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On August 28 2012 13:46 ineversmile wrote:
There are some more fine details to this attack.
The first thing to realize is that you're running 2 fully saturated bases and you have all 4 gases by the time you push out, so you should be able to use more than just 6 gateways with that level of income. Usually one fully saturated base can handle 4 gateways with cut probe production and no other units being produced. The reason why 6 gates work here is that your interceptors are being rebuilt, which is a mineral sink. Notice that MC doesn't remake Zealots; he makes stalkers and interceptors and keeps everything ranged for the attack. This means you can forcefield as you would with Stalker/Sentry/Colossus, splitting armies in half and not allowing the bio behind your FFs to have range onto anything (as opposed to Zealots, which they would shoot at right over the FFs).
Having more stalkers also means that you have a lot of anti-viking units. If you were to go for this same push with 4 Colossi instead of Carriers, obviously the Colossi are going to be good, but the difference with Carriers is that the Carriers can fight back, and at similar range to Vikings. If you hit and run with Carriers and the Vikings fly over your ground army, you can focus them with stalkers. In a late game situation and your opponent already had 2 Starports and a full count of Medivacs already, Carriers are a lot easier to focus down with Vikings. However, in a 2base all-in at this timing, you're looking at the opponent being forced to cut Medivac production a bit early and not having enough Vikings up to trump the Carriers straight-out. Normally, they can have enough Vikings to deal with Colossi at this timing (well, it's a slightly earlier timing due to Colossi build time and move speed both being faster, but it's still pretty similar for the stage of the midgame), but that's also because Colossi don't shoot back at the Vikings to punish small numbers of them kiting as you move towards the Terran's base. Also, often there are Marauders helping to do damage to the Colossi, and since Carriers don't give a shit about Marauders, they're going to last longer. Between that, their higher HP and base armor, and the support from Stalkers, the Vikings at that stage of the game are not the biggest issue for your Carriers; it's keeping the Marines from shooting directly at the Carriers because you want to be trading Interceptors for Marines, not Carriers for Marines.
Something else to think about is that you can shoot down Medivacs with Carriers in engagements, making stim actually cost something. This is a pretty big deal. The more Medivacs you kill while you force more Viking production, the weaker the Bio army is and consequently the stronger all of your ground units are.
My next point is that people don't think a lot about the Inteceptors themselves. They actually have 80 total HP because they're 40 HP+40 Shields, so they have more HP than Marines and they each do fairly similar DPS 1-0 marines (their main nemesis during the timing window in which engagements should start). According to Liquipedia, Marines do 10.5+1.7 DPS while stimmed (1.7 accounting for +1 weapons)=12.2 DPS. Interceptors do 5 DPSx2 shots=10 DPS. Considering that Marines have lower HP (45 when stimmed plus Medivac healing shouldn't equal an average of 80 HP for 1 minute engagements with only 4-6 medivacs), you're going to trade minerals pretty well with the Terran. Marines cost double what interceptors cost, so if your carriers stay alive and keep producing (think of them like a mobile Barracks), you're going to replenish your units at a favorable rate to the Terran's production. Interceptors produce in 8 seconds. You can figure 2 of them are the same cost as a marine and produce in 16 seconds from a carrier. A reactored barracks produces 2 marines in 25 seconds, which adjusts to 1 marine per 12.5 seconds. The marines produce slightly faster than pairs of interceptors, however the interceptors also show up right at the battlefield inside carriers, just like warp gate units.
And this brings me to my next point: that Carriers and warp gates work very well together. Why? Because they both allow reinforcements to show up right there on the battlefield. If you think of your army as Interceptors, Stalkers, and Sentries, it's a lot more synergistic than thinking about Carriers with gateway units. We know carriers are slow and take a long time to rebuild, but if you think of them more like flying production buildings, that completely changes the equation. And this is what's so exciting about this build, to me. There is reason behind the function of carriers in this composition: they produce mineral units right there on the battlefield. No, they don't shoot AoE, but that's not the point of them. You wouldn't expect a Barracks to shoot AoE, either, right? How about a flying barracks that follows your army around while remaking units to a specific cap? That's the carrier.
Your comment inspired me to try air Protoss with carriers as mineral sink, but I do think that Blizzard should reduce the build time, would make the unit much more viable 
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On August 28 2012 13:46 ineversmile wrote:
Notice that MC doesn't remake Zealots; he makes stalkers and interceptors and keeps everything ranged for the attack. This means you can forcefield as you would with Stalker/Sentry/Colossus, splitting armies in half and not allowing the bio behind your FFs to have range onto anything (as opposed to Zealots, which they would shoot at right over the FFs).
