Capt Wolf

I'm still surprised that so many people are voting for flags with the Imperial Guard's cannons rather than a unique design.

Great work! I really like your use of the new masonry bricks, and the overall street scene is excellent. And I'm still in awe of your ship!

I prefer the new cannon option because it is unique from the the redcoats cannons and the bluecoats cannons. it seems to me the Haven Guard shoudn't use another faction's particular style of cannons.

Do you want to remove the crossed anchors insignia as an option for the guard flag? Or is using it for both the guard and merchant flags under consideration?

That sounds like it should work! Having everyone select their top three choices for the guard flag should provide enough info to determine a group favorite. Will the three choices be ranked (1st choice, 2nd choice, etc.) or basically all given equal weight? Either way should work; just curious.

After reflecting on this for awhile, perhaps the easiest way to get a clear choice is to first vote just on the insignia. Four choices should produce a clear favorite. Then proceed to the background choice (with the chosen insignia). If limited to the guard flag, that is at most 8 choices, and some of them will not garner much if any support, so again a clear choice should emerge. Then one final poll to determine the background for the companion merchant flag. I know it's three polls, but by breaking it down you should get the clear prefences of the group.

I think you can eliminate the white-orange-white versions of the vertical stripes and broad horizontal stripes backgrounds. That reduces the possible guard flag combos from 32 to 24. Also, with three of the four possible insignia being some version of crossed cannons, if there isn't a clear winner in the poll, you could treat those three options as one to see if there's a clear backgroud choice, then have a run-off poll between the cannons. I know I'm not explaing this well. Say you get 18 or 20 votes for background #1 with some form of crossed cannons, but no clear leader among the cannon options. If no other single background comes close to the votes for background #1 (or whichever), then run another poll (yes, I know, just what you want) with just the three cannon options on background #1. Essentially, I'm sugesting you view it as six background choices paired with two insignia choices(cannons or muskets). That makes for only 12 possibilities. If a clear insignia choice doesn't emerge, a run-off would only have three choices (one background and three cannons).

Touché!

Two flags, two polls. That's not too bad. (Now how do I work "to" into this?)

What if you enforce the inverted background concept, but eliminate the white-orange-white designs for the vertical stripes and broad horizontal stripes, and treat the remaining orange-white-orange versions of those two backgrounds as the designated inverted form of each other (inverting direction of the stripes rather than the color order)? That gets you down to 24 voting options. Another option could be to just limit this poll to the guard design and do the merchant flag as a separate poll after we know what the guard flag is.

That sounds like a good plan to me. Thanks!

The vertical stripes is also one of my two favorite versions of the merchant flag. I'm torn between the saltires and the vertical stripes, but forcing the inverted designs in my opinion really kills the vertical stripes as a viable choice, unfortunately. That's part of the reason I'd prefer to see inversion voted on or presented as an option in some way, not as a fait accompli. At the very least, can we use the same background, and not an inverted one, for the vertical and broad horizontal backgrounds?

I think some people prefer using the same background design for both flags rather than inverted versions. That still limits the merchant background options to two per any given guard flag choice, but gives the non-inverted faction their say.

I think we shouldn't automatically assume an inverted design for the merchant flag. Some people have stated a preference for non-inverted designs. And the last two flag backgrounds (vertical stripes and broad horizontal stripes) really don't work inverted. Oh, I almost forgot to mention: The flag generator is great. Very cool!

Backgrounds: Emblems:

Cool. Thanks. I'll post images tonight.

The problem is I'm not working with transparent backgrounds. I wish I was!

I can post the blank flag designs and isolated insignia tonight. That said, the insignia are all very similar (except for the crossed muskets, which didn't seem to have much support anyway). They're just different styles of cannons. And I can mock up the flags with the chosen insignia fairly quickly if building the app is problematic.

One of the issues that has come up in this thread repeatedly is that people seem to like the saltire, but not necessarily when combined with crossed cannons (too many crossed items at once). And others have commented they like a certain background, but not when combined with a particular emblem (for both the guard and merchant flags). Would it be better if we decide on the emblem first, then choose a background design that goes with that emblem? Also, since the choice of whether to invert the background or not may be affected by what the resulting merchant flag would look like (same issues with people's preferences about what colors the anchors emblem looks good on), once we've decided on a guard emblem, do we want to vote on the combinations of guard and merchant flags together? If we vote on just the guard flag and whether to invert, we run the risk of forcing ourselves into a merchant flag we aren't happy with. I'll post emblems without backgrounds tonight.

Just to get everything in one place, here are all six backgrounds with the black-and-white cannons guard design and the anchors merchant design:

It seems to me that there is much support for the crossed anchors design from the Imperial Trading Post set as the merchant emblem. That would leave these questions to be resolved: (1a) Background (6 choices): saltire (white cross on orange field), saltire (orange cross on white field), beach towel (thin white stripes on orange field), beach towel (thin orange stripes on white field), vertical stripes, or horizontal stripes (1b) If saltire or beach towel chosen in 1a, should guard and merchant backgrounds be inverted (1c) If inverted patterns are chosen, which version goes with the guards and which version goes with the merchants (2) Emblem for guards: thinly shaded crossed cannons (from redcoats flag), solid black crossed cannons (from bluecoats flag), black-and-white crossed cannons (new design), or crossed muskets.

Thanks! Just trying to contribute. And I'm just using the simple little Paint program that comes with Microsoft Windows. It's limited, but it can get the job done most of the time.

Here's the vertical stripe design with the shaded cannons: But I also got to thinking that the crossed cannons for the Haven Guard should be unique, not a copy of the redcoat or bluecoat cannons. So, what do you think of this (shown on 3 different backgrounds): I didn't quite get the cannons at the proper angle, but drawn properly they should match the angle of the saltire.

I took the liberty of updating the crown on some of the designs, using the crown from the crossed anchors emblem on each of them and sizing the crowns consistently. After all, we don't want the crown of the redcoats or bluecoats for the Haven Guard! Here are three of the guard flag designs along with the corresponding merchant flag designs. I've used a saltire pair, a horizontal stripes pair, and a vertical stripes pair. The first two have inverse background colors, but the vertical stripe design didn't lend itself to an inverse pattern.

An alternative to replacing the crossed anchors could be replacing the barrel instead, perhaps with a shield. It helps maintain the general composition of the original.