After Icon comes...

Would like to see a heatmap style map overlay for really far zoom out.
Because eventually the icons tend to intercept. But a heat map with your color getting more intense the more army there is at a certain location on the map could be helpfull too.

I dont think robots emit heat.

A] Why wouldn't they?

B] It wasn't intended as a literal heatmap. Rather it would use the same principles, the more units clustered together the 'brighter' the cluster would be to denote it's overall 'size/strength'.

Anyways, I'm not sure it will be needed, while we might be controlling large numbers of units at once, it doesn't necessarily mean they'll be in a single area. I just don't think we know enough yet to say if something like that is needed yet.

Mike

You got me.

Bots do emit heat, I think. It would make sense.

I shouldnt have used the term Heatmap to describe what i mean. :?

well maybe this helps you to visualize. Imagine this for enemy Blue for ally green for your units.
We could call it the Bombyzilla Overlaymap of PA

Density or distribution Map?

Difference?
I mean its just the Key that injects meaning.

How high resolution is that picture in the link? It seems like you probably have thousand points of data in that picture.
I think you would in most cases have much lower resolution in PA and at that point blobs of unit icons would purvey the concentration of force just as good as a "heatmap".
It would be interesting though if power or cost of the units would create a heatmap.
So if you have few heavy tanks they would provide much more brightness/colour because they cost more while a lot of cheap scouts wouldn't affect the heatmap much at all.

I smell a really cool mod brewing, if Uber doesn't pick this up.

Icons still have a place in extremely zoomed out views.
You simply merge those of nearby like units and add a modifier indicating the approx. size of the group.

You would end up with something akin to APP-6A / MIL-STD-2525C.

e.g.
This could represent ~100 engineers. The number of • being the order of magnitude (1/10/100/1,000/etc.).

Code:

  •••
┌-----┐
|(┌┬┐)|
└-----┘

If there was too much variety in a large force to make distinguishing individual unit types practical you can then group them via other means such as domain (Land/Air/Sea/Sub-sea) and provide a generic symbol for that group.

Yes they emit heat.

You could use the planet mesh for the map. Could save some ressources on far away zoom. Aka solar map.