Due to my main PC being down, I've been bored out of my mind. The good side of this however is with nothing else to do, I have no distractions, thus I am working on maps that have a much higher chance of getting finished.

I'm currently working on a map I want a dropship selection system for. However searches and the wiki/tutorials do not offer me what I am looking for. I need an in-depth explanation of how a dropship selection system works, how the dropship is unable to move (I'm guessing constantly move onto itself?) how the dropped units are detected and how they are immediately replaced within the transport.

It's fairly basic how it works: You drop a unit from a dropship, it gets detected by a ground only location so you execute your spell/whatever and the enter transport ai is executed to load it back.

I'm not sure if moving the dropship wouldn't prevent the player from dropping units. I'd order it. With enough effort someone might be able to make it escape the location, so if you don't detect it anymore move all dropships from a larger location around it back to its original location.

Oh and the loading into the transport can take a bit of time, so it's possible it gets detected the next trigger loop too. Make sure you start the next spell only if you have checked for at most 0 units and the ground only location.

Anything else?

For my RPG I use a dropship system along with a lot of different text displays for an in-game menu. To make sure that a unit is only detected once, many many of my triggers will not fire if switch 4 is set. Whenever a unit is detected from the dropship, I set this switch. At the end of the trigger cycle for that player I clear that switch and run an ai script to reload the units. This has worked just fine for me so far.

To make a location detect only ground units, double click on a location, or select a location and hit enter. From the properties of the location you can check off low-med-high ground and uncheck air detection.

As for keeping the dropship still, I like to use an inverted location to detect pixel movement of the dropship. If you want I could upload an example map using inverted locations to do this -- but you should be able to get away with just constantly ordering the dropship.

Moving the Transporter is fine.
Ordering is not enough (at least I can escape the dropzone with much effort with mouse and touchpad).

Make sure that you run the "enter transport" script only when a unit is on the ground (else you won't detect every unload).

If you will use spells, I would use 1 DC per spell (so you can use/activate different spells at once). If you use a menu, 1 DC is enough to stop the detection.

Imo you should use an inverted location and only move the dropship back when it's no longer in the location. The inverted location needs to be 2 pixels smaller than the dropship on all sides to properly detect when it is there.

If you need a basic action key, moving the dropship works for it. For example, moving the dropship in Bioject's Hazard Zone when standing next to a corpse will loot the corpse. Or you can buy stuff by the same method, or just interact with anything in general.

It's very useful.

One thing I was wondering was how you load the units the same way? I seem to remember the bigger or smaller the sizes of the units are, there is an order in which the units are loaded in. Correct me if I'm wrong please.

Basic Notes
-You have to run an "ai" Script for the loading to work
-if you want to save triggers and you only have 1 unit to drop alter the location's to only detect units from ground

Movement Detection
-By having a inverted location you can detect where it moves quicker and move it back so you can that has you have it stay in there...
Or
if there is nothing around the drop to abuse you can make so if there is no drop in that location then it becomes almost like a action button

Re-Loading Units
- Give the dropship to another player, then place desired units inside note if you want to have certain units in a row like options 1-2-3-4 then you have unload all units then re-load them in the order
Or
this can be done with the current player via switches which is better option by setting a switch the player can't use a item while its being reloaded

If you unload a unit then immediately reload a unit it seems to just be put back into the same order. Initially, though, you must load them in order.

Just in case this helps since the topic seemed to go toward how units are arranged in the transport:
Link to an other topic.

A new "Fad" that's going around with the Dropship systems used in RPGs is that you can make moving the dropship anywhere = interact with immediate surroundings.

U can use inverted locations to make the execution clean and crisp.

That fad has been around for God knows how long.

About using inverted locations as interact: if you want to save locations, arrange all the dropships in one line line at the border of the map and use one well-sized location to detect their movement towards the battle arena (or where the hero is).

Trouble with that is that you can then move the dropship along the line, disturbing the other dropships and screwing things up.

It's better if you use a fixed point held by a spider mine beneath where the player's dropship is supposed to be. Move the inverted loc there, check to see if the dropship is there - if it isn't, then the player moved it. Works for all the players in your map without using many locations (1 or 2 depending on how you do it and how your map is set up).

It is better to fit the inverted location to the Spider Mine (or whatever other unit you use as an anchor) and center the location on the Dropships. This way none of the anchor units (IE Spider Mine) need to be distinguishable in any way or have to be cycled through to get to the correct Dropship and all players can share the same detection triggers.