EPTWhy Carriers (And also Battlecruisers) Suck - Page 8
| Forum Index > SC2 General |
|
Waah
United States120 Posts
| ||
|
Big J
Austria16289 Posts
We can clearly see that neither of those units was intented to be playable vZ, if not used in a rush (abusing zergs early antiair weakness) PvT: Carriers and Battlecruisers main roles (defined by their huge HP, good dps, slow speed) are to counter compositions without costefficient antiair. (heavy Mechplay, heavy roboplay) all Terran compositions use vikings and marines --> Carriers are just terrible in this MU Protoss compositions don't use a ton of good antiair (blink stalkers are decent, but usually not the standard composition), but the battlecruiser doesn't work very well with the highly mobile terran bioball. Experiments with BCs in the lategame might even be interesting (air upgrades are already a component of bio builds, starports no component of PvT builds, void rays, phoenix are worse BC counters than vikings and corrupotors), but until now there has been no need at all to switch up MMMVG. Especially with the HotS speedupgrade, BCs could become more useful in combination with bio. (interesting "TvP Pure Air Guide" to back up "BCs might be a good lategame unit in TvP if the matchup ever developed past the mass bio vs deathball until end of times" - phase http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=283935 ) PvP: The games are too short for any use of universal lategame units like carriers. Also stargate builds are said to be powerful, but rather rare and usually end the game before carriers come into play (though there would be potential; yet I think that tempests are more interesting in SG vs SG scenarios, because the main SG unit in these scenarios are phoenixes and tempests are more powerful in this scenario) TvT: We see Battlecruisers in nearly every stalemate situation. Not in huge amounts, but in a role that simply can't be filled by any other units (banshees are too fragile against lategame viking+scan, so they can't break tanklines) So in conclusion: The battlecruiser has still some room to improve and is at least in 1 MU really important and useful. I really like that blizzard tries to strengthen it a little more, but the unit and the concept is fine. The carrier is unplayable in the current metagame. The only way to make it playable would be to make it more powerful than the standard antiair counters (marine/viking, corruptor), which ultimatly has to lead into a metagame in which mass carrier would become unbeatable. ("OP" unit) Little microbuffs and statsbuffs might make it more useful, but won't change that "going carrier" is just a terrible decision. --> redesign with a complete rolechange (tempest!) seems to be a good idea, though the carrier might become interesting if PvP became a longer MU and if terrans started to Mech vP. Still I don't see why the carrier would be that much better in those circumstances than other units. | ||
|
Tonybarbosa
Australia38 Posts
Incidentally, regarding use of the Tempest, have I missed the point or does it fit basically only the role of countering mass muta? EDERPT: That is, a zealot change in HotS | ||
|
FeyFey
Germany10114 Posts
On November 21 2011 22:38 Tonybarbosa wrote: I thought that there was some kind of change to make late game zealots weaker? Wouldn't that contribute to making mech more viable in PvT? I don't remember the change, though. It might have just been mentioned. Incidentally, regarding use of the Tempest, have I missed the point or does it fit basically only the role of countering mass muta? EDERPT: That is, a zealot change in HotS the tempest doesn't counter just mutas, but mass air. Which before only the vortex did quiet nicely. Well and stalkers But they had to blink under the air units and since they are pretty fragile its more of a suicidal move. Basically the tempest is a flying thors, with more aoe and less damage. Mainly to use against lots of casters as they won't do lots of damage against zerg. Remember the viper, they could disable stalker damage after blinking below the zerg air army for example, while broodlords are unaffected. And Vikings will probably be able to kite them, but while kiting stack up, so if they get to slow they will take alot of damage. (you can't kite carriers, making vikings pretty bad against carriers, means you have to overproduce vikings even more as against colossi) | ||
|
Zanno
United States1484 Posts
in bw TvP carriers exploited a weakness in terran mech anti-air. the reality of the situation is that 3/3 marines melt interceptors just as badly in bw as they do in sc2, but the counters to marines (reavers/ht) are so much harder that marines aren't viable in a normal engagement...so you don't see marine upgrades researched, instead terrans use goliaths which are overall pretty bad but still better than throwing thousands of gas and time into 3/3 with range and stim for a unit you might not need and will be easily negated by protoss switching out of carriers back into like 4 reavers carriers would be useful if some major balance or metagame shift were to force terran into going tank/hellion, but i don't see that ever happening on top of all this, there are two other minor points 1) the changes to high ground mechanics, while not inherently bad, just different, do not favor carriers at all 2) vikings are pretty good, while wraiths weren't. however, a critical mass of carriers will beat vikings, from what i've seen | ||
