EPT[D] And Then There's the Mothership... - Page 4
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CKSide
United States223 Posts
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JaspluR
Australia174 Posts
On May 22 2010 00:15 PGHammer wrote: The Mothership *is* a viable support unit for a WarpGate army (or ground forces shuttled/blinked in); however, how many players use it that way (or, more telling, get to use it that way)? Also, that is the Mothership's *job* (to collect all the attention); this was the same job the Arbiter had. The Arbiter wasn't very fast, either; it was slower than other air units (especially the Carrier and Shuttle). The Mothership has heavier shielding than the Arbiter because it will get a LOT of attention due to its sheer size; however, that same size means it has the same amount of cloaking area as four Arbiters. The issue is that it takes a boatload of resources (both minerals and gas) to build Mom; it also takes a ton of time. And, if you are playing against a Protoss player, and you aren't rushed early, you very well figure that he may be building up forces for a combined assault, with Mom invited along to help protect the "kids" (other air and ground forces). Because of that early video showing what the Mothership is capable of (most of those capabilities are still there, even with all the nerfing), even without the wormhole nexus, a Mothership as part of a push can still create a ton of havoc. And no player wants to be on the wrong end of that havoc. ( I play Protoss exclusively, and I've noticed that I'm getting rushed just about *constantly*; in my qualifying matches, my only win was when I wasn't rushed.) I think that rushes v. Protoss are (at least in SC2) more a case of "fear of Mom"...and having had a chance to use the Mothership as intended (as a super-sized Arbiter), I can see why. i lol'd at this post | ||
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Ballistixz
United States1269 Posts
but i defiantly agree that a super unit that cost so much minerals and gass needs more abilities and needs to be more effective in battles. right now it just seems like the mothership is just a gimmick unit. also not to mention vikings and corruptors destroy MS like no tommorow =/. or better yet zerg can just parasite it with a infestor lol. | ||
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teekesselchen
Germany886 Posts
How did they imagine late game when they replace Arbiters - Action on the whole map, recall, stasis - with a only-one-at-a-time mothership that supports the stuuuuupid "2 big piles bash each other dead within three seconds" idea of a battle? That's really nowhere near to the amount of tensity and entertainment of a broodwar match. | ||
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phyvo
United States5635 Posts
On May 22 2010 00:15 PGHammer wrote: The Mothership *is* a viable support unit for a WarpGate army (or ground forces shuttled/blinked in); however, how many players use it that way (or, more telling, get to use it that way)? Also, that is the Mothership's *job* (to collect all the attention); this was the same job the Arbiter had. The Arbiter wasn't very fast, either; it was slower than other air units (especially the Carrier and Shuttle). The Mothership has heavier shielding than the Arbiter because it will get a LOT of attention due to its sheer size; however, that same size means it has the same amount of cloaking area as four Arbiters. The issue is that it takes a boatload of resources (both minerals and gas) to build Mom; it also takes a ton of time. And, if you are playing against a Protoss player, and you aren't rushed early, you very well figure that he may be building up forces for a combined assault, with Mom invited along to help protect the "kids" (other air and ground forces). Because of that early video showing what the Mothership is capable of (most of those capabilities are still there, even with all the nerfing), even without the wormhole nexus, a Mothership as part of a push can still create a ton of havoc. And no player wants to be on the wrong end of that havoc. ( I play Protoss exclusively, and I've noticed that I'm getting rushed just about *constantly*; in my qualifying matches, my only win was when I wasn't rushed.) I think that rushes v. Protoss are (at least in SC2) more a case of "fear of Mom"...and having had a chance to use the Mothership as intended (as a super-sized Arbiter), I can see why. The arbiter's job wasn't to "collect the attention". In SC1 the arbiter's job was to allow protoss units to close the distance to the entrenched siege tanks by effectively decreasing their range. Terrans would have to use positioning, scans, turrets, and later sci vessels to regain their siege tanks' range advantage, as well as goliaths to keep arbiter count low. Arbiters also played a key role in separating the Terran army with good stasis usage, which had to be countered with EMP. Now compare this to the mothership: Vortex can't effectively split the army unless there's high templar support for AoE, because vs a MMMG ball they'll all just run into the vortex. The best you can get out of that is a surround with zealots before the battle ensues Unless Terran is going tanks, cloak doesn't serve the same function. It's more like using DTs because vs a MMMG ball a few ravens or a scan will give enough sight for the infantry to fire using most of their range. You also, in an earlier post, suggested (ideally, you should use a Mothership like you would an Arbiter, with Carriers/Void Rays/Phoenix, along with a mix of ground units; if you have to, use Warp Pylons to carry the ground forces along to a staging area just outside the opponent's base; offload the ground forces just outside, and come in low and slow with the whole massive force) I'm not sure you know what you're talking about. Yes, arbiter + carrier is a pretty potent combination lateltaelatelate game. But I can't recall that many pro-games where I ever saw that in action. Maybe... one. Arbiters were mainly used for Protoss ground forces as I detailed above. As for using the mothership with carriers/void rays/pheonix, that's just a horrible idea. On the one hand, Zerg has an easy counter to mothership: neural parasite. So why bother making the mothership when it will never be yours anyways. Terran has an easy counter to all protoss air: Vikings. Terran is already going to be getting vikings to counter your mothership, the last thing you need to be doing is encouraging him to build even more so that your mothership and half of your army all go down like paperweights. Going all ground just seems to me to be a better option, since they buffer vs your opponent's ground, are not countered by the vikings shooting down your mothership, and make more storms available in case your opponent runs into a vortex. This was sort of the situation in thelittleone vs white-ra, thelittleone had mainly marine/medivac and white-ra had a ground force with storm. However, when white-ra lost all his templar at the end of the game his vortex did nothing for him and thelittleone won. The way you describe things seems to me to indicate that while you've had success with your strategy, it's mostly because your opponents never see motherships and so have no idea what the crap they should do. I just don't think motherships in their current state will ever be able to hold up to scrutiny. | ||
