A study on Teleportation

To have teleport units, you must have the cracked version of the editor.

* Teleport capable units do not require telepads to teleport, but can only be teleported to certain selected telepads.
* Teleporting units can only teleport if it is within half the telepad's teleport range.
* A unit serving as a telepad will take in 1 damage per teleportation. It can heal the damage as normal units heal damage. When they have only 1 health, they may not receive teleporting units.
* If it has no health, such as a worker, settler, artillery, scout, etc., it may teleport units according to how much health it should have. (HP bonuses, regular, veteran, etc.) If you do not allow it to "heal", it will still have a limited amount of teleport capacity.
* Teleporting units may only teleport when there are viable teleport pads available.
* A building telepad, though it may teleport without limit of distance, may only receive 1 unit per turn.
* Teleport pads who happen to be marked as teleporters may teleport and still be able to receive teleport units, including it's own type.
* Strangely, teleporting units may only teleport onto building telepads, or telepads on land. This means that naval units may not teleport onto another naval telepad in open water, only one in a port. Restrictions still apply, as in sea units may not teleport to open ground.
* No animation or sound is played when the unit teleports. It is similar to the airlift option, though uses a button with a "T" on it, and if hovered over, reads "unused command".
* Cities with Buildings with the Telepad option can be captured by simply teleporting into them with legal teleport units.
* Buildings may not receive teleporting units on the turn that it is built.
* Immobile units may not teleport.
* Telepads may not have AI Strategy as "Defense" checked.

Units with the airdrop ability and the upgrade ability may not receive teleporting units.

Enjoy. Use this creatively please.

Nov 20 2007 EDIT: New information added to take into account of Civinator's, Gramphos's, and Sgrig's findings.
Jul 18 2016 EDIT: Commodore has discovered here that defensive AI prevents use of teleporation.

Thanks for this info, Bluemofia... I'll be running some tests on it either sometime this week or next weekend, and I'll post some info on what I turn up.

Excellent info. Thank you.

However, you've got what appear to be some typos:

I'm really not sure what this sentence means:

Bluemofia said:

Teleporting units can only teleport to half it's telepad that is recieving the teleporting unit's range.

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Do you mean that the distance to the telepad must be within half of the telepad's range?

Should this say "may not receive units until after ..."?

Bluemofia said:

The teleport pad that has moved and received it's 2 unit teleport limit may not recieve units after it has had 1 turn of rest (as in no movement).

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To take it literally would mean that a telepad should never rest, since then it could no longer receive units ever again.

Blue Monkey said:

I'm really not sure what this sentence meanso you mean that the distance to the telepad must be within half of the telepad's range?

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Yes. The unit teleporting must be within half of the teleport range of the teleport pad. And I'll rewrite that so it makes more sense. (I wrote half of it when I was under the impression that you need a teleport pad to teleport units to another teleport pad)

Blue Monkey said:

Should this say "may not receive units until after ..."?To take it literally would mean that a telepad should never rest, since then it could no longer receive units ever again.

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Ok, the way it works is that for every turn that it is not moved, it may teleport in 1 unit, up to 2.

It is sort of like Action Points, where you need to save up Action Points to do things, and each turn you have a choice to move the teleport pad, to save up "teleport points", or to teleport units in.

Say I have a teleport pad that has not moved for a few turns. I decide to teleport some units to it.

I teleport 2 units to it that turn, since it has not moved/teleported units in for several turns.

The next turn, since it has not moved yet, I teleport in 1 unit (since it has 1 teleport point), and then I move the teleport pad.

The next turn, I can not teleport in another unit, because it has moved the previous turn, and has no "teleport points" left.

I wait 2 turns, and then I can teleport in 2 more units. But I choose to move the teleport pad, and then teleport in 1 unit.

The next turn, I can teleport in 1 unit, as it has 1 "teleport point" left.

Confusing in text, but simple in game.

Thank you for your study, Bluemofia. Here is the link to the original thread: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=75688

Gramphos reported the following: "When you teleport to a unit that unit loses one hitpoint, and you can't teleport to a unit with only one hitpoint". Is this still up to date?

May be this will be a nice typ of an Army Command Center, where you can get limited fast supply in enemy territory.

The fuller explanation is greatly appreciated. Once I'm through with the Rise of Asia map work I'm going to begin developing a "Greater Bharat" mod with a "Mythologicals" culture group as one option. It will be cool to have sadhus and rakshasas that can teleport around.

In the Final Fantasy mod, I'm planning on giving the Mage units both the teleportable and telepad abilities, and flagging the Mage Towers as General Telepads, and make the Summoned creatures teleportable.

