For a long time after I first discovered them, I was your average Advanced Strategic Icons fan.

After some fairly recent discussion, see https://forum.faforever.com/topic/2543/downsides-of-the-advanced-strategic-icons-mod?_=1655984915629 I returned to using the stock icons.

Now having giving the comments and suggestions from much better players than me some thought, I am a Subtle Strategic Icons enjoyer.

The ideas for this mod have come from a few directions, one being the mantis bot icon change which led me to consider the other icon changes faf has made to base Supcom FA. In several ways this mod builds on the unit icon changes that have already been made by this community.

So this mod adds the 'armored' symbol to more units than just the brick and percie: in tier 2 we currently have tanks sharing the same icon, so the obsidian, rhino and pillar now have the 'armored' cross icon to represent the slower but tankier unit in their tier (for pillar it is hp/mass anyway). In response to this the fire beetle and mercy have a more 'hollow' cross icon to differentiate them.

This is extended to tier 1 so the mantis retains its bot icon but now has the cross symbol.

At this point looking at the models, I added the bot icon for those which are obviously so, being the mole, fire beetle, Seraphim t1 mobile anti air and Seraphim t3 mobile artillery. Bots will be bots in this mod, in a game of tanks vs giant stompy robots.

The next step was highlights for the most important structures that you want to notice on first glance if possible, so now intel, TMD, SMD, SML have bi-colored outlines to catch your attention regardless of player color, and the ACU and TMD have white outlines.

The last, most subtle change was to the size of icons, the idea is to again draw your attention to impactful units you want to recognize such as t2 combat air, t2 tanks, t2 subs. Higher tier engineers also become easier to pick out of your swarm of t1 engies. The t3 armored bots are also a little wider to fit their larger symbol.

As part of the progression all T3 units have larger icons, and also all Factory HQ's to help you know when you are behind ! Finally, Experimentals have a larger icon but also a small cross symbol to help catch the eye instead of being just a blank space.

So ultimately the aim of this mod is to provide the maximum amount of game-relevant information in the clearest way possible. In that spirit, some changes are added to third level hives to give them the t3 icon so you know if any are not fully upgraded. Also kennel drones, since they have no blueprints and are just raw buildpower, now have a tierless engineer icon, and the sACU drone has a t3 engineer icon.

I have included some screenshots per faction of the relevant units in-game:

Don't care for the fat strats or the thicc bricks? Not keen on the icon shape or symbol changes? I have added a lite edition of the mod with just the intel, sml/tml, smd/tmd, and the ACU highlight changes. If you are not currently using any icon mod I think this can help your game.

BW

Let's face it, the shoulder drone is basically a meme strategy and not seen in serious games

To make it potentially less so, if it also granted the full T1 suite to the ACU and the drone, it could make a factory-less opening potentially viable on some maps and prove more gameplay options with the ACU being able to build hydro, radar, storages etc for an early t2 say

You may not be aware, but T2 Torp defense currently has Personal Stealth - for all factions. Being a fixed structure means it will remain on your strategic view as soon as you get visual on it.

But if you make it mobile, even the slowest supported speed which is 0.1, then you will need current vision / Omni to get a bead on it. Making it very slow should prevent using it as an actual unit to attack with.

After some mucking around trying to get the ion storm to switch to enemy civilian control when it spawns, I got a working version using patrol commands to prevent it being moved under player control

This does change the behaviour slightly so it will tend to stay in one place if it is actively hitting one target. Mod is in the vault 'Othuy Mass Killed' with veterancy set to same values as Ythotha. This is necessarily a Sim mod because of the unit blueprint charge although it doesn't really change balance at all.

what if, the first factory you placed was basically insta-built ( so build time/cost of 1 ) so you could still place it yourself for best adjacency

i was thinking one of the mods that have your ACU selected with a fac from the start, as you could have this be a modded version that you otherwise can't build in-game

Hey all,

Funny to see this thread and the other popup - I have spent the last couple of weeks trying colours from https://www.canva.com/colors/color-meanings/ to try and get the brightest and most contrasting highlights for a strategic icons mod.

I would have to agree that 16 colours is all that is needed, and having more just gives more descriptions to try and remember. While you can ping something of specific importance in game, being able to say 'red is all t3 mex' or 'yellow has no tmd' is of much benefit.

So below is my take on what these could be, forgive the editing i saw that someone had done the half work for me on Wikipedia and i just threw in the rest with Gimp

Now ideally, the colours are all simple to describe and identifiable to players regardless of background or language.

So we start with the rainbow colours, since this is a thing for FAF, and then we add some more which are distinctly different as possible (likely better choices for these!)

But whichever other ones are chosen, what you then want is for players to be able to tweak these somewhat to their preferred variety, of pink say. This could be done either with some preset options or by using set limits on the hex values which you can choose from within.

Either way, your version of 'pink' which your game displays is still instantly recognisable as that colour. This gives customization especially for players with colour vision impairments to help maximize the difference for them on their screen.

Then the team colours mode, with three colours to represent yourself, your allied team players and enemy players, should have free reign over which colours you can choose to maximize accessibility for those players with really bad eyesight....

