In the game, we have 16 colour palettes where we can edit the colours and combinations to our own choice. When we paint something using palette #4, for example, the painted object changes to our new colour. When we change palette #4 later on, for any reason, everything we painted before now automatically changes to the new colour. This needs to be changed.
The colour palette should stand alone as simply a place that holds colour choices. The colour palette shouldn't be connected to paintable objects. Right now, paintable objects seem to be hardwired to 1 of the 16 palettes to get their colour code. Maybe it's this way because it's easier to code - I don't know.
The way I think it should work is for the palette to be a separate entity that merely holds saved paint codes. With the paint gun, you select a paint code from the palette, point it at an object and when you fire the paint gun, the paint gun applies the paint code to that object. The paint gun changes the colour code of the object and that new code is saved with the object, not the palette position being saved with the object. This way, if you ever change the palette, the painted objects in the game are unaffected.
Also, there should be a way to use the paint gun to select or duplicate the colour of an object in the game, by pointing the crosshair at it, clicking the middle mouse button or tapping an unused key on the keyboard (like "P" for paint/picker/etc) and the paint gun picks up that colour code and the next time you fire the paint gun, it shoots that colour. The game could play a quick "reload" sound when you select the colour just to let you know that something has happened. Also, this colour choice should be separate from the 16 colour palettes so it doesn't unnecessarily use up a colour slot - which are in short supply. This "picked palette" would be virtual and overwritten as soon as you pick either an actual colour palette, or you sample another object colour with the gun.
These two functions of separating the palettes and being able to sample/duplicate a colour would alow the players to have more than 16 saved colour palettes in the game, already coloured objects wouldn't be overwritten or changed by mistake, and the devs wouldn't need to add more than the 16 palette choices they already have.
In fact, they could reduce the colour palette choices to only two. One palette choice would be the "default" colour which players could edit or leave as-is. The second palette would be the one where you would use it to make custom colour choices to custom paint your game objects. This second palette would constantly change, and that would be ok, because either you are painting a new object with a new colour scheme, or if you want to duplicate a colour you already used on another game object, you can just use the gun to sample the previously used colour instead of having to figure out what colour codes you used.
