Fun with Unit Inventory

So, there I was, thinking "I'd like to work on something, but I need inspiration for an original map first." I decided to start poking around in the WE and have a look at the new TFT object editor. While I was there, I noticed the Unit Inventory (blah) abilities... and saw the innocent little field, "Stats - Unit Can Use Items."

Ka-ching.

Now, I know that little option has been noticed before, but to my knowledge it hasn't been really EXPLOITED. I hacked up a test map to find out everything I could about how flexible the unit inventory ability was.

My findings:

1. Nonhero units can indeed use most kinds of items. They can drink potions, get +3 damage from claws of attack, and shoot fireballs from a fire orb. The only exceptions are items that affect hero-only stats, i.e., strength, agility, intelligence, experience. Picking up a bonus item, like the Circlet of Nobility, will have no effect. Trying to pick up a permanent bonus like a Tome of Blah causes a crash. Interestingly, the Manual of Health DOES work.

2. Giving items to units disrupts subgroups. If one footman in a group of 12 has any item that the other 11 do not, that footman will be in a seperate subgroup from the others. That's entirely sensible, but it still means that having many units with different kit-outs can be a real pain to control. Furthermore, there is no way to specify which unit from a particular subgroup should use a reflexive item - i.e., if you want a particular footman to use a potion of healing, you must select that footmen manually.

3. The melee computer AI correctly uses the items given to nonhero units. I added a trigger that gave each footman that was created a potion of healing. After a short and embarassing journey through the wonderful world of unconditional quadratic action loops, I got the trigger to work correctly and was pleased and surprised to see that the computer used the potions held by damaged footmen while creeping.

So, I started thinking about how to turn all of this into a usable map. Obviously it's pointless to only have 2 or 3 units at a time with inventories, since that would be just like having 2 or 3 heroes, except without levels or hero points. At the same time, a large army with inventoried units would be a nightmare of micromanaging. The entire point of letting the player select items for his army is to allow plug-and-play, but even if you save your subgroups by making decisions across the board for each unit type, it would take an eternity of clicking to distribute one kind of item to each of 20 units, nevermind a varied kit of 3 to 6 items.

Given that the computer can handle a task that would frustrate and annoy players - namely, that of commanding and micromanaging a large army that has a variety of items - I think that the best way would be an Aeon of Strife style map. The twist would be that at certain points along the units' paths, there would be an armory that items could be placed in, like Rexxar's Stash in the bonus campaign. When computer units arrived at an armory, they would receive copies of any items in that armory. So, put a ring of protection +2 in the footman armory, and all the footmen travelling through that point would get rings of protection.

I'm a little conflicted on what to do for the players' units. On the one hand, it would be a neat little package if the players had heroes with no hero abilities and I set up a bunch of items that gave hero abilities and handed them out with a trigger. So, if you wanted to be the Blood Mage, you would choose the intelligence hero and purchase the Flamestrike item, and so forth. On the other hand, that would automatically take up 4 out of 6 slots in the hero's inventory and require a lot of trigger coding.

Any thoughts on the whole scheme?

Interesting, but is it really worth making another AOS? I don't see how you can actually collect more than 6 items at a time and critically need others. If you could make it so units could carry any type of item, even if they couldn't use it, that would make units server as a mule, which I would find helpful during RPG's. Maybe if you could pattent a trigger code or edit the MPQ so units could carry any type of item, you could distribute this as a program. Good idea, but you need to think harder about placement.

The Frozen Throne. Stock campaign. Orc. Act One: To Tame a Land. Pack mule unit. Already been done, without MPQ editing, without complex triggers. Crashes only occur if a nonhero unit has an inventory ability that allows item use and tries to pick up a tome.

I don't understand what you mean by 'collect more than 6 items at a time and critically need others.' Perhaps you're missing the point. You give items to the COMPUTER units, and the COMPUTER units use them to damage, heal, buff, debuff, or whatever. Kind of like a 'Create your Own Unit' deal, where the items you put in the stashes determines the end result. I would probably seperate out 'hero' items from 'army grunt' items with a trigger to kick things out of the stash, so that heroes wouldn't become obsolete with tricked-out footmen running around.

Hi,

Your account of your game is intriguing. However, I think you're planning on making a game based on your discovery not on your target audience. IMHO, you should be thinking of what things a player will like and build from there, instead of what to build and hopefully the player will like it.

:D

I'm a little lost as to where the 'stats - unit can use items' is listed? I'm running TFT and it's not listed under stats for any of my units, or anywhere else I can find it.

cbc22 - Design has to work both ways. There is what you want to do and what you are able to do, and design is the process of uniting and compromising the two. It is not necessarily bad to ignore the player's desires when finding a core concept, nor is it necessarily good to ignore the limits of Warcraft for the same purpose. Eventually, both have to be taken into account no matter where you start.

Personally, I think the idea is workable. It isn't necessarily strong enough to carry its own map, but I think that it would be interesting to have an Aeon of Strife map where the spawns are more than just meat shields for the real armies, i.e., the heroes. I can think of other things to do that would make strategic decisions just as important as hero vs. hero micromanagement.

nicodemus - I meant the stats of the Unit Inventory (Blah) abilities. I'll save you a few seconds - for some reason they're in the Special folder instead of the folders for their respective races in the ability editor.