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Stiver
Canada285 Posts
On May 21 2010 15:28 Failsafe wrote: Yeah, it's weird to speculate why a super intelligent race would get rid of their best unit. What kind of Lore explains that? :o I'm fairly sure that Arbiters were a major part of the Conclave/Judicator class(or whatever it's called), which was destroyed during the invasion of Aiur. | ||
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Cloak
United States816 Posts
Carriers lost their critical mass niche and their generalist air role to Void Rays, so the only generically defined role left (excluding unforseeably specific roles) for an air unit would be an air support, since offensive AtG and offensive AtA is taken. Carriers are already designed to spread mass confusion and disarray. Regardless of how good the Carriers are, you, by necessity, would have to focus fire them because of their chaos factor. I think this is a perfect opportunity for a tanking role because you can give them high survivability and low DPS, they can't be ignored not because of their stat efficiency but because of how they qualitatively affect the battle. If Protoss had an air unit that didn't have like a 1:5 investment ratio to GtA units and it pressured your opponent to get air superiority, I'd guarantee you see more use of it *cough* Broodlords *cough*. | ||
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shinigami
Canada423 Posts
Motherships should just be removed from the game because they don't serve any useful purpose; by the time you can fit them into your army, the player continues to choose other units instead because it is simply more effective. If Blizzard wants to keep them, then I think they should return as an offensive powerhouse designed to break static defenses/sieges and to consolidate map control since Protoss already has great defense/mobility with warpgates. But at that point, balance becomes too much of an issue... | ||
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QuothTheRaven
United States5524 Posts
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Orion_2kTC
United States80 Posts
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DuneBug
United States668 Posts
And thus the mothership. And yes, I was super disappointed the first time I built one. Compared to the trailers you'd seen, where they were just incinerating everything on the ground. But so far this has been the case for most units they've made in SC2. It should probably just be removed or re-designed. I could see it being used in the future, but with a limit of 1 it puts too much emphasis on where the mothership is on the map. Also please tell me how you can take over an entire mothership, BC, or carrier, with a tentacle from an infestor. | ||
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fidey
United States46 Posts
I really agree with the powerfield suggestion. I also think it should honestly have something like the Immortal does, where all small missles (Marine fire and like Hydra fire) does very little or no damage, because honestly anything that attacks air (hard)counters the Mothership. | ||
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Brother Laz
Belgium3 Posts
It's slow. It's also slow and it's slow and a huge target and it's slow. It could fulfill the role of this slow moving doom ship heading for your base and you have to throw air units at it to stop it before it annihilates your base. The equivalent of a nuke: you can stop it fairly easily, but you have to stop it or else. Right now it's useless: support spells on a unit that's too slow to support anything. If not planet cracker, at least make its laser powerful so it can act like a moving planetary fortress cannon. | ||
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Roblin
Sweden948 Posts
On May 21 2010 16:07 OperationMeatshield wrote: One thing I want on the mothership is for it to constantly produce a powerfield beneath it. This would be awesome as its mere presence would allow you to reinforce your force in a late game battle. Also there would be fun strats of building the mothership than using it to setup a forward control point with cannons and a constant stream of reinforcements. I think adding a powerfield would also make it seem more high tech, more advanced, like all protoss units are supposed to be. I say this seem like an awesome idea, then the protoss race would kind of be centred around the theme of pylon power, just like zerg is centred around the theme of creep much more than in broodwar. | ||
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shalafiend
United States62 Posts
On May 22 2010 01:55 QuothTheRaven wrote: I don't see what's wrong with having a single unit in the Protoss arsenal that's a specialty unit and rarely sees gameplay use. The rarity of it only makes it that much more exciting and memorable when we do see it. wtf...has this guy been reading the thread at all.. how is a Huge SLOW ASS moving unit going to make gameplay any more exciting. yes..vortex, mass recal, and cloak...- spells that will come into effect as your mothership slowly inches its way across the map...and ONLY then.. right, i see you moving out underneath your giant bulls eye of a saucer: i can..focus fire it and own it in 1 second flat. you manage to use your spells (i will run into the vortex, or i will run away from you) i can assume you're stupid, and just attack at another position forcing you to either pull back your whole army, and leaving your slow saucer desperately flying back to catch up..where i will snipe it. the mothership is rare -cause it is a overnerfed, slow, useless unit that you don't get unless you're already winning and want to Bm. | ||
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cbkenned2009
United States55 Posts
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T0fuuu
Australia2275 Posts
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Sentient
United States437 Posts
On May 21 2010 16:07 OperationMeatshield wrote: One thing I want on the mothership is for it to constantly produce a powerfield beneath it. This would be awesome as its mere presence would allow you to reinforce your force in a late game battle. Also there would be fun strats of building the mothership than using it to setup a forward control point with cannons and a constant stream of reinforcements. I think adding a powerfield would also make it seem more high tech, more advanced, like all protoss units are supposed to be. I really like this idea, though I fear it would overlap with the intended role of the Warp Prism too much. | ||
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junemermaid
United States981 Posts
On May 21 2010 16:07 OperationMeatshield wrote: One thing I want on the mothership is for it to constantly produce a powerfield beneath it. This would be awesome as its mere presence would allow you to reinforce your force in a late game battle. Also there would be fun strats of building the mothership than using it to setup a forward control point with cannons and a constant stream of reinforcements. I think adding a powerfield would also make it seem more high tech, more advanced, like all protoss units are supposed to be. This is a great idea | ||
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Antisocialmunky
United States5912 Posts
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