Having more stalkers also means that you have a lot of anti-viking units. If you were to go for this same push with 4 Colossi instead of Carriers, obviously the Colossi are going to be good, but the difference with Carriers is that the Carriers can fight back, and at similar range to Vikings. If you hit and run with Carriers and the Vikings fly over your ground army, you can focus them with stalkers.
I totally agree on this. If some people haven't realized this yet, stalkers are actually quite good against marines. Let's discuss this a little bit. Let's remember those not upgraded marine (no stim / combat shield) pushes. What did you build against them? Yes, stalkers. Marines have quite low dps and stalkers can kite them. The stalker loses the kiting advantage to marines, and their dps becomes ineffective when medievacs come out and they also get murdered by marauders. But... he doesn't build marauders against carriers.
I need to do some explanations now for you to fully understand how stalkers function in this build. Ok, so you have carriers against marine viking situation, let's see how carriers fight them and how can stalkers help them do it. Let me discuss some situations:
1) Carriers vs Pure Marines with Medievacs
Very cost ineffective engagement for the carriers. They can get sniped, or just have all their interceptors die. Only way they could possibly win is if marines try to snipe the carriers and then using micro and terrain abuse (just like with broodlords) you pull them back to high ground / impassable terrain and marines can't kill them.
Now imagine you have those stalker sentry force. You can do the following:
a) Do not let the marines come and snipe the carriers by positioning the stalkers under the carriers. This results in only interceptors and stalkers taking damage, while the priority for the terran is to kill carriers. Basicly he's targeting useless units either too cheap (interceptors) either too tanky (stalkers) and he hasn't marauders to kill those stalkers.
b) Guardian shield makes interceptors and stalker die even harder so remember to always guardian shield. Also split his marine army, this makes the carriers and stalkers safer and marines can only shoot interceptors like that.
2) Carriers vs Vikings
The usual misunderstanding is that people say that vikings counter carriers. However if we investigate further, we understand the largest advantage of vikings is their range of 9 (that's how they can kite stuff like void rays or battlecruisers until they die and really hard counter them), however against carriers they do not have this advantage. The carrier's dps is so strong that they simply melt before dealing enough damage. You need a really high viking count to be effective, not 6, like 12-16 vikings. You can't achieve this amount of vikings unless you get a lucky scan and see it at 8 min. This is why I recommend always a more marine heavy response against this.
Anyway, I almost forgot I was talking about stalkers here. So stalkers as it already been said can help you even against this large viking count by sniping them.
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I'm willing to try this out - I've been wanting to try stargate in PvT for a while now and this probably has promise.
One question, though. I feel like I ask this often of MC's builds - why is this structured as an allin? Can't you build up to 55 probes, and plant a third once your push has started moving across the map (maybe cutting a gateway and a couple units)? From 55 probes during the timing push, you're in quick striking distance of 65 workers on 3 bases, which is a fine setup for a lategame economy. You might not need this economy - but assuming a well-played Terran can defend this push (which we probably should, since PvT Carrier pushes are still in their infancy). Is the margin of victory on this push so slim that we cannot remove a couple units from it and hedge our bets?
It'd be one thing if more workers limited Carrier production - but gas and production time are really the only factors in how fast you can build up carriers.
Also, if you somehow find your carriers interceptor-less, if you have a lategame infrastructure prepared - you can always pull back, remake interceptors, and then repush immediately. I feel like the window of time where you'd have less units for building from 45 to 55 or 60 probes is relatively small, yes?
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On August 28 2012 23:36 Treehead wrote:
I'm willing to try this out - I've been wanting to try stargate in PvT for a while now and this probably has promise.
One question, though. I feel like I ask this often of MC's builds - why is this structured as an allin? Can't you build up to 55 probes, and plant a third once your push has started moving across the map (maybe cutting a gateway and a couple units)? From 55 probes during the timing push, you're in quick striking distance of 65 workers on 3 bases, which is a fine setup for a lategame economy. You might not need this economy - but assuming a well-played Terran can defend this push (which we probably should, since PvT Carrier pushes are still in their infancy). Is the margin of victory on this push so slim that we cannot remove a couple units from it and hedge our bets?