|
Kindred
Canada396 Posts
The Tempest (earlier idea for Carrier replacement) ![[image loading]](http://images.wikia.com/starcraft/images/c/c3/Tempest_SC2_Game1.jpg) "In comparison to the carrier, the tempest was slightly weaker, but cost fewer resources to build." (^ already a huge reason not to doubt the viability of the Tempest) The tempest had powerful shields and, while having no armaments of its own, carried a number of small fighter-type drones called shuriken that launched, surrounded and swarmed a target, doing little damage individually but significant damage when combined whilst maneuvering rapidly, making it difficult to destroy. The drones could be auto-built with a right click, a behavior which was carried over to the carrier. The shuriken made melee attacks. Special Shields The tempest was strong against ground targets, but was ill-equipped to handle air-to-air encounters; it had poor air defense as its shields did not activate against air attacks, but the shields took little damage from ground attacks. First thoughts are: This is a really cool replacement for the Carrier, and although it may not have “worked” in their eyes, the current Carrier is far less “working” than I think this idea would have been. During the beta especially, players will most definitely experiment with new units, coming to find a use for a unit that is far in the tech tree is vital for feedback purposes. The SC2 community was not even given the chance to experiment with this unit. For one, this unit is so similar in design that the only difference is the name, its interceptors were melee and the Tempest had way better maneuverability. Having this unit be almost the same as a carrier, but weaker and cheaper would support Protoss making phoenix and voidray for air support along with the Tempest to have something to combat A-A, and would also open up the possibility to get a Mothership because you now have air support. I cannot say if I want a Carrier or Tempest, because it should have been for the community to decide seeing as Carriers in SC2 are not nearly as formidable as in BW. The major problem is not the unit themselves but the fact that nothing has been done to create a use for what seems like wasted pixels. Ultimately, this is almost the exact idea that should replace the current carrier, a weaker but more resource viable unit, also increasing the range slightly (If still too weak)of the Tempest would assist with many problems the Carriers currently face; being killed by ground units way too quickly. This being said there is hardly any risk anymore to micro and kill these larger, high tier air units whilst there is an opposing ground army aside from having some units force fielded or stormed According to Dustin Bowder, "the Tempest didn't feel right and that there was too much of an emotional connection with the original unit(Carrier)." The “Carrier” and the “Tempest” are the idealistically, the same unit, deciding to keep its name should not warrant it’s own death because of its previous success and (more so) viability. Also, I think the emotional connection was to the design and look of the SC1 Carrier, the latter not being at all the same anyway. + Show Spoiler + (source:http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=128071) | ||
|
-Celestial-
United Kingdom3867 Posts
On November 20 2011 09:44 Muffinmanifestation wrote: I just tried it out in Unit Tester Online, 200 Marines vs. 33 Carriers, auto-build on, and the Carriers once again were butt stomped. Maybe he tried it where the Carriers were 3/3/3 and the Marines were unupgraded? EDIT: Tried it without Stimpacks, Marines lose handily. Try and come up with a late game situation of Marines Vs. Carriers without Stim. Just wanted to add some numbers as a quick additional note to this: 200 marines - 10,000 minerals, cumulative 5,000 seconds build time; assuming reactors thats 2,500 seconds of barracks time 33 carriers (full of interceptors) - 14,850 minerals, 9,250 gas, cumulative 3,960 seconds stargate build time; no reactor but with constant chronoboost it reduces to 2,640 seconds plus a further 32 seconds per carrier to max out interceptors And this doesn't take into consideration extra interceptors made by auto-build, which adds to the cost. Also worth noting that killing a single carrier (if you assume all resource costs equal, despite gas being generally viewed as "worth" more) is the equivilant of 14 marines of resources but only 6 marines supply. Based on the above tests if you went into these tests with equal resource rather than equal supply the carriers would get even more heavily stomped, perhaps even without stim? Might check that myself later (at work atm). Edit: Anyone else think it'd be really quite fun to play with what Kindred just posted? I remember when I first heard about that unit and thought "that looks awesome, why isn't it in the game?" Also theres still some life in carriers despite this. Saw an epic game on a stream the other day, think it was HongUn's, where it was mass carrier/mothership/void ray and just MELTED two entire zerg armies. Its just they're so hard to get to and so horribly inefficient for their cost and time taken to build. | ||
|
Big J
Austria16289 Posts
