EPThttp://www.sc2replayed.com/replays/126377-1v1-protoss-zerg-scrap-station
How to stop carriers as zerg?
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Apollo701
6 Posts
http://www.sc2replayed.com/replays/126377-1v1-protoss-zerg-scrap-station | ||
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light3
Australia219 Posts
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Turgid
United States1623 Posts
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CustomKal
Canada749 Posts
Killing all the interceptors makes them just as worthless, and hydras being slow can have a better chance if they just do that. Otherwise, just get corrupters. The main thing is not to be "out-micro'd" By carriers, because they can send out their interceptors and then run and still get the full volley. Focus firing is all it takes to beat them, otherwise your just losing to a bigger army. | ||
GHOSTCLAW
United States17042 Posts
also, you need way way way more upgrades. carriers are good, void rays are good, but after you defended the first and second attack you would have been really far ahead had you counterattacked with pretty much anything. The mass lings could have taken down the natural nexus, and/or you could have used the same amount of money that you had spent on masslings to use as static defense (not always a great idea, but another useage idea). the lings were terribly inefficient against the zealots, and carriers as well (lol). you had 0 gas and lots of minerals, which means that you should build hatcheries (expansions) as well as static defense. Carriers are really good, but they take a long time to build, and arn't very mobile. Void rays are pretty mobile, and still take a long time to build, and arn't as strong. It's difficult, but not impossible, to fight. You also didn't need a bling nest that you got - think about cutting that out when you know that they're going all air anyway. also...your counterattacking lings, if they had just kept attacking and you kept pumping lings, you might have won the base race at the end of the game. It's close, that's why your protoss opponent thought that he had lost. edit: hrm upon further inspection, you could have had more hydra faster if you had gottten your fourth base that you took up and running with gas. ZvP when P goes air is all about getting enough gas to support hydra+corruptors+infestors w/ fungal, and getting double the gas would have helped with that. You almost won the game. | ||
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SergioCQH
United States143 Posts
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Apollo701
6 Posts
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whojohnisgalt
93 Posts
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Natt
France253 Posts
On January 10 2011 12:12 SergioCQH wrote: Corrupters are terrible versus carriers. Test it out in a unit tester if you don't believe me. Mass hydras works much better because the high attack rate of hydras will take out interceptors quickly. Don't focus fire with the hydras. Just attack move. You cannot seriously post terrible statement like that in TL. Just test it yourself before ridiculising yourself. | ||
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navy
Canada197 Posts
They start with 2 armor and they take a long time for the interceptors to whittle away | ||
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uberdeluxe
Canada306 Posts
On January 10 2011 12:17 whojohnisgalt wrote: yeah sounds like hydras vs carriers is similar to goliaths vs carriers in BW. by default you should build up critical mass and attack move. if he gets too close or you see an opening then move in and try to snipe a carrier. oh, and spread creep like a motherfucker. honestly i cant see how carriers can beat a zerg if you just macro out a shitload of hydras with ups ok... Hydras are not the ideal counter to carriers for a number of reasons. They are extremely slow, so off of creep he can kite your hydras should you attack the carriers. If you don't, you might think your OK because you can kill all the interceptors. This is most definitely not the truth, as interceptors have 80 hp each an a new one will be out 8 seconds after an old one dies. Not to mention that if you never kill the carriers he can just remake the interceptors for 25 minerals each. If you killed all 8 interceptors from 8 carriers(64 interceptors!!) and lose 12 hydras, your even. Does that happen to you? Another thing is their low hp. Your roaches won't do any tanking for you because carriers can fly, and your hydras won't last long at all. Plus you can't do any kind of focus fire micro, but thats not as important. With corruptors, you can kill carriers extremely quickly, especially with corrupt. At lower levels some people may discredit them, but these people were attacking interceptors. *edit* @NP, it can work really well if you have a good big army to protect the infestors. | ||
