SC2Mapster

Hi there. Can any clarify on how this ability limit i keep hearing about works out?

In my map, techwars 2. I have 5 main buildings. Barracks, factory, starport, spawning pool and gateway. In each building, you can upgrade to another unit by morphing the building into another. That building will spawn a new unit. The unit upgrades are all in separate upgrade abilities. For example. Barracks Unit Upgrades ability has all the upgrades for units that are in the "barracks" tech line. So Combat shield, concussive shells etc. Factory Unit Upgrades contain all the unit upgrades for the units that come from the "Factory" tech line. So spider mines, infernal prelighter etc I hope you understand this mechanic :)

Barracks line has 16 morph abilities to upgrade to another building. Factory line has 11 morph abilities ... Starport line has 11 morph abilities ... Spawning Pool line has 16 morph abilities ... Gateway line has 21 morph abilities ...

In total our map has 334 abilities. Which is probably nothing compared to the insane maps other people make!

We had a problem before, when we added another unit and a building dedicated to that unit... the morph ability button to upgrade to that unit would disappear. BUT after a lot of changes to the map, we have added loads of new units since. Now I'm at the stage where is there really an ability limit? because that is the limiting factor to the map. I just need to know how it all works out :)

Thanks Marc

I believe the ability limit pertains to the max number of abilities that a single unit can have. If you use a morph ability, it essentially changes one unit into a different unit. you can pretty much exploit unit morphing to have a "single" unit have an unlimited number of abilities. I don't believe that there is a limit to the number of abilities you can have in the map, just on a single unit :)

Since HotS, you can create more than 4 command cards which increases the ability limit furthermore.

But I don't think there is a limit in morphing abilities due to tha what Radical wrote.

Thank you for the replies!

Just to confirm, I can keep adding morph abilities to upgrade my buildings? So for example, I can morph my barracks into barracks 2, then morph barracks 2 into barracks 3 and so on for ever with no limit ?

yup. you should be able to do that as much as you want

Thanks! It confuses me a bit more since we had a problem before with the morphing abilities/buttons disappearing every time we added a new one! But i will take your word for it!

@DrSuperEvil: Go

Ahh okay. So when I start off with my "Barracks" building, it can only have a maximum of 64 morphs. This won't effect any other of the other starting buildings (Factory, starport, spawning pool and gateway) ? The starting buildings are built by the SCV.

Don't use morph abilities.

Use "train" instead.

You can set train abilities up to be identical to morph abilities (see the baneling morph ability). It will even preserve current selection and control groups.

Each train ability affords you 32 slots. This should be more than enough.

Also unlike morph abilities, you don't need to mess around with actor messages. You can if you want to, but it's completely optional.

Thanks! I have a better understanding now. I think I will attempt to modify the map before adding more units. As Tyastarcraft said, it should be more than enough. Also that should sort out a few minor problems I'm having anyway so all good :) Thanks! Marc