On November 22 2011 01:22 Lightspeaker wrote: Edit: Anyone else think it'd be really quite fun to play with what Kindred just posted? I remember when I first heard about that unit and thought "that looks awesome, why isn't it in the game?" Also theres still some life in carriers despite this. Saw an epic game on a stream the other day, think it was HongUn's, where it was mass carrier/mothership/void ray and just MELTED two entire zerg armies. Its just they're so hard to get to and so horribly inefficient for their cost and time taken to build. not really... Just seems like a unit that basically is the same as a colossus, but weaker. In a Gateway+X composition colossi just seems stronger. Pure air compositions are unplayable because Protoss has no really strong AtA unit. Looks like a carrier, but maybe stronger vs ground, which really isn't the carriers problem in the first place... | ||
|
Nizzy
United States839 Posts
I've tried going BC's in a top masters league position for a while and it didn't work. Vs Standard Zergs they would just neutral the 2-3 BC's that I had. I really like the change to not be able to NP massive units but that was quickly taken off the PTR. The Metagame changed slighty in TVZ so it might work better now. Vs standard protoss the more BC you get the more mass stalker they just make, and stalkers do like +2 extra vs BC's. I don't know why but with blink stalkers its hard to win until you get like 8 BCs. I think the problem with BC's is that they're what 400 mins? Its more cost effective to just make another CC for mules and keep massing your 3-3 bio and control them with drops. And my god I just realized why I stopped going BCs vs toss its because feedback automatically started them down 100hp+ every fight. | ||
|
Muffinmanifestation
United States20 Posts
On November 22 2011 01:41 Nizzy wrote: And my god I just realized why I stopped going BCs vs toss its because feedback automatically started them down 100hp+ every fight. A bit off topic, but yeah, High Templar were my go to unit vs. Terran when I played Random a while back. I think they can Feedback, like, 8 units Terran makes? If you just Feedback the Medivacs in a big Bio ball, Feedback Thors, Feedback Ravens, Feedback BCs, the Terran's now just sitting on a bunch of units with little support. Then you throw Storms, bring in the Zealots, and mop up. Back on topic. To Lightspeaker, I'll try it when I get home. Minerals and Gas have equal value or is Gas x2? To Big J, yes, Phoenixes are too fragile to really be used in a big fight, and they don't hold air superiority very well because they are so easily outclassed by the other races' "air superiority units." (Viking and Corruptor) Another mechanic that has also led to the decline of Tier 3 units is the removal of the 12 unit hotkey. In Brood War, let's face it, if you wanted to get 60 Marines and Medics to the other side of the battlefield, it'd take you a week. You could make 5 control groups, but that severely limited your production capabilities unless you were a pro. And what happens if you run into a Carrier fleet? Good luck focusing down that bad boy. But in SC2, you can just ball up 60 Marines, Stim under the Carrier, two shot it, and run away, suffering minimal losses. No, I'm not saying Terran's imbalanced, but I am saying the new game has made micro a lot easier. In BW, if you had twelve Carriers on a hotkey, there wasn't much that could get in your way that you couldn't micro out of only because it was nearly impossible for an opponent to keep up with you with more, less expensive units. | ||
|
Big J
Austria16289 Posts
On November 22 2011 01:58 Muffinmanifestation wrote: A bit off topic, but yeah, High Templar were my go to unit vs. Terran when I played Random a while back. I think they can Feedback, like, 8 units Terran makes? If you just Feedback the Medivacs in a big Bio ball, Feedback Thors, Feedback Ravens, Feedback BCs, the Terran's now just sitting on a bunch of units with little support. Then you throw Storms, bring in the Zealots, and mop up. Back on topic. To Lightspeaker, I'll try it when I get home. Minerals and Gas have equal value or is Gas x2? To Big J, yes, Phoenixes are too fragile to really be used in a big fight, and they don't hold air superiority very well because they are so easily outclassed by the other races' "air superiority units." (Viking and Corruptor) Another mechanic that has also led to the decline of Tier 3 units is the removal of the 12 unit hotkey. In Brood War, let's face it, if you wanted to get 60 Marines and Medics to the other side of the battlefield, it'd take you a week. You could make 5 control groups, but that severely limited your production capabilities unless you were a pro. And what happens if you run into a Carrier fleet? Good luck focusing down that bad boy. But in SC2, you can just ball up 60 Marines, Stim under the Carrier, two shot it, and run away, suffering minimal losses. No, I'm not saying Terran's imbalanced, but I am saying the new game has made micro a lot easier. In BW, if you had twelve Carriers on a hotkey, there wasn't much that could get in your way that you couldn't micro out of only because it was nearly impossible for an opponent to keep up with you with more, less expensive units. yeah I know, isn't it aweful that blizzard made the game more fun to play? God how I hate those "12 unit control group with fucked up pathing and dumb