2D warfare: Strategic icons!

During battles in Balanced Annihilation, the first thing I want to know about my units is their directional orientation. Even in the strategic layer, and with dozens of units under my command. Peewee/AK skirmishes for example can be determined down to the wire. Knowing which directon my units are facing lets me know, when I'm ordering a fall back, how much time they have to spend turning before they start moving. Even in Forged Alliance I found myself wanting to order around small skirmishes in the icon layer, outcomes of which are greatly affected by things like unit and turret turn rates. (In before "MASSIVE!", Everything Uber has stressed has been on scalability, not necessarily massive.)

A look through this wiki reveals 70 different types of mobile ships, including fighters, bombers, construction and trade vessels, across all three factions. That's 70 different icons for mobile units, and those are all ships. It can't be that hard to come up with at least that many unique profiles. Or hell. Never mind Sins of a Solar Empire. Look at the units in either ARM or CORE in Total Annihilation. They were all distinguishable enough from one another.

As for your statement that viewing the game at any icon level is for when you no longer care about unit actions...well...I'm sure playtesters can determine that.

I say keep it simple, and that's pretty much it...

When something is down to the wire, it demands intense, close focus. If you have that kind of close attention to the battle, then you are already close enough to see everything. There is no need to abstract down to icons.

A unit's direction can already be inferred from its movement.

I'm curious why you'd worry about micro oriented details on the strategic layer. The strat layer is for seeing the big picture. There's nothing big about where a peewee is pointing (protip- it's pointing at the enemy). Perhaps there is a place where unit direction is incredibly important to its use (like artillery). But such units tend to be big, or are few and far between.

No. It very well would be possible to command a line of Peewees/AKs and have a good zoom of the map at the same time. It would be possible to do this in Forged Alliance as well. I would if icons showed the directions units face.

You can't tell which direction your, or your enemy's units are facing if they're stationary.

Icons are for when unit models are too small to decipher from plain visuals. That doesn't mean you're zoomed so far out that you can't finely command them on the map.

Don't be so dense to believe that zoom is segregated into two distinct 'tactical' and 'strategic' layers--where one is for microing, the other is for observing the big picture and nothing else. The truth is I only need to be zoomed in enough to where I can decipher individual unit positions on the map. Or zoomed out enough to observe everything I want to know.

PEEWEES ARE IN TA YOU NOOB! plus you cant tell what icon is a ak or a peewee if they are In a giant blob o' Doom, the icons would be too small or too close to tell them apart without zooming in!

Not to mention that bots have the highest turning speed of any in the game, and are turreted so can turn their guns even faster.

Above: Two armies shifting back and forth. My units need to stay out of the range of his deadlier EMGs. His units need to close the gap to prevent getting picked off.

Not exactly hard to tell apart, don't you think.

Igncom, I would like to see you play the above face off against pros, if you think the unit turn rates are so quick to be meaningless.

I said Peewee and AK turn speeds are quick.

And If you actually check the thread you will find that I AGREE WITH YOU.

So why the snarky comments?

So did I.

What? Your post looked like it was supplementing meltedcandles's, was it not? Well I lost track of where you stood then, sorry.

I love strategic Icons. I played SupCom a ton. My question was more directed at the added features that the OP was suggesting. I think that would be alot of data to take in for a massive battle and while it may help with micro for smaller scale battles when it gets to large scale it would get exponentially harder.

Edit: and I am asking it as a legit question. I dont know and am looking for opinions.

I only want to add, that you can test icons in action in my mini pa

Sources
viewtopic.php?f=64&t=43193

I watched FAF today.
And i came to the conclusion FA strat icons won't fit to PA. While FA is more clinic and slim, PA feels heavy and meaty, so icons should resemble that. Maybe let them appear like real buttons, or in the style of ruse, with a little 3d effect.

Nope, I can't.

I dunno about your feelings. I don't think of PA as heavy and it is definitely not meaty?

Whatever icons UBER might end up with, I hope it's gonna be fully 2D. The units below the icons are 3D, that's enough.

Why does my tank get bigger when I zoom out?! Damn, I hated that effect in Ruse with passion.

Personally I find FA icons very well done, they are very easy and fast to identify and distinguish from each other.

I didn't said they are bad. I really like them. But I think their style won't fit to PA.

incoming alpha icons reminded me to bump this