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

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

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.

Hey all,

After the recent topic on more impact for a lower rank team mate being killed, there was mention of a mod Structure Share, which transfers only buildings and engineers.

This mod is more or less the reverse of that, and is also made to tie in with the new game option for no tech sharing which was added in the April patch.

What this mod does when fullshare is on, is transfer all units and structures, except factories, gateways, engineers and sACU's. So the eco, army, base defenses, intel buildings are all preserved when that player dies, but you will be hurting for buildpower, and lose access to that players tech.

So if this was a lower rank player but the only faction on your team, you have now lost access to the faction's units, XP's etc.

Have tweaked some things to make this viable - I have added Transports to the list of items prevented from being gifted, to avoid the trivial loophole of gifting a transport with engies on it(also Stingers). The game does have logic to prevent you gifting a transport with your ACU so ideally this could be used as well for engies & sACU's. I couldn't find it in the code tho.

Also since 3 experimentals - tempest, fatty and mega - could build engies I have removed them from their unit blueprints.

To make lategame a bit less tedious, I have given kennels to sparkies, and hives to megas(and upped their build range 1-1.5 which helped with building). So an incentive to keep your newbie uef or cybran player alive until you can borrow their crab or fatty(to make sparkies).

Since you would gain other building units like carriers, or donut or atlantis, you may wish to use these conservatively so you can at least build some of any 'extinct' faction units, but this also places incentive on the other team to remove them....

I hope this will add some extra dimension to the games played with this option anyway, the mod doesn't serve much purpose without it.

Cheers,
BW

1st one is too much like t3 mobile arty and would spoil the feel of the unit

the second one sounds really fitting tho - give the unit a 'cool up' instead of a cool down to allow more counter play

Ok last suggestion from me, again forgive rough cut and paste here, seems I have spent enough time playing with this for now.

It seems to be the new colours are liked (by me too) but visibility and designation are the real issues, like the screenshot above from Arch shows (altho the choice of mex icons is not helping...)

so I propose a loose categorisation of the new icons if they go in - I know this would require more coding on the client so for now I would be in favor of reversion in the new patch until ready.

Below we have the new icons arranged into 16 categories, for 16 players, they will be distinct enough from the other categories in game - also easily referred to by English speakers at least IMHO - you have dark blue, blue, blue-green, purple, dark purple, dark pink, dark red, pink, red, orange, yellow, white, gray, dark green, green, yellow-green.

Also means we are not losing any old colours, and there is potential room for more down the track, and this would also easily allow adding a preset for colour blind players. I was surprised to learn even some regular vision pro players use the alternate set!

New patch lookin good !

All I would add to the com entry explosion would be to err on the lower side to preserve at least the same amount of tree groups even if it means sometimes you may end up with one or two more.

What I do want to bring up, is something I have notice from replays, that seems to have crept in since the patch for overcharge spill damage to shields, is that a single mobile shieldgen can be destroyed when the unit covered is overcharged, even when it is out of range of the aoe or the gun even.

I'm not sure if this was intended behavior or not? seems a bit much I know non-Sera mobile shields have been hit by the nerf-bat a few times already.

It also reduces micro opportunities for retreating your depleted shield to let it recover, I feel the shield should only be destroyed if targeted directly or in the aoe at least.

I thought this might have been a bug but still happens in faf-dev, made a quick replay to show.

https://replay.faforever.com/16791466

had a look at the implementation on faf-dev and it is nice and responsive, seems at least equal to the mod versions I have tried in the past. I wonder if with a little adjustment it could turn off multiple fabs in one go rather than over the course of several ticks, which would have a similar overall affect on sim speed and help prevent an actual e-stall.

currently any mass fabs that are switched off won't be paused though which seems somewhat unintuitive - you can see which ones are running if you enable the eco consumption overlay but i doubt most players have this turned on for their games

as i suspected also there is no priority for tiers of fabs, when energy bar gets filled a bunch of t2 fabs got turned on when i would prefer the t3 fab that is next to my t3 land facs...

How about: a game mode where the match is unrated for the single highest rated player on each side but not the others, so they could just concentrate on helping and instructing and not worry too much about their own performance or rating hit.

This would help new players get their rating established and learn the game, could limit it to players below certain number of players / games except for the coaches

@archsimkat Thanks! No change to the icon priority order - I believe this is still in the unit blueprint.lua and not exposed with the icon framework that was added.

@photek said in Subtle Strategic Icons [UI]:

T1 air really is subtle.

T1 air and navy is unchanged, I added some units to the screenshots for comparison purposes, T1 land has change to bot icon for a few units

Solid outline on ACU.
Funky engineer

good spotting ! Forgot to mention I added a specific icon symbol for the sparkie, as a cross between engineer and direct fire

What about?

• Mass extractors
• Power generators
• Support commanders

no change to any of these - you could argue for a larger icon for t2/t3 power but trying to take the minimalist approach for this mod

there is a (sim) mod in the vault, SACU Smexplosion, which extends the ACU explosion as a mini-version to that faction's sACU. So they don't all blow up with stolen UEF technology....

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

Curious now if storages increase the output cap on a Paragon, would be extra 4k...

The third entry on the table is for size 3 structures, so T3 Fab. 16 is the mass output for it.

Hang on, so a mass storage adds 0.03 x 16 = 0.48 mass to a T3 Fab?

I feel very triggered, could we make it 0.03125 x 16 = 0.5 mass for a sane value.

no Nomads = sadness

If Seraphim were to get 'Doppleganger' style units (or an ability on some of their units a 'la jamming), then Aeon could have some of their units provide a visual range debuff to enemy units in a small aoe from the projectile.

I am thinking the 'bright' projectiles, like those from fervors, direct fire navy, t2 gunships, t3 mobile arty

I think fixing the roll-off points would go a long way to improving the behaviour of naval facs, i remember once playing around with rally points for ages trying to get the ships to leave cleanly when they finish building.

In-game, I don't see players build a block of naval yards like in the linked images, it is usually a dragged line and then maybe another dragged in front a few squares away which poses few issues for the frigates built, grids are reserved for air only.

Having different faction placement potential is not going to work - you will get players always picking a specific faction for different spots on Setons for example.

About the AI - is it possible to have the larger-skirt version blueprint available in-game for just the AI to build ?