Ok here's what I want. Every beacon is considered an airport. A dropship should only load and unload at the beacons. And the dropships should only be able to move back and forth among beacons.

The thing is, I want theoretically infinite beacons, which are built as acadamies then change into beacons. I also want there to be theoretically infinite dropships. So IDK how to use locations, except maybe having 1 location cycling among all airports and 1 location cycling among all dropships. But not sure how to do that either.

This will be a challenge. If the dropship leaves a beacon, I could just give it to a neutral player. It will coast along just fine, then I give it back when it reaches another beacon. But what if the player orders it to move to some random spot with no beacon? It will be stuck then. Or I could make it so that it's impossible to load/unload when not over a beacon, but not sure how to do that. I've seen it before, like in Storm the Fort and Basketball Street. You unload something and it just pops back in immediately.

Well, this may be too difficult, but I know at least there will be some users out there who like a challenge. So, any thoughts?

Center a ground-only location on the dropship. If there is at least one ground unit owned by the player in the location, and no beacon, order all units in the location to enter the nearest transport. No need to center locations on beacons or cycle through them at all.

You use an ai script to load units back inside the transporter. BUT you will load other units accidentally, too, if you drop the unit next to another unit.
You could move the unit and the dropship somewhere else, load it there and send it move it where it was, but you would need to know which units were inside the Dropship.

So, do you have other units around that can be loaded into the dropship?
If you are only moving hero units around, this is possible. Else you will have mistakes.

The idea with neutral dropships will indeed work because giving a unit to p12 won't remove the move order.
I think you can still cycle through the dropships with using 2 neutral players without using the order. You can test for movement with inverted locations.

Unfortunately, that wouldn't satisfy the criterion that the dropships should only be able to move back and forth among beacons. Also, you'd need to be cycling through the dropships (the requirements specify that the system should work for any number of dropships, meaning it has to be just as suited to dealing with 800 dropships as with just one or a few), which in turn would make them difficult to control due to the deselection effect.

What I would do is this: Normally, have dropships belong to a neutral player. When creating an airport, create a civilian along with the beacon. Constantly cycle through the beacons by giving them to a different player, checking to see if each one has a civilian or not. If the lack of a civilian is detected (because the player moved the civilian off of the beacon), remove them and repopulate the beacons. This will constitute the control system for what you are doing. Feel free to use an alternate system if you prefer.

If a beacon does not have a civilian, set a death count to indicate the activation of "move mode", and put a location there. The next time a beacon is detected to have lost its civilian, if it is a different beacon, put a second location there, and order either one or all (depending on your preference, or on a control somewhere on the map) of the dropships at the first location to the second. This part of the system ensures that dropships can only move between airports.

On the other hand, if the second beacon selected is at the first location (i.e. the second beacon is the first beacon), change the death count again to indicate "load/unload mode". This mode gives all the planes at that airport to the player, while also making them move to the airport itself (so they can't go anywhere). If the player moves any civilian, deactivate load/unload mode and give the planes away again. This part of the system allows you to load and unload at airports (and only there), despite the measures taken to ensure that you could only move between airports.

Yeah, Basically there are 4 problems/criteria:

1. Dropships should only be able to load/unload at the beacons.
2. Dropships should only be able to move among beacons (i.e., if they are not over a beacon, they should either be moving to one or they should be prevented from load/unload).
3. More than 1 dropship can be in flight at a time. (not as important, might be 100x harder this way)
4. Theoretically infinite beacons and dropships must be possible.

Aristocract nearly solved prob1, but in that solution, if the dropship happens to fly over some units, they will be loaded (if there's room).

For Prob2, I'm leaning towards temporarily giving the dropship to a neutral player, because that would solve Prob1 at the same time. The problem is, if I command the dropship to move, it's not necessary moving towards another beacon. Hence Foxwolf's thing, which seems a little tedious but I'm not sure. Some kind of civilian selector system is probably inevitable.