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goswser
United States3546 Posts
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Tehkilla
Sweden75 Posts
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ccJroy
United States483 Posts
One solution, corruptors. | ||
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rXs
223 Posts
On January 10 2011 12:26 uberdeluxe wrote: ok... Hydras are not the ideal counter to carriers for a number of reasons. They are extremely slow, so off of creep he can kite your hydras should you attack the carriers. If you don't, you might think your OK because you can kill all the interceptors. This is most definitely not the truth, as interceptors have 80 hp each an a new one will be out 8 seconds after an old one dies. Not to mention that if you never kill the carriers he can just remake the interceptors for 25 minerals each. If you killed all 8 interceptors from 8 carriers(64 interceptors!!) and lose 12 hydras, your even. Does that happen to you? Another thing is their low hp. Your roaches won't do any tanking for you because carriers can fly, and your hydras won't last long at all. Plus you can't do any kind of focus fire micro, but thats not as important. With corruptors, you can kill carriers extremely quickly, especially with corrupt. At lower levels some people may discredit them, but these people were attacking interceptors. *edit* @NP, it can work really well if you have a good big army to protect the infestors. I know hydras are slow but are they really that slow that they can't even outrun CARRIERS of all things? Carriers are also slow and if you're on creep I think you can easily run below the Carriers and focus fire on them. | ||
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ChinoReem
Canada137 Posts
does neural parasite work on air? | ||
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Natt
France253 Posts
On January 10 2011 12:52 ChinoReem wrote: does fungal growrth stop/kill interceptors?? does neural parasite work on air? Yes. Yes. though intercepter are incredibely hard to catch if protoss hasnt got launch upgrade. | ||
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GHOSTCLAW
United States17042 Posts
On January 10 2011 12:45 rXs wrote: I know hydras are slow but are they really that slow that they can't even outrun CARRIERS of all things? Carriers are also slow and if you're on creep I think you can easily run below the Carriers and focus fire on them. carriers happen to be slightly slower than hydras, although the speed multiplier makes hydralisks significantly faster: http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/Carrier http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/Hydra | ||
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Acritter
Syria7637 Posts
On January 10 2011 12:52 ChinoReem wrote: does fungal growrth stop/kill interceptors?? Currently? It stops them, but doesn't do enough to kill them. After the upcoming patch, it won't affect them at all. does neural parasite work on air? Yes. Hydras should be able to wreck Interceptors pretty badly in anything approaching an equal-cost scenario. Once the Interceptors are dead or down to a reasonable count, a small task force of Corruptors can easily chase down the Carriers and kill them. A pure army of Hydras would be unable to chase down the Carriers, and a pure army of Corruptors would often find it difficult to take on the Carriers except when they hit a high enough mass that they take out the Carriers very quickly. A mix is optimal. Mostly, you should just beat the Carrier player by smashing them when they're in the vulnerable position of not quite having that Carrier up and running. A 2base Roach push should be able to go in the front door, kill the defending Zealots, and then do game-ending damage while the freshly built Carrier fails to kill them in time. Meanwhile, the Zerg should be able to transition into Hydras fast enough to defend against the Carrier if it stays to kill all the Roaches or just kill every building the Protoss owns if the Carrier beelines to the Zerg base. | ||
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Simberto
Germany11515 Posts
Getting a few more drones could have helped, and, again, upgrades. If you are on 3 bases, don´t fool around with a single evochamber. As long as you are going for any ground, get at least 2. I just did some testing: At even cost, 6 fully loaded carriers (2700/1500) vs 28 hydras (2800/1400), about half of the hydras survive, and kill of 1200 minerals worth of interceptors. So you would need to get 1-2 carriers to even out the score. If you engage on creep, that should be easily doable. 36 Hydras will kill the interceptors with about 11-12 losses. If you double the engagement, that favors the hydras. Also, hydras are far easier to mass then carriers. And you should be able to outexpand your enemy anyways, if he only goes for mass air. This is at even upgrades. Which later on means that the protoss would also have to get shield upgrades, which rarely any does. | ||
