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More than a year after its introduction, the Mothership persists in posing a challenge for Blizzard’s developers. As Dustin Browder mentioned in a recent interview, the Mothership is still a unit with no distinct role on the battlefield. Neither overpowered nor blatantly weak in its current form, the Motership’s flaws are not that obvious. Unfortunately, Blizzard’s designers simply don’t receive enough feedback from testers to ameliorate them.
… once in a while it happens and then we’ll get some data but it just makes it a lot more complicated.
While the majority of the community isn’t able to provide feedback regarding the current build, additional pointers from StarCraft fans just might save the Motership from ending up as a glorified arbiter. Up until now, gameplay reports by fans haven’t been positive either, and it appears that even a month of discussion wasn’t enough.
Concerning the Mothership, it’s pretty much useless. It comes with all its abilities fully upgraded, but since you build it from the Nexus, you’d have to go all the way across the map to get into your enemy base.
The SC2Blog will be conducting a poll, designed to let the community voice its opinion on what it considers to be the role best suited for a MOTHERSHIP - one that’s positioned at the top of the Protoss tech tree.
Here are the options. Choose wisely.
- Straightforward Capital Ship. Massive shields and armor, high-damage output and a few combat abilities. A supreme offensive tool.
- Disruption and Damage. An offensive support tool, with significant AoE damage and punishing abilities like the Black Hole and the Planet Cracker.
- Mega-Battery. The ultimate mobile support unit, feeding mana and shield energy to the army. Can absorb a lot of damage, regenerates quickly.
- Air Domination Station. A flying AA fortress of damage and disruption. Anti-air AoE damage, Force Field and Lockdown type of spells, a disease-like aura that causes AA damage.
- Support Fortress. A flying castle with an array of battle control and support spells that can protect/recharge/hide friendly units. Also possesses abilities to disable/slow/lock down enemy units.
- Super Troop Carrier. Highly armored and with multiple defensive abilities and teleportation. Able to transport entire fleets and armies across the battlefield.
- Flying Factory. The Mothership can build ANY Protoss unit and warp it to the location it’s at. “Production” costs 110%.
- Base Breaker. Focused on abilities which cause significant damage to buildings, locking down production, disabling defenses and paving the way for attackers.
- Annihilator. The Mothership has a 5 minute “recharge” timer. Acting as a superweapon, the Mothership is equivalent to a Nuke in terms of damage output. Once charged and removed from its dock, the Motership’s “Unleash” ability becomes available. An “unleashed” Mothership delivers massive damage to air and land units around it for 15 seconds.
- Power Plant. The Mothership has a wide radius aura, which: powers buildings, accelerates production by 15%, adds 40 energy points to all shields, doubles regeneration rate, and stops all enemy regeneration and healing abilities.
Cast your vote in the poll to the right, and leave any additional feedback down in the comments, especially if you voted for the “Other” option.
65 Comments to “MotherPoll”
Q&A 41: Corruption Debuff, Zerg Defenses, Unit Dance Moves »
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Voted Disruption and Damage. I want the Mothership to have awe-inspiring, game changing abilities.
Some kind of master genius must have come up with the inspiration for this poll. Anyway,
Support Fortress. The specific spells and unit speed will dictate how often we will see this unit in a typical game.
I voted for battery. The uber units are my only remaining concern regarding SC2. If they are too powerful, they will be used like heroes and the game will be too focused on them. I don’t want it to end up like wc3 where if a hero is killed, it almost wins the battle. The entire game focused around keeping heroes alive and lots of micromanaging units, almost to the extent that it didn’t matter what your strategy was. If you were a better microer than your opponent, your macro didn’t matter very much at all. Counters, scouting, and base management, while still a part of the game, were all secondary to hero micro.
Still, the mothership is a neat unit, and does seem to “fit” the Protoss, which is why I voted as I did.
Disruption and Damage. Also, based on the comments from Blizzcon it obviously needs to move faster.
For balance reasons I think the Mothership should be pretty expensive in terms of minerals, gas and food. You really shouldn’t be able to build more than 2 and still have a balanced army. Also its abilities should be costly and it should be fairly vulnerable to attacks while its energy is recharging. Perhaps Black Hole can be changed from a massive death effect to AOE damage so that it’s not such a game-winner.
The majority of players are not experts. If we were to do it by an average player’s stand point, they usually like games like BGH or money maps.
