SC2Mapster

Just as the title says, I want to give the Virophage the colony infestation ability but I've tried all kinds of ways now and no such luck, somehow it seems the virophage just won't fire to start the channeling.

Played around with actors, weapons, the turret, still couldn't find the issue. So as a scapegoat solution I found out that I could use the virophages attack and replace its vile stream effects for colony infestation effects, still, one issue remains, I want the virophage to have the infestation ability for buildings/structures but I also want it to have an actual attack which will damage and have other effects on units.

So is it possible can I somehow give the virophague 2 attacks? 1 for structures and 1 for other units?

@DrSuperEvil: Go

Forgive my ignorance but, overriding the other commands how? from what I've seen (which is probably off the mark) there's not much linking the weapon (do you mean the "unit" weapon or the actual weapon?) to the other commands.

You can just exclude Structures from the target filter of Vile Stream, and make the infestation ability/weapon require the Structure tag. This will render the Virophage completely unable to target structures with Vile Stream.

The Virophage might still only start infesting structures if no units are in range, and since Vile Stream is channeled it can't attack and infest simultaneously.

Ok, sorry, I was kind of confused about how I wanted to do this at first but I have a clearer idea now.

So I think the attack (infest) for now is fine as it is, so no need for 2 attacks.

1st task:

But what I'm needing right now is a UI progress bar displayed for either the caster or the target or preferably both, and the same color, that measures how much left untill infestation is completed.

2nd task (stage 1):

After that I need a splash damage effect that will create a DoT and will be gradually intensifying by time spent under the virophages attack, and the splash damage should be less intensified the farther away from the virophages main attack target, also this attack should barely damage robotic and mechanical units but still fully affect biological units in the splash AoE.

2nd task (stage 2):

After units are affected by the splash damage effect they should trigger a (behaviour?) buff that will spread a less intensified version of the spash damage to other nearby biological units with a chance that these units will be caught by the behaviour as well, (something like a viral/spreading irradiation), this should be all combined with the accumulating DoT from both the splash damage effect from the main attack and from the behaviour.

2nd task (stage 3(final)):

And last but not least I want an accumulating chance system that will either instantly infest or force morph (cancellable by destruction) into infested units.

Sooo yeah, Incredibly complicated lol. Pretty much some of the gibberish on the 2nd task I can do by myself but I still need some guidance as to where to start.

Progress bar: UI:Show Countdown field on buffs, UI:Show Progress+ on abilities.

• Primary AoE

Persistent->AoE/Persistent->Search->Single target damage is the basic effect setup for things like Psi Storm, make sure you use the Combine or Minimum setting on the damage effect if you're using negative Attribute modifiers (-100%dmg to mech is possible)

If you want the damage to intensify seperately on each unit this should be integrated into the Plague buff instead and you should only run Persistent->Search->Apply Behavior "Plague"

• Plague

Buffs can emulate persistent effects centered on the host unit. you can use this to periodically apply damage and/or more stacks of the buff. Using a main, non-stacked buff will deal constant dps, using that to spawn a stackable "child buff" which handles the damage will cause a linear increase in dps, and making a buff self-replicate will lead to exponential growth (extremely fast, you'll likely hit the maximum stack count very quickly, which is about 60k stacks)

You can also make this damage effect an AoE, or run a Search to afflict nearby units. Apply Behavior effects also have a "probability" field to allow a chance of failure, which you seem to want.

• Intensity by distance

This is quite a lot of work to do over a large area. As you will know, stock units have at most 3 discrete splash damage circles with fixed damage fractions. This creates a very visible split if the targets are stationary. You can add more circles of course, in the above setup you'd need multiple Searches applying stacks of the damage-handling Plague buff with different AoEs. Note that this causes linear growth without further replication by the buff.

You can also make this buff replicate, using the "child buff" setup should lead to quadratic dps growth, which gives a very steep difference between the center and fringe of the AoE (you sure you want it to be "less intensified" and not just weaker on the edge? A static dps ratio is guaranteed by the setup anyway)

• Full corruption

You can either validate a specific number of stacks of the above behaviors (including another failure chance on each try), run a seperate, slower check with a high failure chance regardless of stack count, or simply have each buff stack run its own check each damage tick. After that you just need an Apply Behavior, Issue (Morph) Order or Kill+Create (Infested) Unit depending on how exactly the infested should behave. I advise against the kill+create setup if morphing should be reversible through attacking (as opposed to just getting rid of a potential enemy)

• A warning on probabilities

Note that running a probability-based setup constantly at very high speed will cause it to average out very quickly, effectively creating a slower effect rate but using much more CPU than just using a slower rate in the first place. (this is likely to happen if you add probabilities into the dps routine, either that or the damage will seem very choppy if the effect only ticks every second or so)

On the other hand, running a low probability with a slow rate will cause a massive spread of results between instances/games, which can be very frustrating gameplay, especially if the life of your people hangs on such a dice roll (which is what your morph plan sounds like)

If you just want some randomness so the afflicted don't just all turn at once I would suggest using a deterministic (probability-free) core setup and adding fluctuations through a seperate source, such as randomly adding/subtracting x stacks of your "infestation countdown" (probably using a buff stack counter) every second while said counter ticks every 0.25 seconds or even faster.