Critical Mass: why the Carrier does not work

It has its eight interceptors back and escorts are out, as far as i know.

 

escorts cost money and you can have max of 4 but you gotta make a choice of when to have 4 at once

 

no, they changed back to 8 regular ones, and they start off with 4 when built i think.

 

No carriers had escorts which costed money, so carriers could do extra damage but they cost a bit.

 

i know that, but right now they took away the escort idea, and went back to the normal 8 interceptors, and when the carrier is built it will already have 4 of them.

 

yay lol no need to spam interceptors >.>

 

Auto-building interceptors helps with that too

 

Heal is the only skill that should have *auto cast* would be heal.

 

I think it means you can stack interceptors and they are built when there is an availiable slot, IE, one dies.

 

Carriers are balanced. I fail to see why massing them is a good idea. Terrans will Nuke/Yamato/Viking them to death, Protoss will use Void Rays/Carriers/Motherships, Zerg will Hydra and Corruptor them to death., and more likely, the Protoss will never be given the opportunity to mass Carriers in the first place, likely being ambushed and crushed mid production if they try.

A fully equipped Carrier costs a whopping 700 resources (450 Minerals, 250 Gas). In return for that you get 250 HP, 150 Shields, 4 Defense, and an attack that deals 5*16 damage at a Slow fire rate, at a range of 12.

However, once you take into account that the attack is done at a slow fire rate (at least half normal if not a third normal in SC1), and that each point of Defense reduces the damage by a full 20%, the Carrier has crappy firepower for its cost. Its roughly 5% of its resource cost in damage per volley by units with normal attack speed, -1 of that per point of defense.

In comparison, a Viking deals 18% of its resource cost in damage, with also -1 per point of defense.

For example, lets say that 10 Carriers encountered 35 Vikings. Carriers get 1 free volley on the Vikings, dealing 640 damage and killing 5 of them. Vikings close, then from then on it goes Vikings and Carriers volley, Vikings volley, then Vikings and Carriers volley, and so on.

Calculation:
Initial: (10 Carriers, 35 Vikings)
Round 1: Carriers volley (10 Carriers, 30 Vikings)
Round 2: Vikings+Carriers Volley (8 Carriers, 25 Vikings)
Round 3: Vikings Volley (7 Carriers, 25 Vikings)
Round 4: Vikings+Carriers Volley (5 Carriers, 22 Vikings)
Round 5: Vikings Volley (3 Carriers, 22 Vikings)
Round 6: Vikings+Carriers Volley (2 Carriers, 20 Vikings)
Round 7: Vikings Volley (0 Carriers, 20 Vikings)
Conclusion: Vikings own Carriers pretty good.

Battlecruisers do so even more. They match the Carriers DPS after Defense is applied, except that the Battlecruisers have 200 more toughness plus an upgrade that either lets them deal 250 damage in one attack, gain 200 temporary HP, or fire an AOE barrage that would probably shred Interceptors.

 

A carrier in starcraft 2 they cost 350 minerals and 200 gas. It has a range of 8 and i have no idea where you get the slow fire rate from and the attack is more or less continuous.

Is that the statistics for individual interceptors? the fire rate for a fully loaded carrier is atleast fast (is there a unit that attacks faster?) from what we have seen.

One of the things that makes it 'critical mass'. With recycling and charging shields the fact that a group can lose a significant amount of firepower from the destruction of one fairly easily destroyed carrier. In the end a swarm of 80 interceptors that can attack base defenses while the carrier stays out of range is well worth the investment into the carriers, especially to break a stalemate.

 

i believe he was adding in the cost of the Interceptors, for right now Carriers come out with 4 and have to buy 4 more(each cost only 25 minerals) to reach the max amount of Interceptors that they can hold. as for its range it, Gearvosh and Stebo(people from SC2armory) have said that when they played at Blizzcon it had a range of 12, if you are going off of Wiki you will notice that their source, for the Carriers range at least, comes from a protoss overview from WWI.

 

I never played SC1 online, but the Carrier was an uber unit in skirmish, I can only hope it still is in SC2.

 

A carrier with a full set of interceptors costs 450 Minerals and 200 Gas. Guess they lowered the Gas cost, my bad.

Also, Interceptors have a Range of 8, but may travel up to 4 away from the Carrier, for a net range of 12.

OF course its the stat for individual Interceptors. Interceptors in SC1 had a slow fire rate, couldn't find the exact specification, but it would probably be around the same as a Siege Tank in Siege Mode. Build a Carrier with 1 Interceptor and see how often it fires.

An Interceptor thus has 10 damage dealt at a rate half as often if not less than a unit firing at a normal attack rate. Hence, a Carrier with 8 Interceptors deals about 40 Damage every normal round of combat, where normal round is defined as the time it takes a unit with a normal rate of fire to attack and finish cooldown. Against a Viking, it will deal 32 damage after reduction, whereas the Viking deals 28 damage to the Carrier after reduction in the same time period. In short, the Viking nearly matches the Carrier in DPS when the two fight each other.

You are making the presumption that enemies will attack interceptors. Any sane player will attack the Carrier. The Carrier has the advantage that it makes a good Siege unit, since the near unkillable Interceptors allow it to deliver its attack from a distance, but it really isn't that effective.

