system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
[Star Wars: Revenge of The Sith] At the end of Revenge Of the Sith, we see a shot of Venator class cruisers painted in Imperial grey. Does this mean palpatine was secretly amassing all the early imperial hardware (and respraying Venators) for quite some time in secret?

Who would’ve been doing this and surely they would’ve known about the imminent transition to empire?
gpt
Not necessarily. When the Empire was formed they wanted to differentiate it from the "old and corrupt" Republic and by extension, the Grand Army as fast as possible. Repainting ships and replacing uniforms are pretty fast ways to do so.