I am trying to get back into map making and had an idea for an arena map that would greatly benefit from vHP. Standard burrowed-unit vHP would not work because the players would not be able to select their targets, so I was considering using the players' units for the vhp unit. So, your unit would have about 100 HP, and every time it dies, a new one is created and 1 in subtracted from a DC. Once that DC hits 0, you lose a life. The problem with this is that every few hits, your unit would be deselected. Would this be too annoying?

Definitely.

:C But it opens up so many possibilities...

Would it change your mind if I said that it was about every 5 hits from a slow-attacking hero that you lose selection of your unit?

It's too annoying. No one will play. The one thing you can try doing is to make selection not required, so that your character's actions are controlled by other commands, like moving an observer to the left sets your units direction to left, or unloading a DT would make it cast a spell in the direction where the observer is relatively to a base location. Something like that.

Okay. I'll do that. I'll use an Observer for movement.

Or, what if I used a cloaked Wraith for movement and attacking? eg. shoot something with wraith = do virtual damage (or real damage if the target is a summoned unit), with the amount of damage done being based on your damage upgrade and which hero you're playing as?

... Please remember that I have never completed a map. It would work, it could work nicely, or it might not work for some reason. Try it.

Terrain problems with any flyer.

The deselection, observer movement, and attacking wraith would all be so annoying that I would never play this map.

Deselection: lose hotkey, after your unit "respawns", you have to reselect it, by which time you may have lost 50% of your HP already
Observer movement: clunky and hard for micro

Deselection: It seems that you don't understand how much HP the vhp has. It'll take about 5 hits from a DT to kill one off.

EDIT: You know what, I won't bother. Lock please.

ANY deselection is bad, and will remove hotkeys.

For the record, you can use the wraith for both movement and for damage, making it very unclunky.

Add a hitpoint. Then you could detect when it gets to 1 life, and set it back to 100%, and subtract 1 from the vHP.

Would a disabled unit be a possible alternative to a cloaked wraith?

I thought of a cool idea based on this. If you use an air unit as your hero (but you can't control it manually), then have a starport that allows four directional movement. (ie. WS are up and down, VB are left and right, D is shoot)

Good idea, I'll use that in some map. However, I don't want to use it in this map.

Lock please.

DEF. TOO ANNOYING. i get annoyed by even re-selecting my hero on a new life

What about using a cloaked stacked unit (the same one) in place of the observer.

Is it possible for your main unit to be a invisible sprite and your VHP unit a civilian that is always at your sprite's position?

Are there any invisible stackable units? If you can get invisible stackable useable rines, that would be nice. Add a 1x1 pixel or inverted location to always be centered on rine. Bye bye to locks though.

DTs can stack.