A friend of mine asked me this question today, and I didn't have a solid answer. The Memory Alpha article on Starfleet uniforms (
http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Starfleet_uniform) states that "most of the ranking officers in Starfleet Command" wear the Command division color, namely red. There is support for this in DS9 when Worf switches to red when he takes a command position on the station. We also see Dr. Crusher wearing a red uniform when she is commanding the
Pasteur in "All Good Things..." even though it is a medical ship and she is still ostensibly acting as a doctor.
We are all given command of a ship when we are promoted to Lieutenant, but the career system seems to indicate that we retain our assigned division. Concerns about how monotone the game would become aside, do you think that all players should be wearing red from the beginning because we are commanding a starship, or perhaps we should all switch to red when we hit Captain and become "ranking officers in Starfleet Command"?
I think we can easily justify admirals running around in blue or gold uniforms by saying it is just another of the changes that has been made to the Starfleet uniform regulations by 2409, I'm just interested in how people feel about this from a role-playing perspective.
Comments
Blue eyed folks wear Blue
Blondes/yellow eyes/yellow visors wear Yellow
Everyone else gets Red
And Wesley and toucans get a rainbow.
An in game admiral wearing something other than red. So, I guess it is up to every player to decide if they want to join Starfleet Command at any point during their career, or stick with whatever division they came up in.
* Command & Tactical Red
- for any "flag" ship (if you are carrying the UFP flag on your hull)
- Any and all Tactical officers
* Operations & Security Gold
- Tugs, engineering support craft
- Refit & Repair Starbase (eg: utopia etc.)
- Transport & Freight ships
- Planetary & System Security patrol ships/shuttles
* Science & Medical Blue/Teal
- non combat Science ship
- Non combat survey ship
- Medical support craft (but oddly not hospital ships)
* Flag officer White
- Captains dress uniform
- Admiralty command uniform (though some still wear red with white highlights)
From what i can see in Memory Alpha and Memory Beta it appears to come under the simple heading of if you are a ships Captain it is expected for you to wear Command Red but below the rank of Lt Commander you generally stick to your division colour regardless of your current command role, the only real exception to this was Lt.Commander Worfs switch from gold to red but in that case he switched from Head of Security (gold) to a Tactical and operations officer (Red) which does stick to known canon.
The entire Admiralty on the other hand has the choice to pretty much wear what they want to but its seems to be primarily dependant on there role at any given time eg: the Admiral in charge research and development on Utopia Planitia can wear red as a flag office or white as an Admiral or simply wear gold if his prior specialty was in engineering.
I hope this helps it did take a little research but anything to help the immersion factor is a good thing.
Of course if you like the proper original TOS color schemes, it's
Command/Operations: Gold
Engineering/Security: Red (hence the term 'Redfshirt')
Science/Medical: Blue
To your question about RP, I think it makes more sense this way. In a time of war or emergency, it's better to designate uniforms based on skills and specialty so leaders or people not familiar with your face can designate assignments to you accurately.
My pet peeve is with people openly wearing kits instead of hiding them when they are not on a mission. Don't get me wrong, people definitely have the right to dress how they want but I just think it's odd to see commandos with backpacks everywhere, even though we are at war...game NPCs are guilty of this as well. This is earth space doc...not mos eisley. Leave the battle wear and showing off to the KDF in port. I grant exception to the the STF office on DS9...it just seems more logical there. Anyway just minor peeve of mine.
Like you said, I think that this is a game and people can do whatever they want to have fun while playing it. But personally, I don't see the point of wearing your "kit" (or worse those hideous armors) when you are on your ship or walking around Federation controlled stations/bases.
Red is not a good colour choice when ambushing Klingons because it just shouts SNIPER AIM HERE
True of the default color for Tacs, but as you stated, with the Tailor options, it could be purple for all the player cares.
Red is good because it hides most humanoid blood.... except for those andorians they wear blue but for the smae reasons.
Ugly players wear blue for their toon, Beautiful people wear white, Ugly beautiful people wear black and Beautiful ugly people wear red.
Yes it is player based not toons
and oh there is no such thing as beautiful man so we male MUST wear blue and banned from the game..except me because who's going to be thbejudge otherwise..
I guess klingons need to wear pink uniforms then.
In my color schemes for my characters, we switched back to the TOS standards. In fact, our command color is a darker gold. With Operations being the more standard gold. To offset my admiral and my first officer from my navigator.
I wear blue only because my toon is a sciencer. =P
I'm wearing an orange shirt right now.
I wish that there was an option to wear armor in missions and in pure social areas remove it automatically. It's a pretty low priority, though, I'm sure, and I'd rather the devs fry bigger fish.
Most of the time when I'm in full combat gear in ESD it's because I forgot/am too lazy to muck around with the visuals. It's a bit more jarring for me to beam down in a combat zone with my First Contact/Dominion War-era uniform as opposed to battle gear.
Actually I kind of wish there was a more uniform uniform. I'm glad to see all the variety, but one (or a few) "base models" would be helpful, IMO, preferably preset costumes so you can just grab one. If I recall correctly there didn't seem to be anything like that at chargen.
On ship duty I wear a red uniform, since promoted to captain.
And only as captain! On further ranks the usage of division colors is prefered.
Also in ST canon are yellow admiral dresses. Like in DS9 (Admiral Toddman) here: (http://memory-beta.wikia.com/wiki/Toddman)
Get I on fleet duty then I use only the division colors.
E.g. I created a ships duty and a fleet duty uniform in slots so it's easy to switch.
Greets
The way I see it is that our characters have received command training, which usually goes with red, but since we were scientists and engineers before, we can keep our normal career colour.
http://images.wikia.com/memoryalpha/de/images/1/11/Beverly_Picard_und_Jean-Luc_Picard_auf_der_Br%C3%BCcke_der_USS_Pasteur.jpg