targeting/casting is the best way to balance a strategy game" - arguments. Of course the balancing changes because of that, and no... I'm not suggesting autokiting/blinking or whatever, but I think that there are certain control/AI standards that a game has to fullfill these days which SC:BW doesn't fullfill anymore. Also it is just straight up wrong to say T3 units are being declined... Dt's, colossi, HT's, Thor's, BC's, Broodlords and Ultralisks are all being played frequently. It really comes down to the mothership and the carrier not having a lot of use and even the mothership is rather common in the PvZ lategame (but usually PvZ doesn't reach that stage) Give it a rest, the carrier is (at least close to) fine, but its basic design just doesn't make sense in the protoss arsenal with the current metagame. | ||
|
coL.hendralisk
Zimbabwe1756 Posts
On November 21 2011 21:37 Big J wrote: P/T v Z: The way Zerg airforce is designed (best AtA unit in the game; strong AtA unit needed to cover Broodlords), Carriers and Battlecruisers simply have to be unplayable as a stable composition unit. If they were playable, that would include that zerg AtA can't counter them costefficiently --> Terrans and Protoss could build an army that is only beatable by GtA. But Zerg doesn't have a good GtA-Unit. We can clearly see that neither of those units was intented to be playable vZ, if not used in a rush (abusing zergs early antiair weakness) HAHAHA did you just call corruptors the best air to air unit in the game? O_O It's the only air to air unit in the game and I would gladly trade them for viking/voidray I'm assuming you're zerg, so have you ever played against mothership/carrier/HT/archon/collosus? Late game compositions with carriers are strong as hell... Also you say protoss has no good air to air unit. lol | ||
|
heroofcanton
United States167 Posts
Fortunately, that is not how this game works. If I scout you doing a carrier/bc heavy build and I make the units to be rewarded. If you micro your bcs/carriers over marines and lose them, that's your fault and not the units. Carriers and BCs are units that need support, either from a strong ground army or units like vikings or ravens. These units are actually pretty good if you use them well (see- any tvt game, hongunprime). I feel like you really don't understand the unit and are just trying to slip something in about lol marines op. In short: QQ less or learn to troll better. | ||
|
Big J
Austria16289 Posts
On November 22 2011 02:30 HenryZ wrote: HAHAHA did you just call corruptors the best air to air unit in the game? O_O It's the only air to air unit in the game and I would gladly trade them for viking/voidray I'm assuming you're zerg, so have you ever played against mothership/carrier/HT/archon/collosus? Late game compositions with carriers are strong as hell... Also you say protoss has no good air to air unit. lol yeah I've played against a ton of stupid builds since I started playing in the beta and mothership/carrier stuff is one of them. If you get to this stage of the game, you really should be able to play pure Broodlord/corruptor (I guess + infestor would still be nice, but absolutly not necessary 20+ broodlords wipe the floor with every ground unit in the game, everything else goes into corruptors to protect your broodlords and replenish them when your opponent plays a "slow" style) And though one can argue that vikings might be as potent as corruptors in some scenarios (due to their range) and void rays are just extremly powerful when massed, in terms of pure a-click (+corruption) strength I think there is nothing that beats corruptors AtA. And yes, ofc I would love to trade any zerg unit with it's terran/protoss counterpart... There is simply a reason why every zerg unit has major drawbacks compared to terran/protoss counterparts and it is called larva mechanism... I guess if I could spawn 10carriers or BCs lategame instead of Broodlords... which zerg wouldn't want that? When your mutaharass would be mass cloaked banshee... Or your 6pool would spawn zealots... My roach warren now builds marauders... It's just a lol balancing. Note, I'm by no means saying that zerg units are worse than their "counterparts" (if you can talk about such a thing in such a diverse enivroment like starcraft), but they have drawbacks which make them less potent when used on their own. (broodlords not shooting air, zerglings being rather weak in bigger combats and extremly vulnurable to splash, roaches being extremly supplyheavy, hydralisks just sucking statswise...) And yes, Protoss has no good AtA unit... VoidRays are kind of supplyefficent, but extremly costinefficient as AtA unit, and therefore only viable in the extreme lategame and with support. Phoenix straight up suck vs anything that's not light. Carriers and Motherships not being really good vs Air in the first place. | ||
|
Wrath 2.1
Germany880 Posts
