New Carrier

Hmmm...that makes sense
anyways, seriously, did ANYONE go to the link i gave?

 

It's interesting, I think it was suggested on this forum a long time ago though. More than a year we argued both the Carrier and Mothership to death. My favorite idea for the Carrier is still give it about the same stats it had in SC1 and give it the ability to make 1 or 2 Scarab Drones on top of its Inceptors that are set to either fire when ready or on command (the autocast option in WC3 comes to mind here). Pretty much you would be givng the Carrier an ability that lets it deal with heavy units or groups of units easily at the cost of micro and minerals.

 

Scarabs? then at least 2 cuz 1 would take too long to fire

 

I think the best thing now would be for the return of the tempest.

 

Ok since nobody is looking at the link (or so i think) im just going to post the stuff here myself

Suppressive Fire Formation: A constant stream of repeated bursts from the Intercepter's Pulse Blasters is a result of each Intercepter firing in turn, one after another, so that the damage is racked up individually 5x2 at a time. This would be especially useful versus low-armor units and the Hardened Shields of the Immortal.
-> interceptors can attack separately but they would still fire in turn one right after the other.

Concentrated Fire Formation: Every single Intercepter converges upon the target at the exact same time, with every single Pulse Blaster striking the enemy at the exact same time, to deal devastating damage at the cost of having every single Intercepter wait on its slow-speed cooldown at the same time. In this formation, assuming there were 8 Intercepters, Instead of dealing (5x2)x(8), it would deal (8x5)x(2), so it would deal 40x2 dmg instead of 10x8 damage, thusly reducing the amount of damage that the enemies armoring can shrug off at the cost of DPS. It would be nigh-worthless against the Protoss Immortals and kill low-armor units slightly slower, but give great results against more armored foes. -> would only be focus-fire (all interceptors can only attack one target at one time)

In order to prevent attack-cooldown-bypassing-glitches, every time that the Formation starts to change, none of the Intercepters can attack until every single Intercepter has finished its cooldown and is ready to commense firing in the new Formation.

Formations need to be researched and switching has a cooldown of 10 sec

then up the carrier HP to 300 and we'll all be fine

 

I'm not sure blizzard has told us anything about interceptor formations. But that would be cool. But then they will probably fire slower, or get picked off easier. I like the old attack for the carrier, and the carrier is fine. The carrier is suppose to support other units. Like the void ray, or ground units, like the zealot. The void ray is the bc killer, not the carrier. But the carrier can kill it. It's just not prepared for that.

 

Still... i wish the carrier would be back on par with the bc
interceptor formations would absolutely solve that, and it doesnt even need much micro

 

The Gantrithor is probably the strongest hero unit in starcraft. Only appeared in one mission, in the battle against the overmind. Has 800 health and 500 shields, it's also Tassadar's ride, and is most importantly a carrier.

It's a hero carrier, but in the lore Gantrithor singlehandedly took out Edmund Duke's fleet of Battlecruisers.

The carriers need to be at least as strong as battle cruisers, or at least make the interceptors strongers. I wouldn't mind if there were strategies involved such as interceptor formations, though I can't think of how different formations of interceptors would benefit the carrier.

Protoss are known to possess powerful unit, so I don't see how mothership and carriers overlap.

I can already imagine the epic sight of a mothership accompanied by a fleet of carriers. Hell, I can even imagine the artwork for it.

 

I don't think we need to start worrying too much quite yet, if they don't give the carriers something special then I'm sure they'll just give it a buff. One reason they haven't shown high tier units much in the battle reports is so they don't give out all the info about the game at once, but another huge reason is that the higher tier units still need balancing and Blizzard is aware of this.

 

well I saw karune s post in the Bnet forum (sry cant find the link anymore, but wiki and many other sites mention it too) that the carrier got a significantly higher range than its initial 8...). This may be a good alternative to make it on par with the BC... (yet not enough I think, because of lower HP/SP and lower fire rate).

 

The range really just helps carrier as artillery or support.
@flaming dts : One of the formations would allow all hits to land at hte same time, dealing 80 damage ( 1hit )instead of 5x2x8 damage. (16 hits)
that way, the carrier would be more effective against armored units, whereas it is weak against armored units currently

 

well I quite like the idea many people have talked about the unit formation for interceptors (some even wanted different types of interceptors) but it was scrapped... dunno what blizz thinks about this idea though

 

The interceptor formation would be pretty good!
If they did do something like that, maybe the intercepters could also act like suicide bombers, striking one target causing a fair amount of damage while destroying the interceptor.

I'd guess it would do about 40-60 dmg each for the suicide (i'd only use it when the carrier is near death)

 

The Interceptors are no Scourges.
The Protoss don't sacrifice units if they can avoid it. -The Scrarabs were just really advanced ammo, but the Interceptors are robot fighters, not suicide bombers-

 

The thing is, what is the point of interceptor formations?

The most useful formation I can think of is only effective against Thor. That is to have the interceptors fly around the thor in circles to exploit the Thor's slow turning speed, but why would you need that if the Thor is only going to attack the carrier anyways?

Interceptor formations were most likely scrapped because it offers no advantages. Enemies will never aim for interceptors, so having interceptors line up and fire or fire in circles will not give a combat advantage for the carrier. Formations will most likely be useful for direct attacking air units like Banshees.

 

...
Offers advantanges vs armored units and slightly better power vs. light units

 

Well the carrier is going to be powerful in raids and battle because of its increased damage and range but I still don"t think it makes a very good capital ship if the mothership remains unique.

 

Kamikaze interceptors would be pretty dang powerful if they did 40-60 damage.

Times 8 interceptors that comes out to 320 to 480 damage. Even a yamato cannon can't compete with that.