You're right, it does look quite similar. How about a bluish tint towards the top (sky) and brownish at the bottom (ground). I'm just thinking that you haven't used much colour in the others.
Also, is it necessary to keep using the three vertical bars? Different colors are fine, but how about something even more visually distinctive like a picture of a diaper for Absorbent and Wolverine's photo for Regenerative :p Just kidding on the examples of course, but you get the general idea.
Ok so here is the reflective one: And I also made a weird one that didn't really seem to fit in any of them:
That looks ace. I think the second one looks like a composite, with all those layers. Or absorbent, cause it looks kinda like a spring.
Right, here are my tryouts for engines: Traditional: Bio: Coolant: Fission: Tryouts (actual pictures of engines) Bio: 3phase: Fission: Gas Turbine:
Reactive doesn't look very electrically charged, and that one thing does look like composite like Broccoli said. Absorbant looks a lot like standard too.
I actually just took reactive and composite looks from actual reactive and composite armour. Absorbant, well, okay, it's a deformable plastic. Make it look like plastic, I guess, but how? :p
depending on what angle you look at the armor, that spring thing could or could not look at all like composite. If the armor is placed so so that the left or right side of the picture are flush with the chassis surface, the spring thing doesn't match composite, according to wikipedia. Now, if the top or bottom of the armor picture are placed flush with the chassis, the opposite is true. I can kind of imagine the spring type as absorbent, seeing as how absorbent is made to "undergo excessive plastic deformation." BUT, I think any image is fine, and as long as they're different, it's good.
I like these. Make reflective look like extremely flat, clean and shiny looking armor. So it would look like it would be as smooth as glass. That way you just need to add few lighter parts which go like this / over it or something. Or make it look a bit something which would be flexible that way it would be reflective. I don't like at that desert picture in the latest reflective armor now. There isn't a map behind we when we look towards reflective armor plates. You really need to think simpler than that. First I thought: "What is this? Blue on top and orange on bottom? How this presents reflective?" That just doesn't work. That's why I would suggest you to test my idea. Edit: Oh yeah, you already have made it. But could you make those lighter lines whiter and and totally straight so they wouldn't go zigzag on the armor. That gives bumpy and uneven feeling. Also if you could raise the angle of the reflections a bit I think it would be perfect.
How can you make something look smooth and reflective without just removing all the detail? :p I'll give it a try though
Personal opinion, I say make em crazy cartoony, which would make them each different. Reactive has the armor, but a big lightning bolt cutting through it, absorbent is the spring thing, regenerative is green or has... idk, leaves on it, (green=growing?), reflective has the light beam bouncing off as was suggested earlier, composite has the armor picture, but each column is a different color to suggest the composite... um, composition. Plain is the same armor, but remove the two lines in the middle, so it's just one big ol' boring block. It IS plain, you know. edit: I know beerdude's reading this right now, so he'll probably say something similar 4 seconds after I post this, but oh well. While you're at it, there's a lot you could do to spice up the weapon graphics, too. bio missiles and mg could have a skull and crossbones poison symbol, for example.
Well, here's a few ideas aside from going completely unrealistic. You could have the armor plates portraying what happens when they're actually struck, like the absorbent crumpling around the shell, the reactive discharging and vaporizing the shell, and the reflective deflecting the shell. If we stick with the current icon themes, I think that the absorbent armor should have circular dimples along it, the reflective should look like the plates are angled, and the reactive should have electricity running over it. Just my two cents.
So um. What do you want me to do with it? :p EDIT: Here's my take on the reflective armour (as a slab): EDIT2: Cartoonish engines: 3-Phase: Bio (I have 2): , Coolant: Fission: Gas Turbine: EDIT3: For the weaponry, I really dunno what to do. Sure, little details would be awesome, but the icons are just too small for that. So I tried this (please note that these look rather dodgy because I don't have the original PSDs) : http://img260.imageshack.us/img260/1235/nukeaa5.png (I'm over the image limit) How about it?