It'd be one thing if more workers limited Carrier production - but gas and production time are really the only factors in how fast you can build up carriers.
Also, if you somehow find your carriers interceptor-less, if you have a lategame infrastructure prepared - you can always pull back, remake interceptors, and then repush immediately. I feel like the window of time where you'd have less units for building from 45 to 55 or 60 probes is relatively small, yes?
This is all in because it has no transition. The only good transition are high templars but they're too gas heavy and too slow to tech making it impossible to get it in time. You have to kill him before he can hard counter your carriers.
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On August 28 2012 21:22 Adonminus wrote:
Thanks for the guide Tor, I've always been liking carriers in any match. MC is a true president of protoss that showed us how imba carriers are. You didn't have to put my name near MC's, I'm too modest for that. I just gave you a replay and some tips for the guide.
Since this is a discussion, here's some of my thoughts:
-Discussion of getting air weapons
MC doesn't get +1 weapon, the advantages of this is being able to get some additional gateway units like a zealot and a sentry, or get faster the 3 additional gates. This also allows you to delay the 3th and 4th gas for 10-20 seconds. On the other hand getting +1 weapon or even eventually +2 allows carriers to really serve their purpose of DPS dealers in the fight if the terran has gone for fast upgrades. Usually he'll have +1 armor done, or he went for fast double upgrades then even +2 armor. +2 armor on marines is really deadly if you have +0 carriers and I think just spending the extra 100/100 on air weapons doesn't really hurt you and is a cost effective investment.
I think that MC's build was pretty darn good, considering how radical a build it is to use an obscure unit on a 2-base economy and hit a sharp timing to kill a Terran with penty of Bio, a handful of medivacs, +1, and stim. However, it probably can be improved. +1 air weapons costs 100/100 and can probably be researched about halfway through the first pair of carriers' build times, making the push have exponentially higher DPS for trading units. It's totally worth it, and the gas probably lines up if we take a deeper look at the build order and figure things out. I agree that you definitely need some units out so you don't die to a premature bio timing or take too much damage from an off-timed poke, but that's the balance of a build order.
-Discussion of build weaknesses
The scout after gateway, the late nexus at 30 supply, and getting zealot-stalker-sentry early game make this build really secure. You can always transition into something more safe if you scout a gas opening, (if you don't like standard, you can do those phoenix openers that counter stuff like 111). Then it's safe from any early push the terran can execute from a 1 rax FE since you get 3 gateways and lots of sentries. It is important to have a unit at his watchtower to see if he pushes and be ready to forcefield. The only danger are those 10-11 min medievac pushes, not because you can't stop them but because they are so strong that it forces you to reveal the carriers in order to defend. However that doesn't hard counter it, even if you reveal your carriers, if you push fast enough you can still go and kill him, especially after killing his push.
I think that if he drops your main with the standard 10-11 minute medivac timing, and you wreck his army and kill a couple medivacs with that awesome carrier range, it doesn't even matter that your hand is revealed. You can honestly probably just either go across the map and kill him (because he has so few medivacs and has to completely switch over to vikings), or you can take a third and invest in a bit more tech and a forge or two, if you think he'll have too high of a viking count. An all-in is an all-in until you're somehow ahead...and then what is it? How many 6pools and 4gates lead into standard games? A lot. So while this build does basically put you all-in if your opponent takes a third and goes defensive, if he attacks you with that bio army, you can probably just take a third and even a fourth and probe up again while you go into AoE tech or you make ranged Phoenixes to support your Carriers against inevitable Viking massing.
The other major weakness of the build is scan. If he scans you at 8 min, and sees double stargate carrier. He has at least 4 minutes to prepare marines and vikings. Marines and vikings together really hard hard hard counter this (remember in standard you don't go pure marines with vikings, since you go marauder heavy vs colossi so they can't instantly burn them and marauders can also snipe colossi). This means pure marine viking is non standard and will never happen unless he does a lucky scan to see it. This means the core key to winning with this build is not getting your stargate scanned. This explains why you build it in the corner of your base.
I've played some whacky games, but I'm nowhere near experienced enough with this branch of the 2-base carrier PvT play yet to understand who is in what position when he scans at 8 minues, sees the double stargate carrier, and reacts with marine viking. I would have to see some example games of it and probably crunch a few numbers to figure out the timings. How many vikings does he have if he makes 2 at a time? 3? 4? At which point does his second starport kick in, and did he fly his factory home to make another reactor while he keeps all his raxes pumping marines? It seems complicated. God forbid your opponent's solution is to see 2 stargates and make cloakshees because he figures you're cutting the robo for the fastest carriers in the universe.
