Mothership Combo?

Unusual Idea

Synergy
Balancing has been an issue for the Mothership; what about a synergistic combo. In order to gain access to some of its more devastating abilities (i.e. black hole), the Mothership would need to be in the presence of Pylon Power, either a Phase Prism, or a Pylon.
_________________________________________________

Perhaps the number of said Psi-devices could modulate the strength of the unit/abilities, or just general accesibility?
more powerful black hole, or more shield (these are just general possibilities)
ex: 1 Psi-device Black Hole selectable
2 Psi-device .........
ex2:
1 Psi-device .........
2 Psi-device Black Hole selectable

It makes some kind of sense, being that a super powered unit would need lots of power. It is practically a flying building, a city in the sky, right?

It is strange, but it could work. I think even as a unique unit, or as multiple units, this could balance some of the strength.

 

Interesting idea. I like it; it's something I haven't really seen before. However, currently the Mothership is not a super unit. You can build more than one, and Black Hole is no longer an ability.

How I see your idea being applied is like so: Mothership has three abilities - A, B, and C (whatever Blizzard ends up deciding). When not in Pylon power, it can only use A and B. When within a psi field, all three of its abilities can be used. Ability C would be somewhat more powerful of an ability.

 

Very intresting, you get a power up for a good post !

 

Units can now share mana which makes the Mothership even more OP since it can do multiple planet crackers as long as theres Nullifers around for example, why can't they give the Terran and Zerg some crazy op units/abilities... seems to me they favour the Protoss over Terran and Zerg.

 

Hey thats right Zerg, i think the mothership will get removed then....

 

Wouldn't you be more worried about multiple Psionic Storms rather than Planet Crackers?

You guys seem to think the Mothership is still a super-unit - it's not! Blizzard seriously nerfed it. Black Hole is gone and Planet Cracker is just one smaller beam. And Protoss are not being favored over Terran and Zerg - we are just seeing the most of what Blizzard is doing with them.

The Mothership will definitely be removed if Blizzard can't figure out a perfect niche for it, but don't worry. Every race is going to be able to hold their own without a problem. Again, Blizzard is just simply showing more Protoss to us than Terran or Zerg. This is why Starcraft II is not going to be a simple rock-paper-scissors - abilities, units, and mechancis of one race will be countered in different, sometimes not obvious ways.

 

Such as?

 

Protoss mechanics - warp-in, start building and leave, cliff-walk, Stalker blink, energy share, etc.

Terran mechanics - flying buildings, repairing, drop-pod, cliff-jumping, longest range in game, etc.

Mechanics-wise, pretty much nothing directly counters anything else - but taken in total, each race can counter the others. Unit-wise, we see a bit more of X is good against Y, but then you also have to realize Y is good against Z which is good against B which is then good against X again, but not as good as C is, and so on.

Of course there are some direct counters, but it's just not all that simple.

 

Thank you furrer! ;D

@ ninerman13
That is exactly what I was aiming for!
I was also open to the idea of a super unit , but I understand that such a unit would be really difficult to effectively weave into SC2. Psi-devices could bring back some of that little 'extra' that a Mothership should rightfully dole out!

 

Btw, a psi storm can be evaded and doesn't harm buildings, a planet cracker will destroy most buildings and two of them is even worse... so imagine some Motherships constantly sharing energy, once your command and workers are gone its gg

 

Another reason I believe the Mothership could function as a super unit. You are only allowed 1 nuke per silo, why not 1 mother ship at a time?

 

That logic doesn't follow. You're allowed to build multiple silos, therefore multiple nukes.

Planet Cracker is not as strong in non-super Motherships as they were in the opening demo. A decently-defended base could tear down a Mothership that tried to use the attack on it, even if you ignore the fact that the unit has no air-to-air attack. An occasional Planet Cracker is nowhere nearly as nasty as a few Warp Rays.

Remember, energy sharing does nothing to increase the average rate at which abilities can be used. Imagine you get 6 High Templar simultaneously. Without energy sharing, they charge to 75 and then can all use Psi Storm, then they all have to wait about a minute before they can cast it again. With energy sharing, there is a smaller gap between casts, but the net number of storms used will be the same because the amount of energy involved is the same. What is changing is not "how many" but "when."

Finally, Motherships cost more than Carriers, and don't have nearly the destructive power, even though their main attack is the only thing that will make a mass of Motherships dangerous. Massed Motherships will be scarier than massed Arbiters, but it will be just as pointless as a strategy.

