Mamba: Tactical Ice

Jack Schitt

Jack Schitt
Does anyone know what the deal is with the Tactical paint pack for the Mamba, specifically Tactical Ice? The store thumbnail looks different to the other Tactical Ice skins, more like a dirty snow colour than the traditional bright white. The Ice variant is also listed separately from the other five colours, with its own subheading and asterisk, but there's no corresponding footnote to explain the asterisk. Also, if you select White as a category filter the Mamba disappears from the ship list.

mambatacice.jpg
It's mostly academic at the moment since I don't own a Mamba, but Tactical Ice is my favourite all-round colour scheme and I'd like to know the option will be there one day.
 

Vedmo

Vedmo
Mine is tactical ice, and it came with all the other tactical colors. It is a bit more grey in spots than white, but I think the station lighting is making its color deceptive in this pic, as I know I've seen it looking whiter before.

QT0iXfg.jpg
 

Kubicide

Kubicide
@Vedmo: it looks like dirty grey / gray to me. It's not 'tactical ice' as I have on the Python and other ships. Something changed.
 

Vedmo

Vedmo
Just flew her to an F star and while scooping it looks like this:

hQZ2Jzn.png

It does seem to me that it used to look more shiny pearl white.
 

CMDR Karrde Sun

CMDR Karrde Sun
Im super happy with the holiday gold paint job for the mamba. I dislike the default sets. Its just no effort because they're standard.. i dunno just feels that way.

Sadly i bought it twice before knowing i would put the mamba in the pointless bin really soon afterwards... exploring turret boats atm and don't pvp. Shame its so ferdelance in outfitting :(
 

Jack Schitt

Jack Schitt
Weird. It looks better in the screenshots than in the store, but it's definitely not the same brilliant white as the others. And the separated entry in the store colours list can't be a coincidence, can it?

Additionally, if you select Mamba as a filter, White is not shown as a colour option. As far as I can tell every other ship with a Tactical paint job has White as an option. And White must refer to the Tactical Ice skin, because Tactical it's the only option that appears when both Adder and White are filtered for.

It's not something I normally do but I might tweet @EliteDangerous and see if there's official word on what that asterisk means. It's a puzzler.
 

Jack Schitt

Jack Schitt
I noticed when checking out the new galvanized Mamba paints that the Tactical pack now has Tactical Ice listed normally alongside the other five, rather than being isolated and asterisked as in the OP. But the thumbnail still looks duller and greyer than any of the Tactical Ice paints for the other ships.

Can anyone with this paint pack confirm whether or not anything has changed in-game, or if this is just a tweak to the store's source? I do like the idea of one day building a Tactical Ice Mamba, but only if the skin looks pure white like the others and not the off-white seen in the store and in this thread's screenshots.

(FWIW I did get a "we're looking into this" on Feb 26th in response to my Twitter query, but nothing official since).
 

Crank Larson

Crank Larson
Jack Schitt said:
(FWIW I did get a "we're looking into this" on Feb 26th in response to my Twitter query, but nothing official since).
Click to expand...

That's rather poor. You'd have thought that it would be as simple as asking the person who put the page on the website why it was done that way (and/or the skin designer why it isn't the same as the others).
 

Jack Schitt

Jack Schitt
Thanks for the feedback, folks.

Crank Larson said:
That's rather poor. You'd have thought that it would be as simple as asking the person who put the page on the website why it was done that way (and/or the skin designer why it isn't the same as the others).
Click to expand...
It is peculiar. The asterisked entry and customised categories on the original store page didn't look accidental. It looked as though they knew something was different about the Mamba Ice paint but didn't get around to quantifying what it was, or why.

When I poked them with the Twitter stick, the response was to revert the page to the default layout. So somebody changed something. We just don't know who, or why. And the paint still looks awful, for reasons that are still unknown.
 

Kaocraft

Kaocraft
I love the look of the Mamba in the screenshots, maybe more than I would like it in the usual white, but I agree that "tactical ice" should be consistent with the same paintjob on the other ships.
 

Jack Schitt

Jack Schitt
It's great that some people like the current skin and that it might sell a few packs (although it should be part of the Military pack IMO) but it doesn't help to explain why Ice is different to every other Tactical pack, or why it had a unique presentation on the store right up until the point where it didn't have a unique presentation any more. Only FD can answer that, and they haven't.

We're back to playing the old familiar Frontier guessing game...

strategyor.jpg
Of course now that the changes to the store have removed the uniqueness of this pack they're in a bit of a damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don't quandary. If people buy Tactical because they like the look of the F-15 Strike Mamba, they're not going to be happy if FD change it. My money's on it staying like this. I'd still like to know why.
 

Stealthie

Stealthie
Jack Schitt said:
It's great that some people like the current skin and that it might sell a few packs (although it should be part of the Military pack IMO) but it doesn't help to explain why Ice is different to every other Tactical pack, or why it had a unique presentation on the store right up until the point where it didn't have a unique presentation any more. Only FD can answer that, and they haven't.
Click to expand...

Looking at it, I think there's a couple of things going on with the Mamba.

Firstly, all(?) the other ships seem to have black panels "baked" into the design, which always remain black regardless of the paintjob, whereas it seems like the Mamba's black panels are part of the paintjob and so they can change colour when new paint is applied.

Secondly, in the store at least, it looks like the Mamba is lit differently to other ships - with a more diffused light rather than the harsher light used to display other ship's paintjobs.
I wonder if this might be something to do with the new lighting system that was introduced into the game recently?

Overall, I wonder if they created the skin for the Mamba differently to other ships (rush job?) and maybe the tools they use to create paintjobs aren't quite dialled-in to match what the new lighting displays in-game?
Maybe, in FDev's paint tool, the Mamba paint did look white?
 
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