Add unfinished buildings and amphibious unit icons

[JoonasTo]

Yes so having more symbols rather than just a circle is better. That's the whole point here.

And like I've said two or three times already, the fact that they're letters has nothing to do with their name. It has everything to do with them being recognisable symbols. I can do cyrillic letters instead if that makes you feel better.

Sure, I'd eventually like different letters for every single experimental but that's a lot more work than doing C for air, M for sea and T for land, building can stay as a hexagon.

If we wanted to make specific symbols we would need 12 of them for each mobile experimental(buildings will just stay as a hexagon+appropriate symbol.) For example like this:
Fatboy H
Satellite S
Atlantis G
Megalith M
Monkeylord X
Scathis C
Soul Ripper R
Galactic Colossus Z
CZAR O
Tempest T
Ythotha Y
Ahwassa W

We could replace any of those if something becomes too similar or confusing. And this is just from the latin alphabet, there are a lot more symbols that could be used.


Here's a basic premise of what experimental icons could look like:

[biass]

Yes so having more symbols rather than just a circle is better. That's the whole point here.

And like I've said two or three times already, the fact that they're letters has nothing to do with their name. It has everything to do with them being recognisable symbols. I can do cyrillic letters instead if that makes you feel better.

A-are you taking this seriously? an Atlantis is a G?? and a GC, a Z? what??
Making a group of unrelated, confusing "symbols" (because many people might not even understand that these are letters) instead of a broad identifier is NOT better for anyone here, instead of speeding up the process of "what t4 is this" you've actually gone backwards into "what is this, an icon?" "i do not know what the icon is" "this must be a t4 because i zoomed in" " this icon means nothing towards the t4 it's pointing towards"

This isn't just an opinion anymore, this is legitimate User Experience that can be tested, you need to think about more then just yourself my guy. Do you expect people to be able to parse this system ingame, hell, could YOU parse this system ingame if you didn't create it?
If you're so concerned about giving each T4 their own symbol, why not make up a proper set of individual icons for each experimental that actually MEAN something, instead of obfuscated letters that don't mean anything to 98% of the users?
Because it takes too long?
Then i would ask you; why would you bother to try and rework one of supcom's most polished, defining systems, that even went so far as to define said system for a generation worth of games of it's genre, with a suggestion you spent 5 minutes on?

[Farmsletje]

Thats most certainly not confusing

[FtXCommando]

The system is already recognizable. Like I literally have never been confused about any of the units outside of the rare ones like firebeetles that I didn’t see during casts when I first started. You know if an amphib unit is an amphib unit. You know if it’s an ML or mega. Making more icons will purely make it harder for new players to adapt as now they will go from seeing the T4 icon every 4 games to seeing the ML icon every 6, gc every 8, fatboy every 12.

This also doesn’t benefit old players as it changes a system everyone is already aquainted with. So who is this even meant to help? Better if it stays as a mod if anything.

[JoonasTo]

That's the whole point FtxCommando. You don't know if something is amphibious without clicking on it and finding the name of the unit. There's nothing to give you this information in the unit icon. It's just a regular diamond like all other tracked/hover vehicles.

There's also no information on what kind of experimental something is. You need to click on it to find out if it's a Megalith or a Fatboy.

If you're worried about not being able to tell it's a T4, that's why it could be inside a hexagon, very nice and easy. It will tell you it's a T4 and what T4 it is. Nothing is lost, only gained.
Eventually I'd like to have a different icon shape for buildings, air, land and sea experimentals but we really don't have a lot of shapes left that we can differentiate in such a small icon. We can use cross shapes but the problem with those is that the space to put identifiers in that kind of shape is very small and the icon becomes hard to read. This is mainly why extra symbols is an easier solution.

The problem with making individual image icons for every T4 is that the icons are between 12x12 and 20x20 in size. Something like a monkeylord is perfect for this but GC, Ythotha and Commander all look very similar in this size and differentiating between them reliably is very, very hard. Also what do we draw for a fatboy, it's a box. Do we draw a box? We can't, box is for buildings. Or maybe we do, because it's a factory? Do we draw a shield dome? We can't because domes are for ships. So maybe a toy car? That could work, but the image association isn't really any better than a random symbol then. A lot of the experimentals are the same, they're just geographic shapes without identifying features. This is why unique, easily associated images is problematic.

This also shows the possible cross shapes, as you can see, less than ideal. The pointy cross is very close to the diamond already in use for tracked vehicles, the short arm cross is too close to both the hexagon and the diamond while the regular cross doesn't have enough space. The diagonal cross is the best but still too small to add a symbol in there.

