Strategic View, Icons, and readability

Since a large portion of this game is played from the strategic view I think we are in need of a new type of visual with more information. the more visual information we can get in strategic view the better.

I would propose that all strategic icons should be a simple top down view of the unit/structure with damage taken affecting the icon with cracks and obvious damage decals right on the icon. this way you get facing direction and damage taken information right from the strategic icons themselves. I would also like to see all reclaimable objects have strategic icons maybe grey coloured. this would make wrecks and destroyed buildings still show up as "neutral reclaimable faction"

projectiles should be also colour coded based on their game play layer.
yellow for underwater, orange for ground, red for air, purple for orbit. this would help readability immensely

I would also like to see player colours shaded slightly depending on the layer.

IE: red player
sub naval: dark red
ground: vivid red
air: lighter red
orbit: pale red

this would probably require a bit of tuning in the player colour choices but would go a long way to being able to differentiate between different game play layers beyond the shape of the icons.


these types of things are relatively minor but make a very large impact to game play on the strategic level.


hell, if the optimization of the models proves to be problematic on super scale games you could potentially have super low poly models on and play exclusively in the strategic view with few drawbacks.

theres already two threads. and several mods. https://forums.uberent.com/threads/strategic-icons.54513/


try my sup com icons :

those threads don't address what i am proposing. yes they speak to the crappyness of the current icons but the proposed solutions are lacking in my opinion.

I want to see the "what you see is what you get" doctrine be extended to the strategic icons and projectiles.

the intent is that you can get all the visual information you need from dynamic icons and to include neutral objects into the strategic icons.

Color shades cannot be relied upon. If someone is color blind, that now means nothing.

I'm actually contemplating taking a swing at making my own strategic icons. We'll see if I get around to it. Probably won't since viewers will want to see the default icons.

shades would still apply to colour blindness as they would still view them as darker, medium, light, lighter.

Still doesn't mean it's easy to distinguish – for regular people or color blind people.

My roommate is partially color blind and has difficulty distinguishing between colors. He'd struggle with this.

And even then, many people without color blindness would have difficulty distinguishing between shades unless the units were right next to each other.

that is the point.... currently it is very difficult to tell late game what icons are orbital/air ground when everything is mashed together with a single colour shade. with multiple shades it simply creates a very small difference that creates visual differentiation and collation of like differences will result is a minor thing aiding greatly in unit layer recognition. the difference in the shade is what matters, this is different than a difference between colours. even a colour blind person can differentiate between grey scales.

this would be very easy to implement and make a very large difference in the late game.

you could also make the commander very vivid my making the colour very bright, therefore aiding in finding your commander in all the confusion. it would also make finding enemy commanders easier, perhaps reducing the current prohibitive length of some games.

Icons just need more unique look for each Unit

I mean look at the commander Icon you can see it where it is no mather what

There was a build where zooming out a little showed all ground l layer units, air included. Then zooming a little further erased ground icons and left only orbital. I really liked that part of that particular build... but now it's gone it made orbital life simple...... BRING IT BACK!!!!! Sorry I have no insight on making the icons better.... don't think seeing the damage on assault units is that big of a deal as they die like flies, but being able to track health of key buildings is. But I have no problem with the current health bar.....