I think they just want a standard layout for the icons as they currently exist.

Icons get smaller or you increase the bottom panel size, which would decrease field vision You could probably change this with a mod if you really cared about it 

I think the tone was that it was a deliberate choice or design decision. It was not.  Or, rather, the decision was "good enough for now" several years ago. 

@Thalatta, some players, and I'm part of them, think some aspect of the game-play like formations should have a greater role in this game. And I'm fairly dedicated to make it happen, as much as the development process allows it. My thoughts are really to try getting the game a bit away from this cheap filling of clicky gameplay toward funnier and mentally rewarding mechanics. But it is the hard path from what I've experienced. Much more work for sure. As you can see, there is also a lot of controversy when it comes to vision on the gameplay, which add up to make the triple combo : more work, slow development, resistance to change. But there are a lot of awesome people in the staff, and in this community so there is no reason to give up on making the game better, whatever the path might be.       Now about ModernGUI, the mod itself is bundling the work of plenty of awesome modders, and I did a lot of work too to get it where it is, I don't think it's no longer a small project as the incremental enhancement added to the UI are starting to make it something reasonably cool imho. There are so many things you can explore through the various overlays, hundreds of added stylized tooltips, and added pages. Generally the mod is named only for the "autotrain" who, even if I do like a lot for playing, is a bit clumsy in the way it is currently. I'm currently undertaking a total rethinking of it, that will resemble more to a feature that fit more naturally into the game.

I'm not sure what you mean by "the tone", it was an honest question :P, I was thinking maybe the way it's coded made harder to position and order that, and maybe there was a reason to be coded like that, like if it was easier if things were constantly changing, and not worth any arrangement right now. Or if an alternative panel was being worked on already.