Basically, the legal telepad target for the mages will be the Mage Towers, and the summoned units will have the Mage as their legal telepad. Since summoned units will be slow, and unable to be loaded onto transports (by giving them a transport capacity of 1 and flagging them with the "transports only tactical missiles" flag so that they can't be exploited by players attempting to use them as land transports), so the only way to quickly call a summoned unit into battle would be to unload some Mages (along with defensive units) with a transport airship or gelnika, and have the Mage "summon" it into battle.

Civinator said:

Thank you for your study, Bluemofia. Here is the link to the original thread: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=75688

Gramphos reported the following: "When you teleport to a unit that unit loses one hitpoint, and you can't teleport to a unit with only one hitpoint". Is this still up to date?

May be this will be a nice typ of an Army Command Center, where you can get limited fast supply in enemy territory.

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Nope. Teleportation does not lose any hit points from what I've seen. (But I was testing with all regular 3 HP units, as well as 0 HP units, so I don't think that's a factor)

Blue Monkey said:

The fuller explanation is greatly appreciated. Once I'm through with the Rise of Asia map work I'm going to begin developing a "Greater Bharat" mod with a "Mythologicals" culture group as one option. It will be cool to have sadhus and rakshasas that can teleport around.

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They need a teleport pad to teleport to. The unit that teleports can only teleport to a teleport pad, but does not need to stand on a teleport pad to initiate a teleport.

Hikaro Takayama said:

In the Final Fantasy mod, I'm planning on giving the Mage units both the teleportable and telepad abilities, and flagging the Mage Towers as General Telepads, and make the Summoned creatures teleportable.

Basically, the legal telepad target for the mages will be the Mage Towers, and the summoned units will have the Mage as their legal telepad. Since summoned units will be slow, and unable to be loaded onto transports (by giving them a transport capacity of 1 and flagging them with the "transports only tactical missiles" flag so that they can't be exploited by players attempting to use them as land transports), so the only way to quickly call a summoned unit into battle would be to unload some Mages (along with defensive units) with a transport airship or gelnika, and have the Mage "summon" it into battle.

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Why don't you just simply put the summoned units to not have any transport capacity, but have foot unit and tactical missile flagged?

Then to do so with the mages, the Teleport Range must be large, because the unit that is teleporting must be within half of the telepad unit's teleport range.

If they had those flags, wouldn't they still be able to be loaded into transport ships, and air transports that don't have and "only transports" options flagged?

In the FF mod, the transport airships are big enough to transport any unit, including mounted and armored. The base transport airship can only take 2 units at a time, and the Gelnika can handle four (the gelnika's in FF VII were big enough to house an entire squadron of helicopters in their cargo bay), and transport an entire division of troops in the passenger section.... They were huge mo-fo's).

The mage's teleport range will be about equal to the airship's operational range (which I'll determine through testing) so that they can call any summoned units from the same distance as the airship drop range would normally be.... Plus, wounded mages would be able to teleport to any city with a mage tower in it, which would enable them to get out of dodge quickly if necesarry.... Since mages are generated at city improvements (mage towers), rather than built, they are essentially high-value units that should be kept alive if possible.

Hikaro Takayama said:

If they had those flags, wouldn't they still be able to be loaded into transport ships, and air transports that don't have and "only transports" options flagged?

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Umm, if it is marked as both a foot unit and a tactical nuke, then shouldn't it be only transportable on only things that can transport both foot units and tactical nukes? It's been a while since I've tested this concept, so I'm not sure.

Hikaro Takayama said:

The mage's teleport range will be about equal to the airship's operational range (which I'll determine through testing) so that they can call any summoned units from the same distance as the airship drop range would normally be.... Plus, wounded mages would be able to teleport to any city with a mage tower in it, which would enable them to get out of dodge quickly if necesarry.... Since mages are generated at city improvements (mage towers), rather than built, they are essentially high-value units that should be kept alive if possible.

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That means it needs to be double, (limit 100) because the teleportation range listed in the editor is only effective halved; the unit needs to be in half of the teleportational range of the telepad to be teleported.

Sort of like Air Superiority.

I know that I can transport foot units on unflagged transports (such as transport ships), however, it is impossible to load a transport onto another transport.... Since the FF mod does not have tactical nukes, it will be impossible to load anything with 1 transport capacity onto a transport, and since it can only carry tactical nukes (which don't exist in the game), noone can use it as a transport. I did the same thing with the combat airships in the mod (which are actually land units with the recon and rebase abilities).

