Is this expected/documented behavior for Spidertrons?

[n3ss]

Since Spidertron was introduced, I've noticed that occasionally a spidertron that I have assigned to follow my main spidertron will return to me automatically when I send them away. I thought I was insane or losing time or something, but it happened again recently and I spent some time figuring it out. I haven't seen this documented anywhere and I haven't come across anyone else that's aware of it.. so as another sanity check, is this a expected behavior? is anyone aware of this?



In this webm, I have a red spidertron with the white and green spidertrons set to follow red. I grab the remote for the green spidertron and send it to several waypoints, holding shift the entire time. After it reaches the last waypoint it returns to following the red spidertron. I grab the remote for the white spidertron and send it to several waypoints as well, but I only hold shift for the second and subsequent waypoints, not the first one. It reaches the final waypoint and stops.

Hopefully this all makes sense.

here's another look from map view, you can see the red spidertron pathing back to me after it hits the last waypoint:

[FuryoftheStars]

By holding shift, you're queuing commands in addition to what it already has. So in the case of the white spidertron, by not holding shift on the first click, you are essentially overriding/replacing the follow command with the move command.

Honestly, in most games that I've played that allow for these types of commands, they usually just ignore everything queued after the follow command (as technically the follow command never ends) until the one it was told to follow ceases to exist (destroyed). Great way in those games to queue up a bunch of different units you want performing different actions, but starting at the same time. But anyway, it is interesting that Wube decided that in this case it'd go ahead and execute the commands after a follow, but then return to the follow. Neat!

[Qon]

Neat!

I agree, that is a neat trick
And thanks OP for teaching us this trick