Under what circumstances would you want to see an individual unit? The battle simulator didn't let you manage individual squadrons, only groups of squadrons. Combat calculations are based on the number of fighters, not the number of squadrons. You can safely replace "holds 3 fighter squadrons" with "holds 36 fighters" and it will make no difference during combat. Altering the combat and production calculations involve a simple divide or multiply by 12 to convert from squadron to fighter values. If you were staying faithful to the SW:R battle sim, then you don't need to keep track of squadrons at all, simply the number of fighters. If you no longer need to keep track of squadrons, then you eliminate the damaged squadron. Without damaged squadrons, you have no reason not to use icon:number representation. However, if you are redesigning the battle sim, you have much more important things to worry about than damaged units. Just ditch them entirely. The undamaged units can all be represented in icon:number fashion In the original SW:R, I can think of two instances when an individual unit mattered: 1. moving a specific unit elsewhere 2. targeting a specific unit for sabotage A bit more detail: move 1:x undamaged, stationary units move 1:x damaged, stationary units move 1:x non-stationary units is not possible target a specific undamaged, stationary unit target a specific damaged, stationary unit target a specific non-stationary unit is not possible Let's start with the sabotage targeting: I've always hated having to choose specific troop to sabotage. If I could recode the game, I would let sabotage missions choose to sabotage any X-Wing squadron rather than a specific X-Wing squadron. In fact, I would rather let my saboteurs choose any fighter squadron, even at random, to target over having to choose a specific unit. Making this change eliminates the need to show specific units for targeted missions. Moving units: Undamaged units are commodities. One is as good as another. It doesn't matter which one you select, as long as you select one. It doesn't matter which 10 you select, as long as you select 10. Since they are commodities, stack them. Games that use stacks have the well known click, shift-click, and control-click mechanisms to select a variable number, all, or single item from a stack of items. As others have said, you could use the icon:number representation and the clicking mechanisms for selection. If you must include damaged units, then damaged units could have their own icon and treated separately, unstacked. For the most part, treating damaged units as a special case will allow you to continue to use damaged units while still reducing UI clutter. The major issue then is how to select some number of undamaged units and damaged units for the same move operation. TL;DR version: eliminate damaged fighter squadrons - either simply eliminate them or refactor everything to use fighters instead of squadrons use icon:number representation in all UI views use click, shift-click and control-click mechanisms for selecting some/all/one units in a stack of units let sabotage missions try to sabotage a generic unit instead of a specific unit