How do people utilize Follow, btw? I noticed I could send a healer to a teammate’s hero unit and stick with them, but I don’t know if it heals properly when on Follow.
Can I bypass the Imperial Intercessor distance bug if I send it to follow, say, an Aegis Guard? Would it heal other units?
Follow command is bugged… units like medics or science vessels stop following randomly for no apparent reason.
But the imperial intercessor seems extra bugged.
Follow command worked 100% correct in Wings of liberty campaign… with HotS that bug was introduced and it broke it for HotS campaign and WoL campaign and carried over to coop. I have opened two big reports on that issue… no change. Even provided detailed instructions to reproduce the problem.
Bottom line: never rely on follow command to work continuously… they might randomly stop. That applies to every unit as far as I can tell.
Some more info on the extra bugginess of intercessors: if they see any other allied unit that is fighting (e.g. an ultralisk) they will Pause their follow command and wait for the ultralisk to stop fighting or die.
Now afterwards they „might“ resume following … or not and just stand still forever.
Follow was perfect in WoL… units would Pause following to heal another closely unit, but if the followed unit moved a little bit away, they would stop everything and start to follow again.
If anyone want to open another bug report, I can provide instructions or replays for that bug.
I have explained this before, you select your healer unit(s), press A(Attack), and click on any unit you want it to follow. TADA! Problem solved. This even works in multiplayer (for medievac).
The reason why follow move breaks is because a glitch caused the healer to stop when an enemy comes into range. An attack however, will not cause the healer to switch mode so the “attack follow” will not break unless the unit is stunned by the enemy.
The behaviour for healing units is pretty complex.
Some healers have a fake weapon that will have them stare at a target and “attack” them. (the follow command is basically a patrol route with a single point, iirc, so they’ll “attack” them)
Healing units are programmed to spread their healing in a fashion. After their initial target is healed, they look around an area beyond their natural healing range for another target and go for them next.
Because initially only Terran units had healers, it wasn’t so bad, you’d stim your bio and the medic/vac would have a wealth of options with no concerns.
It’s pretty reasonable, I think, to assume that said “look for a target” system can flag an enemy to attack if they have a weapon, or that their follow command might break if they find additional targets.
Tldr: really, the best solution is just to have a second control group and tell them to move just behind the main force as you go, unfortunately.
I just said you can just use attack command on the healer and target the unit you want to follow, then you don’t have to control your healer for the rest of the game, unless the target is teleported or destroyed, or the healer is stunned. The attack command will stick unlike the move command.
This, of course, only applies to healers with auto-cast heal or shield restore ability AND no weapon.
Come to think about it, I have not seen any “healing” issue with units that do shield regeneration.
The glitch is caused by a behavior change so that a healer on “attack move” will not move forward if there is an enemy unit in acquire range (so that an army with medic or medievec can be controlled in the same group and A-move, that the medics/medievac will not suicide forward), so it now constantly looking for an enemy unit, and if there is one the engine tells the medic to stop. This breaks the “move follow” because a unit on move-follow will still “return fire”, therefore triggering the stop command.
An attack command on your own or allied unit however, will not cause the “return fire” to trigger so they will keep targeting the unit you ordered, so the auto-stop doesn’t happen. Even in this mode the auto-cast heal works because auto-casting spell has a higher priority than attack, and it will not break the attack.
Because this only applies to healers who have no weapon, it doesn’t affect units with auto-cast shield restore because they have weapons, that wasn’t affected by the healer behavior change. It also doesn’t affect SCVs with auto-cast repair so you can just use move-follow with them and they won’t break the follow.
It was the design decision to make most units A-move friendly (such as giving HT a weapon) that caused the glitch. You just have to use “attack follow” for your healers if you don’t put them in your main control group and be fine with it.