Air unit idea; Will it work?

[Ardis]

I had an interesting idea for my mod; it was to make some air units attack more realistically. I wanted to see if I could get more air units to attack like the Protoss Interceptor does with how it flies around while attacking instead of just stopping and shooting like every other air unit does.

Is this possible? And if it is, would the necessary alterations be done with Ice Scripting or something else?

[IskatuMesk]

Wanted to do that for years. It is impossible, even with ASM.

[Ardis]

That stinks. I still thought it was kind of funny when I tried to set it up. I tried using the AI tab on DatEdit and copied the Interceptor's AI to the wraith and tried that. I had wraiths that did one action then exploded.

[Xenon]

Heh, sounds like the Wraith died like Interceptors do when the Carrier explodes. Except in this case, the associated Carrier never existed in the first place.

Too bad there are so many hard-coded things and unavoidable bugs in Starcraft. I once tried modifying Iscript to make the Zergling use Dark Swarm on death. It actually works perfectly for about the first 10 Zerglings but then it invariably crashes

[Lavarinth]

Are you sure the Interceptor doesn't stop even for one frame?

[IskatuMesk]

The interceptor stops.. but the AI has hardcoded checks for the carrier unit and stuff like that, so you're kind of screwed.

[Ardis]

The interceptor only stops to shoot, but all I would have to do is increase the braking distance and it would just fire while still moving.

It was still funny watching the wraith explode. They automatically exploded when I gave an attack order, but a move order (apart from patrol) would blow them up once they stopped.

[Lord_Jeremy]

I believe I have an idea for this. In iscript, you could force the attacking unit to move forward a certain amount of steps, having it fire at intervals. Then, have it rotate 180º and go forward the same number of steps and finally, have it rotate 180º again. I'd test it if my SC modding tools hadn't disappeared >.<

[IskatuMesk]

You can do that but it won't be terribly reliable/look decent, and if it gets interrupted, some crazy shit will happen.

[Lord_Jeremy]

On a side note, it looks like in Starcraft 2 either units will be able to have multiple subunits or be able to acquire multiple targets. I'm referring to how some units were attacking multiple units at once.

[IskatuMesk]

They are most likely using a hardpoint system, like Homeworld and Dawn of War.

[Durandal-Thoth]

What's the likelihood of just copying the interceptor graphics and iScript entry to the wraith, and just modifying that a bit?

[IskatuMesk]

Then you have a wraith that looks like an interceptor but doesn't work like it.

[Durandal-Thoth]

Even with some working with the interceptor iScript? It has all the animations you already need in it, isn't it mostly a matter of setting them up correctly?

I could be wrong, of course, I'm not too good at anything involving scripts.

[IskatuMesk]

Iscript has virtually nothing to do with the interceptor's AI actions; they're all hardcoded. That's why we can't play with them. Every time the interceptor stops and I think attacks, it checks for a parent unit (the carrier).