-Discussion of how many carriers you need
The power of carriers increase as their number grows. However if you want a large number of carriers, you'll also have to delay your extra 3 gates (4th, 5th and 6th gate). The advantages of more carriers are obvious however it can get worst if you get scouted meaning more time for him to prepare. The solution to this is to attack with 4 carriers if you get scouted, or wait for like 6 carriers if you go unscouted and terran is unprepared.
I think that 4 is the magic number for the all-in against standard terran play involving 10-11 minute medivacs/stim/+1 and then a third and second EBay upon scouting your lack of a third. I want to see +1 air weapons in that timing, as well, but other than that I think MC's build is about right for producing a fatal timing with the 4 carriers. If you wait too long, there will be pre-emptive Vikings because he's going to find out you're 0-0 in ground upgrades and assume you're not in twilight tech.
This question is more philosophical to me, because if you don't need exactly 4 for the all-in timing, what kind of build are you actually doing? Right now, this is just a 2-base all-in. However, a lot of 2-base all-ins are great because they could be an all-in, or they could be heavy pressure into a delayed third, or it could be fake pressure into a regular/early-timed third. We've seen a slighly rough, yet functional 2-base Carrier opening, now. It's entirely possible we can refine this and just make it a 2Stargate Carrier into third build. What's missing from this build? Well, the natural expansion might be faster, but that's semantics because MC is often known for expanding after Stalker to be safe (hence the variants of the MC expand in PvT). The point is to get on 2 bases and take gases at the right time to fund a Stargate and then Beacon+Stargate 60 seconds later, then start 2 carriers off of 500 gas another 60 seconds later. That means your build basically just needs gases 3+4 to be done as you start your second stargate, since in 60 seconds you'll produce a little over 500 gas to start the carriers. Obviously the minerals should line up, as well, but you could feasibly use less gateways and take a third, or cut a warp-in and build a third if you feel safe based on scouting. Or, you could build one boosted phoenix and send that out to scout, then decide on your expansion timing and further commitments to tech. Or you build a robo and delay the second stargate, or something else to be less in the dark. Because, honestly, if this 2-base all-in sticks around and doesn't prove to just be a fluke, it's going to prove that you can achieve some map control with 2Stargate Carrier and allow a third base transition. And I highly doubt that it sucks (though maybe it does...but I'm not going to be concerned with that thought process).
I mean, sure...he could figure out you have 4-6 carriers and then mass vikings and marines. Doesn't that mean that you now know exactly what composition he's building? It's only a matter of being one step ahead and planning a way to beat that army composition with a planned transition and the right army positioning for the situation at hand?
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On August 28 2012 23:44 Adonminus wrote:Show nested quote +On August 28 2012 23:36 Treehead wrote:
I'm willing to try this out - I've been wanting to try stargate in PvT for a while now and this probably has promise.
One question, though. I feel like I ask this often of MC's builds - why is this structured as an allin? Can't you build up to 55 probes, and plant a third once your push has started moving across the map (maybe cutting a gateway and a couple units)? From 55 probes during the timing push, you're in quick striking distance of 65 workers on 3 bases, which is a fine setup for a lategame economy. You might not need this economy - but assuming a well-played Terran can defend this push (which we probably should, since PvT Carrier pushes are still in their infancy). Is the margin of victory on this push so slim that we cannot remove a couple units from it and hedge our bets?
It'd be one thing if more workers limited Carrier production - but gas and production time are really the only factors in how fast you can build up carriers.
Also, if you somehow find your carriers interceptor-less, if you have a lategame infrastructure prepared - you can always pull back, remake interceptors, and then repush immediately. I feel like the window of time where you'd have less units for building from 45 to 55 or 60 probes is relatively small, yes? This is all in because it has no transition. The only good transition are high templars but they're too gas heavy and too slow to tech making it impossible to get it in time. You have to kill him before he can hard counter your carriers.
I've read a lot of your guides, and you're really good at setting up timing pushes, so I trust that this one is no different.
However, have you tried out possible transitions? What about adding range 6 phoenixes? They trade pretty well with Vikings, outrange marines and make drops difficult. What about a Mothership to vortex the vikings or marines (I'd imagine they tend to be split apart)? What about abandoning Carriers and moving towards Phoenix Colossus (if you can't scout gasless expand, so that you have the robo already)?
