Merge the Carrier and the Mothership.

These units seem to overlap a good bit. Another problem is that a lot of people want abilities for the Carrier.

So why not merge them? Basically its going to be a Mothership with interceptors and its attack + the spells it has.

The weakness can be thats its either very slow, or low in hp, or shields dont activate vs air units or ground units much like the old tempest mechanic.

Im wondering if its a good idea, it really can be a good one or bad one, so tell me what you think but dont flame too much, im not in love with the idea, but i think it may be an option.

 

The Mothership and Carrier only overlap because the Mothership isnt a super unit as soon as that is changed the overlap will dissapear. Also giving the a Carrier an ability wont affect balance much as long as it is reasonable also most people want an ability for the Carrier just to make the unit fresh again similar to how the zealots got charge.


So I would say merging them is a bad idea all that really needs to happen is the Mothership needs to become a super unit again. (which alot of people have been asking for anyway)

 

I like the idea, iff blizzard doesn't make the MS a super unit again. I prefer to make the MS a super unit, but this is a viable alternative.

As far as making carriers fresh, I don't know why they don't have multiple types of interceptor. That would make them fresh and versitile. Maybe give them AA, AG and AA&G interceptors or something like that.

But not to get to far off topic, I'll just repeat what I said above for absolute clarity.

My first choice by a mile is to have the MS a super unit but what you suggest would be an improvement over what they have now.

 

I don't think this is a "viable alternative" at all. Either the MS is a super unit or it shouldn't be in the game.

There are hundreds of reasons against it and lore is only one of them, but that's a big reason. Mothership = 1. Not 30.

Secondly, it gives the Protoss player a strategy late-game other than massing Carriers. It makes the idea of creating a large ground army supported by smaller air units as well as a super unit as a viable option to conquer a foe that has decided to subvert your army or turtle.

 

Agreed, the mother ship does overlab with the carrier currently. However, if the mothership was turned back into a super unit, it would overlap less as a frontline air superiority fighter or flag ship, and be used more for abilities like timebomb to protect allied units, and for cleaning up what is left of enemy bases. with its higher cost, players would be less likely to use it on the frontlines unless the fight is evenly matched or there isn't any great percieved danger to the mother ship.

What would be interesting is if they gave the mothership back the blackhole ability, along with being able to attack all units in the game, but made it so that only one mothership could be in play no the map at any given time, and if you lose your ship, you wouldn't be able to summon another one for the rest of the game. Then the over powering issue would be somewhat solved because players would be less likely to but the mothership in harms way.


If the carrier were to have any abilities I would like something like this with a carrier having 200 energy:

interceptor barage- cost 150 energy: For the next 20 seconds, all interceptors move twice as fast and deal 1.5 times more damage per attack.
defencive cloak cost 100 energy upkeep 1 energy per sec: carrier cloaks itself, but at the cost of all its interceptors moving at only 3/4 speed.

The second ones size effect would be due to the fact that the air around the carrier has to be distorted to cloak, the contact with the robotic interceptors would be partially interupted. It sound reasonable and neither ability would be overpowering the carrier.

 

i dont think its a 'bad' idea at all, i think its a very interesting and clever idea, and good on ya for comin up with it.

Makes me think of independence day haha

there are a number of issues though..

the carrier - everyone fought so hard for the carrier to be returned, this would ruin those efforts, and those efforts did display how important the carrier was to everyone.

mothership - alot of people want that single unit per user thing, and if enough people want it, i dare say blizzard will be doing there best to make it work.

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If these units were merged, what do you propose?

If the carrier was scrapped, and its interceptors transfered to the mothership, then thats a priceless unit gone from the game. Also, then you have a mothership, with those intense abilities, as well as interceptors, it is getting a bit much. If the mother ship became a single unit per user thing and had the interceptors, then the interceptors would need to be more powerful or somthing, and the protoss would need a unit to make up for the gap left by the missing carrier. If the mothership was given the interceptors, but NOT been a superunit, then that unit would be considered overpowered if you could build them in numbers, they had interceptors, and they had those abilities.

If you scrapped the motheship, and gave the carrier its abilities, then many of those same issues arise.

Same if you scrap both units for a new unit.

So if you gave the mothership the interceptors, how would you balance this? Would the mothership be a superunit? Would the cost change? Health change? Would alterations have to be made to its abilities again?

What would you do with the carrier? wihout its interceptors, it does nothing. So what new abilities, role, what would happen?

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Again i think its a really interesting idea, but i think it comes with too many new issues to solve, many of which would be touchy to many people. Makes more problems than it solves sorta thing. Independence day style rocks though

 

how about making a mothership carrier superunit

Do you really need carriers and a super unit mothership? How about just one of those that has interceptors (like 16 interceptors or so?)

