[Spell] Battleship broadside cannon fire?

Hey everyone!

I am currently working on a war ship map where you will be able to battle other ships (NPC or players) to climb up the leaderboard ladder. I'll try to add a wave system with different kinds of ships you need to sink.

To my question:

I am trying to create a spell that will fire missiles at enemy ships (units) upon tapping a hotkey. As the title suggests, it is supposed to be a "broadside" spell where multiple cannonballs shall be launched at the same time. To add complexity, I don't want to target enemies directly, but fire either to the starboard or port side depending on the spell I use, hitting enemies in the path, just with a button click.
I have tried building the spell based on cluster rockets, thunder clap and fan of knives, but either of those require a specific target area or do damage in a radius around my ship.

Is there a way to create AoE spells that don't require targets and cast missiles in a specific conic area? If left or right won't work no matter what, it would still be cool to have that spray of cannonballs in the direction my ship is facing.

I hope this is comprehensible enough to know what I'm after.


Thanks in advance!

Jon

 

I don't think you can achieve that simply by using default spells, you'll need to trigger it.

The easiest way would be to create two spells based on Channel for your left & right cannons, then you'd have multiple solutions. You'd need to use a bit of math in order to get a firing angle (for instance, facing of the caster -/+ 90 to shoot left/right) and then cast multiple spells based on shockwave in that direction, for instance. You could also use dummies that would act as projectiles, give them something like immolation aura and cause them to move like cannonballs, although that would need a bit more triggers.

 

I did this for an old map. Easiest done with lots of bricks and mortar triggering as the above post lays out. AoE damage done in the areas where you’re firing will be easy to set damages to. I’ll try to help out if you have any questions with specifics.

 

Thanks for your help!
I could indeed use some advice for the triggers as I'm not very familiar with triggered custom spells. I created a dummy unit, two abilities for each side based on Channel and managed to get the hotkeys straight. But I don't know how to go about the dummy + spell effect thing.
Would you mind uploading your map with those triggers/spells?

 

Download 0.9d:

Irate Pirates v0.9d

Look for SHIPS Abilities in the trigger set. My triggers are set for multiplayer, so there's dummy groups.

 

Thank you!
I will have a closer look when I have more time, probably the weekend. I've played your map for a couple minutes and I didn't see those side fire spells in use. Which of the units actually uses them?
Overall, I got a better understanding of it. Now I need to give it a try

 

If you want to try the ship abilities, try adding some of the custom ships on the map to try them out. If you wanted to do it 'properly', you'd have to first do some quest-missions on the main island, until you have enough to buy a ship and island expansion from the port. Then you'd have to expand to one of the empty islands. Then get the resources to buy a better ship, and I think those ships will all have varying strengths of the side fire ability. It'd be easier to just add the ships on world editor then test it from there ;d