Lastly, as well as customizing the colours, players can also choose a preference of the first, say 3 that they would like in game. Then the host would have free choice of their own player colour, and the others could be decided by player rank

Anyway my .02 or more, hope the ideas are helpful

I was thinking after seeing the mass kill totals in a recent cast by some nuke subs just with their long range cruise missiles, that this could be a good change for the Seraphim carrier, since otherwise they lack any longer navy reach than their t2 cruisers, and having just the same weapon currently seems a bit redundant.

Hi again,

Since this is all seems very much up in the air still, I thought I would post again, my explanation may have been convoluted but I'm not sure if my proposal was really understood.

I'm not suggesting for there to be less colours possible - in fact the opposite, we could easily have 30-40 different shades where players can then pick one they like, I know this becomes part of player recognition in the games.

What I recommend is that we have 16 set colour 'categories' if you will, and then within those we can have some different tones and shades players can choose from - but still obviously a red or a dark blue so other players can refer to them easily.

Below I have the current red, green, blue and yellow we have now (or at least it should be, they are taken from a screenshot of the lobby). And then some different versions players could choose from.

The important thing is that, in any game there is only one 'red' or 'green' player so any similarity between the tones won't be relevant.

I would expect players could choose their desired preference order in their profile, for a custom game it would be first in best dressed, TMM could go on rank, highest player gets their first choice, and then so on.

As to accessibility for colour vision impaired players, I had a look at your links Uveso, and it seems we can get a rough equivalent by choosing specific tones which can be distinguished. I found a 16 colour palette at https://github.com/filipworksdev/colorblind-palette-16, which I have included below with a rough mapping to the colours I mentioned earlier.

Note the last column in the first image is of these colours which is why they may seem a bit off So this could be set as the default selection for these players, and they would soon be able to learn which colour players are referring to in-game.

You could definitely have some settings for defaults if you are casting for example so they stay the same - if playing you could choose if you want to show other players choices or only your own, it could be quite flexible.

One last thing I am wondering on, is if the strategic icons could show white unit symbols instead of black for the darker colours as this would be a big aid to visibility! Unsure if possible to load a reversed icon set based on team colour.

Have a 'noobs welcome queue' for starting players, say below 10 or 20 games to get rating established, but which any other players could still join - or maybe select players who are willing to train new players ingame - who would not have their rating affected themselves

Ok I know what you're thinking, yet another Cybran unit with stealth...

But this unit could really benefit from it for several reasons:

1. If you are transporting a stealth ACU or stealth support coms, you no longer need a deceiver / t2 land. Could promote some more sneaky but risky ACU drops with just T2 air, always fun to see.
2. If you are dropping units with a deceiver, then as soon as you complete the drop and the transport moves out of stealth field range, it will show up on radar and potentially spoil the surprise drop early.
3. The Cybran T2 transport is the weakest for hps (slightly) and capacity but having its own stealth would make it the best at least for ACU extractions.

I was thinking after seeing the mass kill totals in a recent cast by some nuke subs just with their long range cruise missiles, that this could be a good change for the Seraphim carrier, since otherwise they lack any longer navy reach than their t2 cruisers, and having just the same weapon currently seems a bit redundant.

well once you have 1k income maybe consider Engineer presets instead? they are much less prone to milling around between builds.

altho - what would be interesting is if these presets came with their own ' factory' module similar to new fatty / carriers that you could select separately and which would have repeat build option available for XP's. If you could place two templates on repeat build that didn't disappear, they could have orders to move off and the boys would alternate between after each finishes

The Stinger just tends to miss moving targets a lot. Could it get the same love the Jester and Vulthoo are getting with the soft projectile tracking?

@segacaretaker said in Mex upgrade change:

You get it wrong, this would finetune the mex upgrades and flatten the peaks.
This would speed up the game a little bit, this is the only real change and not maybe wanted.

Expl.

mass output t1 mex with 2/3 additinal substeps

0%-> 2 mass-> ~t1 HP
33% -> 3 mass-> t1 HP
66% -> 4.5 mass -> t1 HP
100% -> 6 mass -> t2 HP ( t2 reached )

Edit 2:
It seems you all dislike it, i would love to test it, but i don´t need such a feature desperate.
Mod would be waste of time when everybody don´t want it anyway. np

You can get some of this effect right now if you wanted to test it : upgrade each mex to Tech 2 and then cap with storages before upping the next one

What about a small range buff 5 or 10 for T3 mobile arty, might see it used more after setup nerf. Also help vs snipers.

I had an old map idea that would suit the requirements, signing up

I believe EM does it based on the current mass produced by the mex, so if t2 mex is putting out 9 mass it is fully capped and upgrades.

what if, the first factory you placed was basically insta-built ( so build time/cost of 1 ) so you could still place it yourself for best adjacency

i was thinking one of the mods that have your ACU selected with a fac from the start, as you could have this be a modded version that you otherwise can't build in-game

@thewheelie hello forum goblin, you should buy a garlic press!

Well, to give Aeon a viable option , give the second range gun upgrade full OC damage vs unshielded buildings