There must be a value that determines which unit type in a group of selected units is the one whose responses are played when giving commands. I just looked in PyDAT - am I overlooking something? I know there is such a value in WC3, called 'priority' (integer).

I could be wrong, but I think unit rank determines that.

I'm curious, is it unit rank for Terran units or is it something more generic?

Yes, I'm talking about the same unit rank that Terran units display. All units actually have a value for this in units.dat, but only Terran units display it ingame. It controls some pathfinding things as well.

Do lower ranked units give way to the higher ranked ones? Never heard of that, interesting.

You guys are correct.
I tested it in game, and the rank set in units.dat (in PyDAT under tab StarEdit) indeed determines which unit's soundset dominates.

Irrelevant sidenote:
I actually suspected this, but out of laziness I checked the 2 unit ranks in the unmodded units.dat that shows upon opening PyDAT, assuming that I hadn't changed them in my modded units.dat... Turns out I did.

Don't worry, we've all been there at least once.

When hovering over the Rank field in PyDAT, it says: "units with lower Rank will stop and wait to allow units with higher Rank to continue movement"
FULL TEXT

Doesnt look like this behavior works at all in-game; any idea where does it come into practice, Voyager?

I was basing my statement off the description Netbek posted (which dates back all the way to the Arsenal days). Looking at the assembly though, I don't think it's actually true. The only place I see the rank comparison function called is when determining the portrait and sounds to play after selecting units.

I see. Thanks.
It wouldn't have been very useful for pathfinding though. Rank aside, I've noticed the AI has some priorities as to which units to attack first (e.g. BCs kill Ghosts first, Cannons atack cloaked units first...), but that is for another topic...

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Aug 5 2021, 2:13 pm by Luigi.

I still wanted to see if there's any practical effect to ranks when it comes to movement, so out of curiosity I checked if they affect anything the AI does during grouping and attacking/moving to attack, but it looks like they don't. A shame really, since a push-priority-esque thingy would be welcome IMO