About the construction symbol

Construction stripes are a definite must for me, the construction vehicle in the Delta demo would look like just another tank without it, especially if you're mixing up the team colours which might drown out the unique look of the nanolathe.

Would be interested to see if there's going to be a sapper/fighting engineer type unit (think minelayer, for instance), these would also have a downgraded construction-type feel to them, perhaps?

I agree. It might have been that it just looked like it was too much. With the commander, the construction tape was very subtle. With the construction unit, it was kind of in your face.

There isn't anything wrong with the design of the black and yellow stripes, it's almost universally recognized across the entire world in construction fields, where and how much is used is much more flexible.

Mike

I do not prefer that symbol, but I do not think that there is better one for constructors.

I appreciate the visual delineation of constructor type vehicles, as like the commander, it helps clearly indicate vehicles of importance.

Like was mentioned previously, black and yellow are what was used in TA, so there is already a precedent. I honestly don't mind the yellow and black colours because of the history, but if you want to make it clearer, safety vests these days usually use either fluorescent green or orange as these colours tend to stand out more. Of course, these colours tend to be a little on the jarring side because of this:

I think that the construction symbol is fine, and will be great for identification, but there was far too much of it. Tone it down a bit!

Tone it down? The standard battle view is going to be so far up, it may barely be visible!

Giving the lathe its own glow may help to separate the builders from the killers.

I like my construction units like I like my coffee...COVERED IN BEES!

The visual identifiers are as realistic/unrealistic as enslaving the entire army to your own intellect instead of working as a bot net to determine the best solution. The AI is really what should be playing against itself if it is supposed to be "realistic"...but that would also be boring for the player.

So, put simply, the stripes are for the greater good.

Part of the solution is that the construction symbol doesn't interfere with team colors. With the diagonal stripe pattern players recognize, "hey this isn't team color, it's a construction designation". If they were just yellow or orange, then that could potentially read as (or get drowned out by) team color.

Adding a unique glow/effect to the nano lathe is also another idea that someone up there mentioned. This is just a different implementation of the same solution in that players know a glowy effect isn't team color, and if it's unique to construction units then it's easy to pick out where the engineer units are.

You are right, the construction colours should not interfere with team colours, and I realise now that I could have been clearer.

My colour suggestion was mainly to replace the yellow part of the yellow and black stripes with either fluoro orange or green. So it would still display as stripes, and one of the colours would be black, the other being the fluoro colour.

Moving on from this, fluoro green is probably not the best colour as that will clash with the nanolathe green, maybe just fluoro orange and black stripes at certain points on a vehicle model (so that team colour is still clearly distinguishable).

Yeah that works. I think it's also safe to assume that the construction unit design is still early, and will get refined just like the Delta Commander did. When we see final versions of the engineers we can bring it up again if they look like bees.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dU97w2DH5mc

How about a yellow flashing light? That should be able to stand out and clearly identify construction units from all sorts of zoom levels.

Is there a picture of this anywhere? I didn't watch the stream.

:arrow: The Yellow and Black strips work fine.
In TA they are good, in Supreme Commander 2 the engineers and commander can get lost because they dont have it.

No lights.