Giving a unit more than 2 weapons

I'm looking to give a unit more than 2 weapons. I have been able to do this by making abilities based off phoenix fire. The weapons fire off when the unit gets near an enemy, but I am unable to target units directly.

This is a problem for weapons that have a longer cooldown. You wait 3-10 seconds for the weapon to recharge only to have it fire off randomly.

Is there a way to give the abilities targets? Perhaps by linking them to something else?

I have a few ideas, but a lot of this stuff is a bit over my head atm. I have done some testing, but to no avail. Here are my ideas:

- Linking them together using common orderstrings. Is it possible to have more than one ability use the same orderstring? Could you link them to, say the attack orderstring and have them fire at the same target that the unit is attacking?

- Using triggers/jass to force-fire the abilities at the unit you are attacking.

- Using another abilitiy to "paint" a target(Some kind of persistent ability) and have the abilities all fire at that target.


Any suggestions would be welcome, and I'm sure some of the ideas I mentioned are impossible, so feel free to shoot those down too.



Zak_

well. i dont know if u can target a specific unit with that skill but its a good idea... did u try using a item using the phoenix fire? like MmMmm ward of ilusion? (changing targets allowed and set "ENEMY")

EDITED: U can try with other items with enemy targets... u can start with that..

Thanks, I'll check out some of those other abilities.

My issue with items is that it restricts the number that I can use. As it stands, I have a system now, where you buy an item and it adds the ability to your unit. This allows me to have as many abilities as I want.


Zak_

this the unit melee or range?

well.. that sounds good. u can make a item with a lot of charges? or use a item with a cold down and set it to 0 ... :D

Hmm, this has just got me thinking about a cool way you could give people multiple attacks...what if your hero had a little invisible no collision type unit following him around who attacked for him, the unit had no vision whatsoever except for itself...'targeting' an enemy either by the last enemy your hero attacks or perhaps an ability that finds the target with order triggers, is used as the target and it's revealed to the passive computer who controls the invisible guy, the invisible guy also has pheonix fire and so forth...so basically this invisible force attacks for you with an array of different pheonix fire spells and such, based on the items you carry. I like that idea, it's pretty good, it could be used in a mech warrior map, which would explain why you need to 'target' or 'lock on' to an enemy. You could even add a special effect of something showing the lock on. I'll go tinker with this idea and maybe post it later.

EDIT: Ok well I tested it, but I just found out that units don't follow other units very closely, infact there's a fair distance between a unit and a unit that's following that unit. So basically A) the invisible guy was out of range until I circled the enemies a few times to force him to come closer and even then B) I couldn't see his attacks because, well frankly I don't know why and C) I lock on, he kills the unit and then he's able to kill other units as well, don't ask me why, but the whole thing was a flop. What a shame, anyway, I'm sure there are much better ways of doing all that anyway so it's not really a big loss or anything.

You may be on to something, Balthamos. Part of the problem might be his lack of vision; if you crank down Target Acquisition range and Sight Range, they won't be able to do all that much until you rub their noses in it. Also, is your following unit flying? A flying unit should stay a little closer, since collision radius won't affect their pathing judgement.

Try making your "wingman" an invulnerable albatross, scaled down to 0.01 so that it's nearly invisible. You might want to give it aloc as well so it can't be targetted. Raise it's Acquisition Range a little larger than the hero it's following -- sight radius may need to be tweaked a little (give him maybe 500 range?).

If it's not moving closely enough, you could do an "Every .5 second, move wingman to location of hero" trigger, but that could get laggy.

I think the problem is the targetting, the phoenix fire ability will just pop whoever is in range.

Is there a way to alter the targetting priority of your unit? For example, so he targets heroes before other units and other units before buildings? Something like that.

Biflspud, I'm not at home right now, but when I do get home, I'll post the map I tested it with, you can fiddle with it I'm not really that interested in the prospect, sorry.

Zak_, if I got it to work properly the targeting would be solved by the target ability. The only problem is I don't know why the invisible guy decided to keep attacking other enemies as well...that truly is a mystery to me...

You can edit the follow range in the gameplay constants,
I lowered it to 0 for a map where I wanted to make units follow each other to make it look like a train and its cars.

@Balthamos: I think the re-targetting has to do with the pheonix fire spell. However, as long as the first unit attacked is the one you targetted, then that's all I need. My goal is to have the weapons able to be targetted, and contiually attack the target until it is killed. After the target is dead, it is ok if they fire automatically at any nearby enemies.

It would be great if you could post your map, because I am at a loss of how to order the pheonix fire spell to target specific enemies. That would solve most of my problems.