Best way to kill a locust?

[Verdun]

Units with locust ability do whatever they want, are unselectable and unkillable and there is one of these things I want to get rid of.

For context, I am in the very earliest stages of trying to make a "Trade Caravan"- system where if you build a trade building, it immediately spawns a mobile trade unit with locust ability that travels randomly (Wander-neutral) across the map. At regular intervals, it will spawn gold income if it happens to be close to a neutral or friendly structure (say townhalls give lots of gold, farms little).

The locust part is so you as a player can just leave it alone and not micro manage it.

It would be cool however if enemy players could deny trade to you by killing your trade unit if it gets too close. This in turn you would have to adress by either limiting the enemy's territory or researching an upgrade for the caravans so they defend themselves (fire at nearby hostiles with phoenix fire ability).

Any ideas of how this could be done?

I am not 100% attached to the locust ability though, if I can have the same result with something else that's cool too. One possible alternative would be that the unit gets deselected whenever the owner tries to select it, but the enemy can select it just fine - but that seems a bit clunky.

EDIT: Also, as a general question, while we are at it, do you think is there a way to do this sort of thing for locusts?

 

[Uncle]

I'd say just make it a non-Locust computer controlled unit but have it retain the color of the Player that created it. Then the opposing team can manually attack it (like you would a Neutral Passive critter) in order to destroy it.

Locust units can't really be interacted with beyond storing them as a Unit variable and Killing/Removing them directly.

 

[Verdun]

I'd say just make it a non-Locust computer controlled but have it retain the color of the Player that created it. Then the opposing team can manually attack it (like you would a Neutral Passive critter) in order to destroy it.

Locust units can't really be interacted with beyond storing them as a Unit variable and Killing/Removing them directly.

Interesting thought, haven't really considered it like that, this way the enemy would also not be able to target it automatically but would have to always make the conscious choice to attack civilians and upset the international order...

I started digging a bit and by coincidence I found another approach here, but have to test first if it is right for me. From the person who found that one:

Anyway all Results:
Unit has shadow, its attackable, its not selectable, enemy units can target it automaticly and you can right click on it to follow it or attack it

 

[Verdun]

Yo I think I found the best way to kill a locust

Second best is this, by Wietlol, at least for my purposes.

Only wrinkle is that it has to be specific to one unit type because it works with the chaos ability, needs a new unit type.