The Mothership

Have any ideas for that role?

 

Mothership is just an over glorified arbiter to me... yeah they better make it spamable and less in size if they do want to make it en-massed.

 

i didnt hav enough time to read every1's post so if sum 1 alredy said dis im am sorry...Meh personally i think dat should be made a unique unit but be able to make more dan one such az maybe 1 - 3 no more dan 5...

...Know What I Mean...

 

nope..... lol

i think if your going for limitations putting in a number wouldnt balance it... its either one or none (limitless)...

 

I think the idea a lot of people have of one per nexus would be best. Still rare but spammable if you absolutely have to.

 

Heavy Aerial Support unit, like the Void Ray. Can also be Long-Range Artillery or Support

@ freedom :
overglorified arbiter? yea more or less. But it's abilities arent even that good right now.
I agree with 1 mothership per nexus but also with mass resouces.
or maybe the nexus turns INTO a mothership? 0.0

 

The mothership just seems like its on par in terms of strength with the battle cruiser but I do think its a pretty good idea to have a mothership per nexus.

 

But should it be ON PAR or beyond?

 

BThammer the fact that the Mothership is on par with the BC is the problem. The Motherhsip should be unique and some way of making a few BCs cry if there was ever an engagement between the two. The Carrier should be on par with the BC and the Mothership should exceed both. The trick of course is figuring out how to make Carriers on par with BCs again and how to give the Mothership the kind of power it deservse without making it overpowered.

The Carrier should have nearly as much total hp as the Bc (350/200 comes to mind here) an Interceptor range that is nearly (note nearly not as) long as a siege tank in siege mode and some kind of abiliy or set of stances to put it completely on par with the BC.

The Mothership should have the statistics to beat a BC or Carrier in a 1v1 fight without using abilities and without being in the red afterwards (600/400 and 10x7 come to mind here), but the Mothership should lose a 1v2 with either BCs or Carriers as well. As for for its abilities I think the Mothership should have a recall that affects a smaller radius but costs substantially less energy, a Planet Cracker that costs energy while active (like cloak) that does substanial ground damage but makes the Mothership weak to air attacks. Finally the Mothership should have some defensive/support ability Time Bomb comes to mind here as well as stasis field also some modified version of a shield recharge ability could work as well, just something that isn't offensive and isn't cloak.

 

I disagree with the idea that motherships should be stronger than both battlecruisers and carriers. For me its best that motherships be on par with battlecruisers. Overall I do not like to see a limit to 1 for motherships as that will make them less useful. I believe that all units deserve to be massable. And for me having a superunit with 1 limitation isn't unique.

The Carrier having a range nearly the range of a siege tank in siege mode may cause imbalance and in fact they will make battlecruisers obsotele. That is 13 range vs 6 range. That is more than double the range. This is unbelievable insane. In fact I think some units meant to counter capital ships might now have trouble countering Carriers due to this insane range. Best stick to 8 range. Overall range should have been a Terran advantage. So it should be battlecruisers that has the extra range. Perhaps the life of the battlecruisers can be lowered abit.

Actually there was a thread abt merging carriers and motherships. And actually I like the idea as I really feel that it is redundant to have 2 capital ships. Perhaps to make fans of motherships and carriers happy, this unit should be merged into "Mother Carrier". The "Mother Carrier" can attack through interceptors just like Carriers and has spells such as a weaker version of a black hole to allow the enemies to escape before the spell takes effect. Time bomb and planet cracker is nice. Then the Protoss can have a new unit in their army.

For me battlecruisers should really be on par with motherships. The reason is becoz I like the idea of players skill that determine which unit is more powerful. Protoss are powerful becoz they have high life / damage. Terrans make it up for their extra range and micro. Therefore to counter motherships/ mother carrier, I would allow battlecruisers to be given immunity to spells for a duration of time and emp attack to take out energy and shield.

Just an idea anyway. I know some wouldn't like it.

 

If the carrier was that strong then we would run into the same problem as in sc1 so thus the carrier gets a new role and the mothership takes the place of the carrier as the capital ship.

Also out of the 3 the mothership is stronger and costs more then the battle cruiser and the ultralisk.

Also one last fact I really don"t want to have one unit max on any unit in Sc2 and reasons being i don"t want to have to baby sit any one unit.

 

What problem was the problem with Carriers in Sc1? I think this may be the fundemental difference between our views, you seem to be assuming that the Carrier was to powerful in Sc1 were I think it was about perfectly balanced.

@Charmed when you are talking about whether a unit should be more powerful than another unit you are asking a question of lore, and in a lore situation there is no "player skill" or "micro" or any other meta game skill. It is similar to the question of whether a Marine should be more powerful than a Zealot? If you suddenly made your average marine better than a Zealot you basicly doing a royal screw you to the lore. The question of whether or not a unit a is balacaned is where those meta games come in.

From what I have heard both the Carrier and the Mothership are right now balanced on the weak side so where is the issue with making them both stronger? That is what the lore says should happen as well as balance, so why do yoo think they shouldn't be? As for the thread about merging the Carrier and Mothership I remember it, I also remeber I cut the idea to ribbons for some of the reasons I have mentioned in this thread.

 

If one marine is more powerful than 1 zealot, I think the whole starcraft community is going to be very mad. Of coz its too much. But for me lore isn't that very important becoz those lores can be easily change to suit the the gameplay. I can come out with excuses such as the Terrans manage to steal some Protoss technology and give them more powerful suit and etc. Although it's unrealistic, but someone else can be more creative. But still a zealot must always be stronger than a marine.

