GO TO http://www.staredit.net/topic/6949/ FOR AN EXAMPLE OF THE BEST STORAGE SYSTEM FOR IT YET

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Most of you probably already know about this, but for those who haven't (I just found out about it myself via trial and error), here's an idea for an alternative to vHP.

The Idea:
Protoss Scarabs, under certain conditions, will deal damage without exploding. The one condition that I am aware of is Random Suicide Mission + scarab with hyper triggers, but there may be more. The idea then is to move this scarab underneath an enemy for a single trigger cycle, then move it away. It will deal damage, but you won't see the scarab.

The Pros:
1) You can deal direct damage to an enemy without having to keep track of their hp. Nuff said.
2) Increased damage can be done by moving multiple scarabs underneath the enemy.

The Cons:
1) The targets will run away after getting hit. This only happens if the Reaver that shot the Scarab is still around. Removing the Reaver removes the problem. If you need the Reaver to be around, you can compensate by ordering the unit to move to its original location. However, nearby splashed units are more difficult to compensate for. See part 4.
2) You always need at least 1 scarab available that is not about to die. A storage system is therefore needed.
3) Only targets ground units.
4) Splash damage. Note that you CAN get around this. Move the enemy unit away, put a scarab on it, then move the unit back to its original spot. Cover up the move with an exploding death animation. No splash damage! Note that to implement a spell that hits multiple enemies, you'd need a separate chamber for each individual enemy to guarantee the full damage. It is also possible to utilize alliances; give enemies that you don't want splashed to the computer who owns the Scarabs, then give them back. Splash will be avoided for those enemies.
5) Stacking scarabs isn't perfect with a single move (teleport) trigger. For some reason, it one additional trigger cycle (even if you copy/paste the teleport triggers) for scarabs to stack. You therefore want to move the scarabs on top of each other for an additional trigger cycles before using them to attack. Note that this only works with Random Suicided Scarabs; normal ones will never stack properly. Random Suicided Scarabs will EVEN STACK UNDER BUILDINGS.
6) Due to the nature of Starcraft, the victims get vision of the Reavers. It's the same thing as how you get vision of a Siege Tank on top of a ledge when it hits you. Compensating can be done by giving the unit to a computer player to get hit so that the player never sees the Reaver, or remove the Reaver that fired the Scarab altogether.
7) Targeting is a bit strange due to the nature of Random Suicide. Random Suicide first randomly chooses an enemy player (1-8), then picks the nearest unit of that player to attack. As such, the most consistent way to use this system is to then set aside another computer player to act as the target for the Scarabs. Burrowed Devouring Ones are recommended due to their small size and lack of built in AI. Note that Scarabs will not attack burrowed units owned by P9-11 even if they have vision of them.
8) Every Random Suicided Scarab attack appears to be counted towards an attack sprite. I believe Starcraft has an attack sprite limit of 100 at a time. This means that if there are too many units and spells happening simultaneously, some attacks will misfire. There are solutions. One is that the storage system immediately moves the Scarab to a location where it cannot attack another unit. The second is to check if there are too many scarabs attacking on the map. If there are, you have to delay spells by 1 trigger cycle. A third possible solution is to modify your spells such that increased damage results in the Scarabs staying out longer rather than increasing the number Scarabs moved. A fourth solution is to use more computers, each one representing several different binary countoff amounts. IE Player 8 will have scarabs that deal 1 damage and will be used for 1, 2, 4 and 8 damage amounts. Player 7 will have scarabs that deal 16 damage due to upgrades and will be used for 16, 32, and 64 damage. So on and so forth.

Ways to Store Scarabs:
SEE THE MOST OPTIMAL SYSTEM YET AT http://www.staredit.net/topic/6949/

Post has been edited 25 time(s), last time on Apr 12 2009, 6:04 am by SelfPossessed.

I haven't played it yet, since I've already made it (although much more basic than yours. I was playing around with the AI's and noticed the random suicide mission + scarab) Neat idea though, to use it as a damge counter. I honestly never thought of that. I really need this for my map.

Couldn't you set up the reavers so their scarabs never explode? Like block the academy with dark templars or something. You would have less problems if the scarabs were never able to reach their target in the first place.

