Hey guys, I was wondering if there was a way to make it so every "man" a Hydralisk "touches" (gets close to) will lose 10% of it's hp (But only organic units - not mechanical or buildings). I tried doing a trigger that sets to 90%, 80%, 70, etc. to 10, but then it just keeps repeating with the preserve trigger. And if I detect a Unit's hp with EUDs, that would be so time-consuming with every SC unit.. Any other ideas/ways to do this?

It really depends on circumstances.

You could use a virtual HP system.

Or

You could use a scarab (direct damage) system.
The most common iteration of direct damage works on a simple quirk. Whenever you move a scarab to a location covered off by unwalkable terrain, it explodes where it is at. You could move the unit in question to a location to the side, detect what type of unit it is, and then apply the correct amount of damage, and move it back.

I believe there is a wiki article that covers it in more detail. If you have ant questions feel free to ask brohann.

I am unsure how the virtual HP damage system would work. Also, these units will have damage done to them prior so it will not always be 100% or 90% or something. It could vary based upon upgrades and different units that attack.

He's referring to DDS system, which provides a method of HP handling. EUDs probably aren't your answer here.

http://www.staredit.net/?p=oldwiki&s=19

Basically you make the main unit invincible and have a stack of burrowed low hp units underneath which take the damage instead. Every of those burrowed units are equivalent to one virtual HP. When all burrowed units have been killed the main unit dies.

vHp describes a range of systems whereby the health of a unit is stored as something other than the built-in health system. Deathcounters, burrowed units, etc. vHp is pretty much unwieldy in almost every case. You can't really decide to do it halfway through map design without redoing every system. It's just about as bad as EUDs.

The dds (direct damage system) is your best bet. The disadvantage is that a unit has to be removed from play for a few moments (or every unit around it has to be made invincible briefly). With dds it won't matter what damage has been dealt to units beforehand.

The problem is (Tikels you should know) is that this would be in a Cat n Mouse map where there would not be a real place to put this. The Hydralisk would be a unit you can buy and it would be walking around the arena (meaning there would be no room for those scarabs in there, and it being invincible with the burrowed zerglings under it would not work well either.

EDIT: Yeah, I do not believe there is any real good option for this idea. I might just decide to not do it, but it was just a thought.

Use irradiate on a nonbiological unit maybe?

You could do it like Plague, make it drop them to 1% health, then it doesn't matter if you keep repeating it or not since they would die in one hit.

If you wanted it to just work on the mice then it wouldn't be too hard to setup with EUDs.

I guess you could use an actual ability, like Plague, or as Sacrieur mentioned, Irradiate. You could give the cat a hydra and a science vessel, and tell them to Irradiate the hydra to start the ability. Then you detect it was irradiated by EUDs (either that the energy of the SV dropped, or that the hydra has irradiate on it), and move the hydra to the arena, constantly setting its health to full.

But the problem is that you cannot use Irradiate or Plague in an AI script. I have thought of that with Plague, I also thought that would add a cool effect for the disease. But Irradiate would work fine as well if there was a way to make a neutral/computer player use it..

EDIT: I don't think I read yours the whole way through Azrael lol. I kind of like the idea of Irradiate and moving it back into the arena! But the problem is, if I set its health to full constantly, then it cannot be killed in battle. It's supposed to be a unit that kills, but can also be killed. That is why I couldnt' make it invincible in NudeRaider's suggestion.

I get the impression you're not fully grasping the concept of vHP. Yes, the unit you want to be able to be do damage to has to be invincible, but that doesn't mean it can't attack or be attacked. Obviously it can still attack, but you can also still attack it indirectly by killing its "HP" (which is a bunch of burrowed lings). All you need to do is give vision to the player. You can even set the HP of the invincible unit to match their vHP, so the illusion becomes quite a bit better.

The problem with this is that the burrowed units will slow down the mouse to some extend since you have to recenter the vHP-Lings. And since mice will usually be moving a lot this will be significant. You'd have to consider slowing down the cat too.

Also, while irradiate would work nicely on organic units it would have no effect on the robotic probes, which I assume are your mice.
Plague on the other hand would ignore shields.

Honestly I'd scratch that idea. StarCraft just isn't made for triggering diseases, and while there's ways to do it all of them have their drawbacks.

Hmm, in that case you could give it a higher starting HP to take into account the health it will lose from Irradiate.

But controversially, it may make the units it needs to damage also require a higher HP standard.

Although, you can track and reset HP, even without preplacing hydras for index IDs.

I think I am probably going to not do this because it's rather hard and I'm not the best map maker lol. Also, many noobs will be playing this game. So they will be like OH A HYDRALISK! IT'S INVINCIBLE! OP!!! RAGE QUIT!! But thanks for the ideas guys I wish there was an effective way to do this. I also thought it would have been cool to make the attack of the Hydralisk be a Plague, but that would require EUD actions making it even harder and not open to the general public. This topic can be locked