I'm 100% theorycrafting here, so I'm probably wrong, but it seems like somewhere in there, there's probably a way to delay a high viking count long enough to get something new up and running before his forces can bowl you over. I mean 12 Vikings (your lower limit on when they start to "counter") take 3:12 to build (4:36 for 16 vikings) from a reactored starport, and assuming you can take his small number of vikings during the push, you should have at least a few minutes to come up with something new, right?
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On August 29 2012 00:24 Treehead wrote:Show nested quote +On August 28 2012 23:44 Adonminus wrote:On August 28 2012 23:36 Treehead wrote:
I'm willing to try this out - I've been wanting to try stargate in PvT for a while now and this probably has promise.
One question, though. I feel like I ask this often of MC's builds - why is this structured as an allin? Can't you build up to 55 probes, and plant a third once your push has started moving across the map (maybe cutting a gateway and a couple units)? From 55 probes during the timing push, you're in quick striking distance of 65 workers on 3 bases, which is a fine setup for a lategame economy. You might not need this economy - but assuming a well-played Terran can defend this push (which we probably should, since PvT Carrier pushes are still in their infancy). Is the margin of victory on this push so slim that we cannot remove a couple units from it and hedge our bets?
It'd be one thing if more workers limited Carrier production - but gas and production time are really the only factors in how fast you can build up carriers.
Also, if you somehow find your carriers interceptor-less, if you have a lategame infrastructure prepared - you can always pull back, remake interceptors, and then repush immediately. I feel like the window of time where you'd have less units for building from 45 to 55 or 60 probes is relatively small, yes? This is all in because it has no transition. The only good transition are high templars but they're too gas heavy and too slow to tech making it impossible to get it in time. You have to kill him before he can hard counter your carriers. I've read a lot of your guides, and you're really good at setting up timing pushes, so I trust that this one is no different. However, have you tried out possible transitions? What about adding range 6 phoenixes? They trade pretty well with Vikings, outrange marines and make drops difficult. What about a Mothership to vortex the vikings or marines (I'd imagine they tend to be split apart)? What about abandoning Carriers and moving towards Phoenix Colossus (if you can't scout gasless expand, so that you have the robo already)? I'm 100% theorycrafting here, so I'm probably wrong, but it seems like somewhere in there, there's probably a way to delay a high viking count long enough to get something new up and running before his forces can bowl you over. I mean 12 Vikings (your lower limit on when they start to "counter") take 3:12 to build (4:36 for 16 vikings) from a reactored starport, and assuming you can take his small number of vikings during the push, you should have at least a few minutes to come up with something new, right?
The problem aren't the vikings but the high marine count.
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Just thinking mass marines shouldn't be much of a problem. Terran cant get many marauder/medivac and pure marines without medivacs is beaten by plain stalker/sentry. So could just get a large gateway army with upgrades and expand while heading for templar tech? Colossus does not sound like a great idea as they are already getting vikings for the carriers.
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United Kingdom12022 Posts
Just from another Terran point of view, when you're going mech, even if you spam thors this build can seriously do some massive damage. You need crazy amounts of turrets or a ridiculous amount of thors as suprisingly thors are awful against not only the interceptors but the carriers themselves.
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I think the strong points of this build is that you have 4 very durable carriers at a particular time, so it's not surprise as much as it is just taking advantage of Terran who doesn't scout. A typical Terran, at the time this hits, has about half his units in marines, the rest marauder/medivac. Some focus firing with gate units and carriers can easily turn the tide in your favor, although I expect most gate units to simply die off unless T goes into full retreat (depends on where you engage him). If your carriers survive, you will win as the slow trickle of marines that come to fight will never be enough to down even one (if you're smart you would look for loners and stragglers with the carriers to be even more certain). I thank MC and Adonminus for putting in the effort to show the carrier's usage, hopefully bliz will see that it really is too soon (too hasty) to remove any unit from the game, however infrequent they are used.
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My notes after watching the replays:
I feel these specific replays fail to show whether using Carriers was a good idea. Each time, Terran was simply caught trying to attack when his army was like 70% as large as the Protoss army was. Were those Carriers replaced with Colossi or Blink Stalkers or whatever, the games would have been just as onesided.
