Advanced Infiltrator Unit

[Kazarr]

Hello everyone.

This is my first time asking help on the forums here, but there is something that I can't find a single tutorial of no matter how hard I try, so I thought I'd make a thread for it.

I'm trying to create a system whereby a parasitic creature can infect a host. The host should be controllable by the owner of the parasite, yet retain the colours of it's previous owner as well as not being auto-acquired by that player's units. The goal is to make the player whose units are being infected actively search for infected units while the player controlling the parasites tries to make the infected units behave as inconspicuous as possible.
Eventually the parasites in the hosts will burst free from the host in a larger, tougher form than they possessed before they infected a host to wreak havoc, but this ability will take time to charge. (Long cooldown, cooldown starts immediately as if ability had been used upon infection.)

The trouble is making the unit that's taken over to not be auto-acquired. I haven't been able to devise a trigger than can deal with that part. Taking over the unit and making it retain it's previous colours was easy, but making it so that it doesn't get attacked is difficult.

In short, the requirements for this ability:
-Target unit falls under the contol of the owner of the casting unit.
-Casting unit is removed upon casting the ability.
-Target unit retains the same appearance as before, including team colours.
-Target unit will not be treated as a hostile unit by units belonging to other players unless explicitly ordered to do so.
-Target unit will gain an ability (to trigger the maturation of the parasite) that the new owner can activate.
-The ability mentioned in the previous line needs to start it's cooldown immediately upon infection, or the unit needs to gain a mana supply that starts at 0 and is invisible to the player that originally owned the host.

Can anyone trigger this for me, or help me figure it out? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Xonok]

Hello everyone.

This is my first time asking help on the forums here, but there is something that I can't find a single tutorial of no matter how hard I try, so I thought I'd make a thread for it.

I'm trying to create a system whereby a parasitic creature can infect a host. The host should be controllable by the owner of the parasite, yet retain the colours of it's previous owner as well as not being auto-acquired by that player's units. The goal is to make the player whose units are being infected actively search for infected units while the player controlling the parasites tries to make the infected units behave as inconspicuous as possible.
Eventually the parasites in the hosts will burst free from the host in a larger, tougher form than they possessed before they infected a host to wreak havoc, but this ability will take time to charge. (Long cooldown, cooldown starts immediately as if ability had been used upon infection.)

The trouble is making the unit that's taken over to not be auto-acquired. I haven't been able to devise a trigger than can deal with that part. Taking over the unit and making it retain it's previous colours was easy, but making it so that it doesn't get attacked is difficult.

In short, the requirements for this ability:
-Target unit falls under the contol of the owner of the casting unit.
-Casting unit is removed upon casting the ability.
-Target unit retains the same appearance as before, including team colours.
-Target unit will not be treated as a hostile unit by units belonging to other players unless explicitly ordered to do so.
-Target unit will gain an ability (to trigger the maturation of the parasite) that the new owner can activate.
-The ability mentioned in the previous line needs to start it's cooldown immediately upon infection, or the unit needs to gain a mana supply that starts at 0 and is invisible to the player that originally owned the host.

Can anyone trigger this for me, or help me figure it out? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

AFAIK It is not possible to make a unit untargetable without making it invulnerable.
The solution is having another player for every parasite player. The parasite controls the other player and sees everything that it sees. However, the controlled played is not an enemy of other players.

 

[Chaosy]

it is possible, set the selection scale to negative.

 

[Xonok]

it is possible, set the selection scale to negative.

They would still be auto-attackble. Or wouldn't they?

 

[Kazarr]

it is possible, set the selection scale to negative.

How do I trigger the selection scale to be negative? I know it's a simple unit property, but I can't find any actions that alter it. Do I need to set up some special variables? If so, I'm going to need help with that, I'm terrible with those.
I'm going to try this out when I know how to, though. Thank you.

AFAIK It is not possible to make a unit untargetable without making it invulnerable.
The solution is having another player for every parasite player. The parasite controls the other player and sees everything that it sees. However, the controlled played is not an enemy of other players.

I tried that, but an awkward side-effect of this is that all parasite players will be able to control each other's units as well because they'll all end up in the same force with the "shared vision" and "shared unit control" settings. Unless there's a way to ally players and allow them to share vision without being in the same force? Because that would be perfect. Thanks for the input either way!

 

[Xonok]

How do I trigger the selection scale to be negative? I know it's a simple unit property, but I can't find any actions that alter it. Do I need to set up some special variables? If so, I'm going to need help with that, I'm terrible with those.
I'm going to try this out when I know how to, though. Thank you.



I tried that, but an awkward side-effect of this is that all parasite players will be able to control each other's units as well because they'll all end up in the same force with the "shared vision" and "shared unit control" settings. Unless there's a way to ally players and allow them to share vision without being in the same force? Because that would be perfect. Thanks for the input either way!

There's trigger actions for that.

• Player - set player alliance
• Player - set aspect of alliance

 

[Kazarr]

There's trigger actions for that.

• Player - set player alliance
• Player - set aspect of alliance

I used that, and it works perfectly. Of course AIs won't react to the infected units this way, not even when those untis are attacking theirs, but this is meant to be played with some friends anyway. Thanks a lot! I'll be sure to post here again if I need help again, you guys were super helpful and came with solutions almost instantly.