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About this mod
Overhauls the camouflage fatigues available in-game to better match their appearance to the areas where they're effective. Expands FOB Event camo effectiveness for consistency and variety. Makes no changes to single-color "FOB infiltration" camos.
- Requirements
- Permissions and credits
The Problem
The camo system in Metal Gear Solid 5 is somewhat binary: Either you have matching camo for the texture Snake is standing on, or you don't. Since this can have huge effects on enemy sight range, this can lead to situations where camo is inconsistent at all the wrong times, adding to frustration. Additionally, FOB Events added a ton of cool new camos but lazily assigned seemingly random effectiveness to them, leading to bizarre scenarios like Desert Ambush -- a sandy yellow and black camo -- only being effective in greenery! There are many other problems, such as Golden Tiger being the sole camo in the entire game with any degree of effectiveness on red soil, Woodland being completely redundant because of Olive Drab, and so forth.
The goal of this mod is to flesh out the camo system with extra variety, correct obvious problems where camo did not even remotely resemble its area of effectiveness, expand the FOB Event unlockable camos to make them more attractive to acquire and use, and to make camo more consistent in a given area of operations if the player chose their camo correctly (which is hopefully a lot more intuitive, as picking something that looks like it can fit in usually means it will).
The Categories
MGS5 includes five moddable camo categories by default, based on the textures the player is standing on:
As it so happens, there is also a "mix" category which applies only to the Animals and Naked Snake/EVA Jumpsuit camos. This category simply combines the Sand/Soil and Greenery camo types. What I've done is expand the mixed camo categories to contain a mix of every possible camo combination, and assigned each one to at least one non-DLC camo fatigue unlockable through FOB Events. This adds 18 new camo types, though most are just mixtures of existing terrain. I've also gone into the text files and made sure to update effective areas, while also categorizing each fatigue type as follows:
Finally, I added three new camo mixes that are different jumbles of textures than are contained within the standard sets:
The Changes
Here's a quick list of the changes as of the current version, v0.3:
Note the DLC camos are not counted in the totals for each type, so there is always at least one camo of each type you can acquire without paying anything for DLC. You do still have to do the FOB Events to unlock the Advanced camos, of course. Note that absent DLC, the new categories have one camo each: Woodland is Green+, Stone Two-Tone is Rock+, Zebra is Soil+, and Night Splitter is Urban+. Other categories get 1-2 camo options per combination, depending mostly on appearance. I'm surprised it all worked out as nicely as it did, honestly; with a few exceptions, I didn't need to stretch logic to justify the selections I made.
I renamed Desert Sand to "Steel Sand" and Mud to "Steel Mud" just so it was clear they are not environmental camos. They are, and always have been, single-color FOB camos effective on Metal/Concrete. I also renamed Gold Tiger 2T to "Tiger Stripe 2T" because it very clearly is Tiger Stripe and not Golden Tiger.
v0.2 -> v0.3: Restored the Naked camo bonuses to Naked Snake and EVA Jumpsuit; Naked variants do get camo and I was in error on that (thanks, me from two years ago). Created new category Green+ which applies to Woodland; Green+ is just Green with two additional greenish ground textures found in Afghanistan, so it's not much of a buff, but it does mean Woodland is technically better than Olive Drab and thus not utterly useless. Restored Olive Drab's original bonus as a result.
F.A.Q.
Q: How do I know if this is installed properly?
A: Check the camo descriptions. FOB Event camos you have should be labeled Advanced/Monochrome. If you don't have any FOB Event camos, check Woodland or Animals; they should be listed as Advanced.
Q: Are there any changes to Sneaking Suits or Battle Dress?
A: No. It is possible to make changes to these as if they were camo, but I haven't done so as that seems to have been a deliberate design choice on the part of the game developers. They still provide, and have always provided, no visual camo.
Q: What about to swimsuits?
A: At present, I have not changed swimsuits. It would be very easy to do so as an alternate download and I'll look into it for people who want the swimsuits to provide camo, but at the moment they're just the same as before.
Q: Are these camo mixes overpowered?