I mean you already have the warp ray to do damage, and the phoenix to deal with AA, what would be the role of the carrier if you have the Mothership as a super unit? A capital ship role maybe ,but with the mothership i dont think its that necessary.

Another idea why not limit the mother ship to 2 or 3 instead of just 1?

 

To answer your last question there really is no reason other than the fact 1 Mothership makes more sense and it would be easier to balance relative to a unit you can have unlimited of.

As for Carriers vs. The Mothership when its a super unit. The big difference is you could have a large number of Carriers and use them to break a turtle while the Mothership would be a unit you only need 1 of to provide the nessecary support to a ground force. I guess my point is you could just use carriers and break someone but the Mothership would be a unit to have in a group of mixed units because it could provide firepower to break someone if its protected. (so Carriers= single unit fleet if nessecary while the Mothership would need other units to support it but it would a better single unit support for a group)

If that answer seems really jumbled call me on it and i will try and explain my logic better.

 

I think Mothership is for the Carrier what the Thor is for the Siege-tank. Even if they are different units, as super and normal units, these pairs do overlap roles in my humble opinion. Mothership is used for raiding an enemy base with safety, just like Carriers (at least I see cloack, Time bomb and Planet cracker as tools in this sense). Same with Thors and Siege-tanks.

On Mothership and Carrier, they should change the way MS attacks (ATG), as imo that is what's making them alike. And Thor shouldn't be able to Siege like the Siege-tank does.

What if they made MS shoot air-targets instead of ground, and rely on Planet cracker for hitting the floor?

 

I disagree, first the Thor and Siege tank overlap is a problem but at least they are tier 3 and tier 2 respectively. The carrier and MS are both tier 3 which makes it even worse.

It is true that if the MS were a super unit they would overlap roles but since you can only have 1 MS in that case you would also likely get carriers to go with it. They way it is now, one will be better than the other and the lesser of the two will be very underused. That problem doesn't exist if the MS is a super unit because then both are likely to be used at the same time.

As far as Thors having siege mode that would make the Thor/tank overlap even worse.

 

wow, really interesting ideas, i like the first one

 

For the second one, I went along with the Protoss's theme of using cloaking, but I felt that it would be too powerful, so I added a side effect that I thought would counter the advantages without making it completely useless.

The first one is my favorite, make the interceptors exponentially better in battle for a limited time, and to balance its effect, would use up almost all of its possible energy. I felt this one was a little more balanced than the second one, but both ideas were too good not to put them both out there for others to see.

It would be so cool if one of these ideas actually got used in the final product.

 

I could see this happening, Only if it didnt have the normal motheship attack, just the interceptors, otherwise anyone can clearly see and say op.

 

I agree with The Watcher, the Mothership couldn't have both interceptors and a attack. Now if interceptors were just an ability, that say was the Motherships only defense against air, then the Mothership could keep its attack. I think that this would make a lot of sense, but will never see the light of day since too may people are attached to both the Carrier and the Mothership.

 

I like them both, the carrier and mothership. While I do like the idea of merging the two into one unit, I'm afraid I'm one of those that's too attached to both of them to want to give them up for balance issues. The graphics for the carrier look great compared to SC1, and it would be a shame to see the whole thing scraped.

I think it would be better to keep them separate. To solve the issue, Blizzard should turn the mothership back into the super units it was originally designed as, with the number limit of only 1 at a time, that way, both will be usefull in any combat situation.

 

not really...i mean the mothership i supposed to clear choke points, so is the carrier, and the mothership(as a superunit) could deal very effectively against ground and air(considering the black hole comes back) so the only way a carrier would be better is with numbers. But why waste so much money and time to build a fleet of carriers with no support abilities(time bomb is support imo) when you can get a mothership?

 

My answer to your question would be because the Carriers wouldnt need any support if you had enough were as the Mothership really does need some kind of support or it needs to be in a support position to be really effective.

 

I think something better suited to the Protoss and already mentioned in the SC Lore is Super Carriers. Super Carriers ( For Ex. The Gantrithor) would be a better super unit if any and still allow the original carrier. Just make it a pumped up carrier. A bit larger than normal ones. Maybe a special ability. Thats how I do feel even though the MS is good, I would prefer a super carrier. (Limit 1 per box. lol)

Direct quote from SC2 Site

"However, a handful of heavily armed "super carriers" exist, most famously the Gantrithor. This was the flagship of Executor Tassadar when he led a protoss expeditionary force in its attempts to eradicate the zerg in terran space. The Gantrithor was powerful enough that it single-handedly defeated an entire terran battlecruiser squadron under the command of General Edmund Duke. Tassadar later sacrificed himself and his ship to destroy the zerg Overmind when it manifested on Aiur."

 

While the idea sounds interesting it would be too powerful. A ship that has a swarm of units with weapons able to cloak a fleet and stop missiles. That would itself be a super unit

 

But would erase the possibility of invisible carriers..

... or is this gone too with MS?