Organization / Identification issues assembling a Group of ships?

[Clifford]

Just thinking out loud here, but let's pretend:

Someone wanted to organize a group to battle another group that was hanging-around a station (eg Freeport). (This is not taking place in a conflict zone or Fed distress Beacon)

Right now, the main gameplay issues I can see are:
1) organizing / assembling everyone together
2) chance of joining the same island/instance
And
3) identifying CMDR's of one group vs another in the dogfight

#1 would probably be done by setting up something on the forums to recruit players to meet at a certain time and get a list of Cmdr names associate with the group. Probably need a Teamspeak server since the current Comms system doesn't work for groups.

#2) a know issue, maybe better with the recent server changes.
Or an alternative might be to have everyone (both sides of the skirmish) be in a private group??? That would defeat the point since the main objective is to repel the enemy team and then maintain control of the station (in that instance); a battle in a private group doesn't mean anything in that context.

#3) this is the main sticking point I cannot figure out. We don't have a way to add Clan tags. Not everyone can easily identify Team A ships vs Team B ships. You'd have a list of CMDR names and just know who was your team vs the other? Hard if you have a large group. It would quickly devolve into A free-for-all and much friendly-fire I think.
Right now the only way to make a visible difference is to use Ship skins but they cost $. Maybe some people can have skins on their ship but not everyone is willing to do that.
Is there going to be some sort of alliance tag in the future to identify player groups?

Given all that, I think that's why we haven't seen much of a coordinated effort to repel any group at a station. Right now whoever has friends on a Teamspeak server and can get their friends to join-in the same instance can continue to control that instance and it's very hard to mount a coordinated response.

 

[Asp Explorer]

It's simply a matter of proper target identification and assignment.

Proper fire control doesn't need clan tags or "bad guy" highlighting other than what is already present.

Perhaps researching engagement discipline might help? Squad leaders typically assign targets.

 

[Clifford]

It's simply a matter of proper target identification and assignment.
....
Perhaps researching engagement discipline might help? Squad leaders typically assign targets.

I have researched. Normally one country's aircraft are visibly different from another country. But here we all have Anacondas and Vipers that look the same.

During WW2 (Normandy), the planes were painted with Stripes on the wings to identify them, so that's why I came up with the Skins idea (even though it does cost €, it's the only method for a visible difference).

I wonder if people are just going to start changing their CMDR names to have an identifier built-in as part of the name?

I know the DDA mentions "Alliances".
But hopefully there will be some sort of "informal short-term group" mechanism to keep players together for escort missions, doing a quick skirmish, etc.