Spell costs mana but doesn't fire (Not triggered)

So I'm in a bit of a dilemma here. Spent all day working on my entry for the spell contest, only to hit this brick wall that kills the entire spell.

There's a trick you can do to make any active spell you want autocastable. By creating a spell based off of Orb of Lightning (New), you can select what other spell you'd like to fire at a specific % chance. This has worked fine for me in the past, but it's not behaving for me.

The first time the spell goes off, it works perfectly like it's supposed to. After that, it costs the mana, but doesn't cast it anymore. Any ideas? I'd prefer not to go and have to trigger the whole damn thing by hand.

edit: I know that this works, because I just gave the ability to a different unit type, and it worked like a charm. So what can prevent this from working correctly?

I wouldn't call orb of lightning autocast... It's a completely different mechanic and tends to be buggy (like not activating when attacking an automatically acquired target).

Orb of Lightning has other problems. It doesn't trigger if units are only auto-attacking and not ordered.

No idea why the ability is only working once. What active spell are you using?

Edit: Nice ninja post Anitarf.

You can kinda get around that with a small trigger, to the effect of "unit is attacked -- attacking unit has (Orb of Lightning custom ability) -- Order Attacking unit to attack Attacked unit"

Wouldn't that loop?

?
Oh. So? It loops, and the unit continues to attack.

Wow.. that's exactly my problem. I didn't know about that bug. Damnit. The spell is awesome, except for that.

Mwahahahah. Thanks for you help guys, with the info you gave me, I just did a workaround by making sure that when the unit attacks, it does a direct attack, even when the target is auto-acquired. Thanks :DD

edit: Lol Kyrbs, I did that and posted this without seeing your post. It gives a slight pause to the unit when first attacking because of the re-order, but I'll see what I can do to fix it.

No probs. Good luck getting smashed in the spell session. :P

SAMURAI

Hey... Just because I got DQ'd in spell12, doesn't mean I'm gonna do it again. :P

Falcooooooooon Punch !!!!

You might also want to try adding the specific unit event, Unit notices a target in range, to a trigger for every unit that has one of these orb-based spells. The trigger should then have the following action:

^Wait, why? (I know of no "Notices a nearby target" function), yet that would just make your units super-aggressive. Just because he can see an enemy, doesn't mean you want him to attack them.

It looks silly, but it's very effective. The order given when a unit auto acquires isn't attack, so with the conditions provided with that specific action makes it happen only when needed, and doesn't loop every time the unit attacks. The trigger only fires on inital encounter, because after the first hit the hero is automatically reassigned to specifically "attack".

Ah, perfect. Thanks for modifying it.