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

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.

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

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

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.

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 understand the attraction of reducing deformity for gameplay sake, but I can't say I am a fan of this.

Having the buildings at different angles is going to make some bases look like a smurf village, the aesthetic should be gritty industrial, not hobbiton.

You will end up with taller buildings like the perimeter system looking like the tower of pizza.

I know the game is not going for hyper-realism, but ask any engineer and they can tell you why building foundations are levelled.

If there was a way to perhaps 'bury' some of the building model in the ground, so that the structure itself is still horizontal, that would be perfect with this.

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.

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!

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

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

@dragun101

yes this and the other new icon set mods are all UI (changing the icon sorting priority for units would need a sim mod).

give all torpedoes a small aoe (think 0.5 is the minimum) - a few already have this.

then you will get severely punished for any lame shift g sub stacking...

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...

Nice, simpler solution avoiding any potential consequences from player-controlled storms !

I take no responsibility for any sudden increase of chickens suiciding into armies or bases by players trying to get the highest value on their storms

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