Diversifying the Factions . . .with style!

[Call me Arty]

 The various peoples you'll deal with on the Rim have a fairly major effect on you. You grow relations -be them positive or negative- trade, fight, help, destroy, so-on and so forth. My question for you is: What makes any of them different? What's going to make The Cacam of The Desert (funfact, didn't find any of their bases in the desert) any different in your mind from Southeastern Thievela or the Dark Squids?
My solution?

Halo.

Now, stay with me here, okay? I know this is apples to oranges, but Halo had something interesting going for it: The emblems. For those of you unfamiliar, you would take a symbol, put it on a shape, which is on top of a background, and change the colors around. It's really minimal, but even with the limited amount of symbols, you would see a lot of unique emblems. Even if someone had the same symbol as you (skulls were pretty common), the chances of you having the same color, shape, and background were pretty rare.
Thus, I propose that factions should have a similar system to this, so it's not just solid colored tepees, houses, and Jolly-Rodgers. "Oh my, that's a lot of work." I care to disagree. Try it out for yourself here. As far as I see it, making names correlate to symbols wouldn't be that hard. "The Cacam by the Desert" tribal faction is a good first example. "Cacam" (from my short research session) is the Portuguese word for "they hunt." Okay. Since they're tribal, let's make their symbol a bow. "By the desert." Alright, so it's simply a bow in front of say, a cactus or a sand dune, maybe a bright sun. Pretty simple. "Southeastern Thievela." Alright, so maybe a mariner's compass with the Southern and Eastern arms bolder than the rest, and infront of it: A thieve's hood or dagger. "The Dark Squids". . . well, I mean, I'm sure that doesn't need a lot of explaining, does it? A simple icon, a simple background, and tie it to the name and color, pretty simple (I'd hope).

Color Coding

Now, how would you be able to tell these guys apart? Your average visitor usually looks like they fell-through some survivalist's lost-and-found, with a lot of mismatched clothing. . . with one exception. Sure, it's a coincidence, but you can always identify a spacer by a glance, due to their notable light blue Synthread. What if other factions had this? It's not exactly a limiting factor, either. Let's go back to my friends of the Southeastern Thievela. Their icon is a sort of turquoise color. Now, one color would be pretty bland, and I doubt they have the time to make sure that every jacket and piece of body armor matches the right color. That's where gradients come-in! Rather than a single color, factions could have a color's gradient. For example: From turquoise to a turquoise gradient. Now, you have blues light enough for dyed cotton shirts, and dark enough for steel armor, and everything in-between. If you think it might be off-putting to see a hyperweavish color, then tell me which one of these is cloth, thrumbofur, and artic foxskin (otherwise known as one of the worst textiles, one of the best textiles, and a completely average textile).



So, in summary, I propose an emblem system, that would help to diversify the same three icons on the world map into something unique, and identifiable from a glance. In addition, a color-gradient system for pawns from different factions, to make them more identifiable, and stand-out from pawns found in any other faction.
I encourage and welcome your criticism and suggesions.

[sick puppy]

wait, as a mod? to me this sounds alright.

i always just differenciate factions by their numbers, arms and armor, so this would be very nice and fitting. there already are so many colors of cotton clothing anyway, so why not just implement a default paintjob for all faction clothing...besides, white and yellow boomrats have rust-red skin? oh ok, good to know

the leather issue (of having too many) is gonna get solved soon anyway, might aswell put some more color into the game if you're gonna remove so many colors by removing types of leather (and therefore colors)