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A few questions about mobile unit grids (the tut and the file are not helping me):
When do I use them?
What are they used for?
How do I make them?
How many strings/locations do you need?
How many triggers do you need?

When do I use them? Whenever you want
What are they used for? Whatever you want
How do I make them? I dunno but there is a post on it in here somewhere, ill find it for you.
How many strings/locations do you need? If its possible...alot.
How many triggers do you need? Once again, alot.

Really helpful...

If you read my post i meant to come back with some actual help and i found it. so on you!

http://www.staredit.net/index.php?showtopic=20743

It doesn't really answer the question i don't think but it will show you how alot of our top advisors still couldn't find an easy way around it.

They took the pictures off the tutorial <_<

In either case, it doesn't seem like either the thread or the tutorial explains mobile grid systems (not that I looked particularly closely).

But the best way of understanding mobile grids, i think, is firstly to understand how burrowed grid systems work.

Burrowed grids

In a burrowed-grid system, you have a grid of preplaced burrowed units. Then, by giving a specific number of them away, you can find any specific one when you center a location on the next one. So let's say we've got a simple grid of burrowed zerglings belonging to player 7 like this:

X X X
X X X
X X X

Now say we wanted to do something at the middle one on the top row. What we do is give zerglings away until the next one is the one we want - in this case, we give five lings to player 8:

X X X
X X X
X X X

Then we center a location on a ling owned by player 7:

X X X
X X X
X X X

And we can do whatever we like at that location.

Depending on how many zerglings we give away, we can put a location on top of any one of the pre-placed zerglings. Just remember to reset all the lings back to player 7 each time.

--------------------
Mobile Grids

Now, mobile grids work exactly the same way, except that instead of preplacing the grid, we make one on the spot, and then remove it afterwards.

Often we prefer to use air units, so that we can place them even if there are ground units in the way - you should start away from the edge of the map, though, so that your grid doesn't get distorted. A common unit to use is the overlord, and normally we make nine of them, so we get a nice square:

O O O
O O O
O O O

Just like before. And we can do exactly what we did before to these overlords.
Then we remove all the overlords, and we're cool.

The cool thing about mobile grids is that we can find locations relative to other ones. So I might want to find a spot which is directly to the left of my Marine, no matter where my Marine is.

In this case, I firstly center a location on my marine. Then I create my mobile grid of overlords or whatever on top. Then I give a specific number away - or actually, with mobile grids it's more common to simply remove them (since you're going to remove all of them eventually anyway). Then I center a location on the next one. Then I've found my location. I can remove all the other ovvies now. Then I can do whatever I like at my newfound location!

Here's a sample trigger:

Trigger

Actions:

¤ center location labeled 'Location1' on Marine owned by Player 1 at 'Anywhere'.

¤ Create 9 overlords at 'Location1' for Player 1.

¤ Remove 1 overlord at 'Anywhere' for Player 1.

¤ Center location labeled 'Location1' on overlord owned by Player 1 at 'Anywhere'

¤ Remove all overlords for Player 1.

¤ Create 1 Firebat for Player 2 at 'Location1'.

¤ Display text for current player: "FIREBAT: Hey! I'm standing to the left of that marine! =D"

To get further away from the marine, simply repeat the mobile grid process multiple times.

---

As for what you can do with them, that's up to your imagination
Have fun!

I had completely forgotten that air units make a perfect square when they are created via triggers.

well, it depends on which air units. Scourges make more of a circlish pattern.

yeah but most (especially the larger ones) make a nice square pattern...DOI

Though the scourges make a circular pattern, it still fits fine in a 3x3 grid. It gives the same effect, but it doesn't look nice if you can see the scourges(which you never will). What's nice is even if the scourges are messed up it's pretty easy to guess and check the amount of scourges you need to remove before finding the right spot. You just gotta remember that starcraft detects units from bottom left to top right.

No, the only air units that make good squares are Mutalisk, Guardian, Devourer, and Arbitor.
The rest aren't perfect.

If your using the grid to center around a unit, even those units sometimes make mistakes as well, and the top middle unit is replaced with the bottom middle unit, and visa versa. So to remove all the complications, you have to create the grid, then using the grid movement systems, move the grid to the left or right one square, then move it back to it's start position.

Lets keep make this simple

So it looks more like this

O O O
O- O O
O O O

Or something like that.

NO NO NO NO NO!!!! It goes from top left to bottom right!!!

Bottom left to top right is the most standard.

Ugh those pictures were hosting on Millennium's website. I need to get them from him.

My mistake

Don't forget battlecruiser

And Science Vessel and many more.

Also, the tutorial's pictures have been readded.

Mixing observers with scourge make perfect 1x1 squares if you put them together right.