Temporary Summon Units

[phantomfordy]

Is it possible to make a unit summon a unit that only has a certain amount of time to live? If so, how is this possible?
We were thinking of making a unit with negative power regeneration and making it that when their power runs out they die, is this idea good or bad or is there a better way?  ???

All Help will be appreciated, thank you

[jacko161]

I thought i might get your hopes up 

[phantomfordy]

You make me sad...You make me a sad, sad man

[ultifd]

You make me sad...You make me a sad, sad man

Aren't you guys like 14-16?... 

Try not to post like chatting... that's what PMing is for. 

Just wait, people will answer... 

[ElimiNator]

You could do it but not with power yet, It would need to be HP with regain -#, But there is a bug if your health is all ticked down it will go negative instead of dieing. It will be like he has 0 health.

[John.d.h]

You could have the summoned unit require a consumable resource that you don't have.  Then they'll starve to death over time.

[phantomfordy]

Okay, thank for the help, also I will try not to chat using Glest Board  

[phantomfordy]

You could have the summoned unit require a consumable resource that you don't have.  Then they'll starve to death over time.

Would I have to create an additional consumable resource other then what they have in the game?

[John.d.h]

The only consumable resource that comes with Glest by default is Food.  If your faction already uses food for other things, then you'd have to make a new one (which would take all of... oh, I don't know... a minute and a half).

[phantomfordy]

Alright, my faction DOES use food as, well a food source. So I'll just make something like "Power" or "energy". Thanks for the help

[ElimiNator]

Yes just copy the food resource change it to how you want it and make the some units cost a amount of it.

[Little Helper]

Call it summon stones or life energy 

[Omega]

That'll work,m but very rough, and won't be too good with multiple temporary units. Perhaps you could bug GAE, but there's a lot of things with higher priority...

[hailstone]

Perhaps this could work with an item system (I think Daniel was working on an unit modifier system). In the xml you would say it holds a particular undroppable item that has the effect of destroying the unit when the time runs out. That might be complicating it a bit though. Negative regen for health works. It just means it dies even quicker if it's being attacked.

The other things to consider is if the death by timer should count towards the deaths in the stats.

[silnarm]

... Negative regen for health works. It just means it dies even quicker if it's being attacked.

This doesn't work in vanilla glest. These are Bruce's students, they are using Macs.

[titi]

maybe you can create soemthing like this with the current glest, but I think the CPU players will not use it in the right way!
So better don't try something like this yet.
But in general its a very good idea to have such an "attack" which summons new units! Oh man so many good ideas!

[Bruce]

I'm not too concerned if at this stage the AI doesn't use these types of powers properly - I'm more interested to see how they could implement it such that it could be used in multiplayer (I'm pretty sure I'll have sorted out the mp issues for the Mac version by the end of semester - otherwise I could dual-boot the Macs with Windows (that should definitely be supported at the school by July) and install there.

This idea is a good one and introduces some interesting RTS strategies. Anyone who played Emperor: Battle for Dune might recognise this kind of skill from House Ix - the ability to create a holographic version of any unit you own. It attacks like any other unit, but as soon as it gets touched (by another unit or by any kind of attack), the hologram dies. You could create 60 holograms, get in one barrage of fire (by then the enemy will have attacked and "wiped out" your "army", then attack with your real ones - nice, cheap and (if used correctly) effective. These was also a faction (House Tleilax) which could convert your units into units of its own - they became "diseased" and ultimately morphed into the Tleilax unit (which could then be used to turn more units, etc etc - kinda like Zombies I guess).

This kind of approach could also be used for things like undead units that eventually decay and vanish - a nice temporary army that could make a difference in a tight defensive situation.