Get Lumber by just hitting trees?

[Abishkar]

So guys, I want to know if there is a way to make players gain lumber by making the workers just hit the trees, and prevent them from going back to the lumber mill? If yes, how?
Thanks in advance.

 

[Goblintrain]

The quickest way i imagine you could do it would be to just set the damage their harvest ability does to zero, and then trigger the lumber increased based on how many work hours your peons have on trees over a given interval of time. Gather gold & lumber: wisp, will do it without sending them back to drop it off, but they wont perform any harvesting animation. Though... i imagine it may not be hard to que them to their harvest animation when chopping. I don't mess with that, because i just seem to have the worst luck in the world when it comes to playing with unit animations!

 

[Kaijyuu]

IIRC some fancy pants systems spawn invisible drop off buildings next to the lumber harvesters.

Triggering it entirely is also an option. Eat Tree is an excellent ability to mimic the regular harvesting interface, though of course you have to prevent the actual tree eating.

 

[A]mun]

It seems silly, but just give your harvesters the "return lumber" ability from the lumber mill/war mill.

 

[Abishkar]

Um, will it work? @A]mun
Whoopsees, sounds complicated @Goblintrain and @Kaijyuu

 

[Goblintrain]

OMFW!!! Abishkar... your a genius! That actually does work!

@A]mun can't guarantee it doesn't have unintended consequences, but at a glance, the simple solution Abishkar suggested appears to work beautifully.