|
I use them lategame in all 3 MU's, but they're a massive investment, so only if you're massively cashfloating.
In TvP, they're simply good to force a ton of Voids that you can Yamato. Protoss doesn't have much that's cost efficient vs BC's.
In TvZ, you MUST get ravens as well, for seeker and PDD vs the hydra/corrupters. Without ravens, BC's are not viable, so this is a massive gas investment and is only practical if you have a split map scenario. Not to mention usually you already have to have a few ghosts. It's mostly after you don't need to keep replacing tanks since they are dying but in a fortified position.
|
BCs are finishing units in TvT, after you've got the game in the back, you use the BCs to finish them off, there's not really any other way to kill a ton of tanks vikings thors and turrets other than BCs with backup.
In TvP, they can also be used as a finishing unit, a maxed army of upgraded BCs with a couple of ghosts (only scvs for gas, mass orbitals) will beat pretty much any protoss unit comp (stalkers don't stand a chance, and HTs can be yamato'd or emp'd if they try to go voidrays, you'll find out and be able to make a ton of marines quickly and easily).
Here are 2 replays I had in the past day showing that BCs are way more viable than carriers, and in fact necessary for TvT to not be a stalemate.
links:
TvP on Shattered
TvT on Antiga
|
All units in SC2 are too fast like zerglings and blink stalkers, even if he has mass zealot and u got 10 bc's, he will just run over your bases while your bc's with their dps wont kill anything. Bc's lack both mobility and dps for their cost.
TvT bc's are great I use them quite often in late game if I dont kill my opponent early, a lot of people make mistake thinking once you start bc's you should max them until you mine out everything on map. What you should do is once you get small adventage in late game you should switch to bc's make 4-5 and stop, start pushing break siege lines, usually players will overproduce vikings while you go back to standard mech or marine/tank depending what you are playing and you'll just win because he got useless vikings after killing your bc's.
TvP - stalkers just kill them not much to say about it and if you have SO many bc's that you can kill stalkers, why did you even make bc's in first place? You could probably win him with scvs at that point if he let you tech switch that hard.
TvZ - again mobility, zerglings will overrun everything while infestors or corruptors..or both kill your bc's like nothing. People mentioned "you could make them to kill bl's", yep you could but you could also just make viking + ghost and do the same thing 5x as better 
|
two big reasons! Too much investment in infrastructure required to make them cost effective; ie. extra starports when you already have enough barracks and or factories to spend your money on. Secondly they are high attack speed/low damage so armor upgrades reduce their damage output by a lot, and your enemies upgrades on ground unit
armor will favour whatever upgrades you managed to get on your terran air, resulting in very low damage output. Both of these could get mitigated by planning for battlecruiser switch beforehand. However then comes all the explanation from the other posters as to why bc's just aren't very good anyway.
|
On January 31 2012 13:49 Empire.Beastyqt wrote:
All units in SC2 are too fast like zerglings and blink stalkers, even if he has mass zealot and u got 10 bc's, he will just run over your bases while your bc's with their dps wont kill anything. Bc's lack both mobility and dps for their cost.
TvP - stalkers just kill them not much to say about it and if you have SO many bc's that you can kill stalkers, why did you even make bc's in first place? You could probably win him with scvs at that point if he let you tech switch that hard.
I agree, but if you're tired and don't want to deal with controlling a bio army, you can build PFs in the middle of the map and spam nukes everywhere whilst tech switching to BCs, they usually leave after a short while.
|
On January 31 2012 13:49 Empire.Beastyqt wrote:
TvT bc's are great I use them quite often in late game if I dont kill my opponent early, a lot of people make mistake thinking once you start bc's you should max them until you mine out everything on map. What you should do is once you get small adventage in late game you should switch to bc's make 4-5 and stop, start pushing break siege lines, usually players will overproduce vikings while you go back to standard mech or marine/tank depending what you are playing and you'll just win because he got useless vikings after killing your bc's.
Definitely agree with this point. Don't try to max out on BCs lol. You're just asking to get stomped. A few is enough to break a siege-line or force viking production, since Marines don't cut it if you have tank backup.
|
They're a very risky and costly investments, that has a lot of counters in SCII.
TvP - Stalker-Voidrays do quite well against them.
TvZ - Corrupters
TvT - Vikings
They're also extremely slow, and that makes it hard to use effective. It's very hard to retreat with them if you find yourself in an unfavourable engagement.
DPS wise, it may be high but the damage is Damage Per Shot is quite low. With opposing Armour ups most likely ahead of you since Terran Air is in a category of its own, the DPS will be brought down severely. It's -1 Damage per shot after all.
That being said, it does have purpose in TvT. As others have mentioned, they're useful in breaking stalemates and Tank lines. But they'd have to be supported by a large number of Vikings.
I don't often see BC's in the other two match ups due to how easy it is to warp in a bunch of Stalkers, or wait 40s for a large batch of Corruptors.
|
BCs in SC2, unlike BW, have low base dmg but high fire rate. This makes them extremely dependent on upgrades.
If you look at the capital ships that "work" in both BW and SC2 you will see that they do because of "special" features:
Carriers in BW could micro so that they would not take dmg.
BL in SC2 rely on broodlings (that benefit from ground melee upgrades) that keep ground forces away (or deal friendly fire)
The difference between TvT, TvP and TvZ is that Terran has rubbish ground to air (armored) options. So they can be stopped only by air units. Plus, that Infestors and HTs can single handedly counter them,doesn't help either TBH.
|
On January 31 2012 11:05 Lebzetu wrote:
They are used in TvT. God knows why, since Vikings hard counter them and each terran is already massing vikings.
