Strategic icons

Alright, guys, let's talk about those. Aside from many things we can learn from SupCom, there are many ways we can expand upon it.
If you don't want to read it all, skip right to the point #7, it's the most important one.

1. Blurriness.

My guess is that was done to make Icon positioning more precise, so placing of those things would not be bound to the grid and will represent unit position much better. Sounds like a good idea, right? Wrong. The units are hidden behind icons and you can't tell their exact position anyway (and if you want to do it, you can zoom in), and this only makes icon less readable. Icons are good at representing Type more than at representing Position. That is their main purpose. So, make them sharp, even pixelated if needed. SupCom did it well.

2. Shape. As you can see on the picture above, vehicle and aircraft icons are horizontally stretched. This results in them taking more screenspace, without being able to effectively use this space to display information. The closer the shape to the circle, the better its perimeter-to-area ratio is. SupCom, again, did it well - simple squares, rhombs, even triangles and half-circles did their job pretty well. Bombers had their shape close to the current aircraft, but their triangle bottom was straight, giving more space inside, and the shape itself was used to represent the class. I'm not saying that we should take all the icons from there (it wouldn't work well with separate tanks/bots), but it's sertainly something to learn from.

3. "Advanced" indicator. Double outline doesn't work well. It looks too similar to a tight group of basic, and larger groups of T1, T2 and mixed units are really annoying to distinguish. Little notches (again, like in SupCom) would be better. No notch for basic, one notch for advanced.

4. Integration with other parts of UI. The icons should be displayed near pictures in construction menu and on selection indicator. This makes players more familiar with them. Also, icons can be used as construction meter - starting with just outline when placed, filling towards completion.

5. Commander icon. It should be more visible. In a group of units it should be above most other icons. It should be visible from solar system view near the planet he's on - both on camera and in the planet list on the top right. And, it should be visible through the planet if he is on the other side. To avoid confusion, in this situation the icon should be displayed upside down. All this also should also apply to the enemy commander icons. That would not only give more info, but also make orientation on a sphere a lot easier, because you will always see the position of your main base.
Edit: also it may be nice to have individual icons for commander types or archetypes.

6. Orbital unit icons. When camera is under orbital sphere, orbital icons should be projected on the surface. That way it will be easier to see and control unit positions, both your own and enemy.

7. Overlapping icons. This is the one suggestion I really created this thread for. In short, icons shouldn't cover eachother.
Look here please:

On the top you can see close-up view of the post. Extractor, radar and turret. Then we're zooming out.
On the left side you see the way it's currently done in-game. Icons, representing close-standing buildings and units are overlapping. The further you are, the less you can see. I think, this is the case of prioritizing Position over Type (like in my first point) and I think it's not very good.
On the right side you can see my MS Paint skills how I think it can be done. Icons are bumping each other, avoiding overlapping. This sacrifices exact positioning of the unit, but gives far better understanding of base or army composition.

And, speaking of armies:

Identical icons should merge, adding numbers to the side. Those two armies are pretty different and should be used in different situations, but regular icon display system doesn't represent it well. My idea is, again, sacrifice representation of exact position of an army to get exact composition.

Of course, I'm not sure how it should work. Maybe overlapping should be toned down rather than completely avoided. Maybe it should only apply to the center of visible part of the planet and not to the sides, where everything overlaps regardless of distance. And how should merged icons react to the mouse click? Should you pick one unit or the whole stack? I don't know. But maybe you do.

+1. Talk about wasted pixel space.

Personally I like seeing army blobs. The current implementation conveys army strength through size, which works and has worked in the past. I don't need that translated into a number. In addition, if I wanted to tell a few units to break off, I don't have the exact position of the units I'm trying to select. That information is very important. For units I would say exact position information is paramount.

I suppose you could add a thing like Supcom 2's tactical overlay, but I found that clunky and not very useful.

Good ideas.

The strategic icons are all a little lacking.

Look at my screenshot again. Those two armies look almost identical with default icons, but in fact are differently composed (numbers in lower part are correct). This is example of the system that does not show strength of an army. And this is not even that far of a zoom. It's the distance where icons just appear.

If you want to precisely break formation apart, you are likely to zoom in. If you want to pick a bit of every unit type... Well, I think it can be done. Maybe when you click (or even mouseover) them you get the blob back. Or maybe when you use area select it takes actual unit position rather than icon position... There can be other options. Maybe even this whole thing can be just toggleable with a key combination.

Never played SupCom2, can't find the thing on google images. What did it look like?

Also bare in mind that the supcom2 thing with the combined icon for groups of units is only formed after you command that group, or from unit build from the same factory order.

I think the numbers at least should have an outline, so you know where your army begins.

Agree w/ Brian those are good ideas

Right, but the game is not played with screenshots. When facing a blob, I've never found it very difficult to ballpark its unit composition after a couple seconds of shifting units.

When I split a few units off, I typically draw a small box on one of the sides of the formation from the same zoom level I normally play at. That outline suggestion sounds really good, actually. That would convey the information well and you could have some exact numbers on what you're seeing.

Thinking about how I play a bit more, I'm not sure if I'm abnormal, but I constantly am zooming in and out of various locations rather quickly. I may not be the right person to look at an issue that mainly shows up when you order a lot of things from rather far out. Of course, I could have developed that habit BECAUSE you can't see very well from very far out.

This could be solved by having a hotkey which splits a selection in half?

You could have the UI grouping thing appear when you make command groups (CTRL-1 and such)

With the lack of strategic icons. those tanks look like Fleas on the moon.

But i'm all for Strategic Icon rework. I think Neutrino says this is just first pass.

Thanks for posting your ideas though, I'm sure they will take a look at implementing it.
GJ OP.

just copy Supcom FA

how the icons work there

and BAM done.

Tank/bot distinction. Orbital units. Spherical maps. Interplanetary gameplay.
We have a lot to learn from SupCom, but we can't just copy it, we need to improve upon it and adapt to the new features.

If you want a Supcom FA copy, just

... Tadaaaa ...

play Supcom FA!

If we copied another game, what's the point of making a new game?

You can't have innovation and unique gameplay without doing things differently.

PA is changing the RTS genre. We can't just be lazy and just copy another game.

i like the symbolmerging idea sort of what supcom 2 had but should be only done when units are visualy visible and not by just radar

Not everything done in the past was bad. The wheel was invented thousands of years ago, and we still use them to this very day.

How about icon scaling, so that they are always the same relative distance from each other regardless of zoom?

The look and feel of zooming and strategic icons and selection boxes needs a lot of tuning. FA did a very good job of it, and I don't think differentiating from that for the sake of being different is a good idea. FA did many things right, and it would be foolish not to use the ideas in it to make PA better.

My post here has some of the same discussion:

https://forums.uberent.com/threads/scale-of-ui-specifically-health-bars.53987/