The letters and regular markings inside the hexagon work well though. They're clear and easily distinguishable.

[FtXCommando]

That's the whole point FtxCommando. You don't know if something is amphibious without clicking on it and finding the name of the unit. There's nothing to give you this information in the unit icon. It's just a regular diamond like all other tracked/hover vehicles.

I know that's the point. MY point is that it doesn't add anything to the game or make anything easier. Though out of all the new icons, I guess this one is the one that would provide the most utility.

There's also no information on what kind of experimental something is. You need to click on it to find out if it's a Megalith or a Fatboy.

As an 1800 player, I'm going to assume that you realize that the Megalith and Fatboy are from different factions. It's just dumb to make overly complicated icons when the T4 icon already tells you "this is a strong unit" and that you need to focus on countering it. Spend the half second to gloss your cursor over the T4, or, realize what the T4 is because you scouted it 3 minutes ago when it was 30% built like most players do.

If you're worried about not being able to tell it's a T4, that's why it could be inside a hexagon, very nice and easy. It will tell you it's a T4 and what T4 it is. Nothing is lost, only gained.

Eventually I'd like to have a different icon shape for buildings, air, land and sea experimentals but we really don't have a lot of shapes left that we can differentiate in such a small icon. We can use cross shapes but the problem with those is that the space to put identifiers in that kind of shape is very small and the icon becomes hard to read. This is mainly why extra symbols is an easier solution.

I really don't have any words for this other than stupid. If it's a fast circle, it's an air experimental. If it's a slow one, it's a land experimental. If it's in the ocean, it's a navy experimental. Use the faction of the dude you're facing to realize what the experimental is. This is all without addressing the BASIC idea of s c o u t i n g and l o o k i n g. There is zero reason in changing a 10 year old system. It is a system the veteran players are totally used to. Adding 1000000 new icons will do nothing but complicate the game for new players when the only information they need is a basic summary of a force's strength which is given by simple general icons.

Seriously, even with new icons I will never stop doing what I already do (oh so tedious mousing over a t4) to identify what a t4 is. It would probably take about 3500 games for the time I would spend memorizing these random symbols to pay off in the time it would save me in game. And that's assuming I immediately start using the symbols rather than reverting to old habits.

[Myxir]

i mostly agree with ftx here, and would find new icons (especially with no direct/obvious relation to existing ones) as proposed for experimentals more confusing than helpful

what i could imagine would be adding the unit's base type's icon shape as inner icon to the experimental circle.
so basically a tank icon (inside the circle) for fatty, gunship icon (inside the circle) for ripper, submarine for atlantis, bot icon for ML mega chicken and gc, and yes you would have to take a closer look, but this should be acceptable.

[Zeldafanboy]

The furthest I would go would be making "X" represent air experimentals, "+" represent sea experimentals, and the regular exp icon representing land experimentals. (Amphibious experimentals would have the normal land icon)

[Farmsletje]

Amphibious experimental kappa

[JoonasTo]

Okay, I'm starting to think you guys can't see the example pictures I'm posting because of what you keep writing about overly complicated icons. Let me upload somewhere else.


We can do factionally unique icons with already existing ingame icons(though monkeylord becomes stealth and ythotha becomes suicide symbol) but the cross-faction problem still exists, megalith and a fatboy will have the same icon(land factory.) The biggest problem with this is that soulripper, GC, and Ahwassa all have the direct fire symbol. I don't like this as they're all so different from each other. I'd rather put the GC, monkeylord and ythotha with the same symbol and make ahwassa and ripper their own new symbol but if we do that, might as well make new symbols for everything and get rid of the cross-faction problem all together. One solution to this is of course to not separate soulripper, gc, monkeylord, ythotha and ahwassa at all and just leave them all as direct fire but I don't think this is optimal either.

i mostly agree with ftx here, and would find new icons (especially with no direct/obvious relation to existing ones) as proposed for experimentals more confusing than helpful

what i could imagine would be adding the unit's base type's icon shape as inner icon to the experimental circle.
so basically a tank icon (inside the circle) for fatty, gunship icon (inside the circle) for ripper, submarine for atlantis, bot icon for ML mega chicken and gc, and yes you would have to take a closer look, but this should be acceptable.

I actually tried this as one of my earliest ides. We'd have to make the experimental icons larger for this to work, otherwise there's not enough space to identify the icon inside the unit(the examples above are already 16x16 and they're still too small for this.) The experimental icon is actually one of the smallest icons in the game at 11x11, the bot icon is 15x11 because it is unclear in smaller shape with a symbol inside. This is not necessarily a problem ofc if we're willing to make the icons larger than others.