I think class icons are better than classnames because is easy to know wich class u friend have, near you in the battle and most important on the map/minimap. Also is something important to the commander since he have to click on the unit to know wich class it have And is easier to newbies know the classes just for looking at it's icon rather than remmebering the names Another thing is when a teamate spots a enemie u just hear "enemie infantry spoted" and u dont know wich class that enemie is, that means u dont know it's ability and is weapon power because u are not a 100% all the time near to the enemie that has just been spoted. Also that's help you get reinforcement because your friend that is in the main base can choose wich weapon he will take with him, and if he'll need a strong or a fast vehicle. (sorry if i made any grammar mistakes, english is not my primary language)
Minimap is already kinda cluttered, I'm not sure where you'd fit class icons in there. I mean sure icons are always the way to go if you can, because people don't have to know languages or need to actually read to get quick info, but this feels harder to do.
There's already letters for each classes which is just as good as icons, minimap already has too much stuff on it. And no spotting should not tell you what class the enemy is, and neither should targets.
I disagree there, I think spotting/targets should tell you what class the enemy is. Though, I'd make a stronger case for targets than for spotting. Targets (especially commander targets) should provide more info - since you can only have one target at a time it doesn't hurt that much and is kind of a trade-off. Don't think class should be displayed on minimap though. It would be nice in commander view to tell what classes the units you are currently looking at are, though. Course, from a 'from scratch' perspective the best option there is to make the classes visually distinct.
Does the game really differentiate between minimap and big map? That's a rather important question you know.
The mini map is quick info of where are the enemies and u ally's units. When u have time u can stop and press M to see the big map to have a better view to what's going on the map. Maybe there is some players that do the same but I prefer to leave the minimap zoomed so i can se better the distance between me and my targets, also i can see the envoirment, if there's a mountain or a obstacle in my way
I meant in the code, when you hit the map button and all it shows is just the minimap enlarged(or it just works in reverse I dunno) it might be harder then you think to replace the infantry icons with class icons. I know spawns show up only on the big map but all I've heard is no one wants to touch the map with a ten foot pole because of how it works, so a simple swap of icons could be hard. More to the point, I can't really remember a time were it would be handy to see where what class is where. As someone on the ground I only care about who's in the immediate area because that's all I can really influence and I can see what class they are. If I'm in the commander seat I get a pop up of what class people are when I select them, which is good enough for me because I expect squad leads to actually somewhat lead their squads or for those boots on the ground to have some common sense and change class based on what's happening around them. If they fail on either I can usually tell why and give a suggestion that changing class is a good idea. Of course when it comes to commanding the only thing I tend to want to know is if there's an engineer to build things, thankfully be has a rather identifiable engy. Nf not so much...
I like the idea. When (and if) I'm commanding, I cannot recognize different classes from far away, even BE engineer. You have to select him or zoom in. So far only BE has different class models: Scout/Assault may have map-dependant camouflage (etc. snow), Gren and Rifleman has default and Engi has cap. NF is just same skins. Floating icons for classes would help a lot, even if they were only for commander's view. If class information would be easily available, commanders can give more specified orders. It might be hard to code floating emblems, but we do have already squad leaders marked as stars, so there might be ways.
