As Farty just said 100 is the limit for how many units can shoot at once.
Is there any way to circumvent that limit? Or give important units a higher priority?

I guess not, but what I'm asking for, is ideas for workarounds in a map where every player controls a hero and there are many unimportant comp units "sucking away the heroes' shots".
The problem arises when you are near victory because at that point your computer ally is swarming the enemy base. And the heroes which are basically the only units that can kill the objective building due to high armor are shooting very rarely thus prolonging the the game needlessly.
I just don't want to kill all comp units that are more than say 50. Any ideas that could fit smoother into gameplay?

Oh... I donno... There's no way to detect when the player is having problems, so I really don't think there is a way..

The detection can be done indirectly: I can assume that when more than say 70 units entered the location of the base the problem arises.
I've thought of things like merging say 70 units to a super unit but that idea was not at all appealing. I just mentioned it so that you know what kind of help I'm asking for.

It shouldn't really matter as long as they are not all attacking at the very same instant.

Well... What units are the attacking sprites assigned to first? Is it left to right or anything? Or is it just random?

But it does matter. It happens often that heroes can't shoot. Problem is overwhelming the enemy with sheer masses of cheap units is part of the game...
About 200 units in the base is not rare. Many of them are Marines or Firebats which have a high shot frequency.

You can get more than 100 I think, it's just when the map has reached the unit/sprite limits that you REALLY run into trouble, since the weapon sprites can probably dip into the leftover unit/doodad sprite limits. Just a thought there.

Units with melee attacks (zealots, zerglings, NOT firebats) do not use weapon sprites, so you can use those for NPCs. You can also put terrain in the way so that less units can attack the base at the same time.

nope, the map has only a few sprites. I don't get even near the 500 sprites limit. Also Farty posted a list of all the unit/sprite limits you can hit and it sounded pretty reasonable. I don't think he posted false information.
Yeah, I know. And I DO use zealots and zerglings - among many others but I don't feel like making all NPCs to melee units.
But maybe I can do something with terrain, thx.

I would have "bump-back" locations. When there are a certain number of enemy units in the base, have a trigger that moves some back to an outside location. They don't die, and can still come back and attack, but they aren't causing problems.

You could also have a similar system for the human players -- maybe have a secluded location inside the base.

If balance is an issue, then relocate computer and human units at the same time. You could even group them by strength or type.

Once again:

If I knew this, it might be possible to come up with a better solution.

I've noticed that units that use projectiles are always last, units with instant effects come first. IE if there's issues corsairs will fire but not scouts, marines but not goons.

Yeah, but I think that's because they manage to fire faster, so they have a better chance of getting it.

True. Afaik it just depends on the fire rate. If it tries to fire more often it will hit the right moment more often.

That sounds good - it should solve it. Thanks!

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Apr 2 2008, 5:19 pm by NudeRaider.

I agree, I havent seen many corsairs with a firing problem unless units AND sprites were at the max.

Still, I think you could solve the problem better if you knew what order the sprites were assigned to units all trying to attack at the same time.

Probably but there's an "if"