Hey all,
Funny to see this thread and the other popup - I have spent the last couple of weeks trying colours from https://www.canva.com/colors/color-meanings/ to try and get the brightest and most contrasting highlights for a strategic icons mod.
I would have to agree that 16 colours is all that is needed, and having more just gives more descriptions to try and remember. While you can ping something of specific importance in game, being able to say 'red is all t3 mex' or 'yellow has no tmd' is of much benefit.
So below is my take on what these could be, forgive the editing i saw that someone had done the half work for me on Wikipedia and i just threw in the rest with Gimp
Now ideally, the colours are all simple to describe and identifiable to players regardless of background or language.
So we start with the rainbow colours, since this is a thing for FAF, and then we add some more which are distinctly different as possible (likely better choices for these!)
But whichever other ones are chosen, what you then want is for players to be able to tweak these somewhat to their preferred variety, of pink say. This could be done either with some preset options or by using set limits on the hex values which you can choose from within.
Either way, your version of 'pink' which your game displays is still instantly recognisable as that colour. This gives customization especially for players with colour vision impairments to help maximize the difference for them on their screen.
Then the team colours mode, with three colours to represent yourself, your allied team players and enemy players, should have free reign over which colours you can choose to maximize accessibility for those players with really bad eyesight....
Lastly, as well as customizing the colours, players can also choose a preference of the first, say 3 that they would like in game. Then the host would have free choice of their own player colour, and the others could be decided by player rank
Anyway my .02 or more, hope the ideas are helpful