well, i went on against some real players now but im having problems when they are toss (but money maps) i cant seem to counter when they have a fleet of carriers and i cant seem to counter is there any skill of the queen or devourer that should counter or delay them? or do i just build a flock of devourers?
1. money maps suck so much 2. devours and LOTS and LOTS of Zerg Scourge ( if you dont have enough gas as zerg on a money map, you suck) 3. Stop playing on money maps, theres no skill shown in money maps except mass mass mass, and they kill the true concept of the game
Another option would be Hydras and Dark Swarm. However most of these solutions won't work that well against a large number of Carriers because anything that can counter a Carrier still needs to do so in numbers generally on the order of 3 or 4 to 1 if not more, and against the size of Carrier fleets that can be gotten on money maps that many units are just hard manipulate efficiently. If you weren't playing money maps you wouldn't have this problem, because Carriers are primarly countered by not letting your oponent get enough of them to be unstoppable. And i2new there is some value in money maps, if nothing else they illustrate the impact of resources on the game as well as how expansions are nessecary.
well the best way if someone is teching fast. take 2 expands and just roll em over whit hydras,lings and lurkers
Yeah...carriers can be unstoppable, but if you are zerg and a toss opponent has massed carriers, if you can take out the carriers and immediately counter you can gain the upper hand since they have so much of the pop. count in the carriers. Plague, Dark Swarm, and tons of hydras. Same thing goes for BCs. Then you can counter with the hydras you already used to kill the ships, instead of having rather one-dimensional (A2A) devourers. But that's just me, I like to keep it simple on money maps. But then again I shouldn't play money maps and am trying to break the addiction. Don't listen to what I just said.
I would advise against Scourges. Scourges are really not the ideal solution when you have to deal with a large number of anything. Scourges are more tactical weapons for taking out specific targets, used for quick and cheap scouting, or small scale emergency anti-air. And no offense to Ursawarrior, but for anyone who has to ask how to take down Carriers, I doubt they'll find it easy to effectively use a large number of Scourges at once. If Scourges aren't used carefully and efficiently, you're just burning your own Vespene Gas by the ass load. Also, if there is a lot of ranged support, especially Corsairs, sometimes it is just damn near impossible to get enough Scourges to hit target without sacrificing most of them. For the same reason, I think perhaps Ursawarrior might find countering Carriers with DarkSwarmed Hydras not to be the easiest thing in the world, although it is actually very effective. For Ursawarrior I would like to suggest Devourers. You don't need a whole lot, maybe just four or so. Obviously a few more if we're talking about a truly large fleet of Carriers(12+). You just need to send in your Devourers first, manually target the Carriers(do NOT just do Attack and click ground/map). If the fleet of Carriers is so large or too spread out, that the purple Acid Spores are not getting most of them, then manually switch targets and attack the ones without purple goo on them. After a good spread of Acid Spores, you can just mop up the Carriers with Mutas or Hydras. Don't worry too much about losing the Devourers, they're there only to spread and attach Acid Spores onto the Carriers, Mutas and/or Hydras will dispatch them easily afterwards. As an added bonus, Acid Spores counter cloak(by Arbiter's cloaking field) as well, making the Carriers visible. But like Nikzad mentioned, use Defiler's Plague on the Carriers. Go out of your way to Plague Carriers everytime, there is no reason for you not to have Defiler tech by the time you're met with a fat fleet of Carriers. Also, whether you go with DarkSwarm+Hydras, or Devourer+Mutas/Hydras, or even just plain Hydras, you MUST manually target the Carriers with all of your units, that is by far the most important thing. Also, when facing only a few Carriers(4 or so), don't be afraid to take them down with just Hydras that you have around. Don't panic, and just manually target the Carriers, it is better than your Hydras dancing around like morons and getting killed for free.
Seriously delete the money maps, theres so much more to normal games. Like Jon sneaking DTs to your mineral line.
lol, yea, i fugured out the "manually attack carriers" when i was battling toss vs toss and i massed corsairs
Dark Swarm and Plague sounds like a good plan. Also , try to spend a little resources upgrading units. If its that late in the game that your opponent has a substantial fleet of carriers, then you should have a ridiculous amount of mutalisks/hydralisks by then. If you upgrade them they'll have more of a chance against the carrier fleet, and inflict more damage. It's common sense.