There are many instances when there are ridiculously huge defenses set up. As an alternative to massing carriers, BASE BREAKER role would work nicely.
This works well under the assumption that the mothership is not needed in most games. But the player a concrete reason to build it.
I like a combination of flying battery and transport(via teleportation)
I feel like the Mothership would benefit from being a Support Fortress. Having it be a primarily offensive ship doesn’t make sense due to its size and speed; it’s designed to be a command ship, and in most RTS games those types of ships aren’t going to carry the biggest guns, but ARE going to have a significant impact on the battlefield. Its abilities should be powerful enough to make it a high priority target, but also unique enough that it’s an investment for only certain types of strategies.
At first I was thinking it should be a Mega-Battery, but the problem with that is 1) it’s not that much fun for a big unit and 2) abilities like this are too broad for a unit that shouldn’t be in every Protoss build.
I like to stick to its original lore that ancient protoss locked these mothership’s’ away because of its raw power.
So a mix of number one and two please.
What about the option “scrap it”? I’m not a fan of the concept of a mothership in starcraft. The name mothership connotes a behemoth ship, a unique ship (only one), the kind of ship that should be a “hero unit”. There should be no hero units in SCII.
Change the name and the art, then I will be pleased
Why not make it so that the Nexus can convert into a mothership? It’d be a good strat once an area’s resources are depleted. Annihilator seems best.
The first question we have to ask is, “What makes the Protoss, Protoss?” Then extrapolate this to their Mothership, essentially the epitome of their art, and you will have your answer. I abstain from voting.
(Mostly because I’m a Zerg player. XDDD)
I’ve been thinking a lot about the Mothership. Since I would like to see it as a powerful offensive weapon, something like the Disruption and Damage option, I will discuss this question with that in mind.
So, one of the major complaints about the current Mothership is that its too slow. As mentioned, the battle is usually over by the time the ship gets to the battle. Inspired by the line “Mothership descending into lower orbit,” a warning akin to the Terran’s nuclear launch alert, I started asking myself “What if the Mothership could descend from orbit at any place on the battlefield?”
If the Mothership were a slow, powerful attacker, but could be deployed at any point on the map once paid for, it could easily turn the tide of any one battle. Picture this scenario: a Protoss player launches an attack, but has the extra resources to invest in a Mothership. The Mothership enters high orbit, and the Protoss player launches his attack. At this point, the Mothership is unavailable to the Protoss player. Clearly, this would be a longer game, so each side has amassed fairly large armies. When the Protoss players attacks, the battle seems to start going in the way of their opponent. Then they call in the Mothership. This heavily offensive weapon with lots of shields and HP wrecks the base. Unfortunately, it is too slow to guarantee victory for the Protoss if their opponents have more bases, but it has proved a pivotal unit to turn the tide of a battle that the Protoss player might have lost.
In this way, the Mothership could be an awe-inspiring support unit capable of dishing out plenty of damage, but unable to catch up with the rest of the Protoss player’s armies to lead main attacks. I’m sure there are other strategies that could be used after the Mothership were deployed, depending on your opponent, but the slow speed that presently seems to hinder it could actually serve as a balance. By the time the Mothership made it to the second base in a Protoss attack, their enemies might be prepared to destroy it. The strategy involved in the timing of the launching of a Mothership (which I feel could easily be returned to a unique unit) could result in a variety of uses for it.
Anyway, those are just some ideas I’ve had about the Mothership. It also might be interesting if, were this idea used, the Mothership’s Planet Cracker ability were in some way accessible when the Mothership is in higher orbit, before being deployed. Not sure on the specifics of this, just an idea. I would personally like to see the Mothership in this form, as a powerful support unit that can be called down to change the tide of battle, but I’m sure there are plenty of interesting ways that the unit could work in the game and still fit the awe-inspiring name.
Anyone have any thoughts on my ideas?
I’d like the Mothership to be a Disruption and Damage unit but in a different way. First of all, it should have strong enough shield and the normal weapon that deal fairly good damage which match with its size. And to use the special ability like blackhole and planetcraker, the player will have to spend some resources to build it, just like how the Terran build their nuke missle. When the mothership launch the super weapon, it has to be rebuild to be used a gain. I think this will make the game more ballance.
meo123: the idea to rebuild its special wepons is cool. and so u can have all the tree original weapon, what we had seen in original demo.
9.Annihilator.
