Spork

Hey, I registered and now I'm posting again.

I'm still trying to get my Uruk-hai Pikemen to stab people from long range so that they can attack as infantry close on them, or the back row when merged with Uruk-hai Fighters, or those sorts of things.

Ideally, I'd get them to use an Archer weapon, remove the projectile image so it's invisible, and make the warhead obey the damage values for the Pikemen normally.

But there's something very wierd going on that's making it nearly impossible for them to behave. I got so sick of struggling with modified Pikemen that I copied the Haradrim Lancers, renamed their object file so the game would think they are Pikemen, and ran a game test. I click on pikemen, Haradrim come out, and all seems well.

But as soon as I tell them to attack anything they start behaving crappily. They run over to the enemies and seem incapable of attacking. Occasionally their group can kill one or two goblins before dying, but they nearly never seem to think they can hit anything. If I tell them to attack buildings though, then they preform normally and throw their spears like normal Haradrim.

And if I put them in Porcupine formation (yes, they accept that command) then they will stab guys with their spears correctly, but it's still kinda chunky.

There has GOT to be some bizzare behavior NOT LOCATED in weapon.ini or evilfactionunits.ini that governs at what range Pikemen are allowed to attack. I can't seem to find a Horde_Brain file for them, but I really need to change their logic from melee to ranged somehow for this to work.

But, like I said, even when they're using untouched Haradrim code with untouched Haradrim weapons and stats, the sheer fact that their name is 'IsengardPikeman' seems to completely change all their mechanics.

Why can I make completely new heroes, new units, and turn Saruman's little piddly whack into an all-impressive Sauron area-effect blowback and not tell Pikemen to attack at a range of 80?