Put simply, a fleet of air units like Vikings, Void Rays, or Corruptors will slaughter Carriers with ease., so long as they charge the Carriers.

2 Void Rays vs. 1 Carrier (rounds are at slow rate instead of normal rate).
Start: Carrier deals 64 Damage, Void Rays close
Round 1: Carrier deals 64 Damage, Void Rays deal 8 Damage
Round 2: Carrier deal 64 Damage, Void Rays deal 80 Damage
Round 3: Carrier deals 64 Damage, Void Rays deal 176 Damage, 1 Void Ray dies
Round 4: Carrier deals 64 Damage, Void Ray deals 88 Damage
Round 5: Carrier deals 64 Damage, Void Ray deals 88 Damage, Carrier dies

I don't know the specifics of the Corruptor's ability, but 4 Corruptors deal 64 Damage to a Carrier every time the Carrier deals 40. By the time the first Corruptor is downed, the Carrier will be down to about 150 HP, assuming it hasn't been corrupted already.

 

The carrier just i sent worth its weight in resources atm same with the colossus (unless you build like 12 but that's not what we want with SC2). This needs to be more of a capital ship, look at the mother ship and the battle cruiser both have times x attack per go around (versus what the battle cruiser had in SC1) but the carrier is like a gimped version of that because you have to do more for the same thing. Besides the BC and MS both have abilities to back them up.

The carrier may have 12 range but spending that kind of cash just on a mass base raider is just stupid this whole thing might of worked for SC1 but i don't think its going to work very well in SC2. :wacko:

 

This is what we call carrier dancing, you micro the carriers to attack a unit or building, and retreat them as the interceptors close in, so long as you don't go more the four matrices away, the interceptors will keep attacking what you clicked.

 

It is difficult to judge the effectiveness of Carriers and Colossi because they are support units. Most combat units draw their effectiveness from their raw HP and DPS, spellcasters do it from spells, but ranged specialists do so from their range and/or mobility, and are often weak in both HP/DPS and Spells alike.

 

What is the point in having an individual interceptors stats be compared? Atleast include that they cost a grand total of 25minerals. Does that make them seem as bad?

Thats the point in having many carriers, their range will allow them to deal a ton of damage before a viking can even close.

Your base defenses don't have much choice when the carrier is 12 away. I said a group of carriers can attack defenses (I.E. Missle turrets, spore colonies, photon cannons of a turtler) with impunity.

Put simply, a fleet of air units like Vikings, Void Rays, or Corruptors will slaughter Carriers with ease., so long as they charge the Carriers.

That is, again showing how weak individual carriers are while the thread is saying how strong they are massed. Yes they are weak in small numbers, the OP and the thread in general agrees with that, they are also very powerful in huge numbers, you have not argued anything that would suggest otherwise.

 

Because the Carriers DPS is solely dependent on the Interceptors, and it can be shown that the DPS of 8 Interceptors is not worth the 650 resources needed to obtain them?

If by ton of damage, you mean one free and full volley before the Vikings close, then yes, they did, but it didn't save them. Carriers are one of two units that can shoot and move, and the only one that can shoot without facing the enemy, but they are too slow to be able to abuse that much.

As can a Guardian. Or a Banshee, under the right circumstances. Carriers are good at killing base defenses, but if you are building a fleet of Carriers, the enemy will not rely on static defenses to defeat air units, unless they are too dumb to notice that you aren't building a fleet of Carriers.

That wasn't the point. Increasing the number of Carriers involved in that combat would make no difference, given that they are all air units with no splash attacks. The same result would happen if 20 Void Rays fought 10 Carriers. I showed already what would happen if a large group of Carriers fought a similar group of Vikings, they get minced.

 

the carrier is a interesting unit i must say in regards to how it works that's why its so hard to figure out how to balance them.

There roll like the colossus is support and personally they should be the meat tanks of the skies on the other hand the colossus for what it does some how needs to be more inclined to taking out smaller units more efficiently like it did in the beginning but easily countered under the right conditions and should never have the want to amass them but still use them.

Each unit should be made unique just right now the 2 units that everyone is talking about seem to be lacking on what they where made to be.

phoenix = smaller faster unit costs less so you can amass more of them strong against small units weak against larger ones

warp ray = strong against big heavier units and defensive spots but weak against smaller faster units

Mother ship = adds a multi attack to the mix along with a high amount of health and shields along with the addition of ability's that allow it to be very supporting also costs a lot but worth it as they seem to be good at what they do.

Now as you can see the warp ray takes the place of the carriers ability to destroy buildings as they can dispose of them fairly quickly and the ms takes the place of the multi attack and also the fact that its a much better support unit then the carrier and i wouldn't want to amass them.

That leaves the protoss left with one thing a nice decent costing ground specialist.
The other 2 factions have them but the protoss do not atm except the MS and the warp ray but one i sent good at handling small groups and the other is too costly to deal with such a threat.

Also i don't care how much people are attached to something if it needs to change well then it needs to change people will then be accustomed to what ever happens when SC2 comes out.