A: In my experience, not really. They're more consistent if you pick correctly for your area of operations, meaning you shouldn't get treated as if you aren't wearing any camo at all less frequently, but there are still areas where three or more different texture types are present so you will need to watch yourself. The only camo that comes close is probably Tiger Stripe Two-Tone, which as the Desert+Rock camo is effective in an enormous swath of Afghanistan. However, Desert Ambush's Desert+Urban mix is extremely useful in places like Yakho Oboo, Mountain Relay Base, Soviet Base Camp, and so forth, so it's by no means the best camo around even then. If you are concerned about the game becoming easier, I recommend using Infinite Heaven to set guard sight to 120% or better to make up for it.
Q: Will these camos break multiplayer?
A: They shouldn't, since FOB invasions all take place in areas that are 100% Metal/Concrete. Any camo that already worked on FOBs should still work just fine there, and the new camos won't be of any use since, at best, they're Metal/Concrete and something else that never appears on a FOB anyway. That said I can't guarantee they won't cause any problems if you invade someone whose camos are different from yours, so I recommend sticking to Squares or Monochrome fatigues just in case.
Q: Where is Zebra effective, anyway?
A: Any dry soil, whether it's plain or red. Essentially if you're out in the open in Africa and not on a road or on rocks/wetlands, you should be covered. This was a compromise in that I figured if anybody was going to see a zebra and not notice it, it'd be while it's milling about in the open in Africa. Hence why Soil+ doesn't cover sand: A zebra in Afghanistan would just be silly (though if you know your areas, it has some effectiveness even there...).
The camo system in Metal Gear Solid 5 is somewhat binary: Either you have matching camo for the texture Snake is standing on, or you don't. Since this can have huge effects on enemy sight range, this can lead to situations where camo is inconsistent at all the wrong times, adding to frustration. Additionally, FOB Events added a ton of cool new camos but lazily assigned seemingly random effectiveness to them, leading to bizarre scenarios like Desert Ambush -- a sandy yellow and black camo -- only being effective in greenery! There are many other problems, such as Golden Tiger being the sole camo in the entire game with any degree of effectiveness on red soil, Woodland being completely redundant because of Olive Drab, and so forth.
The goal of this mod is to flesh out the camo system with extra variety, correct obvious problems where camo did not even remotely resemble its area of effectiveness, expand the FOB Event unlockable camos to make them more attractive to acquire and use, and to make camo more consistent in a given area of operations if the player chose their camo correctly (which is hopefully a lot more intuitive, as picking something that looks like it can fit in usually means it will).
The Categories
MGS5 includes five moddable camo categories by default, based on the textures the player is standing on:
- Sand/Soil: Includes most sandy desert terrain, a number of rocky Afghanistan terrains, and gravel.
- Rock: Includes most rocky terrains not covered by Sand/Soil, and a few soil terrains as well.
- Greenery: Includes a number of forest, jungle, and mossy terrain textures.
- Marshy/Wet: Includes a number of dark or "wet" soil types and several kinds of water.
- Metal/Concrete: Includes most "base" terrain, including fully developed roads, helipads, concrete buildings, and most FOB textures (pipes etc.).
As it so happens, there is also a "mix" category which applies only to the Animals and Naked Snake/EVA Jumpsuit camos. This category simply combines the Sand/Soil and Greenery camo types. What I've done is expand the mixed camo categories to contain a mix of every possible camo combination, and assigned each one to at least one non-DLC camo fatigue unlockable through FOB Events. This adds 18 new camo types, though most are just mixtures of existing terrain. I've also gone into the text files and made sure to update effective areas, while also categorizing each fatigue type as follows:
- Standard: The game originally used this term to describe all camo fatigues. It now applies only to the camos that are unlockable offline (except Woodland and Animals): Olive Drab, Splitter, Squares, Tiger Stripe, Golden Tiger, Desert Fox, and Wetwork.
- Monochrome: This refers to all single color camos, such as Parasite Mist or Brick Red. These camos were all effective for Metal/Concrete and were clearly intended for style purposes when infiltrating enemy FOBs. I have made no changes to these camos, except to change the name of a couple to ensure they're not confusing (Desert Sand and Mud mainly). A monochrome camo is still there for FOB invasions and nothing else.
- Advanced: A new term that applies to all other FOB Event camos (the ones with actual patterns). Advanced fatigues work in two different terrain types each (with a few exceptions). They aren't any more effective in each area than standard camos, they're simply more versatile and capable of crossing between texture boundaries without dropping your camo bonus abruptly.
