Upgrading units / giving the upgrade option in we?

Is there anyway to allow units to upgrade to other units without triggers? The simplist way I found was to make it a building, and then it has upgrades, the problem is I need for the units to not have the building flag. So, is there any way to allow units to upgrade to another unit type (just once won't work, they need to do so multiple, and some have a choice of upgrade) without changing them into buildings or creating dummy abilities and running triggers? I guess the muta from sc would be the example I am trying to copy sort of.

For units with only a single upgrade, you could use the Destroyer Form ability, but if they have more than one upgrade I'm pretty sure you'll have to make dummy spells and triggers since a unit can't have more than one of the same ability.

Or use chaos ability. Thats what it does. Converts a unit into another unit. For example if you want a footman to convert into a knight then creat a chaos based skill that has knight as its converted unit type. Give the skill to the footman. Then set the reqired tech to the research tech you want to use to convert the unit.

No triggers needed. If you want it to be a comand button that only effects one unit then use destroyer form. Chaos will allow you to convert all units of that type at once and all units of that type that enter the map. Once researched it will auto convert as soon as the unit enters the map. The disadvantage is you need a seporate chaos skill for each unit type you want to convert.

Either one will work depending on exactly what you want to do.

No, those things don't work.... That is for only one upgrade... I want to be able to do something like this.
peasent>soldier>knight>captain for each unit individually.

Those two skills only upgrade once, and even more the destroyer skill only changes model info, not the model itself. I guess I will have to do it through triggers. It would be so nice if blizzard just enabled the "upgrade to" function for units.

We think there is a perm transform skill. Cant remember which one tho. As far as transforming a unit multiple times you would have to give a seporate skill to each level of unit that transforms it to the new level.

Its not hard to do with triggers. Make a dummy skill to fire the trigger and then use unit-replace unit.

Then was the problem?, you can always give other upgrades to the upgraded unit types

Not true, unneccessary and incorrect. Morph skills can transform a unit completely if the right flags are set. Just copy the flags from the destroyer skill and apply it to bear form, metmorphosis and storm crow form. That way you can have 4 similar skills with no conflict.

All you need to do is give the right abilities to the right units and you can upgrade units just like it works in DarkDeeds by weevil.

Okay, I guess I didn't quite explain enough... I will end up just doing it with triggers, similar to how you upgrade skills for a cost in the blizzard td buff tower. There is going to be about 30 units that can upgrade to other things, and it not only costs money, but you have to research it too, I think the easiest way without the simple upgrade stat will be triggers.... Altering destroyer, bear form, etc seems like more work than just doing a dummy ability with triggs... oh well.

One other question though... I may be able to change my triggers enough that it would allow for the units to be buildings and thus have the upgrade stat, my only question is: Will a unit given the building - true stat be affected in any major way? They can walk and attack so what is the major difference?

You asked how to do it. You didnt ask how to do it without any effort.
emote_sweat
You cant change the building flag with a trigger. That can only be done in the unit editor. You can have a building turn into a unit with unit-replace unit.