Graphic improvement - Ships and missles

[consiefe]

Yes but nothing too complicated like the present dot sized triangle, square etc. Just geometric shapes.

As far as iconography's concerned, it should be distilled to the essentials, identifiable at a glance.

From my point of view, including unicode shape suggestions, we're talking about:



*The basic filled circle character is a bit too small.

These would be coloured following the current palette (blue player, red enemy, etc.). There could be multiple types of vessels within a same location, but the icon pertaining to the majority should prevail.

What do you guys think?


EDIT: Had to host a screenshot of my proposal since apparently the forum isn't quite Unicode.

This style, I liked very much.

[serger]

For the fleets, I'll be happy to have an option to see it's flag rank symbol.

[Inglonias]

Yeah, replacing the dots with text glyphs would be fantastic. Bonus points if we can configure them by fleet, too, or at the very least select what glyphs get used for what categories.

[Droll]

IMO the icons are great but with hostile contacts you don't always know the exact type of ship it is - especially with statics. There probably should be an "unidentified" icon as well.

[Jarhead0331]

IMO the icons are great but with hostile contacts you don't always know the exact type of ship it is - especially with statics. There probably should be an "unidentified" icon as well.

This could be handled with color, as well. Something similar to the color system used by Command Modern Operations for designating bogeys, bandits, allied, neutral, etc.

[kenlon]

Shadow's proposal is very good - having the option to add icons yourself in addition would be nice, but that could easily be a pain to manage, so simplicity is good.

[mergele]

If it#s hostile it just all get's the "hostile military vessel" as default, missiles as such.  There are more developed possibilities but I think that'd may well be overcomplicating things.

[vorpal+5]

But you can already prefix all your fleets names with Unicode symbols ...

[Steve Walmsley]

A different shaped, but similar-sized, icon might not be too bad I'll look into it at the weekend to see how easy it would be to implement and what effect it would have on performance. There is also the complication that different types of fleets would be in the same location, plus system bodies, so there would need to be some order of preference for which icon was displayed. System body should probably have the highest preference or they would disappear when a fleet was in the same location.

[consiefe]

A different shaped, but similar-sized, icon might not be too bad I'll look into it at the weekend to see how easy it would be to implement and what effect it would have on performance. There is also the complication that different types of fleets would be in the same location, plus system bodies, so there would need to be some order of preference for which icon was displayed. System body should probably have the highest preference or they would disappear when a fleet was in the same location.

Yes, they might be ordered like system body > stations&static > military fleet > commercial fleet > missiles.

[Shadow]

A different shaped, but similar-sized, icon might not be too bad I'll look into it at the weekend to see how easy it would be to implement and what effect it would have on performance. There is also the complication that different types of fleets would be in the same location, plus system bodies, so there would need to be some order of preference for which icon was displayed. System body should probably have the highest preference or they would disappear when a fleet was in the same location.

Yes, they might be ordered like system body > stations&static > military fleet > commercial fleet > missiles.

I concur!

[MarcAFK]

If theres stacked icons you could display a + next to the symbol that has priority, clicking on that expands out the list of other symbols. or displaying every symbol as well , to its right could be an option.

[Droll]

Yeah this is a great idea. The previous idea that Steve employed didn't because of the background and relatively massive size. You would certainly icons that need to be differentiable at small sizes though.

[stabliser]

Ive been experimenting with various fonts and labels. some of which would cover this and leave the exact icons to the player to choose.... But... the labels dont attach to the systems and so on the many rearanges to the map theres a lot of labels to move.

So, could we attach labels to systems located at 6 or 8 points around it that were dragged with it?

Edit: I guess everyone else is talking about the tactical map and I was talking about the galactic map, but perhaps a rightclick to anchor a label to a body would allow players to decide what wingding to attach to the tactical map too. Even waypoints could have additional notes attached.  More than 16 set colours please.

[xenoscepter]

I don't like the first two suggestions, too comprehensive. Player's ultimately decide what constitutes a Frigate or a Destroyer and may well decide to name their gulls "Ragglsnufts RGL-S" and "Ingiwiggz IG-WZ" or some other non-sense... more like "Assault Carriers", "Heavy Battlecruisers" and such, but the point is the symbols being tied to nomenclature is a bad idea for Aurora specifically.

I looked at the provided screenshots from Aurora II, and yeah, that'll clutter up right quick. Having the symbols scale down as you zoom out, eventually becoming dots after a certain point and then scaling back up as you zoom in might be one way to solve that. No idea how you could implement it though... or how hard that might be to implement.