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Canada11583 Posts
On November 30 2011 06:27 Moonling wrote:
Good points! However I feel that the collosus is ruining star craft 2 for this exact reason: why make any other unit when you have colossus? If it was gone t would not make Vikings therefore allowing for a stargate tech switch that toss used to do in bw. The colossus IMO has broken the mechanics of the game and stalled the meta game forprotoss worse than blizz realizes. Ground aoe from the reaver would fix the carrier, because no colli means no Vikings, plus changing speed and micro would fix it to. However, bliz I think realizes this therefore it's either the carrier or colossus and they chose to keep the collosus
Edit: stupid phone
I've been rather convinced of this for awhile. It's an a-move unit that's best counter is going air. It's sooo powerful and mobile (cliff-walker) but there's very little pay-off for good micro skills, thus leading to 1a deathball. However, it's huge power forces stupidly powerful counters such as 9 range vikings and armoured corrupters. Now I know people argue that BW was built on over-powered units, but it was built on over-powered units when players had the micro skills to use them (Jangbi storms, lurker hopping, dark swarm hopping, reaver micro, mine laying, plagues.) The sort of overpowered units stemming from the collosi are more boring a move units. Blizzard themselves has admitted the corrupter is pretty uninspired.
What I really don't like seeing in this thread is people arguing that the Carrier should go because it is currently a boring unit. That's precisely the point being addressed in the OP. Currently the Carrier is a boring a-move unit because of bad design and the fact that Blizzard never once touched the Carrier in all their balance changes. Even the Archon, which for the longest time was the other forgotten child, got some patches (they kept talking about the Archon being some bonus unit that would never have builds built around it.)
The problem with taking away the Carrier is it's replacement, simply by design is completely uninspired compared to the type of gameplay that BW Carriers had that SC2 Carrier could have if only Blizzard would make the right changes. Unless the Tempest has some sort of hold command, attack-retreat type micro-ability, I can only see it turning into the Collosi of the air. But it doesn't have to be that way. Choose Carriers and choose carriers that can be micro-ed. That was the entire point of getting a better UI wasn't it? (multibase, unlimited selection, automine). More time to do cool stuff like micro the army. This is one of those potentially cool things.
Edit
One thing that makes me not so hopeful about carriers in general is just how useful accessible and useful air is. This was a deliberate move by Blizzard as the air units were not used as much in BW. However, it is precisely because of this, that Protoss could go air in PvT. It was the big tech switch which had it's best counter in the goliath (ground based.) When the best counter is long range and fast air, cliffs are irrelevant to the carriers (cliffs were the ultimate defence for carrier) and they can be sniped far too easily. However, by making bio as powerful as it is, and putting the medic into the stargate, Terran is going stargate everytime even if there are no collosi. So it's a simple matter to take out the couple Carriers made.
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Question: if your opponent surprises you with carriers(a few carriers and mainly zealot) at a midgame timing,( 13-15 minutes), and you didnt respond to the stargate opening with a spire( you only have hydra den).
what would be the ideal response to such attack?
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On November 30 2011 19:38 Falling wrote:Show nested quote +On November 30 2011 06:27 Moonling wrote:
Good points! However I feel that the collosus is ruining star craft 2 for this exact reason: why make any other unit when you have colossus? If it was gone t would not make Vikings therefore allowing for a stargate tech switch that toss used to do in bw. The colossus IMO has broken the mechanics of the game and stalled the meta game forprotoss worse than blizz realizes. Ground aoe from the reaver would fix the carrier, because no colli means no Vikings, plus changing speed and micro would fix it to. However, bliz I think realizes this therefore it's either the carrier or colossus and they chose to keep the collosus
Edit: stupid phone I've been rather convinced of this for awhile. It's an a-move unit that's best counter is going air. It's sooo powerful and mobile (cliff-walker) but there's very little pay-off for good micro skills, thus leading to 1a deathball. However, it's huge power forces stupidly powerful counters such as 9 range vikings and armoured corrupters. Now I know people argue that BW was built on over-powered units, but it was built on over-powered units when players had the micro skills to use them (Jangbi storms, lurker hopping, dark swarm hopping, reaver micro.) The sort of overpowered units stemming from the collosi are more boring a move units. Blizzard themselves has admitted the corrupter is pretty uninspired. What I really don't like seeing in this thread is people arguing that the Carrier should go because it is currently a boring unit. That's precisely the point being addressed in the OP. Currently the Carrier is a boring a-move unit because of bad design and the fact that Blizzard never once touched the Carrier in all their balance changes. Even the Archon, which for the longest time was the other forgotten child, got some patches (they kept talking about the Archon being some bonus unit that would never have builds built around it.) The problem with taking away the Carrier is it's replacement, simply by design is completely uninspired compared to the type of gameplay that BW Carriers had that SC2 Carrier could have if only Blizzard would make the right changes. Unless the Tempest has some sort of hold command, attack-retreat type micro-ability, I can only see it turning into the Collosi of the air. But it doesn't have to be that way. Choose Carriers and choose carriers that can be micro-ed. That was the entire point of getting a better UI wasn't it? (multibase, unlimited selection, automine). More time to do cool stuff like micro the army. This is one of those potentially cool things.
