Locust Ability

[Kildare]

I'm just wondering if it's possible to change the Carrier's Attack into a WCIII-style Locust ability that launches all fighters that hover around the Carrier instead of attacking a target then returning to the Carrier?

 

[onisagi]

like brood lords and their floating broodlings?

 

[Kildare]

Yes, but difference is that they will continually strafe around the Carrier and AUTO attack enemies on sight.

 

[onisagi]

well... if you go into brood lord's "brood lord hanger" ability and changed the Ammo inside "Info +" to "Interceptor"

you'll have interceptors instead of broodlings flying along side your brood lord. There seems to be an event that makes the brood lord keep building new broodlings, so what happens is your interceptor numbers keep increasing overtime, probably cuz it doesnt detect any broodlings? So it keeps calling the build hanger unit event.

Play around with that.

 

[Ancanus]

I think he wants them to be annoyingly fluttering around instead of chilling next to the carrier.

If you give the escorts the Critter Wander behaviour, they will move around while the brood lord is not moving.

 

[Kildare]

I think he wants them to be annoyingly fluttering around instead of chilling next to the carrier.

If you give the escorts the Critter Wander behaviour, they will move around while the brood lord is not moving.

What he said. However, i don't want them to just flutter around. I want them to auto-attack enemies within range like in WCIII.

 

[Dan]

maybe...

phoenix fire + wander

 

[Ancanus]

Yeah, Dan's intentions of separating damage and visuals are good.

How about you have one cluster of interceptors just fluttering around the carrier, and a separate cluster serving the attack? I don't think the difference will be notable.

So it just accounts to figuring out how to have the interceptors flying around. and keeping the default carrier attack.

 

[Dan]

yeah, but also you could have the interceptors flutter around the carrier... hanger or brood lord or triggers or whatever you want to do to make that happen and look how you want it to. then you can put a behavior on the interceptors. (phoenix fire)

behavior (buff) -> periodic - Effect (search area) -> Effect (damage)

alternatively to a phoenix fire ability chain, it is possible to make a weapon with VERY similar effects by simply giving the intercepter's a weapon that is capable of firing while they are moving, and doesn't require "attack target" and "only while attacking" fields (or whatever). this might be a better way actually.

as far as the actual fluttering... well the interceptor ability only LAUNCHES them when it attacks a target... then they return. so there might be options for them to stay out...

 

[Clockwork]

If you remember I talked about making an ability based from the carrier ability that I was having issues with. It is essentially the locust ability you are trying to create. Look at the carrier weapon and that is what you want to make with some exceptions.

*Im not currently at my home computer which has my proto type ability so this is based on memory.
You want the persistent effect 'Launch Interceptor'. Normally the Weapon would use this effect, but instead you want an ability to fire it. I do not remember if you need to put it through some sort of behavior first or not (Ill try to edit this post when I get the chance to check my test map).

The persistent effect will fire your magazine, which will hold all of your interceptors/locust/what-have-you.

Again I got really angry at this ability because it was not working the way I wanted it to. I have yet to go back and try to fix it. You have to play around with the casting, if you leave it as channeled then the unit cannot do anything else while casting it. I got as far as having them fly around even while the caster was moving, however I believe the caster could no longer attack units itself, or it would do the attack animation but it would not actually trigger the caster weapon damage. I think that is why I started looking to behaviors (buff or other) to do the persistent launching, because if your unit is actively launching the 'locust' it cannot do anything else.

The other issue was getting the duration to work properly. As long as there were enemies to attack the 'locust' would not return to the unit. Ill start taking a fresh look at this too. Hopefully we can figure it out.