It would be awesome when the mothership releaseses the “Unleash” its triggered to stay in that area for 10 seconds. and all unit (also enemies) gets cloaked. and the mothership blows up all enemies,structures,air and so on and the mothership himself(maybe).
When the enemies are cloaked by your mothership, the enemies needs to “detect” their own units to se them(or move,just a testing thing wich works best)
That would be similar to the nuke. If you kill the mothership before 10 or 20 seconds, the unleash is destroyd and peace.
haha.. just a funny thing i came up with now.
I really think at this stage it should be scrapped, along with thor and queen. Just get rid of them and invent some other units. I sometimes imagine these units as mere decoy and absent from the final versions of the game.
If it remains I think it should be a converted nexus, and would best suit either the Mega-Battery or Power Plant roles. However it should not “stops all enemy regeneration and healing abilities”. That just doesn’t work for me
Maybe it could just do something a little more domestic, like give more supply, or increase efficiency. It should have defensive capabilities, but Leave the fighting to the existing capitol ships. Units, Units and more units is what I like from Starcraft.
vote for 3. Mega-Battery (or 5. Support Fortress)
All of them LOL
just kidding
vote for 3. Mega-Battery or 5. Support Fortress)
i don’t want other option cuz
Straightforward Capital Ship , Disruption and Damage <——- everyone will build it
Air Domination Station <—— combine with immortal Toss will rule over land and AIR
Super Troop Carrier. Flying Factory <—— it shoud have something more important role
Base Breaker <——– too slow to come to enemy base. Terran Nuke already take that role
Annihilator <——– that’s what i hate for C&C series
Power Plant<——– so it will stay in the base for all game. and i think that should be Zerg’s Queen role
Voted for mega battery. Adds a interesting twist to one of the mose unused buildings in the first sc. Protoss already has a capital ship why need two?
I vote for #16 plox scrap em’
Well, since the Terrans love to transform their machines, and the Protoss merge two units into a bigger one, I think it is possible to build the Mothership by merging some smaller units. For example 3 or 4 Colossi combined with 3 or 4 Warprays. Anyway, warping the Mothership from outterspace always seems to the coolest idea.
I only got one piece of advice for the folks at Blizzard
K.I.S.S
Keep it Simple/Stupid
Not that I’m calling them stupid, but they need to keep the things as simple or as stupid as they can.
If the mothership seems too complicated to be used, simple scrap it and try some new cool units or redesign it.
I loved the Arbiter in the first Starcraft because it’s role seemed to fit and was simple to use yet effective.
Don’t complicate yourselves Blizzard
@Vice_Versa_Man
That idea won’t fly, thats not an eSport friendly gameplay mechanic. In SC/SC2 competitive play above all else.
I believe the Protoss idealogy is ‘good units that are built to last’ opposing the zerg’s ‘cheap to die, but gets the job done’ ideal.
following that…
Mega Battery will be the best. But do give it a normal speed, and a short range Air-to-ground attack. Planet cracker might be one of the skills to keep, but dump the timebomb or blackhole ability.
Reasons: A hit hit point unit that will boost the shields and recharge nearby units fits very nicely into the protoss theory of maintaining its units, giving the whole army longevity while not adding too much power into the game. With such a unit you will BET it will be attack target, and given it having a decent ground attack, I will still say give it a ‘1 only’ classification.
The reason I say give it a good air to ground ability is to be sure that this HIGH TIER unit wont be a ’stupid sitting duck’ when being attacked by a single marine, also gives it an increasing role…. You know it will be attacked, but you need to MOVE IT UP FRONT for its ability. WIll be interesting to see how players micro such unit.
Let the enemy feel ‘pressured’ when a mothership is around, and yes… give it a better name, something like, ‘Nexus Maximus’ will be better than ‘mothership’.
I love the base breaker idea. Once you have it, it slowly moves towards the enemy base, and once it is there, it just shuts down the main base. Of course it would need alot of support to get there.
I voted Battery. It seems like a unique role. The superdamage capital ship role has already been filled by the carrier anyways, and I’d hate for some unit to come in and make one of my favorite units pointless.
Yeah, i think the battery is the best solution for what to do with the mothership. It would give the protoss player an advantage without being overpowered. Maybe recharging mana is a bit too good, shield charge would be nice.
also, @tassadar - “nexus maximus” is a retarded name, mothership is way better
Flying Factory, but with a bit of Support Fortress too. However instead of directly producing units, built/warped-in units could instead appear at the Mothership’s location, and other Protoss units would only be able to teleport already built units. Thus it would allow you to keep your front line constantly supplied with fresh units, and they wouldn’t need to cross the entire map or steal focus for teleportation. So you’re paying resources and support for help with micromanagement (it’s support abilities could be automated, too). An interesting twist would be for it to require power for some of it’s abilities, like the factory redirection.