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HardCorey
United States709 Posts
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Creegz
Canada354 Posts
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Maskedsatyr
Singapore1245 Posts
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michaelhasanalias
Korea (South)1231 Posts
On January 10 2011 12:32 Tehkilla wrote: Neural parasite would be pretty good i reckon. yeah, not sure why that wasn't the first response. Anything that's more than 2 food and 100/150 to make, NP is your hero. Scout and see what he's making.. and if you see that kind of crap, a few NP's that even stay for a few seconds will absolutely cripple his army. | ||
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charlie420247
United States692 Posts
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lkjewq
United States132 Posts
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Saracen
United States5139 Posts
EDIT: Be careful about listening to the advice in this thread as a majority of it is downright terrible. | ||
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sleepingdog
Austria6145 Posts
On January 10 2011 18:42 Saracen wrote: Just mass corruptor/muta while making sure you keep getting air upgrades. EDIT: Be careful about listening to the advice in this thread as a majority of it is downright terrible. Strong emphasis on air upgrades, ESPECIALLY armor! Why? You gotta understand how carriers work - not only do they spawn interceptors, each of which has its "own" attack...each interceptor even has two attacks, wich makes intereceptors scale insanely well with attack-upgrades, but wich means they also suffer extremely from the opponent's armor upgrades. Corruptors/mutas do just fine vs carriers attack-wise, all you need to do as zerg is to make sure both stay alive long enough. | ||
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Crovea
Denmark100 Posts
I tested with Mutalisks, Hydras and corrupters of equal gascost. I tested with with and without focus fiiring for all 3 units. Corrupers with focus fire worked out best by far, while hydras did slightly better with focus fire than without focus fire (off creep) Mutalisks faired the worst. So i mass corrupters against carriers. | ||
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SpoR
United States1542 Posts
On January 10 2011 13:01 GHOSTCLAW wrote: carriers happen to be slightly slower than hydras, although the speed multiplier makes hydralisks significantly faster: http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/Carrier http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/Hydra yea but when hydra take a shot they slow down, so you can't chase down carriers. After 1-3 volleys they are outrunning/kiting u while u chase. You're better off skipping hydra tech all together and going straight roach to corruptor. Only make hydras if hes massing stalkers /immortals. | ||
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Smokeys
Sweden3 Posts
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Robellicose
England245 Posts
Carriers do their damage in 16 small chunks - 8 interceptors, each of which fires two attacks. Clearly, the way to pulverise carriers is to use something that has decent armour, which nullifies waaay more carrier damage than it would void ray damage, for instance. An increase of 1 armour reduces carrier damage by 16 per volley. Corruptors have a natural armour of 2 so they already reduce it by a significant amount. get corruptors with armour ups and target fire the carriers (ignore interceptors as Zerg - leave sniping them to the terran marines) | ||
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Creegz
Canada354 Posts
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FinestHour
United States18466 Posts
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Hinduuism
United States47 Posts
On January 11 2011 04:20 Creegz wrote: Robellicose seems to have the best option there. Corruptors are going to do the best job against Carriers. Corruptors are a very underused unit next to something like Archons. Corrupters are used in a majority of ZvPs to deal with colossi and voids. ಠ_ಠ | ||
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Severedevil
United States4839 Posts
However, Corruptors and Hydralisks don't mix very well vs. Carriers, because the Corruptors exist to chase down and kill the Carriers, while the Hydralisks would rather sit and kill the interceptors if the Carriers dare attack; without critical mass of either, your position will be awkward. If you're already relying on Hydras and you don't have a large pile of money banked (or upgrades for air units) then you'll probably do better to stick with Hydras and Infestors to fungal up the carriers/interceptors. (I'm suspicious of NP since Carriers have enough range to smite the Infestor.) | ||
