Poll : Mothership

What i would like to see done with the Mothership is it stays as a super unit you can only have one of at a time but maybe have the ability to rebuild after it is destroyed. Also the Mothership should be able to attack multiple units simultaneously as well as being able to attack both ground and air. I think the mothership should have to abilities the planet cracker and an Air AOE similar to the BC's plasma torpedos. Besides that the Mothership should just have a ton of shields and hp (the shields should make atleast a third of the MS's hp perferably half or more) and be suseptoable to atks like lockdown EMP missle just like any other unit to keep it balanced and give it a solid weakness.

 

If we can make multiple motherships, then they don't deserves the name MOTHERship. I like the old better.

 

I'm not afraid of changing anything, and I certainly don't want sc2 to be sc 1.5. I understand that things in Sc2 are going to be different, and I really did like the idea of the original mothership, far more than I like this new, wimpy one.

However, I also understand why Blizzard changed it. Even though this game isn't going to be Starcraft 1.5, it is still Starcraft, and that means some things will not change, primarily the hard counter system that has made Starcraft such a great game.

A single mothership, no matter how powerful, must still be easy to counter. This was true of virtually all units within the original game, and it will be even more so with Starcraft 2. If Blizzard exempted the mothership from this hard counter system, it would become analogous to a hero unit, something Blizzard wants to stay away from in Sc2.

Simply put, ultimate, one-per-player units do not fit into the mechanics of starcraft very well. Starcraft is about massable, highly niched units, and that is what Blizzard has made the new mothership into.

All that said, I do not like the new mothership. I personally believe Blizzard should either scrap the mothership all together, and replace it with some other anti-ground air unit, or at least rename the thing. Massable motherships really don't make sense.

 

Ok, the new MS is just appalling. At this point it looks even weaker than the Carrier!! What kind of MS is that? Like I said in the Carrier vs Tempest poll, they should give the MS anti-air and defence and give it some nice abilities (not just the lame cloak. Cloak is kinda not useful late game. Everyone has good detectors by then), and make it the new capital ship of the Protoss. Look at the Terran's BCs. Nice large ship with two useful abilities. As the Protoss new capital ship, the MS should be slightly more advance than the other races which is consistent with the theme of the Protoss of large and strong but small in numbers. The Carriers should revert back to the Tempest or be smaller which will be assessible earlier during the game. This new carrier type should be the Protoss's siege unit.

 

I agree with the countering system, but i just dont know how they made the mothership useless, to me it looks just as if they didn't try to fix it, i know its a difficult job to balance every unit in the game, and they really should balance the old mothership maybe in the way almost everybody thinks is best, and that is, reducing the aoe in the black hole, so i really dont want the mothership to be scraped, it fits the protoss, powerfull unit, high cost, few units, and that thing they showed in the blizzcon, was no mothership at all.
blizzard hasnt even shown us the terran and zerg options to counter the mothership, and even in the first demo, the mothership with all her abilities was very vulnerable. So please bring back the powerfull mothership why in the hell would i want to have invisible units under a juicy/useless mothership? cmon not even anti air? that´s just taking the specialization thing a little too far!

 

The mother ship is cool now. it's better if u can have more then one. black hole was to strong. It's cloak field is good. It's ablity Earth Cracker should not of been changed. the damage AOE could change but not how it looked with the 3 spinning beams of light.

 

Yeah, that was cool.

 

Fenix you do know that having an unit at "absurdly high cost" means the game would be very noob friendly..

What happens when you are a noob? you are slow and you get a lot of ressource that you can't use..

Conclusion: noobs would play protoss to use the mothership...

and I don't want the protoss to be the "noob race"

"Look, this guy is a noob, he plays protoss"

I like the super unit concept but it should be balanced.. like.. you don't charge with only the mothership...

but with like.. the mothership and some troops.. you know..

Also, this is starcraft.. I don't want it to be WC3.. aka winning a game with only a few units and a very powerful one (aka hero or the mothership)

 

well the MS could have been nerfed without completly ripping its balls (or ovaries...?) off. I could have been weaker, but still kick ass, and it could have been made so its slighly weaker, so you need a good micro to keep it alive. that way it wouldnt be so 'noob friendly' as they generally have bad micro.

You're right about the small army + hero part of WC3, but you shouldnt think of the Ms as a hero. heroes generally could keep themselves alive pretty well, unless fighting another hero, but with the thor and BC as kickass as they are, the MS would have a hard time staying in one piece.

 

I hope you are right about that stuff, also, the MS, unlike heroes, can't be used in early game.

 

Black Hole might be OP, but it CAN be balanced. People made many suggestions that could have worked in another topic, and they were worth trying.