The Carriers do seem better than Stalkers at fending off drops, but that's not saying much. I personally use Phoenixes to help deal with drops, and while they're less effective at clearing the drop out once it's landed, Phoenixes are even more effective at stopping it preemptively or hunting it down afterward. Oh, and they get made faster. And they don't come with a 450/350 price tag just for the right to make them.
Make Phoenixes, guys, they're really good.
On the plus side, the Carriers are easier to hide than the Colossi are. A good Terran should realize that something is up, but since Carriers can fly off into the corner and stack on top of each other / on the telltale buildings themselves, unless the Terran happens to scan the Stargates they'll be in the dark. That's worth something.
As for what Terran should be doing about this, my experience using Carriers says to just keep your bio on the ground, make purely marines, and watch for the addition of Colossus. (HTs don't make sense here, as storms kill your inteceptors). Prepare to mass up vikings should this happen (3 Starports is not excessive). Don't start massing up Vikings unless there are Colossi coming; the 150 minerals is better spent on 3 marines.
Carrier + Colossus does not do well against well microed Marine + Viking. The Carriers have to stay in front of the Colossi or else they get sniped, and if the carriers engage the Vikings, marines behind the carriers can shoot the interceptors, whereas the Colossi can be kited by the Terran ball while still attacking the Carriers. Zealots will be poorly upgraded and so won't be that big a deal. However, Carrier + Colossus will positively smash pure MMM.
Above all, keep your infantry upgrades going continuously. Fights involving Carriers hinge more on upgrades than any other unit in the game.
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i like to show the fleet beacon as most terran predicts that it is mother ship and yeah.... then boom carriers arrive
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Here's a replay of it, thought it was a higher master player though, I ripped him apart. This build is really strong but only if it's not scouted. It might not be strong in the future if T scans more, does his own 2 base timing, etc.
http://drop.sc/244260
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On August 28 2012 10:31 Stunergy wrote:
What about doing the proxy stargates on the harder to hide maps?
edit: I just tried this on the ladder after i practice it, and it was an easy win, he scanned my base twice, and only saw the gates, and the units at my natural. Had no idea what happened to him, when i pylon'd at his main cliff, and use the carriers to warp in the main as the 3 other carrier and gateway units attacked the natural.
Maybe just proxy the Beacon? It is an expensive proxy regardless, just figure 300 300 is better to lose than what would amount to a huge amount of your ability to produce units.
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On August 29 2012 03:46 ThomasjServo wrote:Show nested quote +On August 28 2012 10:31 Stunergy wrote:
What about doing the proxy stargates on the harder to hide maps?
edit: I just tried this on the ladder after i practice it, and it was an easy win, he scanned my base twice, and only saw the gates, and the units at my natural. Had no idea what happened to him, when i pylon'd at his main cliff, and use the carriers to warp in the main as the 3 other carrier and gateway units attacked the natural. Maybe just proxy the Beacon? It is an expensive proxy regardless, just figure 300 300 is better to lose than what would amount to a huge amount of your ability to produce units.
If you go super all in, proxy them. If Terran pushes you before you have any carriers out though, you lose.
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Better to get Grav catapult around when your second round of carriers start. No point in using the gas earlier, you can get an extra chunk of sentry energy with the 100 saved gas. The extra forcefields are pretty nice when push comes to Godlike Carrier shove.
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[I hesitate to create a guide on this cuz I don't have any replays yet, for some reasons my replays on the unit tester map are gone.]
not sure if many people know this but I just found a little micro trick while using carriers:
normally when your carrier is moving and shooting, after it's target dies the interceptors go home and the carrier is now essentially a giant slow moving space ship that cannot attack without having to stop and release interceptors, which is obviously not good as units can catch up with the carrier and take it out while the interceptors are released one by one. Even with graviton catapult it still takes a bit of time.
There is a way to prevent the interceptors from entering the carrier hanger when a target dies and maintaining its speed at the same time: right when the target dies and as the interceptors are flying back to the carrier you a-move the carrier or right click the enemy unit you want to kill next then immediately issues a move cmd afterwards. This way the interceptors that are flying back to the carrier will immediately fly towards the target and engage, the carrier will decelerate a slight bit when you are issuing the attack cmd but if you issue the move cmd fast enough after that the carrier won't lose much speed. This doesn't work for any interceptors that have gone back into the carrier hanger, those in the hanger will stay there until you override the carrier's move cmd with a stop/attack cmd, at which point they will be released.
