Changing hero range up AND down, help

OK i want items that change your range. So by picking up a special item, you, for example, get 1000 range. But if you drop it, you will get 100 range (melee) again.

I first tried making an upgrade based on improved bows, now this could INCREASE the range but i could never DECREASE it.

So i tried by triggers, changing the acquisition range of the unit. This didnt work at all, acquisition range in the object editor will change the range as your acquisition may never be lower than the range (at least not by changing in object editor).

Any way to do this? One idea would be negative values in the range upgrade... Maybe if i check the level of the range increaser upgrade, and then counter it with a range DECREASER upgrade with negative values? Ill try that, any help appreciated.

edit: The increase/decrease upgrades work ONCE, because i cannot "untech" upgrades, so i can increase range once and decrease it once.

And i cant have like 9999 upgrades, 1 for each time a hero drops an item... will take years.

This has been discussed countless times and is impossible to do. Abilities; however, can be leveled up and down so you could give them a "ranged attack" ability to use while a bow is equipped.

Maybe by the next patch, Blizzard will allow upgrades to be un-researched. Go complain about it on the battle.net forums.



EDIT: By "ranged attack" I mean an ability that has a casting range--like finger of death. Not something to replace the current attack. This is a crappy solution, but probably the only one available until either Blizzard allows for down-leveling upgrades or provides actions to find the min and max damage of a unit.

So the solution would be to have the upgrade give the unit the ability (Which gives +900 range above the 100 starting) and then remove it when another upgrade (Which could be called Downgrade or whatever you use for your map) or time runs out or whatever, correct?

No.

First, I don't think there are any abilities that actually add to your range.

Second, what you're proposing is that you learn Upgrade A which enables Ability Z. Then you learn Upgrade B which disables Ability Z. Now that both of those upgrades are learned, how are you going to ever enable Ability Z again? Even if you give each ability 1000 levels so that you can upgrade them repeatedly, it's still has a limit and that would drastically increase load time.

You could create a dummy item, that you purhace to upgrade (And another for downgrading). Then you can enable, disable selling of these perticular items, all according to what you want.

lol dude, you're still talking about the same thing as your last suggestion.

The whole problem was that i CANT degrade an upgrade.

I came up with one way to have 2 different ranges though. Disabling and enabling the different attacks. I could have one "short ranged weapon" with 300 range and one "long range weapon" with 800 range, and then all the different guns only have 2 different ranges.

I tried searching for other posts (as i knew this problem had been discussed) but cudnt find any... oh well thx

Add and remove abilities?
What people used to do was change the aqusition range. This means that even if your unit has a base range of 2000, it will only fire however far the aqusition (targetting) range is. You can then change the aquisition range to suit your needs.

What WC3 needs is the possibility to change a unit's different stats with variables in-game. Like, you set the name to a string variable, and the life to a real variable, and then whenever you want, you can change the name to whatever you want and suddenly he gets a 2k hp boost. I hate WC3 just because of the limits :(.

Hmm have you ever tried the acquisition range trick urself?

That was the first thing i tried when this problem came up, but it didnt work. The trigger that changes aquisition range didnt do anything... =/

Did you make sure it fired (Aka, set a message to see that the trigger fired)? I personally haven't tried it but I do know it does work, at least with older versions of WC3 (Not pre-1.10 obviously).
It's what everyone does when you change the hero's attackrange anyway.

Acquisition Range is the range at which a unit will automatically acquire a new target.

If a unit's attack range is 100 and their acquisition range is 600 then when an enemy unit comes within 600 range of the unit it will run to attack him.

If a unit's attack range is 600 and their acquisition range is 600 then any enemy unit within range will be attacked.

If a unit's attack range is 1000 and their acquisition range is 600 then when an enemy unit comes within 600 range of the unit, it will automatically attack him. However--a player can still force a unit to attack an enemy that's up to 1000 range away.

So basically, let's say the longest range weapon is 2000. So you give every hero a range of 2000 but adjust their attack range to suit their current weapon. So if they're melee, they'll get 100--if they have a standard range weapon, they'll get 600--etc. This will not work because you'll still see melee fighters being able to attack units up to 2000 range away if they're ordered by the player to do so.


In short: this idea won't work!



Your best bet is to give the unit a ranged auto-cast ability like Searing Arrows that can replace it's standard attack when being used.

1: Yes i know what acquisition range IS, what i said was that it didnt work for me. But i guess it did work that way, i thought it wud work like in object editor:

If you change acquisition range in editor to something lower than the attack range, the attackrange will automatiaclly be set to the acquisition range.

2: Searing arrows and other attack enhancing abilities only add things to your normal attack, they do not change it. For example, you cant have a 200 range hero cast searing arrows at 2000 range when autocasting.... at least not before this new patch, i havent tried it in new patch yet.

Except that you're incorrect. The unit can't attack past its aquisitionrange.

No dead-inside, actually he is correct.

By changing the acquisition range by triggers you CAN attack past the new acquisition range. You are thinking of the acquisition range changes you can make in the object editor, as i said in the other post.

Uh, what? I'm thinking of the what now?