New PTE Icons Discussion - New Icons Suggested

Any screenshots for those who haven't explored the PTE?

Orbital being big definitely is a necesary evil, because those icons are usually what you zoom to that extreme for and are otherwise hard to pull out unless they have size and top layer priority. Commander should be only overlaying icon to them.

Besides that, idk, a lot of the old icons were fine as were. The orbital is welcomed change.

Absolutely. I'll shoot some off a replay. *Replay doesnt work dang it*
I'll play another game and Take some.
I agree with his point about the top line on the Dox, Slammer, Leveler, and Ant Icons. It's confusing when looking at large armies where all you really see from a distance is lines, and not necessarily their direction. Vanguards are particularly hard to distinguish, because they're icon design does not scream *I AM A VANGUARD THAT SHOOTS BIG THINGS THAT HURT*. It just is a cross and a line with a slightly weird outline (Which I like for the Inferno). This outline is SLIGHTLY larger than that of a regular unit....which makes it confusing.

Shellers are just strange, imho. I see them and I'm like a Pelter? What? Oh it moves....

The AA vehicle is so difficult to distinguish from regular tanks in a few moments that I usually just send my air force over the army to see if there is any AA.

This is after 4 games of large scale battles, mind. Things will certainly become easier as time goes on, but my initial impression is one of confusion towards these parts.

Orbital:

This part of the game is in need of being LESS of a *oh-ho! We added in a higher air layer for laughs!* and more of a *Orbital so serious* type of deal.
With that in mind, I love the new Orbital Icons' animations for hovering, Size, and Significance.

That is, unfortunately, also their downfall.
When I see an icon that looks like a RADAR ICON for the Anchor, I DO NOT think, OOO that's an ANCHOR.

I think, why does FredMcBob have 15 radars above his base? Huh?
Thought that one would have been shot down at the daily office coffee break, Uber.

I think there needs to be a distinguishing factor between the icons of the Orbital Radars and the Ground Radars. For example, observe my amazing MS Paint skillz:


Also, can we please change the Laser Icon to something that doesn't mean *I shoot at things in my layer* (A straight line at the top like the Ant and Dox)? Like, for example, a down arrow for emphasis.

Perhaps it might be worth taking a look at the Nato symbols and the design ideas behind them?

While possibly confusing at first, once basic familiarity with the symbols is achieved, rapid differentiation can occur. In addition, symbols can be combined to represent new units that are able to be rapidly interpreted (eg. "Mechanized infantry" is a combination of "infantry" and "tank" symbols)


From wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_Military_Symbols_for_Land_Based_Systems

SupCom used a modified version of the NATO unit symbols, so many people are familiar with them already.

IIRC, there's already a mod for PA that replaces the unit icons with SupCom like unit symbols, though the name escapes me.

I would just like to point out that easily recognized icons are only part of it, as you show in this image:



All the icons are an unholy mess. Add to this a typical mid-late game scenario, where you may have legions of Aircraft patrolling your base, clusters of units, dotted throughout and masses of orbital assets cluttering the sky. Unit selection becomes an extremely exasperating and a painstakingly slow process, it's near impossible to achieve anything as specific as 'just' sending ground vehicles to a location. Particularly as the UI is pretty much on it's knees by now and about as responsive as a drunk sloth.

What is desperately, desperately needed, is a way to isolate layers from selection actions. So the nth layer can be effectively made immune to selection, so that you might select all ground units and send them to defend without sending all your patrolling aircraft too. Or deal with orbital invasions without accidentally sending ground units to their doom, or the wrong bloody direction!

I find the new symbols aren't nearly as consistent as they were before... I liked the double-border of the old symbols indicating if something was T2. Now not everything has that anymore...

Not to mention a lot of these are really confusing to me. I have no idea what a line with two dots next to it means for example...

In the PTE, there is ZERO UI lag until you have filled up at least 3 planets with units.

This pleases me to no end but still, If I'm using only using my air layer defensively for the most part, would it not make sense that I have the choice to temporarily turn off air layer selection in order to expedite ground based actions?

I like some, I don't like others.
Example of something I like:
the + used for fabricators is better than the . from before.
Examples of things I don't like:
the / used for AA should be ^ in my opinion.
The turret icons are not exactly clear.
The combination of strange symbols for different units in asymmetrical ways, such as "_.." or "-ϵ" is not very informative and not easily recognizable from a distance. I believe it's best to keep unit icons relatively symmetrical, or to at least keep their specialization centered on the icon.
Also; perhaps the metal icons could use a more informative symbol.

I suggest learning how to use the CTRL and SHIFT click functions on the lower left corner unit boxes. Really helps when selecting specific units.

Also, there was a way to turn off the icons of the ground and air layer just by zooming out a certain distance or selecting an orbital unit. It didn't stop you from selecting ground, but it made it a hell of a lot easier. I just haven't found the right settings to make that happen in some of the new builds.

Orbital icons are a little messed up in the PTE build, they're supposed to be partially transparent so they're not as overbearing.

Right now icons are all on (per planet) or all off. There's no "only show one strata" of icons. Unit selection is also always just selecting the actual unit rather than being able to select the icons directly. These are things I'd love to get improved but they're both fairly big changes to what we currently do and it's low priority right now over optimization work.

Here's what some of the icons mean right now:
_ hits ground
/ hits air
| hits orbital
_. hit ground at long range (_.. even further)
_♦ (bar * diamond) hit ground, high damage
_ € (bar * euro like symbol) hit ground, flame
͡ (dome curve) radar
+ fabricator
x explosive

There's further work on these, but there's obviously more to do here.

Could you guys start by making the Asymmetrical icons symmetrical??

I think that would certainly help things by a ton.

Also, as Marshall said, attempting to differentiate units by both size and symbol is just....not consistent. I couldn't have told you what you just told me by looking at a unit. Vanguards and Infernos especially, moreso Fighters/bombers.

I could make a mod to do this, but I shouldn't be spending time on that right now.

The Icon Atlas is live. Set visibility: hidden on the icons you don't want and they go away. opacity: 0.5 allows for a little more subtlety.

I'm not sure if changing the strategic icon atlas while the game is live actually updates the icons. If it does, that certainly would let you do that. It's an rather expensive way to handle it though.

If you don't want to do this I can throw something together by tomorrow night