[gap]

Originally Posted by CaptBones

There are no silly questions...sometimes silly answers though.

Originally Posted by CaptBones

Essentially "yes"...but in a ship with the primary superstructure and bridge amidships, the national flag/ensign is almost as likely to be displayed at sea from the mainmast. Tankers and bulk carriers are frequently the exception; they generally have a large superstructure aft with crew's quarters and it's not a long walk to the fantail, so the flag/ensign might be flown there when at sea. Again, just as often a matter of the Master's choice and convenience and I don't think either placement would be "wrong" for the sim. Most commercial vessels don't have a "foremast" per se; they typically have Kingposts, goal-post cranes and jib-crane poles or even just a seperate pole/mast for mounting the masthead light (the range light being on the mainmast).

In short, your answer is: at least in the USA there are no written rules which prescribe / help deciding which mast a ship ensign should be flown from, but the one that is closer to the superstructure / crew area, is the one that most likely will be preferred both for mechant ships and military vessels. Is that correct?

Originally Posted by CaptBones

Well, the starboard yardarm is the "senior" position for any flags/pennants displayed. I'd suspect that would be where a proud crew would choose to fly their house flag.

Roger that

Originally Posted by CaptBones

In wartime it is generally a good idea to make it as hard as possible for your enemy to find or identify you. Now, if you're a neutral vessel and you think that both/all warring sides are going to respect International Law as well as each other's, and their own, Prize Regulations, I suspect you would at least try initially to make yourself as readily identifiable as possible.
Once that quaint romantic notion of "civilized" warfare wears off...it's out come the paint cans and down come the flags...be as unidentifiable as you can for as long as you can.

Well, wether belligerents will respect international law, Geneve convention, engagement rules or not, I imagine that the best thing you can do at any stage of the war as a neutral subject or organization caught in the middle of it, is making yourself visible and marking your neutrality as clearly as possible. As far as I can understand, zigzagging, proceeding with obscured lights and/or hiding any element that might have helped own identification, would have been a suicidal tactic for a neutral vessel, unless she was sailing in British waters and she was actually trying to smuggle goods in the UK.

Originally Posted by CaptBones

Plus, in convoy, you do not want any "miscellaneous" flags flying that could possibly be mistaken for a signal in the air...signal flags and flashing lights are the primary and sometimes only allowed means of communication in the convoy.

I see you point here. I suppose the same would have applied to flying ensigns outside territorial waters. Isn't it?

Originally Posted by CaptBones

Yeah, not at all practical in a wartime convoy either.

Lol yes

Originally Posted by CaptBones

Yeah...great idea! To be clear...a USN Broad pennant is the personal command pennant of an officer, not a Flag Officer, in command of a Division of BB's, CV's or CA's/CL's or a designated Force, Flotilla/Group, or Squadron of ships or craft of any type (which would include a convoy itself and the ships in a convoy escort force, although the escort commander could be flying a Burgee pennant instead). A Burgee pennant indicates command of a Division of ships or craft other than BB's, CV's or CA's/CL's. Flag Officers obviously display their personal flag in their flagship, when in command of any group of ships. If a ship of that type were escorting a convoy, you would possibly see a Flag Officer's personal flag displayed.

In the USN, Broad pennants are white swallow-tail shaped with dark blue stripes along the top and bottom of the fly (same as the Flotilla pennant in the RN, but the blue is darker); Burgee pennants are narrower swallow-tail shaped and have red stripes along the top and bottom fly (not equivalent to the RN Division pennant). The use of Roman numerals and Arabic numerals is specific, but probably too much so for this discussion (or use in the sim).

In the RN, the Flotilla pennant is white, swallow-tail shaped with light blue stripes along the top and bottom of the fly. The Squadron pennant is squared with colored quadrants; light blue in the upper-left, yellow in the upper-right, red in the lower-right, and white in the lower-left (as viewed with the hoist to the left). Division pennant is squared with horizontal stripes; red, white, blue, and yellow, from top to bottom. If the convoy commander (not the escort commander) is RN, he might even display a RFA Commodore's pennant; dark-blue swallow-tail with a "gold" anchor in the middle, surrounded by a circle of "gold" line (rope, to the landlubbers out there).

Great information thank you very much!

Adding an extra node/bone to the tallest mast of each ship, and linking a Flag Officer's pennant to it (as a normal equipement) should be no problem. The problem is making sure that, for each convoy series, only the first escort unit assigned to the convoy (acting in game as the escort leader) and only the first merchant unit (acting as the commodore ship), have the proper pennants for their role.
In order to achieve that, we could create proxy copies of some destroyers and of some valuable merchant ships, give them pennants, and make sure that one of them is on top of the ship/escort list of each convoy series with a spawn probability of 100%, but then commodore ship and escort commander would always belong to the same class for that convoy series.
A possible alternative could be assigning the ships with pennants to one or more of the special ship types (Type17=Elite Destroyer escort, Type108=Rare Cargo ship, Type109=Rare Troop Transport), and putting on top of each convoy's merchant/escort list a generic entry with a 100% spawn chance and a special ship type specified, but again, if we needed to use ships from of those types elsewhere in the caimpaign, they would always display the pennants, even when they don't apply to those ship's momentary role.
A third alternative is creating one or two new nations (one for Axis and one for Allies), and putting in their rosters only ships "equipped" with command pennants. If we did that, we could draw commodore ships and escort leaders for each convoy from that generic nation, being sure that the game will pick up randomly from their pool and only from there, and we no limitation but the fact of seeing the new fantasy nation(s) listed in museum.

Vecko, if you have followed the whole discussion and if you are interested into its practical (modding) aspects, what do you think about my speculations?