My Experiments with Ships and a Test Map

I whipped this up just to see what could be done. Two main problems present themselves at present:

1) flying units won't be able to fly across land

2) ships can't unload units

#1 isn't that big a deal to me since I really hardly ever use flying units.

#2 is due to the apparent fact that flying units can only unload stuff directly beneath them, contrary to the fact that they can pick stuff up really far away in comparison.

I tried editing the ranges on the various load/cargo/unload abilities in abilitydata.slk to no avail. It allowed me to load stuff farther away, which looked unrealistic, but nothing I changed affected how far away it would unload.

Perhaps a bridge serving as a kind of dock would allow the ships to move onto the bridge and then unload. Dunno'.

Bedtime.

Let me know what you think.

One additional observation about Blizzard: it seems that with only a TINY bit more work they could have implemented water based units, and that the only reason they didn't was the inevitable balancing delays it would have introduced. Perhaps in a future patch they will at least add another movement type - Water.

http://www.knology.net/~heaven/files/war3/water.w3m

Care.

Try it! Try it! Heh.

I think it's pretty cool to have an armada of ships floating about. Reminds me of AoK, or War 2.

Whoa, just had a cool idea. Make a Rowboat unit, with a peasant or two attached as special effects. Gotta' try this later....

Care.

*testin it*

Ya it was cóol but it´bugged for me... said construction failed when i tried the scnd time.

make them ground hover units, and targeted as air..

As far as combat is considered, they will be like air units... but when they are moving around they wont be able to pass over trees, buildings, doodads, other units, etc.

If you set the movement type of flying units to "None" and give them a movement speed, they will be able to go thru everything like normal. Only problem is that then you wont be able to block flying units at all (which isnt a problem for most maps).

why not just make a trigger that moves the unit back into the water if it tries to get out?

Whoa! Are you serious? So instead of Flying as the move type I use None, and then give it a movement speed?

Who cares about blocking for air units. You're right, I personally don't see that as a problem.

If this works that'll be cool, and will mean that we pretty much (with a little work) have everything we need: air, ground, and water units!

Thanks!

Care.

if u made the edges of the water the shallow water, then it should drop off troops?

assumming you're just using triggers to stop ships from crossing the water into land...

Ok, results are in. Neither method works acceptably for flying units.

Setting the gyrocopter's move type to NONE allows it to move across the map unrestricted, which is fine, but at a move height of 0. It hugs the landscape, even going under water.

Setting the move type to HOVER prevents it from moving across water. I imagine HOVER requires the same pathability as GROUND. Somebody correct me if I'm wrong.

And Ogz, I don't use triggers to restrict movement. The trick is this: ships = flying units. I use Zepir's wonderful map editor to paint areas of no-fly over the land so the ships can't move onto it, and I make sure that there is walkable pathability far enough into the shallow water areas to allow unloading. That's it, really. So as a consequence flying units, real ones that I would want to fly (i.e., gryphons, gyro's, etc.) can't move across land either. No fix in sight. It's not a big deal to me since I rarely ever use flying units, but....

Thanks for all your comments!

The map is now 4 players! 2 orcs with working juggernauts and 2 human players. Let me know what you think!

http://www.knology.net/~heaven/files/war3/water.w3m

Care.