I think if both Carriers and Motherships must be 2 different units, then Carriers should have strong attack while motherships possess spells that can manipulate time and space (extremely powerful). The Battlecruisers should have a moderate damage (> mothership but < carriers) and their spells shouldn't be more devastating than the mothership. However Battlecruiser's spells should be able to help them to resist the mothership's spells by being temporary immune to spells while being able to fire emp missile to take out the shield and energy.

In conclusion, Mothership = Carrier = Battlecruiser.

Carrier = Longest range, highest damage, fastest but without any spells.

Battlecruiser = Average damage (second to carrier) and has unique spells to resist spells like black hole.

Mothership = Highest life , very powerful spells (e.g black hole) but poorest damage and the slowest.

For me it is best to allow players skill to determine which units should be the most powerful be it 1 vs 1 or in a group. As for the lore, it can be adjusted to suit the gameplay. I can say that since motherships are actually floating cities, so their weapons are inefficient. The reason why their spells is so powerful is that becoz those actually living inside inside are all psionics that channel the energy of the crystal. I am sure someone else can be creative to adjust the lore to suit the circumstances.

Just an idea.

 

For me gameplay and balance will always be second (to a degree) to lore, primarily because there are to few defenders of lore in Blizzard games anoymore. Personally I hate the fact that the Mothership spawned from this great Protoss lore idea which is now being gutted because some people don't want the gameplay to change at all from Sc1 to Sc2. There is absolutely no reason why the lore can't be maintained along side balance and gameplay. I would rather see the Mothership removed from the game entirely versus being maintained as a husk of its former self.

Like I mentioned earlier based on what we have heard so far the Carrier and Mothership are currently to weak and the Battlecruiser is off the chain. It is funny that relative to the lore behind those various units the same situation seems to be in place. Retruning the Carrier to its former self should be easy enough and making the Mothership adhere to its lore also shouldn't be diffcult either considering that is what curent gmaeplay balacne is saying should be done anayways. The only people I have seen that appear to not want this to happen are people who don't like how powerful the Carrier was in Sc1 (which would also be people who tend to believe they are god's gift to gaming), people who believe every unit should have some kind of equivalency (Blizzard has specificly stated they don't want this), or people who believe the Mothership is the the heros from Wc3 (probably the most valid reason but still significantly lacking in support because any real comparisson between the tow will show they are nothing alike).

I tend to agree with your conclusion I would make one change though,

BC/Carrier < Mothership
BC/Carrier cost < Mothership cost

The Mothership's health should noticeably exceed both the BC and Carrier, its damage should only be on par or less than par with the BC/Carrier, but the Mothership's abilties should put it that step or 2 ahead of its compatriots. Finally, the Mothership should be limited to only one fielded per played at a time or at the most 1 field per nexus per player at a time. The Mothership shouldn't be spamable and shouldn't need to be spamable.

 

The day when SC2 was announced with the introduction of the mothership, I was freak out with the awesome powers of the mothership. The time bomb and planet cracker seems fine but the black hole really could make me shiver. It seems even if SC2 were to be balanced in that way, I can't help but felt that Blizzard is going to make Battlecruisers useless against Protoss. In SC1 it was that way and I would want Battlecruisers to have some degree of usefulness against Protoss in SC2. Just imagine if my Battlecruisers got suck inside the black hole for lore purposes, then it might caused many Terran players from refraining to build air units against Protoss. Maybe except Vikings since they can change to ground mode.

In short, it is very hard for some ppl like me to accept some radical changes from SC1 to SC2. I am sure it can be worked towards ur favour but its very common for people to resist to changes. In fact there are some changes made in SC2 that made me unhappy. Examples like medics > medivacs and science vessel > nighthawks.

We all know some units like motherships and thors are very controversial as their roles keep changing from one another. So I think its best that Blizzard made a poll for all SC fans to decide on the fate of motherships and thors. Since they cannot satisfied everyone but the least they can do is to satisfy the majority. Even if it doesn't favour some of our wishes, we should respect the decision of the majority.

 

I wholeheartedly agree with LordKerwyn: They have nerfed 2 units who need to get back to a more ppowerful state:
I am sorry for those who wont like what I am saying, but for the moment, BC owns Carrier which should not be the case (have you seen these lame interceptors???), not only in Firepower (interceptors are so slow they deal less damage than the 10x8) but also HP.

Regarding the Mothership, it used to have HP 400+ SHD 400 = 800, and now its 400+200=600.

I personally do not like it at all, and I know I am not the only one

 

The problem with the carrier is that it had to be massed to be effective.

The mothership does the same amount of damage ( 8x 8 attack) as the battlecruiser but the mothership can attack muli units while the battlecruiser has to focus on one unit per burst.

The mothership has a total of 600 life because the battle cruiser and the ultralisk has 600 health.

 

Nope, the Mothership is in line with Terran Thor (and Zerg Queen)! http://forums.battle.net/thread.html?topicId=12454856512&sid=3000 (1st thread)

Consequently, Carrier has to line up with BC at least.

 

In line with the terran thor and zerg queen...dude the mothership has abilities, which the thor doesnt have (besides alvage) and the queen sux in normal combat, whereas the mothership is prettyhdecent. I still like the idea of the mothership being kinda like the terran nuke...

 

I really wish they would go in a different direction with the carrier or atleast give it something interesting like that anit ground thing or anything plus it seems that if the terran plan to build multi cruisers the protoss are going to have a hell of a time dealing with them (only counter it seems is the warp ray and they die too quickly).

Mother ship costs more then a battle cruiser lost its time warp ability and has the same attack and health as a BC so why not alow more then one it just seems like the right thing to do.