I support these two arguments as well.
Colossus made carrier obsolete for the following 2 reasons.
#1 Vikings got a major range upgrade from what wraith used to have, in order to counter colossus' range
#2 Terran usually already has vikings out in order to counter colossus.
As things are right now, colossus and carriers can't co-exist effectively.
If anything though, to fix the problem w/o removing one of the units, I'd say raise carrier's shield & perhaps give it longer range to better fight off vikings?
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4713 Posts
I don't agree with nerfing the viking or buffing the carrier in such a way that it can fight vikings. The carrier needs to have some counters. What the carrier needs is a match-up in which those counter units aren't made regularly, mech terran is the perfect match up.
And when I mean mech I mean pure mech, Battle Helion, Siege Tank and Warhound. And the big reason why terrans want to either go, pure mech or pure bio most of the time is the way their upgrade work. Terran gets upgrades for infantry, vehicles or air, they don't share upgrades in the same way zerg and protoss do. So terran usually want to specialize. I don't see how its unrealistic in this case to have a carrier build that counters terran mech and if it doesn't win it forces a tech switch that the terran won't like.
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I will start off by saying that I am thankful to OP for your effort in writing up the case for the carrier.
I think it is a travesty that Blizzard is going to remove such an iconic unit without even attempt to change/buff it in someway. I think in general, the carrier is too cost ineffective. A lot of arguments about the meta-game has been made already so I will refrain from doing so. I will just outline some possible solutions in order to improve the cost effectiveness for the carrier:
1. Reduce carrier build time from 120 to 90 - make it the same as for BC (the argument about Chronoboost is invalid as it is for Toss to catch up with terran mule and zerg massing drone)
2. Give interceptors healing when return to the carrier and improve interceptors's AI
3. Give the carrier itself (not the interceptor) a short range splash damage vs air light units similar to the Tempest. That way, protoss can just get carrier to counter mass mutalisk instead of having to add in Tempest. Also, it fixes the mass mutalisk problem vs zerg
4. Give carrier hardened shield similar to the old Tempest in WoL Beta but protect against air. Conversely, give it hardened shield similar to the immortal to increase survivability
5. Increase carrier movement speed to better microed and run away from vikings/corruptors
6. Reduce interceptor's cost to perhaps 15 mineral
While some of the above suggestions seem rather overpowered and dramatic, I believe we should really brain storm and explore all avenue to redesign the iconic carrier before complete removal. If the Battlecruiser will get redline reactor and ultralisk get charge ability, I see little problem in adding new ability/buffs for the carrier
To the Opening Post: I think when you post on B-net or get into contact with Blizzard, you should collate all the ideas for possibile solutions to fix the carrier which has been posted here in this thread. But make sure that you present a section showing all the bullet points succinctly. Then it is up to Blizzard to read through all the suggestions and make their own tweaking. Our role as a community is to help by brainstorming possible solutions, and people should't be afraid to post bold ideas.
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Carriers are great for when I need to make low-level team games more interesting by almost losing.
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I'll share my opinions for each point (terran):
1. Agreed to a certain extent, since I've tried playing around with carriers in some team games (i'm a terran player) and it feels a tad bit too long to transition. But no where near to the level of a carrier since chronoboost is available. The perseon above me argues that chronoboost is for toss to catch up with terran mules and zerg larvae mechanics but mules and larvae mechanics aren't used to economic benefits in the 'late game' which is when you'd usually see carrier transitions. If there are carriers coming off lets say 1/2 base, they are going to have to sacrifice that economic 'catch-up' mechanics for the allin/timing they're going for.
