Appearance Options for Additional Skin Pigmentation for American Army

[Datastrike]

It would be great to see a few more “Appearance” options for just a little more variation in skin pigmentation on the American/British side.

There have been a few other topics related to this, but were not as clear in what was being suggested in my opinion. There were a lot of different races of soldiers fighting for the Americans and British throughout the war. Below is a list of the races that fought on the side of the Allies during WW2 to give a little bit more context.

Caucasian:
Individuals from Europe, North America, Australia, and other regions with predominantly white populations. (This is already covered obviously)

African:
People from Africa, including those serving in colonial armies and the African American troops in the U.S. military.

Asian:
People from East Asia, Southeast Asia, and South Asia, such as Chinese, Indian, Filipino, and Burmese soldiers.

Indigenous:
Native peoples from various continents, including Indigenous Australians, Māori, and Native Americans.

Pacific Islander:
People from the Pacific Islands, including those from Melanesia, Polynesia, and Micronesia.

[Guthix_Auditore]

Interesting proposition, But the amount of work required to do this is something the debts probably won’t do. It’s not a bad idea, And it would definitely open the door to more “exotic” squads. Like the African American combat squads or the Navajo. I like it.

[CaptainBeel]

Im open to this but they should start with giving us proper Commonwealth uniforms first.

I’d happily support a Maori or Australian Indigenous premium squad.

[robihr]

well iirc regiments were rather racially segregated in those times, so having racially diverse lineup wouldnt be correct.

More than one million African American men and women served in every branch of the US armed forces during World War II. In addition to battling the forces of Fascism abroad, these Americans also battled racism in the United States and in the US military. The Army, Navy, and Marine Corps all segregated African Americans into separate units because of the belief that they were not as capable as white service members. Adding to this indignity, the Army frequently assigned White officers from the American South to command Black infantrymen.

also if you want some of those squads you have

@Datastrike

African American troops in the U.S. military.

@Datastrike

People from Africa, including those serving in colonial armies

@Datastrike

People from East Asia, Southeast Asia, and South Asia, such as Chinese, Indian, Filipino, and Burmese soldiers.

erm… we have japan… other nationalities arent covered cause there is no battlefield that includes them(well maybe filipino could be included into pacific as a squad).

@Datastrike

Indigenous:
Native peoples from various continents, including Indigenous Australians, Māori, and Native Americans.

insignificant amount of them were in the army. i think we barely have squad or two of australians in general, not to mention indigenous ones.

[Burghlar]

@robihr

well iirc regiments were rather racially segregated in those times, so having racially diverse lineup wouldnt be correct.

This is correct.

They would have to add unique squads, similar to the current US and British specific squads on Allies. For example, they could add in the 92nd Infantry (Buffalo Soldiers), an all black US Army division, which would definitely be cool.

Only tricky part is you can currently move the squad members from the Brit squads to the US squads and only the uniform changes. Same with Italian and German squads. This would cause historical inaccuracies if, say, you moved a soldier from the 92nd Infantry to the 505th Airborne. Granted, it’s already not super accurate that you can put Italians in German squads and Brits in US squads, but it’s more plausible than the first example given the time period.

[CaptainBeel]

I think one of the things that needs to happen with this game is to get rid of ‘real’ units. It’s not as if anyone cares about them or we’re using accurate weapons/battles for them anyway.

So instead of 505th Airborne or 92nd Infantry or whatever, we should just have Rifleman I, Machine Gunner, Assaulter etc. etc.

Players should have the ability to freely select one default uniform for each nation within their faction.

So for Axis you would click like a German flag and all your guys for that squad get a default German uniform, likewise click Italian flag they all get Italian uniforms. They could also add Finnish, Hungarian and Romanian uniforms as well.

This would apply especially to Allies. USA and UK obviously, but then as Ive suggested elsewhere, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, British India, South Africa. Also Scottish specific uniforms and maybe Free Polish/Free Czech/Greek Army depending on later additions to the game.

Now that would be first and main priority to me. Where the idea of this thread comes in would be maybe have a similar system for race. We already have different faces based on the nationality of squads, these could be tied to uniforms.

For USA if you choose American uniforms then maybe you can also choose to have an all black or all white squad.

If they added British Sudanese for example then one could have the same for a British uniform squad.

British Indian can be difficult because my understanding was it was often a British officer and then Indian soldiers. (options for British uniforms would include a turban for Indian troops).

The other option is just add more faces to customisation which we do already have some more tanned fellows so perhaps within British squads thered be some ‘Indian’ faces, American ‘African-American’ faces.

Maori I think should be a premium squad (in part because our Maori mates were elite troops), likewise Australian Aborigines.

Overall it’s kind of difficult to implement. Im definitely not against the idea, but it could be hard to programme the game to have like only all black or all white American units, and then British squads can have a mix of white and Indian troops or whatever.

[Burghlar]

I think while it would be cool, we have to remember that WWII was fought by about 99% white people on the US side, so implementing so many options to select black US troops would definitely pull back from the historical accuracy. More Indians fought for the British, but still very small numbers.

From US Army Center of Military History