And what you're saying is that if I gave the telepad units 2x the op range of my transport airships, then the summoned units could be 'summoned' (teleported) from either the city that the airdropped mages originated from, or one equidistant.... Makes sense... ALthough the actual operational range for air unit recon seems to be 2x the range that you enter in the op. range box... wierd, now that I think about it....

Bluemofia said:

They need a teleport pad to teleport to. The unit that teleports can only teleport to a teleport pad, but does not need to stand on a teleport pad to initiate a teleport.

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I'm contemplating having certain units, like Ravana, who could summon his rakshasa cohorts; otherwise a certain city improvement or SW would be the telepad (ie a wandering saddhu instantly transported back to his ashram).

Bluemofia said:

A unit serving as a telepad ...If the telepad moves, ...A building telepad, ...Teleport pads who happen to be marked as teleporters may teleport and still be able to recieve teleport units, including it's own type. ...Strangely, teleporting units may only teleport onto building telepads, or telepads on land.

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Does a teleporting unit land with the ability to use its remaining move points (like a unit getting off a ship in a port city) or has it ended its turn (like a unit disembarking onto open land)? Does the type of telepad (building vs. unit (moved or not)) make a difference?


Is there a way to set another game element, such as an airfield or a resource, as a telepad?
Such an option would allow a fixed location telepad outside of a city (could represent a sacred mountain, fairy glen, intergalactic tourist lookout point, etc.). An invisible, no movement point, unit could do some of this, but would be limited to the owning player*; an "airfield" telepad would be buildable and capturable, while both it and a "resource" telepad could be set to be available only after certain research, then the ability to build/use the telepad network could be traded.

*EDIT: Just realized that a telepad unit could be set to be enslaved as the same type of unit, thus allowing it to be useably captured. But then I think no other unit would be enslaveable?

Blue Monkey said:

Does a teleporting unit land with the ability to use its remaining move points (like a unit getting off a ship in a port city) or has it ended its turn (like a unit disembarking onto open land)? Does the type of telepad (building vs. unit (moved or not)) make a difference?

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1. Yes. The unit immedietly stops.
2. No. The telepad's state of movement points does not make a difference.

Blue Monkey said:

Is there a way to set another game element, such as an airfield or a resource, as a telepad?

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No. Only buildings and units can be set as telepads.

Blue Monkey said:

*EDIT: Just realized that a telepad unit could be set to be enslaved as the same type of unit, thus allowing it to be useably captured. But then I think no other unit would be enslaveable?

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If it can be set to be enslaveable, then it would have a 1/3 chance of being enslaved from a unit that is defeated in combat by the enslavee unit.

Easiest way is just simply put them as a unit that is buildable with only a certain resource that never appears on the map, and is buidable by all civs, and then preplaced on locations which you would like them to be placed. (start with barbarian ownership or player ownership. Either one would work)

And make them immobile.

This is some fascinating stuff, and I would like to use it as the Space Bridge in a Transformers mod that I am working on. Is this teleporting option stable and proving to work? I simply DL the hacked version of the Editor, but can I use this hacked version to edit biq files like I normally would and ones that were previously used in the store version?

I fortified my worker which I had made into a telepad and the game crashed



EDIT: Oh, and what does the Charm button do/mean?

WilliamOfOrange said:

This is some fascinating stuff, and I would like to use it as the Space Bridge in a Transformers mod that I am working on. Is this teleporting option stable and proving to work?

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Yes.

WilliamOfOrange said:

I simply DL the hacked version of the Editor, but can I use this hacked version to edit biq files like I normally would and ones that were previously used in the store version?

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Yes. Just open up the biq files with the hacked version, and it'll work.

WilliamOfOrange said:

I fortified my worker which I had made into a telepad and the game crashed

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Hmm, what else did you do? Because when I was testing it, fortifying teleport and telepad units didn't cause it to crash. Do you have the latest patch?

WilliamOfOrange said:

EDIT: Oh, and what does the Charm button do/mean?

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No idea. Though I know it requires Bombard strength to work whatever it does.

New information added to take into account of Civinator's findings.

Bluemofia said:

New information added to take into account of Civinator's findings.

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Thank you, but these merrits belong to other civers. In post 5 of this thread I gave a link to an old thread about teleporting (and charm).

In post 5 of that thread Gramphos mentioned, that the telepad unit looses a hitpoint, when another unit teleports to it: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=1524893&postcount=5

In post 54 of this thread sgrig posted some additional interesting information about teleporting: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=2242348&postcount=54

Especially, that when you teleport from a building telepad to the city of another civ, that also hosts a building telepad, you capture this city immediately. My tests confirmed that. So it´s very risky to operate with building telepads.