A new idea has just struck me. How about, dropships are always owned by the neutral player, and all ground units walking onto the beacon are given to the neutral player and then the scrip is run to load them into the dropship. Then use some kind of selector system, maybe with an observer, to command where to move the dropship. But then it would have to unload the units, whcih would end up right on top of the beacon, and then get loaded again... I liked this, tho, cuz I wouldn't have to cycle around all beacons.

Or, maybe an opposite extreme. Dropships and units are normally owned by u, and loaded manually. But then use a selector system to move dropships around, temporarily giving them to a neutral player. But then how would I make it so that ur dropships dont move on their own?

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Nov 26 2010, 9:33 pm by DrZygote214.

You can't execute AI script on player 12 (Neutral).

Question: In your map, will you need to use protoss probes? If not, then I have something figured out that should work perfectly. I will do a test map and then upload it here if it works. It will be instant and may not require you to cycle through units.

More news on my way once I'm done with the test map.

That's okay cuz I can just make p7 or p8 neutral. I was thinking only 4 - 6 human players max.


Don't think I'll need probes. Why, does it have to do with picking up crystals or something? I'm interested. Leme know when you're done, or at least an estimate of when it'll be done.

No. 4 makes all of this impossible

even if you do cycle thru all the dropships, you'll have selection problems, timing problems, and a whole slew of other headaches

if you can, just stick with 1 dropship or have multiple different units that all serve as dropship (this way you can have 1 location per)

http://www.staredit.net/files/2329/

Here you go, you can open the map to look at the triggers if you want. For now, I am not sure if it will work with multiple players.

Just as I was about to post, I got an idea... I'll make the change and update the map once done.

Forgot to include some details...

It should work with any amount of dropship and beacons.
It works by building a pylon at the place you have a dropship and to the place you want to send it.
Everything is instant.

Just a note: Doing my way, once two dropships are at the same airport, there is no way to control them individually. You may want to restrict one dropship per airport.

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Nov 26 2010, 11:36 pm by Apos.

^This is one of the reasons why the version I designed has a specific "load/drop mode" where dropships are under player control, instead of trying to use AI scripts. The other reason is that compared to using p7 or p8, the load/drop mode gives the player better control over precisely which units are loaded and when. Also, having a specific load/drop mode, instead of detecting when a dropship gets to a beacon and giving it to the player (and stopping it), is that it lets dropships fly over airports that aren't the destination. Like if you have airports organized 1-2-3 in a line, and are sending a dropship from 1-3, it doesn't have to stop when it hits (2), if you do things as I have described.

Re: the observer thing: it'd be a lot slower than having a specific control unit (like a civilian or a probe) at each beacon for choosing the destination. With an observer, it'd have to travel all the way from wherever it might be to wherever it has to go, while carefully avoiding any other airports that might be between the two. It's a large amount of awkwardness for the player to bear in return for a bit of an easier triggering task on your part.

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Nov 27 2010, 12:02 am by FoxWolf1.

Could a teleportation system be an other option for your map?

I had those same thoughts. The way to get around it is, in the trigger, it should say exactly 1 dropship instead of all dropships. You can't control which 1 it will pick, but at least they won't be permanently stuck together.


True, especially since the maps I have in mind will be 256x256. Better to have like a cacoon by each beacon, which u can cancel to activate something.


'Fraid not. You gotta be able to shoot down airplanes. This is war! I will check out ur map now Apos.

I can't try this out right now, since I'm on vacation, but just by how you describe it, the only control is the one that moves the ship, right? In that case, you're probably having it give the plane to the player when it's on a beacon...so how do you detect whether the beacon that the airplane is flying over is the destination? Based on the OP's descriptions, the system should probably be able to have planes fly over beacons that aren't the destination without getting messed up.

Actually, I never thought of that. That'd be nice but right now I'm not worrying about it. Prolly it would be rare to have 3 airports all in a straight line like that, so i'll worry about it later.

