Need help with unit following other unit type stuff.

I'm trying to make a flying unit follow a ground unit, and the flying unit needs to both passive but able to attack via triggers. I want to know if it's possible to somehow smooth the follow action, and maybe if there is a better way to do it than I am doing it.

I am currently issuing the follow order with triggers, each time the units is issued any other order, or anytime the hero it is following is revived (it is killed when hero dies, but recreated when hero revives). The following is somewhat choppy, is there a way to fix this? It would be a huge improvement if I could make the unit follow much closer to the hero, is that possible either?

I'd also like a solution to the auto-aquiring problem (where should I start... I want my unit to be able to shoot anything, anywhere, but ONLY when I tell it to?) but that's just a wish I've had since I first started mapping. Why can't they just make a setting that doesn't allow a unit to autoaquire targets? Making them workers is crap, because we can't get rid of the stupid Idle Workers icon, and any other method is just plain dysfunctional (shadowmeld? YES, I really want my units to become invisible everytime I want to disable autoaquire. *rants*). Sigh...

Well, any answer to the first problem is appreciated, I honesty expect nothing for the autoaquire issue.

i cant help you with the first problem, but i can help with auto-acquiring. In tank commanders i have a blanchette thorn weapon that fires spores at enemies. These spores grow into new spores and so on and on ad infinitum. The spores have a 4 second delay before they start firing after they have been spawned. They have NONE enabled attacks and are given a modified lightning orb skill 4 seconds after spawning. The lightning orb skill enables the attack for the spore.

All you'd have to do is add the lightning orb skill when you want the unit to attack and remove it when you dont want them to attack. Alternatively you could set the flying unit's acquisition range to 0, but i find using skills neater.

Neat, didn't know about Orb abilities giving them an attack! Clever.

Alternately, you can set them to Neutral Passive when they're not supposed to attack anything; Neutral Passive won't attack, even if it is attacked, unless they're commanded to by a trigger function.

E: Unit is attacked
C: Attacking unit is Player Ground Unit
A: Unit Group - Pick all units of type Accompanying Flying Unit within 100 range
Change owner of Picked unit to Player

E: Unit dies
C: Killing unit is Player Ground Unit
A: Unit Group - Pick all units of type Accompanying Flying Unit within 100 range
Change owner of Picked unit to Neutral Passive

In answer to question one: Set the follow range in the gameplay constants, it defaults to 300...if you lower it units should follow closer.

In answer to question two: If you know of a way to make an invisible unit visible you can turn off auto acquire targets easily with ghost. Otherwise, I dunno.