Factory finish

September 25, 2026 · feedback

For as long as the island has had real airplanes, both air forces flew them with their wings dipped in team paint: a Spitfire with scarlet wings, a Fortress with bright blue ones. It told you who was who, and it made every airplane in the sky look like a toy. Not any more. The warbirds fly the paint they went to war in, and the side a pilot fights for is written over their head instead.

Two identical dark green Spitfires crossing in a merge, one under a red tile reading Baron von Brick and one under a blue tile reading Stall Warning Sam, with the rest of the furball strung out behind them as small red and blue tiles over distant planes — Same airplane, same paint, opposite sides. Read the tile.

Every airplane in its own paint

Every class now wears its own factory finish, and both air forces fly the very same one:

the Sparrowhawk is a Spitfire in dark green and ocean grey, with the pale Sky spinner and tail band the real ones carried;
the Thunderhead is a bare-metal Mustang with an olive-drab nose band and anti-glare panel;
the Ironclad is a bare-metal Lightning, the Leviathan an olive-drab Fortress with white group marks on its fin, and the Swordfin an Avenger in Navy sea blue and white;
and the Starfang and the other jets fly bare metal or grey, trimmed in white.

That goes for every airplane in the sky: the bandit you're chasing, the wingman on your right, and the one you're flying. The island's reserve planes parked on the flightlines wear the same paint, and so does every piece that comes off an airplane that's been shot to bits.

The whole roster flying together over the island: a dark green Spitfire, a bare-metal Mustang, a twin-boom Lightning, a Navy-blue Avenger, a silver F-104, an olive-drab Fortress, the yellow Skywriter biplane and the Marquee blimp — The air force in the paint it went to war in.

Read the tile, not the wings

Friend or foe now rides the nameplate. Every pilot's callsign flies on a tile of their team's color, Crimson or Cobalt, with the name in white across it.

Up close it's a name. Far out it's a flag. Past a few hundred metres, where the airplane under it has shrunk to a speck and the old red wings shrank right along with it, the tile stops shrinking and holds its size. A kilometre off, a furball is a scatter of red and blue chips you can sort at a glance: the blue ones coming your way are trouble, the red ones are yours. (Or the other way round, if you fly Cobalt.)

A long callsign now shrinks its lettering to fit inside its tile instead of spilling off the ends.

The paint shop, all the way

Earned paint used to stop at the fuselage, because the wings had to stay in team colors. Now there's nothing to stop it. Equip Duneworn and your Spitfire is sand from nose to tail, wings and all, with its Sky spinner and tail band left on; Midnight Reaper takes the whole airframe near-black. None of it gives away your side. The tile does that.

A Sparrowhawk in sand Duneworn paint from nose to tail with twelve kill-mark stencils under the cockpit, a gold spinner cap, a white and gold pennant on its fin, and a crimson nameplate tile reading IRON ANNIE with the title ACE beneath it — A whole career on one airframe, and a Crimson tile to say whose it is.

The rest of what you earn sits on the airframe too. A career ace's fin pennant is white silk with a gold fly now, standing on the crown of the fin rather than hovering over it, and the ace's gold spinner cap is unchanged. Your nemesis still burns orange for you alone, now as a thick orange frame round his tile, so you can still see which side he's on while you settle the score.