The mothership is supposed to be a mothership, the high-tide of battle, the pinnacle of protoss technology. Not a support unit, but a highly expensive fleet of one. If a base is attacked on one side by the extent of the ‘Toss forces, its a battle, but when the Mothership hits the flank, it’s a two-front battle that will almost always be a slaughter.
I want to vote 1, 2 and 4. 1 because it is the quintessential capital ship, 2 because it was created as with the planet cracker in mind, and 4 because it is, above all else, a spacecraft… I would hate to see that SC2 skirmishes with little land battles where the Mothership isn’t considered because it is so ground focused.
My vote is a Mothership with High Armor/Shields, an awesome air attack, a mediocre ground attack which is supplemented by Planet cracker, and some awesome situational ability, whether time bomb or not.
I would like to call your attention to another series of RTS games - Command and Conquer. In particular, Command and Conquer 3, in which the alien faction (Scrin) have a unit called the Mothership.
The Scrin Mothership is an expensive, slow-moving unit that has an incredibly powerful beam weapon which can only hit targets right below the Mothership. When the beam hits a unit/structure, it is instantly destroyed. The exploding unit triggers a chain reaction, and all units/structures near it die, followed by the units near them, and so forth. The only units that survive the carnage are those that were far enough from any of the victims not to explode.
Now that’s a true Annihilator. Fits perfectly with the CnC style of gameplay, involving massively powerful superweapons, which are extremely costly and on long cooldowns.
This is not what Starcraft is about. On one hand we have large scale battles involving a lot of weaker units, and on the other we have very micro-intensive play using special abilities, unit-dancing etc. Superweapons have NO place in Starcraft. Neither do single, overpowered units.
IMO, that rules out most of the options. I voted for “Support Fortress”.
The main problem with the mothership at the moment is its speed. There are 3 ways to deal with this:
1) Make it faster. This could work, but it’s hard to tweak it just right for balance issues.
2) Teleportation. This won’t work. If you teleport into a battle, it won’t be able to keep pace as your forces continue their assault. And it won’t have the mobility necessary to make it worth the money
3) Support. I guess I’ve always seen the mothership as a great support weapon. The advantage of being more passive is that it wouldn’t need to be mobile to be effective, necessarily. So you could make it a support ship, give it teleportation (so it can move near the enemy base when needed without having to take hours to traverse the map), and it could still be a potent weapon. Of course, you don’t want to make it too much like the queen, but that’s my two cents.
There shouldn’t be super weapons in SC 2. Which means there shouldn’t be a mothership. As many people have already said, the mothership was designed with the idea to be all powerful, showing the pinnacle of the protoss technology.
That’s the description of a super unit. That’s why many people are falling back to a support role. But that’s not what the mothership was designed to be.
That’s why I think it should be scraped. If they want a support unit, then come up with a completely different unit.
As I see from the original Protoss gameplay trailer, the abilities of the Mothership are not something called the “Super weapon” as we can see in C&C series. Comparing to a nuke missle, the planet cracker is not much more powerful and the nuke can also do great damage to air units as well as the blackhole. The only difference here is that Mothership’s abilities can be launched instantly. However, things can be easily balanced by lowering the moving speed of the Mothership, increase the resources needed to reactivate the abilities after each time they are used, or even make the Mothership lose some of its shield in order to launch the abilities. Many things can be changed to make the game more dynamic. I’m not saying that the supporting role doesn’t suit this unit, I just want to say that by any purpose, Blizzard has created an extremely cool unit which should the attacking role well.
I fail to see why everyone seems to dislike the mothership as a ’super-weapon’, it is the best thing that has happened to the protoss that makes them differ strongly from the other two races. Balancing can be made through speed/cost/food, leave it as a super weapon. I mean the Queen is a unique unit already, no reason why another race cannot have the same.
If it is SUPER will EVERYONE make it? yes, of course, have you seen a Terran not use a nuke if it has a chance to? Using that as an arguement is a dumb statement.
