Image Resources

[--Imperator--]

Had a peek at the GitHub repo: looks like George added some images that DON'T look like placeholders... looking good!

From left to right:

GDMs, HEL cannons, autocannons, hypersonics, plasma towers, armored sats, battlestations

Vanguard (?), Reliant, Stinger, Adamant, Warphant, Eldritch, Undine, Helion

Eldritch looks appropriately menacing. Good. The backbone of the Imperial Navy.

[george moromisato]

Glad you like them! These should be live in the Era 4 Alpha game. Refresh the browser, if necessary.

[Watch TV, Do Nothing]

The new icons look great in the primary structure tab (the yards or fleet HQ tab) and the Deploy tab.

The icons do not appear in the production or empire tabs; the grey boxes are still present. I kind of prefer the right-justification of unit counts in the empire tab to the left-justification used in the overview and fleet tabs.

I like the use of unit name under the icon in the fleet tab and overview tabs; dynamic label removal when there are a lot of individual unit classes is a good compromise.

Relative placement of numbers and names is inconsistent between the overall forces and the individual units, which is a little distracting. For individual units the number is on the top and the name is on the bottom. For forces counts this order is reversed.

What happens when unit count gets really large? 10-million unit Helion fleets were not uncommon in Era 3, that's 8 digits. On a planet with a lot of unit classes I'd be curious to know how this gets displayed, does the font size shrink or does it overlap other interface elements?

The use of pylon rake to distinguish high-tech and low-tech jumpships is a very good touch, but at their smallest sizes it is less noticeable and some of the classes are not highly distinguishable at a glance. I assume hue is going to distinguish propulsion types, given that jumpships and defenses all have a common hue? Maybe high-tech classes could have a different color saturation or intensity than low-tech classes, or include pink highlights to emphasize that they have chronimium as a component?

In general it is great when there is a visual language that communicates a unit's role. Stinger and Eldritch should look the most similar, since they are high-and-low tech variants of the same role. A user wants to quickly pick a bunch of basic jumpships to counter an incoming jumpcruiser fleet, so basic jumpships should look more similar to one another than they do to any other ship class. If the Stinger looks more similar to the Adamant than it does to the Eldritch, that's not ideal, since the ship's role is more important to how the unit is employed than its TL is. But jumpships should also bear some visual similarity to starfrigates, to communicate that they share the starfrigate's direct attack and point defense, with the primary points of distinction being propulsion (represented by hue and by the nacelles on jumpships, and ??? on starships), attack range and cost. But starfrigates should also bear some similarity to starcruisers; since they share long range, AoE damage and high cost, perhaps they should have large icons and elongated weapons. Not everything needs to be communicated by the icon alone, for example perhaps an attribute like point defense could be represented by a colored halo or background color, or by overlaid symbols at some icon sizes (e.g. superimpose a little missile icon when the ship icon is displayed at a large size, like in the deploy window, but omit it at smaller sizes like on the overview tab). Missile and direct attacks are mechanically very different; it would be great if there was a fairly-consistent visual element of ship icons that communicated the ship's attack type, just as its color communicates its propulsion type. Does that at all make sense?

[--Imperator--]

I think the use of icons in the production tab could be removed entirely. IMO it would be a bit distracting when you're trying to figure out which of those supply worlds has a shortfall of hex or whatever, haven't noticed it now since they were only grey boxes. I agree with keeping them in the empire stats screen though.

It DOES become visually disconcerting when some units have an icon and some don't, see Exhibit A: this player's capital and Exhibit B: the empire deployment screen:

Capture.PNG (188.05 KiB) Viewed 22708 times

Capture 1.PNG (436.09 KiB) Viewed 22708 times

I had hoped this wouldn't be the case as then George wouldn't have to make icons for ALL the units this development sprint, just a few.

Fortunately, I believe many of the placeholders can be filled in from here:

DesignationIconsSmall.png (152.34 KiB) Viewed 22708 times

All the base resource icons are nicely separated out already from [2,1] to [3,3]. Nebula resources at [11,2] and [11,3].

For ship and infantry components, the icons at [6,1] to [6,3] could be stripped of the outer "border" and used as is? Same for ramjet parts at the last tile.

For starships and ramjets, for now I think its completely fine if we just add a purple and orange color filter respectively to the JumpshipIcons.png. Vanguard and Helion become a purple-colored Sirius and Minotaur, orange-colored Hammerhead and Cerberus; Stinger, Eldritch --> purple Defiance, Gorgos and orange Manta, Cyclops; Adamant, Undine --> purple Victory, Megathere and orange Behemoth, Typhon.

Jumpmissiles? Can add a green filter to the image for hypersonic missiles.

Infantry is the only odd one, the green spaceman looks a but out of place - are they space marines or astronauts? But I think that icon can be used for all 3 infantry types.

Did I miss any others?

What happens when unit count gets really large? 10-million unit Helion fleets were not uncommon in Era 3, that's 8 digits. On a planet with a lot of unit classes I'd be curious to know how this gets displayed, does the font size shrink or does it overlap other interface elements?

Feel free to add 10 million of each unit type to the Commonwealth of Man so I can "test" this...

[--Imperator--]

Here's an example for the starship icons.

[--Imperator--]

Ramjets.

Hammerhead looks very familiar for some reason, hmmm...

Looks like George plans to add images for all the ship types, excellent!

[TheBugKing]

Those are beautiful. What class is the turtle shaped one in the lower left corner?

[whaleduck]

It's a Cerberus-class gunship