@ Fwop

I just tried. Even though the scarabs couldn't reach the Academy, they still blew up. I think it's a side effect of the Random Suicide AI.

I saw this and was easily amused at how simple, yet so useful in many ways. Easily the most practical spell damage, skips vhp entirely.

Yeah, we're using vvHP in the Build-A-Ship Workshop map. Albeit it's a guardian instead of a scarab

Excellent idea.

Sorry for me being dumb, but I didn't understand how this could by-pass vHP, someone can explain why please?

So, I just want to make sure, does the scarab deal the same amount of damage it would deal if it exploded?

Because this allows you to easily deal physical damage, so you don't need to do it all virtually anymore.

Have you managed to measure the damage dealt by 1 scarab per trigger cycle? This concept is extremely useful for my map.

Neato burrito.

The questions I have were just asked by Falkoner and JaFF.

nice concept!

to the 2. cons:
Scarabs will explode after living a few seconds (don't know the exact lifetime).
To make sure you always use the freshed scarab you need to put the reavers in lines.
Since locations use the units which are more left before the ones who are on the right side of it, you can use that knowledge.
R = Reaver, X = Target
R - - - - - - - - - X
R - - - - - - - - - X
R - - - - - - - - - X
R - - - - - - - - - X
->->->->->->-> decreasing life time
Just put a location over the reavers and (nearly) over the target units. Now you just need enough reavers to have no failures.

Another improvement could be that you move the scarabs to another location where they wait and die. This is only useful, if the reavers can only shot a new scarab when their scarab died (I'm not absolutely sure about that) because you cannot screw up the system then (pros: no errors; cons: maybe more units/sprites used, can need more place on the map, may uses 1 location more).

BTW, I was able to deal only 2 damage because of splash (-> 58 hp sarah kerrigan).

EDIT:
additional cons:
-you will hit urself in melee (you take some splash damage).

You mean the attack it uses with the AI splashes?

In the test map, it does damage equal to the scarab's damage set in the editor.

That's perfect. That's about as perfect as a real time damage counter is going to get.

Yes, they can only fire a new scarab after their first has died.

@ Falkoner, Jaff, and Kaias

I haven't tested for more than 1 trigger cycle (as in I don't know how fast they refresh their attack), but it does the damage listed for the first one (as in, the first attack occurs within the timeframe of 1 trigger cycle). The Scarabs in the test map are set to 10 damage, are used for a single trigger cycle, and deal their listed damage (20 for the defiler).

@ stickynote and Jaff

I'm glad that some found this to be useful. I expect great things then.

@ Ahli

For the Reaver line, you still have to time them separately if you want to be perfectly accurate. Units in Starcraft sometimes attack a bit slower or faster than another. If the game goes on long enough, a game with a line of Reavers will eventually mess up.

I not sure what you mean by moving the scarabs away. The suicide AI has to be continuously running to get the scarabs to spaz out. If you mean junkyard/set generic command point to store them (owned by a another computer player), then running the suicide AI (given to the suicide computer player) before moving them, that might be possible. However, even these scarabs will die over time (at least, whenever I tried they'd eventually die after a while), which makes it difficult to get fresh scarabs. That and I don't know how multiple AIs will affect the suicide one. Still, it's definitely worth looking into as an alternative storage mechanism.

Hitting yourself is a side effect of splash, so I didn't mention it.

On another note, I seem to do weird stuff with Reavers. o_O I actually came across this because of the test map you made using the give Reaver to human player concept I thought up.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Nov 11 2008, 6:38 pm by SelfPossessed.

I'm surprised no one had ever thought of this before (In previous maps, I had reavers which did 100 dmg, minus armour, thus alowing varying damage).

In my map they never explode or only explode at the beginning and it just uses ai scripts.

Attachments:

Now, can you throw this in with players? As in players own the scarabs? Or is still the fact that players can't run AIs? The purpose behind what I'm asking would be to make the scarab damage increase more... through upgrades

@ Morphling

In that case, storing them may be an option. Sweet.

@ Epoch

Short version. It won't work.

Long version. After you give the Reaver, the scarab is owned by the player. The scarab also maintains its last AI, including junkyard and Random Suicide. Unfortunately, as Random Suicide isn't continuously running, the scarab won't spaz out and deal damage without exploding.