Indeed I think they should make carriers and battlecruisers back to what they were in bw. fully uped battlecruisers were putting stuff in their place. While the switch to battlecruisers is very hard because they are expensiv you have to start researching the upgrades long before and you need to create many startports, it's very exciting to watch. It's so hard for a sc lover to see what sc2 games come to... those finals of mlg... sup? 1 game was maybe longer than 10-15 min? the others were more like 6 minutes. We've seen good matches this mlg, good defeces, hard pushes, air battles, but it's not the way it is in bw. If you watch an fantasy / flash tvt or something like that. God I know I shouldn't compare those two games, but why not? You have to see what we loved on bw and leave what we didn't like (7 unit controle groups, bad grafic, and some other minor things ). I think it's stupid to try to close out bw on everything. We all (many) came from bw and to deny our backgroud and to forget the game we followed for a decade isn't easy and shouldn't be nessecary. This is more a reply to this thread then to exactly op's questioning, but I agree with Op, and I wouldn't appreciate if blizzard removed the carrier. "Carrier has departed" shiet. | ||
|
thegreatpiata
Canada54 Posts
Maybe for balance sake, have it only work only on air units and maybe give it a time delay for the interceptor to arm so you can't just detonate 8 interceptors rapidly (or balance it around the fact that you can detonate 4 or 8 interceptors rapidly). This would make the carrier a great back line support unit, which is really where it should be given it's attack style. It could also make phoenixes a lot more interesting if there were situations where you wanted to use graviton beam and detonate an interceptor on the gravitated unit. | ||
|
terranghost
United States980 Posts
The battlecruiser is actually pretty good against a protoss player if you can sneak them out the only thing they really fear is a shitton of stalkers. If they don't have the ability to yamato due to templars feed back or it just flat out not being upgraded then carriers and voidrays rape them. If you can safely transition to it while your opponent is primarily stuck on stalkers for AA then the BCs will actually do pretty well just be sure to emp your own bcs if templar start to arrive or neutralize the templar themselves. Against zerg you better have air superiority because zerg can go mass corruptor kill of almost all the bcs then instantly switch to say roach or zergling to deal with the marines you will build with your left over minerals. (also ravens are basically a must if you decide to go bcs against the zerg pdd stops all of their AA but fungal and IT) BC in the mirror however are most useful if you decide to mech or go air where you gain that supieriority the BC's actually do pretty well against marines and you dont have to worry about vikings if you have more. The carrier is actually pretty bad in the mirror because guardian shield basically gives everything base 2 armor and although I don't really play pvp ever I don't think it is possible to even tech safely to carriers without dieing. Against zerg just like with the BC you better hope you have superiority in the air or enough ground support for them because a mass transition to corruptors will just screw you over. Against terran like you said not to useful right now but TBH templar/carrier though very gas intensive is actually pretty damn hard for the terrans to beat marines and vikings are the terrans only AA that can hold their own against carriers marines melt to storm so long as they don't get emped or sniped first. and carriers can actually fight pretty cost efficiently vs carriers and if the carrier is 3 on weapons vs a 0 armor viking that means the vikings die in 1 hit. Also vikings are slow so storm can hit them pretty easily too. Hopefully blizzard leaves the carrier in they appear to be moving in the direction of helping terrans mech (although I do it anyway as they are now  ) If you have a meching the marine count will be low and since carriers and vikings can fight pretty evenly all the toss would have to worry about is turrets built on the spot and this new warhammer because thors are really bad against carriers unless you stack them. | ||
|
FatalBlur
United States25 Posts
I recently switched because of all the bad mouthing I get just for playing Terran. that's a very stupid reason to switch, I switched from Terran to Protoss because I realized I liked the Protoss style more, but just because you get badmouthed for being a terran is a stupid fucking reason, thats all I have to say, gl with zerg i guess | ||
|
ThePianoDentist
United Kingdom698 Posts
On November 20 2011 02:44 Muffinmanifestation wrote: Note: For those of you who will judge me based on my ranking, I'm a mid-level Plat player who's just switched from Terran to Zerg. I hate MMM and Tanks, always opting for something more interesting, even if I lose. I recently switched because of all the bad mouthing I get just for playing Terran. Quit hatin', bros. I find it funny when lower level players get bad-mouthed for playing terran just because at the highest level terran may be slightly op. at plat level terran is by far the hardest race from my playing random experience (fungal growth == whole army just died!). It's like when i get hate from zerg's in PvZ even though I find zerg the easiest race at platinum. and yeah i agree i never understood why in all the balance changes throughout the game blizzard never seemed to give a damn about the carrier | ||
|
astroorion
United States1022 Posts
Thanks! | ||
| ||
![[image loading]](http://farm7.staticflickr.com/6235/6364004353_727f9fa2a9_b.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://farm7.staticflickr.com/6105/6364003557_5be6e9bb55_b.jpg)
