3D.
I've encountered a number of "Pony containment failure" paint schemes. The dazzle effect isn't created when a bunch of offensively bright colors are piled atop one another. It occurs, specifically, when dark and bright colors are set side-by-side in a repeating pattern. Black-and-white is the Zebra example, and was used in WWII battleship paint to prevent range-finding. Range-finding is taken care of through IFF, so I suppose dazzle wont actually work.
I dunno how it would work with lock-on mechanics, but it would definitely be a different game without the targeting box. THEN I would think your camo pattern might actually be useful... as it is you can be in River City night with your NV off and still accurately hit targets in complete darkness because of the targeting square... Thinking like - if anyone has played it - hardcore mode in Battlefield where there are no spotting triangles?? That kind of thing...
I let my daughter pick out the colours for my mechs recently. No wonder I'm dying so much faster now.
Historical Reference for Dazzle patterns used on ships. Another site with some great pictures. Graphic examples of Dazzle Camo on US Cruisers in WW2 I think the best colors for the dazzle camo in MWO would be dark greys, dark blues and dark greens.