I second that emotion. That post reminds me of the good old days of thesis-level posts and counterposts. When we battled paragon and there was a little schism between the people who thought he was cool and those who didn't. It was really informative too. I never really play Zerg so I didn't know that was a valid strategy with the devourers, but after Remy related it, it seemed so obvious. Maybe I'll dip into Zerg one of these days....
I love you too Jon and Nik, my babies. And Nik, dip away buddy, dip away. Zerg is damn lovely, SC1 Zerg was anyway.... One of the main problems that people have with Devourers is that they start out believing that Devourers are the Zerg anti-air solution. Most of these said "people" use them en masse in large numbers, then immediately tag them as ineffective or too complicated. The important thing is that, Zerg strays away from SC's textbook Air Balance Model, and hand out its anti-air goodness in separate packages. The Devourer can be thought of as being like StimPack. Just StimPack alone doesn't win battles, or even kill anything at all on its own, you must attack. However, for Zerg anti-air, the "StimPack" and the "attack" are not found on the same unit. Devourers are there only to prep the enemy air for slaughter, Mutas and Hydras will take care of the rest as they are the actual damage dealers. Devourers are jaw-dropping good, but must be used in moderation, just like you can't send out an ass load of Medics just because they're good. @ Ursawarrior, Corsairs are extremely ineffective VS Carriers.
if you're a sadist then u will get at least 48 devourers at least and its guaranteed to win against 24 carriers lolz if what you picture out is an xtremely massed carriers....... id probably use 12 devourers and mutas are the rest and plague for a quick drip... if your targetting on minimizing you expenses in killing at least 12 carriers, its possible for Plague + 6devourers + 12 mutas + some scourge for the finisher... i think its possible its just that u need to have an xtremely well micromanagement handling capability
There is nothing wrong with money maps, I don't know why people have so much disgust in them... Anyways, what I would recommend for you to do is to plague the carriers and get hydralisks and dark swarm or Devourers to absorb damage while scourges take out the carriers.
Do you realize that the Carriers can have lvl 3 armor upgrade to completely negate your attack upgrade? The Carrier has a base armor of 4. The Corsair has a base attack of 5. This means that your Corsairs are dealing only 1 measly damage per attack cycle. The Carrier's high armor also pretty much negates the Corsair's splash damage, you'd be dealing 0 damage from splash at least every other attack. It only take Carriers about 6 attack cycles to take down a Corsair. Against someone who knows what he's doing, you won't have 24 Corsairs for very long. And like I said, upgrades don't really change anything. Since the Corsair only have an attack mod of 1, it can be canceled out with an equal level armor upgrade. You might be able to muscle Carriers out of the sky with sheer numbers using Corsairs, but it is by far the least effective/economic method.
MY EYEEEES! Money maps are sheer evil! Economy management is such a massive part of the game; money maps just take that massive chunk away. There's really no playing ability required whatsover in money maps.. Lose your army? Who cares, you have infinite resources to make units out of from your twelve Gateways, Hatcheries, Factories, etc. Hrm, I feel like teching to mass Carriers or Battlecruisers, no problem. I'll just use my infinite minerals to make my base basically impenetrable. There's no real micro required... Early game is very inactive, or any actions are quickly halted without any effort; eventually it just turns into who gets the most strongest units fastest. I'de say the biggest way to beat it is to prevent it from happening in the first place. You shouldn't let a Protoss opponent get that developed; Scourges can deal with smaller groups of Carriers, but if it's at the point where they're massed, you just were unaware of his strategy. Eitherway, Hydralisks and Defilers are probably the most effective, provided the map doesn't have terrain where Carriers could attack from out of range, like cliffs or waterfronts. In this case, i'de just let the Hydralisks attack whatever they can, while sending Scourges in. Scourges are pretty rough to micro down in decent numbers, especially when the Interceptors are already busy attacking Hydralisks covered in Dark Swarm. The Carriers will be forced to retreat or be destroyed. Personally i'm not a very big Devourer fan.
