recommendations for anti-air units and structures
Put an icon on all units structures that only can fire at air units, an "X" in the corner of building pic would help immensly!
Its no problem for those that been around but all NEW must have hell of a time. Ex them normal turrets in some mods they fire at anything other its only air.
/Cheers
AA help for those that are new.
Moderator: Moderators
Hmm
I was thinking that something similar to this would be good for all icons. Been figuring out such a system myself. Since the unit description usually focusses on weaponry, and the HUD provides cost and armour info, you could use this spot to provide further info on the unit's mobility.
Attributes you'd need build icons for:
HasRadar ? (little antenna with yellow waves)
HasJammer ? (little antenna with red waves)
HasCloak ? (blue outline of stick figure)
HasStealth? (no smoking symbol over has radar)
HasTransporting? (yellow claw)
[Flying | Gunship | Ground | Immobile]? (grey plane/chopper/car/box)
Powerful Self-Destruct? (orange explosion star *)
Armed: [anti-air | anti-ground | anti-sub] ? (red crosshairs with grey plane/car/sub)
Can move on ground? (brown circle)
Can move [on|under] water? (half-empty blue circle, full blue circle)
Terrain: [flatland only | normal slope | all-terrain] (brown flat, brown hill, brown mountain)
Builds? (green scaffold)
Repairs? (green wrench)
Assists? (green star)
Reclaims? (green E)
Resurrect? (green skull)
The problem is that you'd be cluttered with icons (about 4 for a normal unit, 8 for something complex), and it still wouldn't tell you anything about their speed, the details of their weaponry, etc. Plus, the icons for a Hammer and a Rocko would be the same. So you might need icons for the primary weapon too.
you could do:
primary wep:[HighTrajectory | LowTrajectory | Beam | Direct | Tracking]
and strength values for
primary wep:range=
primary wep:blast radius=
total firing cost/sec=
total damage/sec=
... you'd have list them in orders of magnitude to fit the info in there, so they'd be all one digit. Maybe ln(x)? In that scale, 1 represents 3, 5 represents 150, and 10 represents 22000. You might be able to fit a vague inkling of most TA values in a single digit that way... if you do a hex digit you can go up to 3.2 million.
The fact is that TA units aren't simple like StarCraft units, where you can easily dump the unit's full characteristics into an in-game GUI. It would be very hard to draw the line, and there would always be "hidden" information that would bite you in the ass if the designer didn't include it in the blurb.
For example, you can get screwed if you don't realise that numerous plasma cannons cost energy to fire. If your energy is low, your big guns suddenly become decorations. The game never tells you this in any obvious way (that I can see at least).
Worse, you'll never find out about unit-specific damage unless it's in the blurb. Sub-killers do extra damage against subs? Torp launchers do extra damage against subs? How I know that?
With modding becoming more and more common, it's getting harder and harder to know what any given unit does without reading through piles of docs or experimenting for days.
We also have concerns about expressing the energy costs/ranges for the cloak, radar, and jammer features of a unit. And should we make icons for the things that are available on mouseover? Like resource storage/provision/consumption? If I need an icon to see my AA units, shouldn't I also need an icon for some clever new armed Mexx that a modder has added in? Or the indestructable geotherm?
I would love this feature... but I don't know how it would work. Maybe only list the most significant icons? But then it becomes tricky... and this would have to be done algorithmically or else be a maintenance nightmare. So no clever "exceptions" can be allowed.
You can see I've been thinking about this for a while.
Attributes you'd need build icons for:
HasRadar ? (little antenna with yellow waves)
HasJammer ? (little antenna with red waves)
HasCloak ? (blue outline of stick figure)
HasStealth? (no smoking symbol over has radar)
HasTransporting? (yellow claw)
[Flying | Gunship | Ground | Immobile]? (grey plane/chopper/car/box)
Powerful Self-Destruct? (orange explosion star *)
Armed: [anti-air | anti-ground | anti-sub] ? (red crosshairs with grey plane/car/sub)
Can move on ground? (brown circle)
Can move [on|under] water? (half-empty blue circle, full blue circle)
Terrain: [flatland only | normal slope | all-terrain] (brown flat, brown hill, brown mountain)
Builds? (green scaffold)
Repairs? (green wrench)
Assists? (green star)
Reclaims? (green E)
Resurrect? (green skull)
The problem is that you'd be cluttered with icons (about 4 for a normal unit, 8 for something complex), and it still wouldn't tell you anything about their speed, the details of their weaponry, etc. Plus, the icons for a Hammer and a Rocko would be the same. So you might need icons for the primary weapon too.