As for a new Mothership super-unit... give it AA and AG defense, the ORIGINAL Planet-Cracker, unless the new one is a big fat thick one like in Independance Day... and give it Interceptors. Interceptors actually make sense... thats why I suggest it, but it'd be too Carrier like.

Ideally, they should have scrapped the unit ENTIRELY, made a new one from scratch, design and whatnot and thats it. Here's the concept of the new MS... Pretty much something that can pwn ground units without being seen, so why keep the mothership namesake and not just make another ship, sure redundancy, but hell atleast it would make sense background wise and game wise... It's pretty much a bombardment unit now, having many of those around would look like crap, and since theres already the Warp Ray.. then I dont think Ill use it often.

 

@ JBL, oh yeah, i forgot about early game heroes.

i hope i am too. and that the Mothership goes back to kicking some ass. the old mothership had 1200hp including shields. they could take that down to 950~1050, reduce the range of blackhole, increase the slowing effects of timebomb, return its air attack, possibly reduce its default attack damage, and you have a balanced super unit.

 

I like the idea of a protoss superunit, but its true that it was too powerful, they should only remove the black hole ability and leave it with time bomb and planet craker, and only anti air attack because since its a mothership it should be flying in very high orbit,and the planet craker would work like an orbital assault that fits with the whole mothership thing, this way the it would be a great support unit for the rest of your army

 

This is something that I could not get over with. I was one of those people that was very disappointed with the removal of the Reavers but after some time and thoughts, it actually made sense and I'm all for it.

But revamping the Mothership absolutely made no sense whatsoever. Mothership was such a cool concept. It really symbolizes how the Protoss was meant to be. From the looks of it now, the Carriers is probably going to replace the Mothership's role of been the flagship of the Protoss. Sounds funny right? Well from the looks of it, Mothership and Carriers simply overlap each other. They are both late game captial ships that could be massable if wanted. If Blizzard axed the Reavers because they thought that the Collossus overlapped their roles, then I have absolutely no idea why they can't see that the Mothership and Carriers are also overlapping.

The other possibility is that Blizzard kind of rushed this Mothership idea to the public so people can get a hang on it at BlizzCon. They changed it just so they can get some feedbacks and reactions from the fans. They wanted to know if the fans prefered the idea of Mothership been a superunit or not. Since most of the people are disappointed of the changes to the Mothership at BlizzCon, Blizzard will probably axe this new Mothership idea and change it back to the old one that we all once loved.

As for the vote, I voted to keep the Mothership has a super unit, but adjust some of its abilities. There is no way I think Blizzard changed it because they couldn't balance the Mothership right. They have soo much time from now till release and I'm sure they can find a balance for the Mothership. So I'm guessing that Blizzard just wanted to see the fans reaction to this and adjust it accordling.

 

the first opiton is for the MS when first revealed, and the third is for the new MS that had its balls cut off.

 

I modified the first option to hopefully clear up any confusion that came from it

 

thanks for the info lichking hopefully that is more alot more clear.

 

I was opposed to how the Mothership turned out at Blizzcon, but after reading ArchLimit's post he's managed to change my mind. It really would be incredibly difficult for Blizzard to balance the MS, since in order to balance it (and return it to its former glory) the rest of the Protoss fleet would have to be weakened so that they're not insanely strong late game, but during mid game they're going to be completely screwed. It's essentially either the Mothership returns to how powerful it was in May and weaken the rest of the fleet, or weaken the Mothership so that the Protoss don't control the skies once it's built.

I think the best way that the MS can stay in the game is if it's changed into a suped up Arbiter, sadly. There's no way to realistically balance the old MS into the game since it would either screw the Protoss over early to mid game, or overpower them late game.

 

Hmmm while i believe thats a sensible argument against the mothership the fact you can only have one is in and of itself a balancing mechanism because have 10 of them and slaughter you opnents base in one massive planet cracker. Unlike other caster units which if you have enough of them you can keep there abilities going long enough to seriously turn the tide in a battle. In my opinion the only really overpowered ability of the old mothership was the black hole ability because it would be hard to tone it down and still keep the same feel.

 

Yeah, I think that the mother ship is a replacement of the arbitar. If you guys making Starcraft II are reading this please revise the mother ship. I know it seems like we are asking alot, first alot of stuff and unique qualities have been taken away from the mother ship and it ballances alot of things out with the thor and everything and then we ask for them back. Can't we just have only one mothership on the map at a time so it is kind of the same thing. A dozen motherships raiding your base is mad crazy. Just change it's name, mother ship gives the idea that there is only one of but still replaceable.