Apos, ur map works. For those who don't know, first build a pylon on the origin beacon, then build one on the destination beacon. However, the drop ship is weird in flight. U can't select it for longer than a split second. Is it constantly getting re-owned between P12 and P1? I think this is not good because enemies need to be able to attack it without the attack getting canceled just cuz it switched owners.

I believe I have a valid approach now:

locations MA1 (big) and MA2 (small) cycle among all airports
if it finds a dropship in MA1, constantly order it to move to MA2 (so that u can't move dropships manually off the beacon)

to begin a move command, do something at the origin beacon (e.g., cancel cacoon); this gives the dropship there (and all units inside of it) to a neutral player.
to select a destination airport, do something else at the beacon (e.g., cancel a diff kind of cacoon). Then run the trigger to move the dropship.
location ND constantly centers over the dropship ownt by neutral player, when it moves over a beacon, stop the dropship and give it to P1 again.

But now I have a new condition. You gotta be able to destroy airports, so instead of beacons they could be buildings. Or there could be a nearby building, and when it's killed, it kills the airport too.

To fix that, I would need to make it cycle through beacons instead of the dropships. Both ways work except that an you would need an additional trigger in order to prevent a glitch that would happen when the plane would move over a beacon before getting to it's destination.

Guess what? It occurs to me that I don't know how to make a location cycle among all beacons. I just looked at Apos' thing again, but not sure I get it. How do you guarantee that a location will flow through ALL the beacons, instead of just one or two?

All I know is, you use the move location action. Move Location X on Unit Y owned by player Z at anywhere. Then if you do that again, how do u make it so that it doesn't hit the same unit? Do you maybe put something there, like an observer, so that they all end up with observers, and u search for the blank ones, then kill all obs at the end?

BTW Apos, did u say there was a bug in your map? I don't notice any, although IDK what all those barrax r for.

Let's explain the cycle first: (This is only a general explanation and may not be that way I used in my test map)

1)Center a location over a unit owned by player 1.
2)Give that unit to player 2.
3)Repeat as long as player 1 owns a unit.
3)When player 1 doesn't have anymore units, give all units owned by player 2 to player 1.

The disabled barracks are there to freeze the air units. The water under there barracks is there to freeze the ground units. How it works:

1)If you move a unit (Not order) to a location that it can't be moved, they just freeze during that trigger. Repeat the move trigger over and over and the result is a unit that can't be moved.

I noticed a bug when I added a second dropship. The bug was caused because I probably made a little silly mistake with my trigger that would check if the dropship was over a beacon. (If it's over a beacon, it's owned by player 1, if it's not over a beacon, it's owned by player 10, 11 or 12.)

Ok I see how to cycle now, but it's rather ugly as I use P1 and P8, so the beacons are all flashing red and yellow over and over. If anyone knows how to prevent that, let me know.

I got the dropships to freeze using Apos' method. BTW Apos, I tested it without the beginning trigger to disable doodad state on the barrax, and it still worked. Apparently all u need are 9 clustered barrax owned by P12. No need to disable them.

Now I only need one last thing: the commands for origin and destination. I would like to use a zerg lurker egg: cancel it to select the origin. And a zerg mutalisk caccoon: cancel it to select the destination. But how do I do that? There are egg and cacoon units, but they can't be canceled. Any thoughts?

You can use tanks but they will attack.

You can use mutalisks and freeze them. They can mute to cocoon. (Make sure they have an amazingly long build time.)
Note: You will need to enable the research for mutation.

Also, I disabled the barracks so they wouldn't be seen on the minimap.

I've also seen Reavers used, like in STF. just build a scarab. prolly u could use carriers too. But IDK. It might be easier to just, instead of beacons, use Starports as Airports, and just build a unit to order a command.

Or hmm. Is it possible to put a larva at each beacon, freeze it, and make it build into something?