Does anyone know how I would go about getting that trick where you have lurker spines attacking in a clockwise motion, but the attacks are constant instead of staggered, so its like this continual spine attack that moves around in a clockwise direction?

If you place the lurks and the objects for them to attack all for neutral players except the first lurker, then time it appropriately so that you give the next lurker in line just before the last attack ends, that will probably work?

I did it in this map.

Apparently I just put a whole bunch of lurkers down. I can't find any triggers that control them other than different quadrant type stuff. You're just going to have to order the unit they're attacking to move in a clockwise direction.

Couldn't you just stack like 80 Lurkers for P9, and then have a trigger like this?



I mean, you don't really need to do anything fancy (as Sacrieur suggested) because they'll naturally unsynchronize their attacks over time, but if you need the effect to begin immediately, you could stagger the ownership to stagger the initial attack.

It's a boss battle where the boss moves to the centre of the arena, and then launches this attack. I'm going to balance the lurker spine damage so the damage is either lethal or very damaging, forcing the players to stop whatever they are doing and run for it.

I will try out these methods later today, but just before I do: I thought of another method.


What if I created and removed the lurkers? Does that 'refresh' the attack? Does anyone know?

It would be a new unit, so it would be a new attack cooldown. However, removing and creating the Lurkers all at once is more going to guarantee they attack synchronously than asynchronously: isn't that the opposite of what you're trying to achieve here?

If your intention is to get a continuous attack via creating/removing, that's not going to work because there's a small acquisition delay before a unit first attacks. Unless you combined it with one of the suggestions mentioned above (e.g., creating them one at a time on every trigger loop).

Also, I'm not sure, but iirc the lurkers show a brief burrow animation when created which means further delay and that you have to create them in a temp location. Anyways. that's also a way to control cooldown: Have (a) temp location(s) where you move them to and back when you need to refresh attack synchronisation.

Preplace them all, then use give triggers to give the target and the lurker away together. Then give them back to another player before the next set, repeat.

Here's an example map, using the give method and a cloaked larva as the target.

Attachments:

Thanks a lot Roy. I'll post here again after I have put this into the map.

Didn't Minigame Party have this mechanic? I think the trick was to burrow a shit ton of lurkers and have a DT with vision circling around, making sure so heal the DT often.

you'll want to stagger the lurkers and move them away like nude said. I'd also use a burrowed unit that the lurkers have vision of to cause the lurkers to attack. Be careful of the cooldowns of lurkers.

The problem with using a Dark Templar is that it has a collision box that may interfere with the players' units (either by blocking a player's unit or by moving around a player's unit in a manner that disrupts the system). Using a cloaked larva would be a better implementation. Check the example map I attached.

I think it would be better to set it up once and be done with it rather than constantly be moving Lurkers around (which would also require an extra area for you to move them to). Shuffling is entirely unnecessary, as you can see in my example map.

How exactly are they supposed to attack in a clockwise circle if their target is a burrowed unit? If you're confused about the effect Oh_Man wants to achieve, check the example map I attached.

For one, I believe cloaked larva are not 100% stable. For two, you need to have a location to order the larva, so why couldn't you move a burrowed unit instead? Also, the larva has a static move speed, whereas you can make a burrowed unit move as fast as you want

Giving units to neutral players would indeed be more efficient than moving them away.

1. Cloaked larvae are not any more unstable than cloaked Marines or Zerglings. That is, they are very stable. If you wanted, though, you could use a disabled unit sprite of a more familiar unit such as a Marine and do an E-D-E-M to achieve the same effect of an invisible unit with no collision.
2. Moving a burrowed unit in a circular pattern would require several locations for any sense of fluidity (mobile grids would not make the effect look fluid at all). If a location grid were already in place, it would be a reasonable solution, but I doubt that's the case here.
3. The speed is a simple relationship with the circumference of the circle traveled: to increase the speed, make the larva move in a smaller circle, and to decrease the speed, make it move in a larger circle. There are no physical limits with a crawling larva in this scenario that don't also exist for a trigger-moved burrowed unit.

I would like to see an example of your solution if you truly believe it to be superior in some manner.

Unfortunately I can't get SCMDraft to run right now, and mobile grids are not the easiest things to create in the world. The image above shows what you can make with a devourer (yellow/brown) grid and a scourge/observer (green) grid. The attack would be timed in such a way that it would be smooth of course, and you can easily split up the 22 degree angle by adding vertices at the cardinal directions in the mobile grid, but I figured 20 attack points would make a pretty good circle at 2 attacks per second and a 10 second revolution. Any lower than that or slower than that, and it will look bad. The downside is that you can't constantly attack. I don't like the constant attack method because it doesn't work with armor well, but that's a balancing issue, and is the reason I thought to use this method.

The only real benefit I see is the ability to move the lurkers mid spin. Everything else can be resolved as you said by reducing the radius of the circle (duh!).

From what I can tell from Bioject's map: Resident Evil One... It looks like he just constantly spawns the lurkers offscreen and have them attack a burrowed unit one by one as they spawn... He has around 60 of them attacking and it is amazing. Love that map.

The burrowed unit moves by Protoss Observer by the way.

Okay I need help now with Lurkers unburrowing.

Here is what I understand so far: If the Lurker player doesn't have burrowing researched, the lurkers can't burrow.
I start the Lurkers off with a player that has burrow, then swap them to the player that doesn't have burrow. Great! Now they are burrowed and attacking.

BUT - if the attacked unit gets out of range of the lurkers those lurkers will always pop up, even if they have burrowed disabled.

Any solutions how to fix??

Short answer: Nope.
Long answer: No, because Lurkers don't need/ignore the burrow tech.

Solution: Make sure there are never units outside their attack range that they can see.

IIRC computers completely ignore the burrow tech.

Players who don't have burrow researched can burrow/unburrow just fine. Players who have burrow disabled can't burrow/unburrow lurkers. Computers can burrow/unburrow regardless.