I'm not sure if someone has suggested this, but this is my idea on how to effectively manage intel and see what units are behind a planet when looking from the front. See attached pic. The photoshoppery may be a little crude but I didn't want to spend a lot of time on a mock up. The system works in that if you have radar coverage or ghosted buildings or direct line of sight at various points on the planet the UI will show blips in a circle around the planet in the direction which it is shortest to travel in to get that specific blip centre screen. So say for example you want to see where a blip is at the top right of the planet, you would pan the camera to the top right until it becomes onscreen. To further sort out distances the system could have it that the blips are at different heights from the ground depending on how far away it is - that is to say that a vehicle close to the front of the planet will appear closer to the edge (so that it can seamlessly snap onto the sphere when it enters the front) and objects further away are higher up. An optional line could connect the blip with the object if far away for ease of finding the location. The final thing with the system is that you could have coloured areas (akin to how some HUDs work on space sim games) either team coloured or friend/foe coloured to work with the blips to give an overall indication of in what direction the hostiles/allies are located. It's not quite perfect, since it doesn't give information as to your intel coverage etc. is on the other side of the planet, (and I haven't considered how air would work out on it) but I think it would work as a nice supplement. Edit: Added a mock up of how the icons would work for a unit travelling from the far to the front side
This is pretty smart, the dark space around the planet can be utilized to show some intel info in a collapsed fashion to indicate enemy location (pinpoint location and distance (fade colours maybe) This idea has potential, I hope the devs look into it.
Assuming player colours are limited to a set of specific, relatively bright ones, I'd actually prefer a system that works similar to now; the icons are rendered smaller, through the planet, and a darker shade to indicate they are far-side rather than near-side. Cons: not immediately intuitive until the camera is moved / rotated more icon rendering required for the engine (it cannot occlude icons for far-side units) valid player colours must have a relatively unique darkened shade, to avoid confusion between Player A nearside and (similar colour) Player B far-side Pros: they'll map seamlessly as units transition from far to near side as you rotate the globe you'll intuitively grasp where the units are rendering them like this lends itself to actual 3D display (i.e. nVidia 3D Vision / AMD HD3D) of icons behind the planet surface even zooming out to system level should be relatively readable; although at some point you'll want to implement an icon LoD / hide option (possibly based on unit size) Humans are pretty good at grasping 3D spaces from 2D implementations, and as implemented now (icons drawn behind the planet) if you zoom out a bit and rotate the globe, you should be able to get a good feel for where those units actually are. Darkening farside icons is just an additional readability touch in that respect.
This would be very, very helpful. +1 for coming up with a solution, this man is a gentleman and a scholar.
This is a great idea +1. My only concern is what would it be like late game when most of the planet is covered in buildings and particularly units, it might become a jumbled mess around the edge.
One of the suggestions that was mentioned a couple of times in some interviews / devlogs (and is seen sort of in the gameplay visualisation) is that from a distance a lot of the icons will coalesce into a smaller amount of icons with names (such as enemy base 1) etc. It might be interesting to see how that could work out. One thing the idea in the OP does mention to solve the edge becoming crowded (though I really should improve the concept mock-up) is that the icons appear at different heights above the circle outline of the planet. The higher an icon is the further away it is in that direction. That way, objects closer to the front are lower down and will actually seamlessly translate onto the planet itself. (I'm probably going to expand the mock-up tomorrow). The differing heights in itself allow for it to not become as crowded if it were all at the same radius.
I agreed with darktom77, In late game can be a reall mess. But maybe this idea will help understood a bit the concern, and make something with it.
The idea needs some work, but it has potential. The devs should look into it and see if they can make if work (There are some problems with the idea that needs to be worked out for it to be feasible).
You need to have lines attaching the icons to their locations, otherwise this will be mistaken for the orbital layer frequently. There needs to be some indication that this isn't the actual location of the units in question.
I made the lines a little clearer not in that image (they were there but faint before). Obviously there still needs some work to be done on it all. There might be a way to make orbital units have a unique icon shape (and perhaps other visual features to make it stand apart)
One of the few things I actually enjoyed in SupCom2 was the unit grouping. It would provide a single icon and counter for a group of units within a certain area when zoomed out. I forget how accurate it was, but it certainly helped strategic level planning when there's a ton of stuff happening.
That's one of the things they have said they wanted to do with the UI to help manage information more clearly. You can see in their concept video in the screengrab below an idea what they might have in mind
You could also use the same thing that supcom2 and do autogrouping in the bars : Similars and near units are under the same strat icon, and you display the number next to it. I really like your idea.
Provided you group all units of same type which are close to each other, within a single icon but with additional display options to show evidence of the group size, then the mess could be avoided. Same for holographic solution.
This is actually a pretty reasonable solution to the problem. As others have suggested, I do think there will need to be some kind of system for aggregating symbols that are close together, but this is actually a reasonable solution. In order to help distinguish it from the orbital layer, I would just suggest that the satellite symbols are very different from the ones on the surface. I think this would be necessary anyway to help distinguish them when they transit a planet, so it's really not too big of an issue.
