I used the search and couldn't find a clear answer. It's been a while since I've made a map but is there a way to order units to unburrow with a trigger? I want to create burrowed units and have them unburrow.

The "Order" action will make them unburrow, but of course you'll have to tell them to move somewhere. The typical solution is to center a location on top of the burrowed unit, and then order the unit to move to the location.



If moving a location over the unit isn't feasible (e.g., you have several units that need to unburrow and can't use Give Unit to cycle through them), you can issue an order and then attempt to move them to an unwalkable terrain tile, which would interrupt their order command.



Edit: Thanks to Sacrieur for verifying that the wait between the order and move on the alternate method is unnecessary.

Post has been edited 3 time(s), last time on Dec 25 2015, 12:20 am by Roy. Reason: Thanks, Sac!

It worked, thanks!

There is one interesting twist with this. Not very important or useful, but I'm not sure if it's really mentioned anywhere. If you move the burrowed unit under the structure and use a patrol instead of move for unburrowing then it should unburrow and stay still on top of that structure.

SEN I love you!

It's unreliable to use Roy's second method, after careful and extensive testing revealed that there is quirk with it which causes the unburrowed unit to complete its order despite having been moved to unwalkable terrain.

Since there is no solution for this presently, it's best to implement the first one.

Post has been edited 3 time(s), last time on Dec 25 2015, 10:01 pm by Sacrieur.

then just combine it. Order to move to the location on them and then move them to unwalkable.

This is the first solution Roy posted with an unnecessary step. The second solution is for the instance you cannot center a location on the burrowed unit.

That "unnecessary step" is supposed to prevent them from actually going to the center of the location after unburrowing. Even though it may quirk at times there's no reason to leave it out entirely.

The "location on them" is the supposedly preplaced location 'Burrower' from Roy's 2nd solution.

Also there might be ways around that as well. Spontaneous ideas would be to wait for 1 loop then move them again, or give them to a neutral player before moving, then give them back.

Post has been edited 3 time(s), last time on Dec 27 2015, 12:23 pm by NudeRaider.

A 6.1% failure rate is plenty reason to leave it out. Any failure rate is plenty reason to leave it out.


Already tried it; doesn't work.


You can't give the units, that's why you're using the second method:

But you have a preplaced location on them, right? So give them all. Or how about using burrow detection to find out which to cycle through?
Anyways it was just a random idea. If those are not feasible there might different workarounds.
I think Inferno was it that suggested ordering after unburrowing.

Give Unit is a disruptive trigger action, and it is not appropriate for many games to use it, especially for player-controlled units.

Say you have three units selected and burrow them all, which fires the trigger to unburrow them. If you cycle through each of the three units with "Give Unit", all those units get deselected in the process. The player would then have to reselect all three units, creating a bad game experience. If you need to avoid this bad game experience, you have to avoid using "Give Unit", which is the only practical means of location-based cycling. For these instances I suggested the alternative, which has its own drawbacks as described by Sacrieur. Another alternative, if feasible, would be to use an LID system for all possible burrowed units.

However, the person who started the thread has resolved the issue, so in an effort to prevent this thread from going further off-topic, I'm locking it. If you want to continue discussion on corner cases and alternatives, please start a Theories and Ideas topic.