you could do:
primary wep:[HighTrajectory | LowTrajectory | Beam | Direct | Tracking]
and strength values for
primary wep:range=
primary wep:blast radius=
total firing cost/sec=
total damage/sec=
... you'd have list them in orders of magnitude to fit the info in there, so they'd be all one digit. Maybe ln(x)? In that scale, 1 represents 3, 5 represents 150, and 10 represents 22000. You might be able to fit a vague inkling of most TA values in a single digit that way... if you do a hex digit you can go up to 3.2 million.
The fact is that TA units aren't simple like StarCraft units, where you can easily dump the unit's full characteristics into an in-game GUI. It would be very hard to draw the line, and there would always be "hidden" information that would bite you in the ass if the designer didn't include it in the blurb.
For example, you can get screwed if you don't realise that numerous plasma cannons cost energy to fire. If your energy is low, your big guns suddenly become decorations. The game never tells you this in any obvious way (that I can see at least).
Worse, you'll never find out about unit-specific damage unless it's in the blurb. Sub-killers do extra damage against subs? Torp launchers do extra damage against subs? How I know that?
With modding becoming more and more common, it's getting harder and harder to know what any given unit does without reading through piles of docs or experimenting for days.
We also have concerns about expressing the energy costs/ranges for the cloak, radar, and jammer features of a unit. And should we make icons for the things that are available on mouseover? Like resource storage/provision/consumption? If I need an icon to see my AA units, shouldn't I also need an icon for some clever new armed Mexx that a modder has added in? Or the indestructable geotherm?
I would love this feature... but I don't know how it would work. Maybe only list the most significant icons? But then it becomes tricky... and this would have to be done algorithmically or else be a maintenance nightmare. So no clever "exceptions" can be allowed.
You can see I've been thinking about this for a while.
Re: Hmm
Very detailed proposal, but as you suggest, I think you might be going a bit overboard. :)Pxtl wrote:I was thinking that something similar to this would be good for all icons. Been figuring out such a system myself.
How about a more sophisticated build menu instead? What I'm thinking is instead of having to click repeatedly on the little arrow buttons to page through all those unit/structure icons, instead there's just one button with the command "build" that pops open a much more spacious window that's specifically dedicated to build queue management. You'd be able to have lots of handy options to take you more quickly to the unit you're wanting to build, and perhaps better control over the build queue itself (it'd be nice to be able to insert stuff near the beginning without cancelling the current build project or cancelling and then re-adding all the subsequent stuff already in it).
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Felix the Cat
- Posts: 2383
- Joined: 15 Jun 2005, 17:30
Maybe when you mouseover either a unit or a build pic, the associated ability icons should appear in a column at the very left of the screen?
Anyways, if I were interested in that silly little competition, I'd post a link to the MTR. In fact, out of pure spite, I'll post one so that nobody in that competition can claim this thread for their own!
So boo at you, silly competitioners! Here's a Monthly Topic Rotation link!
(this topic is loosely related in a vague sort of way to something that could possibly be part of a theoretical new GUI, therefore, it's a new GUI topic and should be ignored by all and spammed by the competitors!)
Anyways, if I were interested in that silly little competition, I'd post a link to the MTR. In fact, out of pure spite, I'll post one so that nobody in that competition can claim this thread for their own!
So boo at you, silly competitioners! Here's a Monthly Topic Rotation link!
(this topic is loosely related in a vague sort of way to something that could possibly be part of a theoretical new GUI, therefore, it's a new GUI topic and should be ignored by all and spammed by the competitors!)
I could come up with these icons without any trouble, but as you say, it would be a nightmare figuring out what units really need an icon... AA sort of assumes that you've already played OTA, right, so what real differences are there? Basically, Jethros, Crashers, Defenders, and Pulverizers are the only units changed in any seemingly-odd way. And all it would take is one army of jethros vs an army of thuds before the player would get the point 
Looks like I might be able to work out something for internet after all, not sure.
Looks like I might be able to work out something for internet after all, not sure.
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LocalFiend
- Posts: 26
- Joined: 17 Sep 2005, 03:13