 

which is why we pray that they make it a super unit again.

 

Uh Neon I thought they gave the AA attack back to the MS.

Here's an idea. It fits in with the build multiple silos to make multiple nukes: Each warp beacon (or whatever they name the capitol ship building) allow the production of one MS. So 2 beacons 2 MSs if one of them is destroyed then the MS will stay but you will have to rebuild the beacon before you make more Motherships.

Though once again we would need to have the unit not suck as much

 

If we were doing that I'd like it better if they were made from a building other than the Stargate. An MS-specific building. Even if it's not a super unit it's still a MS, it should at least have some special building dedicated to its upgrades and construction.

 

Yeah I also think that.

I think it would be interesting if it warps in like a building above the building dedicated to cap ship production and is thus attackable but that might be to similar to the Thor (I thought of that before the Thor was revealed)

 

i like this idea as it relies on the protoss structure policy by that i mean a structure is not powered unless its in range of a pylon. the mother ship is in a way both unit and structure thus some rules must still apply but some can be over looked.

 

I like your beacon idea. It could become a super unit again, or even very powerful 'reproducible' unit.

Recap:
Access to abilities A,B, and C
In the presence of Psi, A, B, C, and D

Super Unit Reproducible
--- 1 per 'Beacon'

 

I like this idea. It makes the Mothership feel like the Thor in terms of being part-building, but it is done in a distinctly Protoss manner. It would be like the big, big sister to Phase Cannon: useful outside of pylon power, undeployed, but even more powerful when in a psi field. It might unlock a specific ability, as we've been talking about, but it might also increase the strength of already-researched abilities. The natural forms of Planet Cracker, Cloaking Field, Time Bomb, and Black Hole might be fairly weak, but would be formidable when powered. perhaps casting under power would simply increase the duration of the ability? Maybe the ability to use Pylon power to strengthen other abilities would be researchable itself? Whatever the benefit of casting under power is, I'd like to see it cut off if the Pylon is taken out before the ability is over.

The inclusion of the "beacon" idea is great too. It becomes a sort of meta-Pylon that limits the construction of this highly specialized ship. While normal units require a certain amount of infrastructure to be built (pylons, tech buildings), the Mothership would require a second layer of infrastructure with this support building. Apart from housing Mothership upgrades, it might even be used to dispense Mothership abilities. Perhaps it could allow the Mothership to act as a Shield Battery when near a Beacon, perhaps it could activate a special ability, on top of the kinds of abilities enabled by Pylon power: Black Hole would be particularly interesting, because it would become a defensive ability, attached to a structure. I'd also like to see the Mothership be given Recall, and attaching the ability to a structure would keep it from stealing warp-in's thunder.
Enemies would know to avoid the structure as if it were a battery of Phase Cannons, knowing that it might be used to activate a devastating attack if the Mothership is home, but they would also want to target it, knowing that its loss would keep the Mothership's owner from quickly rebuilding it. Players building them would have to strike a balance between hiding it safely in the back of their base, or bringing it to the front for defensive purposes.

The Beacon structure would probably be expensive and take a long time to build in order to keep players from massing Motherships and covering their bases with the dangerous proximity-to-Beacon effects.

This is how I see it:
1: Raw unit: access to ability A .
2: Unit + Psi: access to ability B - this can be something that is useful for attacking or defending, since Pylon power can be moved onto the battlefield via Phase Prisms.
3: Unit + Proximity to Beacon: access to ability C - this can be something scary like Black Hole, because it will be limited to the player's base, used defensively. As I said before, Recall would be a nice choice too.

This could also be varied by mixing up whether or not an ability comes naturally or is researched.

 

I like this "proxy" Mothership idea... I wish it had come to my attention before the monthly report, but we can just include it in this month's report.

However, now that the Mothership is against a limited unit, this idea would need a couple of modifications.

I still think retaining it as a required building for construction of the Mothership would be awesome. But in order to nerf some of the usefulness of the Mothership's abilities, I'm thinking that:

A) The building generates all of the Mothership's mana and must be transferred to the Mothership via direct link.

B) The Mothership must be in the "field" of the building to generate mana at all.

This would drastically limit the mobility of the Mothership's numerous abilities that are very devastating. It would also leave a strategic opening for opponents to disable the Mothership's abilities when the Mothership wasn't around.

It just needs to be expounded upon, but that's really Blizzard's job. I will bring this idea up with Karune.