Obviously this takes quite a lot of apm, but I can imagine this boosting the effectiveness of carrier by quite a lot, especially in this all in build where every unit counts. I hope some more dedicated users with better technical skills that I do will write a more thorough guide on this.
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On September 01 2012 04:20 uh-oh wrote:
[I hesitate to create a guide on this cuz I don't have any replays yet, for some reasons my replays on the unit tester map are gone.]
not sure if many people know this but I just found a little micro trick while using carriers:
normally when your carrier is moving and shooting, after it's target dies the interceptors go home and the carrier is now essentially a giant slow moving space ship that cannot attack without having to stop and release interceptors, which is obviously not good as units can catch up with the carrier and take it out while the interceptors are released one by one. Even with graviton catapult it still takes a bit of time.
There is a way to prevent the interceptors from entering the carrier hanger when a target dies and maintaining its speed at the same time: right when the target dies and as the interceptors are flying back to the carrier you a-move the carrier or right click the enemy unit you want to kill next then immediately issues a move cmd afterwards. This way the interceptors that are flying back to the carrier will immediately fly towards the target and engage, the carrier will decelerate a slight bit when you are issuing the attack cmd but if you issue the move cmd fast enough after that the carrier won't lose much speed. This doesn't work for any interceptors that have gone back into the carrier hanger, those in the hanger will stay there until you override the carrier's move cmd with a stop/attack cmd, at which point they will be released.
Obviously this takes quite a lot of apm, but I can imagine this boosting the effectiveness of carrier by quite a lot, especially in this all in build where every unit counts. I hope some more dedicated users with better technical skills that I do will write a more thorough guide on this.
Does this mean you can spam a-click on the ground near the fight to keep attack-moving, to increase the damage output of a fair-sized group of carriers?
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On September 01 2012 05:43 ineversmile wrote:Show nested quote +On September 01 2012 04:20 uh-oh wrote:
[I hesitate to create a guide on this cuz I don't have any replays yet, for some reasons my replays on the unit tester map are gone.]
not sure if many people know this but I just found a little micro trick while using carriers:
normally when your carrier is moving and shooting, after it's target dies the interceptors go home and the carrier is now essentially a giant slow moving space ship that cannot attack without having to stop and release interceptors, which is obviously not good as units can catch up with the carrier and take it out while the interceptors are released one by one. Even with graviton catapult it still takes a bit of time.
There is a way to prevent the interceptors from entering the carrier hanger when a target dies and maintaining its speed at the same time: right when the target dies and as the interceptors are flying back to the carrier you a-move the carrier or right click the enemy unit you want to kill next then immediately issues a move cmd afterwards. This way the interceptors that are flying back to the carrier will immediately fly towards the target and engage, the carrier will decelerate a slight bit when you are issuing the attack cmd but if you issue the move cmd fast enough after that the carrier won't lose much speed. This doesn't work for any interceptors that have gone back into the carrier hanger, those in the hanger will stay there until you override the carrier's move cmd with a stop/attack cmd, at which point they will be released.
Obviously this takes quite a lot of apm, but I can imagine this boosting the effectiveness of carrier by quite a lot, especially in this all in build where every unit counts. I hope some more dedicated users with better technical skills that I do will write a more thorough guide on this. Does this mean you can spam a-click on the ground near the fight to keep attack-moving, to increase the damage output of a fair-sized group of carriers?
The more attack moves you make the more the carriers decelerate. The damage output will still be the same because interceptors always have to complete their flight path before firing. What you are proposing will probably make the carriers to move at a slower speed but never have their interceptors return to the hanger. If you don't want to slow your carrier down too much you should only issue the a-move cmd when the interceptors are flying home.
Another thing is every time time when you attack move the carrier retargets, so if the carrier picks a different target when the first target is damaged but not dead, it will not decrease enemy fire power, which basically decreases the efficiency of the carrier.
EDIT: It's a-move cmd while interceptors are returning+move cmd immediately after that, not just spam a-move.
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On August 28 2012 11:03 SC2John wrote:
I just think this is really based off of "omg, I hope he doesn't see me". MC was allowed to do this because he was up 1 game and playing in a Bo5. This is essentially the same as a DT rush, where, if you fail to do damage, suddenly there's no good transition and you have no observers on the map and it just feels really shaky.
I don't recommend this build for normal ladder play, that's all.
LOL whats the point of ladder if not to have fun?
SC2 is a GAME, its meant for ENTERTAINMENT, and this strat is funny and interesting
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EPT
