Set Rule

What a map's author normally sets in the settings, a world processor changes during play

mediumYou need: What a world processor is, Mining

steptick 0

Set Rule0

ruleunit mine speedvaluep1p2p3p4

Unit Bind1

type

Unit Control2

typeminexy

Sensor3

=

 in

@counter0number

cargonullnull

setrule unitMineSpeed 4 @sharded 0 0 0

One line, and the team’s units mine four times as fast. The mono on this map fills its twenty copper in a bit over two seconds instead of nine.

Field	What is in it
first	which rule
second	the value
third	the team — for the ten multiplier rules
the rest	the corners of an area — only for the mapArea rule

A rule changes at once and in full: not for one unit and not for one building, but for all of them together. It can be put back with the same setrule and the old value — the setting does not revert by itself.

Silent failure

For multipliers the third field is a team, not an empty space. unitHealth, unitMineSpeed, blockHealth and seven more rules belong not to the world but to a team: setrule takes it from the third field and, if there is no team there, silently does nothing.

setrule unitMineSpeed 4 0 0 0 0

That line will not break and will not complain — it simply speeds up mining for the derelicts: zero is the team with number zero. Yours needs @sharded, the enemy @crux. In the game’s editor this field is labelled exactly that — “of” — and holds @sharded by default.

What can be changed

There are three dozen rules, and they fall into four kinds by what they take in the second field:

Kind	Examples
a number	unitCap, waveSpacing, musicVolume
on/off	waves, attackMode, canGameOver, lighting
a team multiplier	unitHealth, unitMineSpeed, blockHealth, buildSpeed
special	ban and unban take content, mapArea takes four numbers

The full list is in the reference: «Game rules». It also shows which rule needs a team, which counts in seconds and which in tiles, and the bounds the game clamps a value to.

Note

Seconds and tiles are converted for you. waveSpacing 30 is thirty seconds, not thirty ticks; dropZoneRadius 5 is five tiles. The instruction converts them into the game’s internal units, and there is no need to write ticks or world units.

A health multiplier does not raise health

steptick 0

Set Rule0

ruleunit healthvaluep1p2p3p4

Unit Bind1

type

Sensor2

=

 in

Sensor3

=

 in

@counter0number

healthnullnull

limitnullnull

Here a flare stands under an enemy turret’s fire with the rule unitHealth 4 switched on. Watch limit: it is still 70. But the health drops four times slower, and the flare survives a bombardment that used to kill it.

Silent failure

unitHealth and blockHealth divide the damage, they do not multiply the health. These rules are not visible in @health and @maxHealth at all — a program waiting for those numbers to grow will wait for ever.

Such rules have to be checked by their consequences: how many hits a unit takes, not what sensor shows.

Bans and bounds

Two rules stand apart because they do not take a number:

setrule ban @duo 0 0 0 0
setrule mapArea 0 2 2 10 5

ban and unban take content: a block or a unit. A banned block disappears from the build menu, and a banned unit stops being produced.

mapArea is the only rule that needs all four of the last fields: the coordinates of the bottom left corner, and after them the width and height of the playable area. That is how the campaign opens a map piece by piece.

Remember

• setrule rule value changes a setting for the whole game on the fly.
• For the ten multiplier rules the third field is a team, and without one the line says nothing.
• Seconds and tiles are converted for you.
• unitHealth and blockHealth divide damage rather than raising health.
• ban and unban take content, mapArea four numbers of an area.
• A rule does not revert by itself: it is put back with the same setrule.

Task

In the first example change 4 to 0.25: mining becomes four times slower than usual, and in the first ten seconds the mono gathers five instead of twenty. Filling its hold takes it over half a minute.

In the second example set unitHealth 1: the flare dies again — the rule is back to normal. And if instead you erase @sharded and write 0, the same thing happens: the multiplier goes to the derelicts and the flare is left without protection.