• Rory
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Topic: Ensign for the Royal Aether Fleet

So, I'm painting up the IS ships that I've bought, and I've been doing some thinking about what would be the appropriate colors for them. My own tastes were to find something historical, and naval ships at the time were painted a rather light shade of gray beneath, and a lighter shade above. This became the color schemes for my Aeronef fleet.

I decided that the ships of His Majesty's Aether Fleet would instead be a somewhat darker gray.

Then I got to thinking about the Ensign. I sincerly doubt the Navy would lend the White Ensign to those "d*mn aerial monstronsities". I can just hear some puffed up admiral shouting at an Aether Captain, "You may have a naval crew, you may be sailing under naval command, but your not putting my ensign on that thing!"

After doing some research, I noticed just such a conflict with regards to the establishment of the historical RAF ensign. The RAF originally asked for a modification to the White Ensign, and were flatly denied. (A quick trip to Wikipedia, White Ensign got me all the information I needed.)

With this in mind, I pushed that same conflict back about 15 years, and came up with an Ensign for the Royal Aether Fleet. Allow me to demonstrate:

http://homepage.mac.com/rorymh/Ensign_of_the_Royal_Aether_Fleet.gif

Much of the logic for it is smiliar to the traditional RAF. The Roundrel is colored gold/blue/white to represent the Sun/Earth/Moon in a very Kubrikian alignment.

Obviously, this is all tied to my own very narrow version of reality, your mileage may vary.

.r.

  • From: Denver, CO
  • Registered: 2005-03-27
  • Posts: 3,578

Re: Ensign for the Royal Aether Fleet

Wet monkeys of the world, unite! Rory has joined the Forum! wink

Rory wrote:

http://homepage.mac.com/rorymh/Ensign_of_the_Royal_Aether_Fleet.gif

Much of the logic for it is smiliar to the traditional RAF. The Roundrel is colored gold/blue/white to represent the Sun/Earth/Moon in a very Kubrikian alignment.

Hey, I really like this!

Although, shouldn't the middle be the yellow (Sun) and the outer be the white (Moon)?

Also, what if the background were black? Sort of the opposite of the wet navy ensign (white) and to represent space?

Daniel Kast
Majestic Twelve Games
cricket@mj12games.com

mj12games's Website

  • Rory
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Re: Ensign for the Royal Aether Fleet

Hey, I really like this!

Although, shouldn't the middle be the yellow (Sun) and the outer be the white (Moon)?

Hmm. I suppose it depends on where you are when you see the alignment. I don't imagine there's a lot of interest in heading to the inner system yet, because heat management is going to be a huge issue. It's much easier to heat than it is to cool, even more so for the Edwardians.

So it's going to be hard to ever get an alignment where the Earth is:

a) behind the sun,
b) appear larger than the sun, but smaller than the moon.

Whereas the arrangment of Sun/Earth/Moon might be quite a common sight to a Aether Sailor.

Also, what if the background were black? Sort of the opposite of the wet navy ensign (white) and to represent space?

I thought about it, and rejected it because I imagine black to be a popular color for painting the ships in the first place. The point of the Ensign is recognition, an early IFF system for ships at sea. Visibility will be critical, and a black ensign is going to be hard to spot. The roundrel and the Union flag would then be the only parts of the ensign that are visible. Hard to spot.

But if you really want it, I'd be glad to run up a graphic like that. All yours. W00t.

.r.

  • Rory
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Re: Ensign for the Royal Aether Fleet

cricket wrote:

Although, shouldn't the middle be the yellow (Sun) and the outer be the white (Moon)?

Also, what if the background were black? Sort of the opposite of the wet navy ensign (white) and to represent space?

Here you go:

http://homepage.mac.com/rorymh/Ensign_of_the_Royal_Aether_Fleet_V2.gif

for comparison:

http://homepage.mac.com/rorymh/Ensign_of_the_Royal_Aether_Fleet.gif

I really don't think this works as well, in part because the "gold" of the sun doesn't show up well against the white of the moon. I don't mind the black field, but my previous comments hold (difficulty in identification in space).

.r.

  • Rory
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Re: Ensign for the Royal Aether Fleet

This is a version for Kevin:

http://homepage.mac.com/rorymh/Ensign_of_the_Royal_Aether_Fleet_V3.gif

I'm not crazy about this version. I think it will be difficult to identify in space. As for the non-national colors in the roundel, I think that I gave a strong enough justification for them in my first post.

Still, what do you think, sirs?

.r.

  • Rory
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Re: Ensign for the Royal Aether Fleet

Fourth Variant:

http://homepage.mac.com/rorymh/Ensign_of_the_Royal_Aether_Fleet_V4.gif

I'm not crazy about this. The white field is too featureless, and the Union Flag and Roundel seem to have nothing to do with one another. The two symbols are seemingly unrelated.

A fifth variant would be to put the St. George cross over the flag, and the roundel into the lower right. I don't think that's appropriate, because that's a defaced White Ensign. If the Navy didn't want them flying the White Ensign, you can bet they won't want them to deface it.

Just my two cents. Your mileage may vary.

.r.

  • Rory
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Re: Ensign for the Royal Aether Fleet

Here you go, the variant I was just discussing, defaced White Ensign with Roundel.

http://homepage.mac.com/rorymh/Ensign_of_the_Royal_Aether_Fleet_V5.gif

.r.

  • From: Denver, CO
  • Registered: 2005-03-27
  • Posts: 3,578

Re: Ensign for the Royal Aether Fleet

For what it's worth, I really do like your original roundel, Rory... when you first presented it, I missed the whole "conjunction" thing and thought of it in terms of relative orbits, which is why I thought the Sun should be at the center.

However, on the surface, the idea of a roundel doesn't make a whole lot of sense -- it was adopted by the RAF, which was itself an amalgamation of the RFC (Army) and RNAS (Navy)... but was originally used by the RFC. In other words, there's no historical precendent for the naval service to use such a thing.

On the other hand -- the reason the roundel was developed is that it is impossible (or impractical) to fly a flag from an airplane... the same is true for ether-ships, so I suppose they would have to come up with some way of denoting their nationality right on the hull... so a roundel makes sense from that perspective.

I guess I'm saying do what you think looks cool for your own ships... and it's likely we'll do some work on our end (input appreciated) to decide what the various nations do "officially" to identify themselves. Right now, I've had Dugan put the flags right on the hulls (in the Iron Stars rulebook, the naval ensign is clearly visible on most of the British designs); but in thinking about it, there may be a need for more obvious markings in the darkness of space.

One possibility is to take a cue from WW1 tanks, and paint vertical stripes on the hull...

http://www.landships.freeservers.com/jpegs_new/thumbs/mk5_bw_small.jpg

So, the Brits might do a white-red-white scheme, while the USA might be red-white-blue, and the French blue-white-red...

Just an idea. I still like Rory's roundel... wink

Daniel Kast
Majestic Twelve Games
cricket@mj12games.com

mj12games's Website

  • Registered: 2022-11-15
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Re: Ensign for the Royal Aether Fleet

The Spanish in the red and gold. wink    In historic aircraft photos of the spanish planes, they used a roundel shape split into three horizontal fields...the top and bottom red and the middle yellow.  I was planning on using that on my ships.

  • Rory
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Re: Ensign for the Royal Aether Fleet

I started trying to paint my Russians today, thinking to grad from gold to a dark red.

Looks too much like a Taco joint logo. I must rethink.

.r.