But it can't be too fast for a tier 3 unit. Essentially, getting carriers is a tech switch which is fundamentally going to be a big investment which creates a timing attack chance for the opposing player. In brood-war, there was always the timing window for the terran player to move out and take advantage of the time it takes to get out 4 carriers to defend the push. During this window, the terran could deal fatal damage, take out 2 bases and leave the protoss without an economy to continue the transition. Starcraft 1 had a slower pace, more specifically that terrans played mech versus protoss which is much less mobile than SC2 bio. The build time for carriers in SC1 was 140 seconds, even longer than the implementation in SC2. So maybe a 30 second cut from the build time + chronoboost is still too large of a window. But lets face it, most of the protosses out there aren't using chronoboost to its full potential so maybe it can still be experimented with.
2. Agreed. Totally. Carrier control should be returned to SC2. Actually find it necessary to combat against vikings and corruptors more effectively. Without this, if there is an engagement with similar air army sizes, the protoss player will always lose atleast 1 carrier. It's not as bad as bc's vs vikings as carriers have 13 range, but the carriers cannot retreat.
3. Upgrades....... i actually laughed at this during the beta. The turrets get a +2 armor upgrade and carriers have been "nerfed" to have 2 attacks. Coming from a BW background, i thought that carriers would be a joke with mass turrets. But i never got to test it out (bio metagame and everyone going collossus rushes) Making the carriers have a single combined attack might be better. BC's also suffer from this (rapid fire vs strong burst fire). Has anyone tried a dual-core upgrade with carriers?
4. Easy to counter...... My opinion on this is mixed. Since i'm a terran player, I play with a bio-centric army and i play more puma-style with more marines anyway. Mech in sc1 played vulture tank with maybe a few goliaths mixed in, but nothing in the numbers to deal with 2/4 carriers that would pop up if the timing was planned. The timing attack would effectively be stopped once the 4 carriers arrived. But with a bio-centric army, marines are expendable anyway and fight decently versus carriers. Vikings having to be massed to deal with collossi doesn't help either. Then force a transition to marauder/ghosts from the terran player using templars and then go to a carrier transition. Templars -> collossi are frequently used because the robotics facility is already there to start the tech switch. And since you already have templar tech out, you have a unit COMPOSITION that is great at dealing with marines/vikings. The reason why carriers were so successful for a while was that 1. people found out they need a great economy to support the carriers and 2. the economy fueled both carriers AND the supporting ground army of dragoon, zealot templars. The templars would storm the goliaths that grew too large in numbers to be dealt with carrier numbers. Collossus / voidray works if a great economy is established because the composition has great synergy like muta/bling (kill off marines and mutas/voidrays take care of the rest)
5. Exactly what I want to ask you. What does a carrier offer that a collossi/templar doesn't? If you don't have either the supporting ground army and/or forcefields to stop marines from stimming and running up to the carriers and exploding them, they're just as bad as collossi/templars in those situations.
6. I honestly don't think that this matters....... not very significant
But fundamentally, what does a carrier offer that templar/collossi doesn't? As you stated, carriers have a huge build time and require a large investment for the tech switch for comparatively insignificant gains. The tech switch to air-mech with bc's in TvT requires 5/6 starports to go down at the same time + a fusion core but this is done off 4+ bases (this is a larger investment than 6 stargates and bc's cost more than carriers. And the tech switch pays off because it forces the opponent to pull back their seige line if they aren't prepared, which gives more territory to the player with air dominance. But carriers don't force much deviation from the terran player's large game plan.
Also, bio with drops is specialised for hit and run tactics which exploit the slow mobility of the carriers too. Meching terrans used to drop 2 tanks to take out expos but 4/8 marauders take out expos in 8 seconds and can retreat with no losses. It's hard to find a place for carriers to fit in the current metagame.
This is a purely TvP matchup centred opinion, haven't been able to experiment much against carriers with zerg. But I did find that corruptors don't exactly take out carriers cost-effectively and forces a large reaction from the zerg player.
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this is a sick post and i think the dps part is really well written. The only application i see it being used in right now, in the current game, is trolling, 3v3's, 4v4's, pro's cheesing, huk (back in the day), huk, and hungun. huk and hungun are using them in a 2 base scenario against zergs, but never consistently enough to say that is viable or efficient. but once massed a carrier has its place in any game scenario
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REMOVE COLOSSUS, GIVE REAVER, YES
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nice post wish we could figure out a way to use it in its current state
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why not change
dmg from 5x2 into 10
then +attack to give +2 instead of +1?
so they do 10/12/14/16 dmg as 1 attack instead of 2x 5/6/7/8, which means armor upgrades dont kill their dps as much
maybe also give it a heal all button for the interceptors with a mineral cost? like 5 min per interceptor, but it recalls all interceptors and cant attack for 5 secs
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imo, they should bring back the original Tempest idea which was basically a mini, more maneuverable Carrier. Not really sure how it would all balance out but it would be fun as hell to use. Of course the role of a capital ship would have to be filled still.
