Im trying to create a Artillery barrage that works like this.
A Artillery barrage that launches as many missiles as Siloes can create
so 10 siloes with 5 missiles on each creates creates 50 missiles raining down in a AOE.
Im imagining like this
Artiller Barrage (small)
Rains down a barrage of missiles in a small area.
Artillery Barrale (medium).
Raind down a barrage of missiles in a larger area).
The thought here is that Missiles have a travel time (properly visible on mini map too). And the more missile vs the smaller area the more damage the ability do, So dependent on stored missiles the ability can either do ALOT of Damage in a small radius or lesser damage spread out over more places.
on top of that missiles should be able to be shot down. (by weapons designed to do this).
Ive tried the nuke approach but this seemed to complicate things.
So right now im contemplating something along the lines of
What exactly are the "silos" in your setup? Proper structures on the map or just "missile pod" upgrades on a unit? Do you need the ability to control how many missiles are actually launched each time, or just a "fire everything" approach limited by the total capacity of the silos? And do the silos have to actually "build" the missiles or just sit there and wait for launch orders?
In general you can either use a Persistent effect to repeatedly use a Calldown (nuke) setup if individual missiles are built and stored in separate structures, or just use a high-range Search Area effect to "count" how many silos there are and create the missiles at launch time (basically how all standard weapons function, no ammo involved)
There is no "random point in circle" targeting option (might get added in LotV), so you're stuck with either randomly choosing offsets from a predefined list, or damaging the whole target zone and making the distinct impact location visual-only. The AoE will be defined by the offset locations and/or the radius of any Area fields used to inflict damage, that bit is easy to set.
Missiles are fully functional units and can already be targeted and destroyed, as the Raven's PDD does (using an instant kill rather than damage though); making missiles fully selectable like units will require some meddling with Actor data to give them wireframes, armor icons etc.
If kill credit isn't an issue you could also make the ability only trigger an Issue Order effect on the silos, and give them the ability/weapon to attack based on their own capacity.
Siloes are proper structures in the map.
The ability to control how many missiles is in a volley would be pretty cool.
The silos builds the missiles and store them.
The Persiststent effect wich repeatedly uses calldowns are what i have setup right now (it does not work however).
randomly chosen offsets are okay too.
Selectable missiles are not necessary just being able to shoot them down with Gatling guns would suffice (or disabling them in a way). Missiles falling to the ground would be wicked cool.
Can calldowns have a artillery like arc?
I guess It's only AOE in the sense that i have serveral missiles each missile have a small impact radius and as such selecting a larger radius(ability start).
Will make it less reliable damage but a larger zone. (zone control vs Damage).
The "calldown" mechanic is only an ammo system, but might require an Ability with the Calldown Effect field set to function properly. Still, I see no reason why you couldn't add a Persistent effect to the existing Nuke ability to launch multiple calldowns at different offsets. In the worst case the Calldown effect type can request more than one launch, so you can define the offset afterwards with a single-tick Persistent.
To auto-target missiles simply don't exclude them from the target filter of the anti-missile weapon, if players are meant to target manually you'll have to sift through the Unit: Flags+ field on the missile and make sure it's targetable via mouseclick, this might also allow actually selecting the unit to view the wireframe.
The arc/flight path is defined by the missile Mover, if there is an actual traveling missile involved at all. Nukes just play stationary animations at the launch and impact location.
"Selecting a larger radius" in this case would mean you have to define an additional offset distribution for each radius choice, and switch between them based on however the "selection" part works (multiple abilities, on/off toggle buff, tech requirements or whatever)
In general you can and should split the ability into multiple parts, test each one individually, then combine them. So far you have:
Calldown/Ammo system: Either get the Calldown to work copying from the Nuke ability, or come up with an alternative ammo system like buff stacks or dummy units. Test with a simple activation effect like dealing 1 damage to the target unit instantly or giving the caster a stacking armor buff (ApplyBehavior on Caster, buff gives +1 armor for easy stack counting)
"Random impact location workaround": You can test your offset distribution system by launching something like Psi Storm or Siege Tank attacks, by setting your Persistent to apply the effect called by that weapon/ability, anything that can target points on the ground should work.
Remote Launch: You'll need to launch the missiles from the silos to the ability target location. Either implement a separate ability for the silos to "attack" with, or look at e.g. the Mutalisk bouncing weapon for how to launch missiles from something that isn't the ability caster (it's fairly complicated and requires Actors). Test with only launching a single missile with no conditions like ammo and no target offsets, this is also where you can adjust the travel arc easily by repeatedly launching missiles to and from the same 2 points until you're satisfied with the visuals
Then you glue everything together: the "success" effect of the calldown/ammo mechanism becomes the offset distribution, and that aims a single-missile launch at the chosen offset (instead of the Psi Storm you had for testing). If you run into problems regarding the Scope (incorrect unit-based locations most likely), note you can specify an effect that previously occured in the chain to draw the scope from. Caster always points at the unit that originally used the ability/weapon.
Thanks, Il be hacking away on this, il Let you know when i get it to work. :), Thanks for the tips on testing!, I kinda fingured out i needed to test them seperately but you convinced me.
What do you mean "launching ammo missiles"? By default missiles are simply created when they're "launched", any system that mimics ammo or "producing" the missiles is simply an arbitrary restriction and would work equally well to give Psi Storm "ammo limitations". "Magazine" interfaces are meant to do what the Carrier does, and as I already said the Nuke calldown doesn't even involve "missiles" in the gameplay sense.
You can "launch" regular units, but that's more for the purpose of suicide-bombing or forcefully moving them (Abduct)
Alright,First post here goes.