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roymarthyup
1442 Posts
1 carrier (6 food 450 minerals 250 gas) kills 3 hydralisks (6 food 300 minerals 150 gas) pretty easily, and if the hydras dont focus the carrier and instead try to attack interceptors they lose even more badly 4 hydraslisks (8 food 400 minerals 200 gas) will kill a carrier if they focus the carrier but they will lose if they try to focus the interceptors the funny thing however is 10 carriers (60food 4500 minerals 2500 gas) will lose to 30 hydralisks (3000 minerals 1500 gas) as long as the hydras just attackmove and kill all the interceptors. I dont know why this happens in 10v30 but it doesnt happen in 1v3.... theres something going on that causes masses of hydras to beat masses of carriers and i dont know why it is but my testing has shown this to be the case. I think the reason for this is because the carrier has to take time and move to launch the interceptors then once they launch they die so fast and then the interceptors have to fly to new targets while being killed by hydras everywhere all of these tests are done using 0/0 hydras and 0/0/0 carriers with range and launch upgraded. Also, another thing making hydras so good against carriers is the fact that if you upgrade hydra +3attack it is very very hard for the protoss to counter it because he has to upgrade +3SHIELDS and +3AIR ARMOR just so his interceptors dont all instantly die to the hydras upgraded attack fire. And if the toss spends his money on shields and air armor he has almost no money left to buy +air attack upgrades so his carriers do crappy damage or the interceptors die horribly fast | ||
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SCdinner
Canada516 Posts
On January 10 2011 11:24 light3 wrote: corrupters? Definatly Corrupters. They reduce the interceptors damage by 4 without a single armour upgrade and do 20 damage against the carriers. Corrupter dps = 10.5, carrier dps =16. A carrier costs 800 resources while a corrupter costs 250. Definate advantage goes to the corrupter. | ||
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thurst0n
United States611 Posts
there is a threshold for any units that will change the effectiveness, Roaches in vs small #'s are super good, while roahces vs bigger numbers not so great, 3 mutalisks are basically a waste of money while 15+ is devestating. Diff units scale differantly.. With the 3 hydras scenario one hydra will die quickly leaving only 2 left.. which can do basically nothing, while if 1 hydra dye out of 30, that's basically nothing lost.. | ||
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bobucles
410 Posts
Spore crawlers are not very effective as they cost heaps of minerals and have poor DPS for the price. Infestors are a good idea, but you won't get in range to use neural parasite without tunneling. Carriers can kill them in one volley with a weapon upgrade. If you swarm superior infestor numbers (which is much easier than superior corruptor numbers), you can comfortably control 3/4 of a carrier fleet while sniping the rest. Unfortunately, NP'ed units are not treated as hostile (even though you only get 15 seconds!) so you'll have to WAIT for them to shoot you again, or frantically spam A-click to kill them before the 15 seconds are up. NP'ed units can not be hit by fungal growth. Infested Terrans... now we're talking. If you ever needed superior AA support, dump a pile of infested Terran on the field. Carriers are virtually impossible to micro, so they'll inevitably waste shots on the infested Terrans, and it'll buy your other AA forces time to settle the score. Don't try to kill interceptors without them. | ||
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OoOo
Germany126 Posts
a carrier does 8*2=16 shots that mean every amor upgrade decreases the carriers damage by 16 so a coruptor will take 48 les dmg from a carrier if he has 1 amor upgrade also the 16 dmg less mean that a carrier needs 2 shots more to kill a hydra (2 shots are exaktly 16 dmg with 1 amor) since that attacktime of a interceptor is suprisingly long (about 3 seconds) thats quite a lot | ||
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michaelhasanalias
Korea (South)1231 Posts