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The concept of the carrier is just too good to let go. The problem to me seems that carrier interceptors die too fast ?
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On November 29 2011 22:22 TotalBiscuit wrote:
Well written thread and 2 not so well written replies up there :/
well that comment is also not what the OP wants, he asked for interesting discussion on the unit, not a questioning of the intelligence of the posters by other posters.
However, the carrier death makes me sad because it seems like it would by far be the easiest unit in the game to fix. The problems are as obvious as the solutions, and Blizzard would truthfully have to work very little in order to make them useful.
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where do i sign the petition? i want carriers to stay
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Ultimately, it comes down to the fact that Collossi overshadow carriers in literally every way.
Almost every composition protoss faces sits on the ground. Marines, marauders. Stalkers, other collossi, zealots, immortals. Roaches, hydras, lings, infestors.
Protoss ground army sucks, particularly in extended fights when sentries go down/run out of FFs. Protoss primarily win fights by removing as much supply from the opponent in single instances, whether it is outright killing huge chunks of supply with a deathball, using mamaships void, or using FFs to separate and eliminate chunks of the enemy army.
Collossi do all this admirably. They have humongous burst DPS; carriers have higher DPS, but the lack of AOE means they lack this explosive, sudden DPS that instantly kills large pieces of the enemy army per attack. Functionally, they are the exact same; they walk over protoss units, have long range, etc. Force fields complement them by giving them nice stacks to shoot as well.
How do races counter collossi? Vikings, corruptors, neural parasite (not as much) are pretty much it. These same things counter the carrier. So what does a carrier do a collossi can't? It shoots air. There isn't much of a point of a carrier being able to attack air though. If the carrier isn't killing the ground army as fast as it can, the protoss army will just melt, particularly to stimmed bioballs. And they will still likely die anyway, as corruptors and vikings only target collossi/carrier. Often what happens is all the collossi will die, but before they die they single-handedly eliminate much of the enemy groudn army, letting mass warpgate reinforcements move in for a kill. Carriers will not do nearly as much damage because of a lack of AOE, and attacking air helps even less.
What would make the carrier more viable would be splash damage. Protoss completely relies on splash damage to win much of the time, as gateway units are normally outgunned. Whether its collossi deathballs or chargelot high templar, protoss really needs AOE for most of its matchups. Whether or not splash damage carriers would be viable is another question.
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Never played broodwar, only a diamond league scrub, but I've never used carriers other than when I've played 4v4 casuals with friends, not even when I was in 1v1 bronze.
The most disappointing thing is that the carrier has been universally recognized as needing some kind of rework to make it more viable, and USUALLY when the community and the statistics speak, something happens. This could be clearly seen in the infestor fungal nerf. However, despite an incredibly long consensus on carriers requiring some fundamental change, I have yet to see a patch notes that says "carrier a.i. altered to allow for increased control" or "carrier interceptors damage increased from x to y". Maybe it has happened and I've missed it, but in that case whatever it was clearly didn't work.
Also, apparently you used to be able to chronoboost carriers to increase interceptor production but it got patched out. If the carrier DID get modified so it was viable, bringing that back as well would be AWESOME!
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C) What's so stupid about the tempest?
Most of what a tempest would accomplish can be done by phoenix or void rays. It's as if those two units were merged into the Voidnix.
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On November 30 2011 19:43 ThePlayer33 wrote:
Question: if your opponent surprises you with carriers(a few carriers and mainly zealot) at a midgame timing,( 13-15 minutes), and you didnt respond to the stargate opening with a spire( you only have hydra den).
what would be the ideal response to such attack?
13-15minutes and no spire? your response as the zerg is to leave the game lol
as soon as you place a hydra den in zvp you think one of two things
1) I am all inning and the protoss will die
2) i am building a spire immediately after this cuz hydras suck
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I'm sad that people ignored my post a few pages back.
My main points were:
A: all the other variables related to how useful/exciting a unit is completely change when you can micro it at a higher skill ceiling. If the carrier could do better micro, it might be very viable even without changing anything else about it. Another good example of this is the vulture from BW. Take away that level of moving shot micro, and it's worthless. With the micro, it's imba.
B: we haven't really had carrier-friendly maps in SC2 yet (like there were in BW). This means larger unpathable areas, like daybreak, but larger, in central map areas (not just corners and perimeters).
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EPT