Finally, I added three new camo mixes that are different jumbles of textures than are contained within the standard sets:
- Rock+: Applies to basically all rocklike terrain, including a number of "rocky" terrain types that were previously contained in Sand/Soil.
- Soil+: Applies to all soil textures under Sand/Soil and all soil textures under Red Soil, but not to any sand textures, nor to gravel or wet soil.
- Urban+: Applies to all textures that Metal/Concrete covers, as well as a number of others that may or may not actually be accounted for in-game such as brick, tin, vinyl, plastic, etc. If this works it makes some edge cases slightly better, if it doesn't work it's exactly the same as Metal/Concrete.
The Changes
Here's a quick list of the changes as of the current version, v0.3:
Note the DLC camos are not counted in the totals for each type, so there is always at least one camo of each type you can acquire without paying anything for DLC. You do still have to do the FOB Events to unlock the Advanced camos, of course. Note that absent DLC, the new categories have one camo each: Woodland is Green+, Stone Two-Tone is Rock+, Zebra is Soil+, and Night Splitter is Urban+. Other categories get 1-2 camo options per combination, depending mostly on appearance. I'm surprised it all worked out as nicely as it did, honestly; with a few exceptions, I didn't need to stretch logic to justify the selections I made.
I renamed Desert Sand to "Steel Sand" and Mud to "Steel Mud" just so it was clear they are not environmental camos. They are, and always have been, single-color FOB camos effective on Metal/Concrete. I also renamed Gold Tiger 2T to "Tiger Stripe 2T" because it very clearly is Tiger Stripe and not Golden Tiger.
v0.2 -> v0.3: Restored the Naked camo bonuses to Naked Snake and EVA Jumpsuit; Naked variants do get camo and I was in error on that (thanks, me from two years ago). Created new category Green+ which applies to Woodland; Green+ is just Green with two additional greenish ground textures found in Afghanistan, so it's not much of a buff, but it does mean Woodland is technically better than Olive Drab and thus not utterly useless. Restored Olive Drab's original bonus as a result.
F.A.Q.
Q: How do I know if this is installed properly?
A: Check the camo descriptions. FOB Event camos you have should be labeled Advanced/Monochrome. If you don't have any FOB Event camos, check Woodland or Animals; they should be listed as Advanced.
Q: Are there any changes to Sneaking Suits or Battle Dress?
A: No. It is possible to make changes to these as if they were camo, but I haven't done so as that seems to have been a deliberate design choice on the part of the game developers. They still provide, and have always provided, no visual camo.
Q: What about to swimsuits?
A: At present, I have not changed swimsuits. It would be very easy to do so as an alternate download and I'll look into it for people who want the swimsuits to provide camo, but at the moment they're just the same as before.
Q: Are these camo mixes overpowered?
A: In my experience, not really. They're more consistent if you pick correctly for your area of operations, meaning you shouldn't get treated as if you aren't wearing any camo at all less frequently, but there are still areas where three or more different texture types are present so you will need to watch yourself. The only camo that comes close is probably Tiger Stripe Two-Tone, which as the Desert+Rock camo is effective in an enormous swath of Afghanistan. However, Desert Ambush's Desert+Urban mix is extremely useful in places like Yakho Oboo, Mountain Relay Base, Soviet Base Camp, and so forth, so it's by no means the best camo around even then. If you are concerned about the game becoming easier, I recommend using Infinite Heaven to set guard sight to 120% or better to make up for it.
Q: Will these camos break multiplayer?
A: They shouldn't, since FOB invasions all take place in areas that are 100% Metal/Concrete. Any camo that already worked on FOBs should still work just fine there, and the new camos won't be of any use since, at best, they're Metal/Concrete and something else that never appears on a FOB anyway. That said I can't guarantee they won't cause any problems if you invade someone whose camos are different from yours, so I recommend sticking to Squares or Monochrome fatigues just in case.
Q: Where is Zebra effective, anyway?
A: Any dry soil, whether it's plain or red. Essentially if you're out in the open in Africa and not on a road or on rocks/wetlands, you should be covered. This was a compromise in that I figured if anybody was going to see a zebra and not notice it, it'd be while it's milling about in the open in Africa. Hence why Soil+ doesn't cover sand: A zebra in Afghanistan would just be silly (though if you know your areas, it has some effectiveness even there...).