[General] Neutral Passive peasant stops harvesting lumber - How to disable stopping?

[Rektis]

The Neutral Passive player on my map has a Lumber Mill and Peasants. The Peasants are sent to harvest wood. They start harvesting until they're full, but then don't return the lumber.

It works when I set ownership to one of the "normal" players.
The Peasants of Neutral Passive also actually can be sent to return lumber and go back to a tree to harvest, if I take full control of Neutral Passive and right-click the Lumber Mill with a peasant that is "full of lumber".

How can I make the Neutral Passive player Peasants behave like normal player Peasants, i.e. making them return their harvest and continue harvesting?

I guess I can trigger this with periodic checks, but I suspect there's an easier solution I'm missing.

 

[TheLordOfChaos201]

The Neutral Passive player on my map has a Lumber Mill and Peasants. The Peasants are sent to harvest wood. They start harvesting until they're full, but then don't return the lumber.

It works when I set ownership to one of the "normal" players.
The Peasants of Neutral Passive also actually can be sent to return lumber and go back to a tree to harvest, if I take full control of Neutral Passive and right-click the Lumber Mill with a peasant that is "full of lumber".

How can I make the Neutral Passive player Peasants behave like normal player Peasants, i.e. making them return their harvest and continue harvesting?

I guess I can trigger this with periodic checks, but I suspect there's an easier solution I'm missing.

is this purely for aesthetics or do you want the to actually collect lumber as a resource to be used.

If it is just for looks you can create a separate lumber harvesting upgrade for them that causes them to harvest 0 lumber until they are holding a bundle of 10 lumber

this will cause them to infinitely pick at the tree but never harm it or harvest any lumber

 

[axleion]

a checklist:
- does the peasant have the correct Harvest Lumber ability?
- does the lumber mill have the correct Return Lumber ability?

though since the interaction works when controlled manually, I guess the checklist above is fulfilled already.

perhaps it has something to do with being Neutral Passive, hence the name "Passive".
maybe you should try assign the units and buildings to unused player slot.

 

[Sieben]

I agree with Dark_Axl: that is likely to be caused by the use of Neutral Passive player.
Dr Super Good recently said something about this in another thread:

Also be aware that Neutral players have their own AI that can cause them to do unexpected things. For example Neutral Hostile units might ignore orders in order to sleep, might ignore attacking buildings and might suddenly cancel movement orders to return to guard position.

I would also recommend to change the ownership of your units, if you have an available player slot. You may want to set the alliance setting to friendly with other players, change its color to black, and it should do the trick.

 

[Rektis]

It is purely for aesthetics, but I do want them to finish off trees.

The peasant has Harvest Lumber and the mill has Return Lumber.

All the player slots are used, so I can't assign them to another player.

 

[TheLordOfChaos201]

It is purely for aesthetics, but I do want them to finish off trees.

The peasant has Harvest Lumber and the mill has Return Lumber.

All the player slots are used, so I can't assign them to another player.

since it is purely for aesthetics why not add a timer to when all the trees are suddenly chopped down

I take it an event triggers once the peasants have chopped all the tries down?

the other option is to manually order them to return wood using the

unit order String

trigger... but that will probably have unintended consequences

 

[Dr Super Good]

Use a normal player for it. The neutral players are not really designed to do that stuff.

 

[Rektis]

Is it possible to change the AI behaviour so that Neutral Passive returns harvested lumber?

Also, I considered just de-selecting the peasant selected, so that a player can't use it, but the de-selection is too slow. You still can issue orders, if you're quick.

 

[axleion]

Also, I considered just de-selecting the peasant selected, so that a player can't use it, but the de-selection is too slow. You still can issue orders, if you're quick.

only for pure aesthetic and you don't want players to be able to click them?
you should consider adding Locust to the peasant and assign the peasant to some normal player slot.

 

[Rektis]

The peasants must be killable by normal units, so I can't use locust.
They're supposed to be background units that play no real role, kinda like critters. They shouldn't be mistaken for units that can be used tactically, so I prefer them not to be on a player slot, because that'd both make the peasant not have a player colour and be controllable.

 

[TheLordOfChaos201]

The Neutral Passive player on my map has a Lumber Mill and Peasants. The Peasants are sent to harvest wood. They start harvesting until they're full, but then don't return the lumber.

It works when I set ownership to one of the "normal" players.
The Peasants of Neutral Passive also actually can be sent to return lumber and go back to a tree to harvest, if I take full control of Neutral Passive and right-click the Lumber Mill with a peasant that is "full of lumber".

How can I make the Neutral Passive player Peasants behave like normal player Peasants, i.e. making them return their harvest and continue harvesting?

I guess I can trigger this with periodic checks, but I suspect there's an easier solution I'm missing.

here's an idea

give them the night elves wisp gather ability

that way they collect wood without ever having to chop down the tree or return limber