I have a unit that I made always invisible, so they can use abilities without being seen. I used Channel to make a steal ability, and in most cases, (even with full computer AI) the units around don't notice thier presence. But tow special cases (probably more) are when units are shadow melded that are passivly in shadow meld (meaning that they auto aquire) will unshadow meld then immediatly shadow meld again. Plus if you are a city, the AI will send peons to battle stations after using the ability. Anyone have any workarounds here? I thought of making a second unit across the map that has steal that can steal anywhere on the map (I used a hero so the player can click the button to get to "steath" abilities) This won't work well for any regular units that have steal though. maybe the hero stealth ability button can be for the last clicked unit...
I'm not really sure but I think that the problem is that when units are passive, they will react to the spellcaster, usually by attacking. However, since they couldn't see you, they must have reacted and went back to passive in a split second.
When you were in the orc town, they reacted because an offensive spell was cast in within one of their buildings. Or at least I think that's how the AI works.
Try this, make a sleeping creep and use the ability. It should wake up and sleep again really fast according to what I think.
Sure enough, that is exactly what is happening. I'm tring to design a stealth game where you are a thief and you enter enemy cities and steal from varius units. They garrison themselves in at night, and you can steal from them in the building by using steal on the building. also at night guards would patrol and when they see you, everyone would exit the buildings and attack.
Now if steal revealed your position, that might be fine for stealing from a small party by running after the dirty deed, but if you are in a city, you are screwed. maybe they could only steal from buildings, and the stratigy would be not to be seen while stealing and shadow meld before they came back round. But then you couldn't steal from units themselves.
So I wanted to make them able to steal without detection. A possible workaround is having a "stealth" button that disables attacks, and gives the unit some arrow abilities. Then I can detect "smart" order, and trigger the ability that is selected. (either pick lock, steal, whatever else i think of needs to be done while invisible)
I was going to have steals fail if you had to move, cause that is what would happen under the other system, but i may trigger the same effect. If you have to move to far to steal i could reveal the charater. Or i could make it so if the unit being stole from moves too far after the begining of the steal to hte end of the steal, you would be revealed. Plus I could always trigger the guards to use some kind of detector every now and then.