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Id like to state that the carrier is by no means a BAD unit. It deals Great DPS with upgrades, and bolsters an army quite a bit.
While the carrier "counters" Mech units, i have to agree with an above poster that : as long as mech is terribly easy to exploit (mass zealot, expand, Warp prism play, mass immortal, its like a hard counter) we wont be seeing it too much in this expansion (or HoTs, i doubt mech will be much stronger then, protoss gaining mass recall)
Bio-Play has the tools to deal with protoss anti Infantry, vikings > colossi. Ghost > templar. I doubt well see a metagame shift away from this in WoL.
Carrier tech switches are kindof OK, but its not like you can surprise Terrans as much as Zerg with air, since their main unit : Marines are insanely cheap, shoot down interceptors, and the terran is very likely ahead in upgrades with them.
Carriers, Voidrays, Phoenix and the Mothership all share a common enemy in PvT : The Marine
I do however feel, Carriers are underused in PvZ
Tempests arent supposed to be only anti mutalisk units. As the new Capital ship they will deal good damage against ground and, possibly even be worth making even if your opponent has many marines.
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On November 24 2011 07:59 CortoMontez wrote:
Just a question, because I am too lazy to check it myself, during the ascension challenge, did the AI make the thors target the carriers themselves?
This is because, in the thor v carrier battle, it is better for thors to be attacking interceptors, as I have once fallen victim to having a single thor volley kill half my interceptors...
hehe its a problem with the range upgrade (or the speed upgrade). The interceptors get fired really close together, so they can actually be caught by a single fungal, or well a thors shot (thors shot has to be really unlucky for you though as they generally should see the carrier and target it before they see the interceptors).
As for the carrier, the replies alone show the problem. Building vikings and you are save, colossi/voids are better.
Vikings are actually horribad against carrier. There is a reason a toss builds 3 colossi and then transitions, because you need alot of vikings to actually kill them off quick enough. Against carriers building enough vikings actually is alot worse. And the vikings lose to carriers pretty hard in a no support scenario, that generally happens close to cliffs.
Colossi are better, sure if the terran doesn't have micro colossi will do tons of damage because their ao abuses the pathing ai. But carriers fly and terran has no anti air on the ground that is able to deal with a carrier that has a templar behind him. (and ghosts can't pass a carrier) And vikings are actually pretty weak to storm as well if they fight against carriers (you know the kiting problem)
Voids do better the carriers, well they fly, but they can't attack in the front, means if they have to pull back they are useless. And well they have half the range of carriers.
Carriers are a mineral dump unit, means you can use other high tech gas units, while still having your big guns. The build time is no issue, because they get 4 interceptors for free that you can even chronoboost. (kinda like the complaints about spinecrawlers, because they had such a long build time compared to sunkens, but those people forgot the creep colo).
So Carriers are generally better for better players against better players (because they take alot of micro to handle, you control the interceptors with your carrier which makes it really hard) And here we have the problem, the interceptor. They die really fast if the carriers do their job and stay out of range. They also get hit by storms if the opponent does something foolish and suicides marines. And its not even an issue that they don't get that bw instant repair (if the interceptors wouldn't die the carrier would just be imbalanced right now). But they just rebuild to slow and could maybe be a bit cheaper as well. Otherwise carriers are mostly out of order after a fight even if the toss won, so they are perfect for trading cost effective, but you normally set yourself behind on the path to get them, which means your even with the opponent just for using a micro intensive unit.
Another issue is that they are a lategame unit that needs their upgrades, like the ultralisk (haha even today there are people building ultralisks without 3/5)
Aside from that carriers own ghost heavy builds really hard. Having ghosts and vikings always ends up in the carriers sniping the ghosts, and the ground army just running over the terran. And the vikings won't even get all carriers. Battlecruiser are good at killing of interceptors though and without energy they do really well against carrier ht compositions hehe. Its a really interesting situation since ghosts can prevent the stalkers from blinking under a bc from save distance, but it will probably never come to this. because its deep lategame, something that almost never happens at the moment (or with people having no idea what to do and not even trying something to break the stalemate into their favor).
Still its fun to play around with carriers and fairly easy to tech to them on some maps. Meta and Shakuras are my carrier maps x3. You basically only need 8 supply to prevent the opponent from entering your half of the map. So can take all the time you want.
So atleast i will miss the carrier. But just like in bw its a unit you build to break a stalemate, if they scout it fine, they will trade evenly and the opponent have to overcommit, if they don't you will get a huge gain from it.
And since when do pro games even reach those stalemate situations, it just started recently again and then a patch hit us. So if hots stays away for a bit longer we might even see some lategame strategies. And if they have some time left in the unit design team, carrier is probably their first thing to work on.
And hey even the scout had its place in bw. (people got them instead of the corsair, because they could hit ground and sniped overlords way better). So just don't remove units Blizzards, it just makes an expansion become a mod only.
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Actually I don't think carriers in SC2 are all that bad. They and their interceptors seem to be less resilient than in BW, but do more dps. Like many have said earlier, they would do well against mech.
The reason that Terran is going bio instead of mech is, to a significant extent, the maps. Maps in SC2 strike me as being not too big and having large open spaces in the middle, both of which favor bio in TvP as bio can strike fast and spread out to minimize splash damage from Toss. On the other hand if maps were larger, but had more cliffs and narrow passageways, then mech would be stronger against Toss; even chargelots and immortals wouldn't be able to take mech head-on in a narrow pass. Carriers would shine then.
If we look back at BW, carriers were mainly used on maps like Katrina or that map last OSL on which Jangbi went carriers twice against Fantasy. Cliffs and narrow passageways. I don't remember seeing carriers on maps like Fighting Spirit.
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If it was Blizzard's intention to give it a specific role in the first place, I would say they probably kinda screwed up there, seeing that it's going to be removed in HotS.
There's no question about a carrier's power and what it forces your opponent to make to counter it, I too agree it is not a totally "worthless and broken" unit that is unusable. Unfortunately, you will have to get more than just a few carriers to make it actually work with air upgrades and also make full use of your fleet beacon + graviton beam.
Therefore, the main problem lies with getting there.
How do you get up mass carriers in your everyday game without letting your opponent get ahead of you either economically, killing you with a timing attack, or just get up too many carrier-counters quicker than you? If you could do that and make it work, you probably would already have had the ability to kill him off regardless of whether you gotten carriers or not.
There simply isn't enough reason to justify the risk taken for going carriers instead of playing "standard" if you are already ahead. If you are not ahead, it would be suicidal to even attempt it. Do not forget, with the build time of carriers, it's pretty much all-in as you can't remake them as fast as any other unit even if you have 4 stargates pumping them out at once. It would be very uneconomical to go for both ground and air upgrades.
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EPT
