Any way to make a static AI controlled lurker? So it doesn't unburrow once enemies get out of reach.

As far as doing it in a nice way, no.

Removing the burrow ability from the computer won't stop them from burrowing/unburrowing lurkers.

The only other way to achieve this is to going to be having a location centred on the lurker that detects when enemy Men are near. If they are absent, then give the lurker to neutral or other unused P1-8 player (NOT P9-11, it eventually screws up their AI) to prevent the CPU from unburrowing it. Or continually Move the lurker to the same spot so it can't unburrow by interrupting the unburrow animation/effect.

Care to explain the bold line?

Figured you'd probably ask. Just found the thread: http://www.staredit.net/topic/5902/

Also when I get home, I'll confirm the best research setting for burrow for lurkers. I believe having it available but not researched gives the best results: lurkers will burrow once they come to a stop after being ordered to move somewhere (and enemies are around?), but will do it less often when it is disabled (hardly ever) or researched (much more sporadically).

Edit: Yes, confirm that the best tech setting is Enabled for burrowing, rather than Researched or Disabled.

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Feb 21 2012, 5:14 am by Lanthanide.

Thank you!

I had a movie map a while back that made a computer-controlled Lurker unable to burrow by disabling the technology, Lanthanide, so I don't know what you're citing there.

'course, not sure if this lets the Lurkers stop UNburrowing if they begin the map burrowed... Since it stops Siege Tanks from going in to (or out of) Siege Mode, I'd assume it would work.

Please post the map. I know that player-controlled lurkers can be prevented from unburrowing by disabling the technology, because it removes the icon to click on. Obviously CPU players don't click icons or use hotkeys, though.

Note that this could only possibly work with pre-placed burrowed lurkers. If you try and create a zerg ground unit Burrowed for a player that does not have the tech researched, it will appear above ground. If you create a Burrowed zerg ground unit for a player who does have the tech, and then give that unit to a 2nd player, that 2nd player will now have the Burrowed tech researched. If it is a human player, the Disabled setting will still take precedence and they won't be able to unburrow the unit due to lack of icon to click on. In the case of giving it to a CPU, they will now have the upgrade researched and therefore would behave as if it was researched.

So it is possible that having burrow Disabled for a CPU with pre-placed burrowed lurkers might prevent them from being able to unburrow the lurker, but that's the only combination of factors I can imagine where this would be true. Not useful if you need to create lurkers on-the-fly during gameplay through triggers, unless you can re-use a few of them over and over again.

Also siege modes are different in implementation compared to lurkers, because they are two different units, whereas a lurker being burrowed or not is a state applied to the lurker itself. You can create sieged tanks for any player even if they don't have the siege upgrade researched, but you can't create any zerg ground unit burrowed for a player that doesn't have burrow researched.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Feb 22 2012, 4:11 am by Lanthanide.

Yeah, it was indeed functional for a Lurker that was pre-placed. The movie map has submerged to the nethers, but I recreated the effects and it works for pre-placed Lurkers.

If you don't need an actual AI then you can make the player owned by a dummy player rather than a computer player. This way the player's units behave as if they were owned by a human.

I thought if you disabled the tech you couldn't ever use it. Even with giving one to the player...

You could also disable the lurker... And then even if a player owns it... It go pew pew always

I explained this quite thoroughly in my post. Making burrow tech Disabled prevents a human player from burrowing/unburrowing because there is no button to click on.

Actually now that I think about it more, I think having it Disabled for CPUs does prevent them from burrowing their lurkers as well, making them useless. A lot of my experimentation with this stuff was back in 2010 when I made the posts in that CPU units freezing thread, so forgive my foggy memory.

So yeah: to prevent a CPU from being able to unburrow a lurker, pre-place it as burrowed and keep the tech Disabled for them. You won't be able to create new burrowed lurkers for them, or give burrowed lurkers from other players that have the tech, because then the tech would be transferred to the CPU and allow them to unburrow.

unlocking for relevance.

http://www.staredit.net/files/583/

Kenoli made this a long time ago to help someone micro marines to kill lurkers. It uses neutral players or a dummy player IIRC, as heinermann said.