[General] What Is "Special"? (Silence, Drunken Haze, etc)

[Kyrbi0]

I swear, guys, I even Searched first to make sure. No one seems to have any idea what this does; couldn't even really find any conversation about it. :<

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There are three abilities in the World Editor, Silence, Drunken Haze & Cloud, which are mostly identical except for how they used (the 1st is point-targetted AoE, the 2nd is unit-targetted AoE, the 3rd is a point-targetted Channeling AoE). They all share a field for Disabling certain kinds of unit interactions, and there are four choices; Melee, Ranged, Spells (which are all self-explanatory & work great)... and "Special".


So what in the world is a "Special"? What does it mean to Disable it? I have no clue how to test it, since I don't know what it even is. Is this of any use? Anyone have any insight?

Thanks in advance!

 

[Jampion]

I don't know if it has any useful or intended effect, but I know, that it disables attacks that only work against trees.
For example the second attack indices for ghouls, peasants and peons are disabled (you can no longer use attack on trees).
However normal attacks that also work against trees are not disabled (Infernal, Siege units, Mountain Giant).

Tree only attack indices have certain special properties, for example they are hidden and do not benefit from attack speed modifiers, if I remember correctly.

 

[Kyrbi0]

I don't know if it has any useful or intended effect, but I know, that it disables attacks that only work against trees.
For example the second attack indices for ghouls, peasants and peons are disabled (you can no longer use attack on trees).
However normal attacks that also work against trees are not disabled (Infernal, Siege units, Mountain Giant).

Tree only attack indices have certain special properties, for example they are hidden and do not benefit from attack speed modifiers, if I remember correctly.

REALLY? I'm serious, I never knew any of that. That's great (that it actually does something). If that's the case, I could see a neat little custom spell that (either temporarily or persistently) disables Lumber gathering for afflicted units.

I also didn't know that stuff about "Tree-only Attack Indices". Thanks!

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Does anyone else have any insight? Can you confirm what Jampion reports? Are there any other 'special' things (attacks, I imagine), like the War Club or Attack Ground or somesuch?

 

[Jampion]

(either temporarily or persistently) disables Lumber gathering for afflicted units.

It does not stop lumber gathering, just the attack that is manually ordered by using attack on a tree. The harvest abilities still work as usual.
The lumber harvest ability is in no way connected to an attack as far as I know.

A second attack index you can disable is "debris". This could actually be useful in some maps to prevent a unit from destroying rock chunks for a certain time.

If you are interested in this I suggest to do the following: Use silence as spell to disable special attacks. Silence has the advantage, that it is only applied on units that are affected.
So in case your unit has an attack index with only a special target, you will see the buff and further investigate from there.
I guess there are even more special attack targets.

Note, if you have tree and debris as targets the attack becomes "normal" again, is no longer hidden, affected by attack speed modifiers and can no longer be disabled with "special".

edit: wall is another target.

 

[Kyrbi0]

Well, Silence may be good for that, but since I'm generally modding stuff to 'fit into' the standard game, and the standard game doesn't allow for Buffs Not to Stack, I lean towards using Cloud, since (out of almost all the other abilities!) it doesn't have any problems Stacking with custom versions of itself.

Also, I'll be honest, while I'm excited to finally know more about this, it doesn't sound like there's anything truly useful (to me) that I can do with it. Unless we discover more things it can disable.

 

[Wark]

Resource denial?
I'd look into how it interacts with "physical" spells, too, like Berserk or Ensnare. Just a hunch.