On January 11 2011 06:07 bobucles wrote: Corruptors will get the job done, but they will crumble without focus fire micro. Spore crawlers are not very effective as they cost heaps of minerals and have poor DPS for the price. Infestors are a good idea, but you won't get in range to use neural parasite without tunneling. Carriers can kill them in one volley with a weapon upgrade. If you swarm superior infestor numbers (which is much easier than superior corruptor numbers), you can comfortably control 3/4 of a carrier fleet while sniping the rest. Unfortunately, NP'ed units are not treated as hostile (even though you only get 15 seconds!) so you'll have to WAIT for them to shoot you again, or frantically spam A-click to kill them before the 15 seconds are up. NP'ed units can not be hit by fungal growth. Infested Terrans... now we're talking. If you ever needed superior AA support, dump a pile of infested Terran on the field. Carriers are virtually impossible to micro, so they'll inevitably waste shots on the infested Terrans, and it'll buy your other AA forces time to settle the score. Don't try to kill interceptors without them. This is exactly the mindset for why everyone is bad with infestors and doesn't use them ever. Only an idiot would make an entirely infestor army. Additionally, your information about engagement is misleading at best, but more correctly just plain wrong. Carrier range is 8 (pre-engagement), and NP is 9. Carriers a-moving will not engage an infestor at range 9 when NP is in range. Only once interceptors are launched can they outrange infestors. In other words, in order to launch interceptors, they must be within NP range. you're going to engage with hydra/corrupter/queen/etc and all of those units that are capable of ATTACKING the carrier take interceptor priority over the infestor. Both of these factoids allow you to very easily get in NP range without the risk of having your infestors sniped. Again, any time the opponent makes a unit bigger than 100/150/2, infestors are viable (for neural parasite). Raven, High Templar, Archon, Battlecruiser, Thor, Brood Lord, void ray, carrier.... if you see the opponent making these units, compliment your army with infestors and NP. It is a COST EFFECTIVE counter. | ||
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Leviance
Germany4079 Posts
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HardCorey
United States709 Posts
Think about the unit mix as a whole instead of just countering the single unit. It should be relatively easy to figure out whats the best thing to build against any single massed unit but when you take full army compositions into account it can be an entirely different scenario. | ||
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GreEny K
Germany7312 Posts
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bobucles
410 Posts
Additionally, your information about engagement is misleading at best, but more correctly just plain wrong. And yet it is more realistic than your theorycrafting. Infestor heavy armies are very versatile and have synergies with just about every Zerg unit.If you NP spam Carriers, Infestors are GOING to die. Accept it. +1 range is not a big difference, and it won't matter when Infestors are stacked 3 range deep. Carriers aren't the ONLY thing on the field, and even if they are NP isn't going to do it all alone. If you successfully NP carriers, they won't just... kill themselves. This is the biggest weakness with NP right now. Units under your control are considered FRIENDLY. It is very difficult to get rid of friendly units! So you can NP the ENTIRE carrier fleet. Big deal. They'll sit there. They'll sit there until NP wears off, and then they're killing Infestors again. You HAVE to deliberately leave SOMETHING hostile in order to maximize damage, which means taking some hits in turn. Infested Terran have good potential here, as they can quickly clear the sky if there are only a few hostile squadrons at a time. Splitting the fleet in half is pretty damaging as is. You are also making the terrible assumption that Carriers are fighting over open plains against ground units, and they're rushing straight for the Infestors at the BACK. Any flying unit that does this DESERVES to die, and it is in no way representative of the unit's abilities. Mass carrier is very dangerous against Zerg, but takes forever to get rolling. Sometimes the best option is just to kill him before the game gets that far. | ||
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DoubleReed
United States4130 Posts
Queens are often better than hydralisks against carriers, because they have significantly more health and won't melt nearly as fast as hydralisks. Transfuse is also very efffective as Carriers do lots of little damage so normally you'll have the necessary time for Transfuse micro. They also outrange hydras, and range is important. Corruptors "hard counter" carriers mostly because of the building time. You can build a TON more corruptors before he can make a sufficient amount of carriers. Mass Carrier will kill you, but the advantage is that hopefully you can use a static, medium force of Corruptors to pick off the Carriers before there are too many. Personally, if I see a carrier, I make like 6-8 corruptors and then get in my opponent's face. You can pretty powerfully discourage carrier/phoenix play, if you have aggressive corruptors out on the field. | ||
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aka_star
United Kingdom1546 Posts
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