Comment 2 for bug 978160

@Nasenbaer#1 - You are correct, of course, that the Atlantean buildings use the blueish-gray color to identify surfaces that will show player color on the game map. The other tribes' buildings use either a white or off-white color for this purpose. Though I was not involved at the time they were created, I believe the use of the darker color on the Atlantean buildings was intentional to invoke a darkening effect on the base player color when seen in the game. In other words, the original hue of the player color areas in an image has a direct impact on the reflectivity of those areas when masked and overlayed with a standard player color in the game.

example: the blue player color for the Atlantean buildings is a much darker hue than the blue player color of the other tribes. Similarly, the Atlantean red is a dark red, green a dark green, etc.

So, again, it is due to the fact that NO player color mask is applied to the building images in menus, status screens, etc. that one ultimately sees the underlying player color designator on the buildings.