Im trying to create a Artillery barrage that works like this.
A Artillery barrage that launches as many missiles as Siloes can create so 10 siloes with 5 missiles on each creates creates 50 missiles raining down in a AOE.
Im imagining like this
Artiller Barrage (small) Rains down a barrage of missiles in a small area.
Artillery Barrale (medium). Raind down a barrage of missiles in a larger area).
The thought here is that Missiles have a travel time (properly visible on mini map too). And the more missile vs the smaller area the more damage the ability do, So dependent on stored missiles the ability can either do ALOT of Damage in a small radius or lesser damage spread out over more places. on top of that missiles should be able to be shot down. (by weapons designed to do this).
Ive tried the nuke approach but this seemed to complicate things.
So right now im contemplating something along the lines of
Ability "high Templar target effect" (search) (small)
Ability2 "high Templar target effect" (search) (medium)
Effect target "AOE Perodic ->Missile unit raining down (somehow i need to get a requirement inhere).
Damage Impact "missile damage"
Ive tried a fair bit of fiddling around but i decided to just erase all mentions of the ability and start over.
If somebody could point me in the right dirrect that would be much apriciated. (specifically im not entirely sure how the ammo mechanic works).
What exactly are the "silos" in your setup? Proper structures on the map or just "missile pod" upgrades on a unit? Do you need the ability to control how many missiles are actually launched each time, or just a "fire everything" approach limited by the total capacity of the silos? And do the silos have to actually "build" the missiles or just sit there and wait for launch orders?
In general you can either use a Persistent effect to repeatedly use a Calldown (nuke) setup if individual missiles are built and stored in separate structures, or just use a high-range Search Area effect to "count" how many silos there are and create the missiles at launch time (basically how all standard weapons function, no ammo involved)
There is no "random point in circle" targeting option (might get added in LotV), so you're stuck with either randomly choosing offsets from a predefined list, or damaging the whole target zone and making the distinct impact location visual-only. The AoE will be defined by the offset locations and/or the radius of any Area fields used to inflict damage, that bit is easy to set.
Missiles are fully functional units and can already be targeted and destroyed, as the Raven's PDD does (using an instant kill rather than damage though); making missiles fully selectable like units will require some meddling with Actor data to give them wireframes, armor icons etc.
If kill credit isn't an issue you could also make the ability only trigger an Issue Order effect on the silos, and give them the ability/weapon to attack based on their own capacity.
@Photoloss: Go
Siloes are proper structures in the map. The ability to control how many missiles is in a volley would be pretty cool.
The silos builds the missiles and store them.
The Persiststent effect wich repeatedly uses calldowns are what i have setup right now (it does not work however). randomly chosen offsets are okay too.
Selectable missiles are not necessary just being able to shoot them down with Gatling guns would suffice (or disabling them in a way). Missiles falling to the ground would be wicked cool.
Can calldowns have a artillery like arc?
I guess It's only AOE in the sense that i have serveral missiles each missile have a small impact radius and as such selecting a larger radius(ability start). Will make it less reliable damage but a larger zone. (zone control vs Damage).
The "calldown" mechanic is only an ammo system, but might require an Ability with the Calldown Effect field set to function properly. Still, I see no reason why you couldn't add a Persistent effect to the existing Nuke ability to launch multiple calldowns at different offsets. In the worst case the Calldown effect type can request more than one launch, so you can define the offset afterwards with a single-tick Persistent.
To auto-target missiles simply don't exclude them from the target filter of the anti-missile weapon, if players are meant to target manually you'll have to sift through the Unit: Flags+ field on the missile and make sure it's targetable via mouseclick, this might also allow actually selecting the unit to view the wireframe.
The arc/flight path is defined by the missile Mover, if there is an actual traveling missile involved at all. Nukes just play stationary animations at the launch and impact location.
"Selecting a larger radius" in this case would mean you have to define an additional offset distribution for each radius choice, and switch between them based on however the "selection" part works (multiple abilities, on/off toggle buff, tech requirements or whatever)
In general you can and should split the ability into multiple parts, test each one individually, then combine them. So far you have:
Then you glue everything together: the "success" effect of the calldown/ammo mechanism becomes the offset distribution, and that aims a single-missile launch at the chosen offset (instead of the Psi Storm you had for testing). If you run into problems regarding the Scope (incorrect unit-based locations most likely), note you can specify an effect that previously occured in the chain to draw the scope from. Caster always points at the unit that originally used the ability/weapon.
@Photoloss: Go
Thanks, Il be hacking away on this, il Let you know when i get it to work. :), Thanks for the tips on testing!, I kinda fingured out i needed to test them seperately but you convinced me.
Also Launching Ammo missiles? is that possible?
@COldfusionstorm: Go
What do you mean "launching ammo missiles"? By default missiles are simply created when they're "launched", any system that mimics ammo or "producing" the missiles is simply an arbitrary restriction and would work equally well to give Psi Storm "ammo limitations". "Magazine" interfaces are meant to do what the Carrier does, and as I already said the Nuke calldown doesn't even involve "missiles" in the gameplay sense.
You can "launch" regular units, but that's more for the purpose of suicide-bombing or forcefully moving them (Abduct)
@Photoloss: Go
OMG ijust had Ephihany!, I Think i might have solved this. THANKS Photoloss.! Wait or have it.
Editor Mode enabled.
Thanks for all the Help, im still working on this. (on and off as i seem a bit stuck).
I did get a ability to launch several nukes (depending on targets in area). so, Not too bad.
Again still working on it and will update when i get it working (properly with a map including the ability)