In TvZ, if you go BC, you die to corruptor.
In TvP, they go blink stalkers or void rays.
And above all else, they are expensive, hard to tech to and they have to pay for themselves.
You need like 4+ bases to get them anyway, and terrans cant get to 4+ bases since they dont know how to macro.
Thinly disguised terran hate..
|
The thing is, lategame battlecruisers are exceptionally strong in TvP, quite effective for capitalising on a lead in TvT, and have useage as part of the latelatelatelategame sky terran army composition vs. Zerg.
The problem is that they are extremely expensive, slow to produce, and only really function well when there are alot of them supported by other expensive units such as ghosts, ravens and in some cases vikings.
If you watch MVP or oGsTOP play TvZ, you will see that in the lategame they start to make battlecruisers. Unfortunately its such a late-game tactic that we almost never see the unit come into play.
If you watch MVPKeen play TvP, he also makes them in the lategame - but as we saw in a recent match of his, there is a hugely vulnerable period in the game where you are transitioning into them that is so easily exploited.
In TvT, they are pretty common, so I needn't go into that.
The battlecruiser is a good unit, and professional players know this. But it'll not be a regularity to see them, because they are so far down the tech tree, so expensive, so slow to produce, etc. etc.
Be on the lookout, you will see them eventually in that one-in-a-thousand game :D
|
I feel like the easiest situations to get Battlecruisers are those where you should probably just go kill him. Generally, you need to be quite a bit ahead. Of course, TvT stalemates are a big exception to this.
|
same reason as why carrier is not used often
-needs high air upgrades to do good damages
-has counters
-expensive
but terran can use bcs to break siege tank line. (also mass vikings ahead, with +3 armor can easily break the line since there is no atk upgrade for turret)
in protoss vs protoss we don't see carriers coz colossus are mobile tanks.
|
If they'd remove the energy from BCs, I feel like they could be sort of useful in TvP. At the moment Feedback deals so much damage to them that it's not even funny. Same thing goes for Thors tbh as well.
|
Because pros know how to end the game earlier and teching up to them leaves you vulnerable. Lower level players turtle too hard and miss all their timings so it seems viable, but it isn't most of the time. They also aren't that effective for their investment. There's better options in the super late game.
|
The thing is Battlecruisers are like Ultralisks, except more so. Like Day9 said: Ultralisks are a unit that you make when you are already ahead that you use to keep the momentum, not a unit that you decide to just "go". (Except NesTea, who somehow managed to make a huge comeback and win by pulling out Ultralisk/Infestor in the last second)
Battlecruisers are even more so, you can't just decide to go battlecruisers, the game's gotta be at that point where it's not really a big deal to make them anymore.
|
At least they are used more than the Carrier. :D
|
haven't read every post so excuse if it has been mentioned. Against armor upgrades if you haven't gone for air attack, banshees do better, as they are faster out if anti air is missing, which happens in tvz and tvt.
Where i love to use bcs is in tvt, yeah vikings hardcounter them, but my viking hardcounter their vikings, while the bc tanks quite alot of viking shots. (and covers the raven with the seeker). But i love sky terran anyway.
I also love to use them in tvz, personally the bc does way better against mutas then the thors, mobility advantage and does not rely on splash, the yamato is semi okay against ultras and since you upgrade air, broodlords are not to much of an option. Though mass t1-1,5 can easily ignore the bc shots.
Also the posts regarding vikings, voidrays, corrupters kill the bcs. Party true but bcs still do extremly well against air, and seeker missile is really effective against air that focuses bcs. And vikings do super well against everything that does good against bcs. Against zerg you could even land them if there aren't roaches or ultras around. So its not like vikings cut your army supply to fight ground.
That being said bc buffs your viking force and is really supply efficient, but doesn't work in C&C style mass one unit type. The ground nerf made it possible that you can ignore them with your ground army if your ahead in armor upgrades.
And thats the main problem with those high attack speed t3 units, they need upgrades and since they are air, they often start at 0/0 against 2/2 or 3/3. Though when preparing for broodlords you basically start +1 attack and finish it before you build a viking. I think in this situation its perfect to throw in a bc so the zerg goes blerg with trying to retain air control with corruptor infestor.
But its mainly the lategame upgrade disadvantage why bcs aren't build.
|
cause when u want to build them u realize that your air upgrades are at 1/0 when enemy has 3/3 ground and kill BCs ezpz
also: corruptor, viking
|
On January 31 2012 23:12 DrGreen wrote:
cause when u want to build them u realize that your air upgrades are at 1/0 when enemy has 3/3 ground and kill BCs ezpz
also: corruptor, viking
Pretty much this. Having to upgrade ship weapons and armor takes too much gas when you already did it for bio and mech. You can't afford it mid game so a late game transition to BCs isn't viable because their not upgraded and 3/3 marines would just own 1/1ish BCs.
I think an interesting idea would be to combine ship and ground mech armor so there's 5 paths instead of 6...
|
On January 31 2012 11:05 Lebzetu wrote:
They are used in TvT. God knows why, since Vikings hard counter them and each terran is already massing vikings.
In TvZ, if you go BC, you die to corruptor.
In TvP, they go blink stalkers or void rays.
And above all else, they are expensive, hard to tech to and they have to pay for themselves.
You need like 4+ bases to get them anyway, and terrans cant get to 4+ bases since they dont know how to macro.
Its funny how we are in 2012 and there are still idiots saying "race X doesn't know how to macro".
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