I vote a mix of Support ship, Battery with a very decent attack. Let people fear the protoss mothership. As of right now, the Protoss does have a good gating mechanism, but it just doesn’t have a true signature, this is IT. Please Blizz.. make it right.
I got a different idea, that fits neither of those descriptions. In fact its pretty far from them(does come close to support fortress and a few others, but only vaguely).
And I think solves most of the units problems - the “super weapon” problem, the mobility problem and has the potential to fit the “no useless or must-build units” policy of Blizzard.
Mine uses teleportation - making it great for static situations, like base assaults and less potent when the battlefield rapidly changes position. Which I think is an interesting mechanic by itself.
Its got a few other crazy, good mechanics, but I won’t be writing a novel here, if anyone wants to know, ask.
@matrix - write it here you dummy, even if its a novel.
Blizzard read this blog.
As does everyone and their mother.
Based on its name, a mothership should really be a ‘mother’ to other vehicles (probably ships); something analogous to a carrier, only for regular vehicles, not fighters. This looks like some combination of troop carrier and support fortress.
In addition, the mothership should really not be so high tier that it’s unusable in most games. One interesting thought to make the mothership useful in the late game, without making it excessive early game:
*Shield Transfer*: when a mothership’s shields are damaged, it automatically draws energy from all nearby friendly shields to recharge itself (alternately, it just distributes the damage between all nearby shields). This means that a mothership by itself is fairly easy to kill, but a mothership near other protoss units is extremely tough. If a mothership can drain building shields, it becomes an extremely potent base defender (this can all be combined with a mothership acting as a battery, which would temporarily make some other vehicle the recipient of the same recharge effect).
@IntraX, ok if you want, had it posted in SC2 forums.
Its got its Time Bomb ability which is perfect right now.
Add to it a personal teleport - meaning only for the mothership, not surroundings(something with a time-theme again maybe?)
It shouldn’t tedious getting it to the enemy’s base. Basically it should serve the purpose of being able to keep up with your other army or hold/block a point until reinforcements arrive. Abuse prevention is up to balance.
Give it a fixed amount of “power” so to speak yielding the following mechanic.
1. Alone the mothership is not an easy prey because it keeps its power all for itself. Would hold its own for a while, but still won’t do any good if it gets overwhelmed.
2. If it is supported by an army it uses that same “power” to make them stronger, thereby weakening itself. Which would introduce a new micro element and force enemies to reconsider their targeting priorities.
3. Any allmighy weapon you might wanna put should use that same “power” giving you another choice - normal attacks+strong army/mothership or uber-weapon and no bonuses.
The additional strength it provides to units should be targeted towards the smaller units in the protoss army.
You know - larger units being able to hold their own either way, while the cumulative effect on smaller ones would yield a far greater benefit.
Also - another crazy idea - build it in parts - if you have the infrastructure/resources, it builds faster. It seems like a flying city anyway - why not be able to build one city block in that factory, and another in a second factory, etc.
That way you can’t build massive fleets and the mothership without falling behind. And why would you, since the MS is better with smaller units, than larger ones.
Give it a decent attack - the type of attack be it either small damage, multiple targets simultaneously, or a high focus damage - would depend on the needs of the protoss army.
Now I am not a big fan of artificial restrictions, but I think in this case a limit of one per army would be necessary.
I have no idea how it would play, no idea if it overlaps any roles or the such. “On paper” to me this looks like a great idea. It fits the general concept and it fits the semantics of the word. I can’t immediately think of any roles it takes over and I certainly have no way to test how it plays really. But (I think…) it solves the “super weapon” problem, the mobility problem and has the potential to fit the “no useless or must-build units” policy of Blizzard.
SUPER UNIT.
very well said above, most of the posters already pointed out, the zerg queen is already a unique unit, no reason not to have a super unique unit for the Protoss too.
I believe Blizz’s dilemma might be the following:
to make it SUPER COOL without being Overpowered.
- in trying to do such, the attack was taken out, and the unit ended up feeling like a big support unit, then again, a SUPER HIGH TIER unit that’s JUST a support feels silly, so blizz ended up in a state of confusion….
solution is simple.
revert it back to super unit. There are means to balance it, like… when calling a mothership, a huge RED BLINK appears on the mini-map, and everyone and their mother will know which Nexus is calling the mothership, it takes a long while to call down the mothership, so if they can destroy the nexus before that, then the resources for calling the mothership is wasted.
Once called, the mothership is a 1-only super unit, decent support, battery charging to surrounding unit, making it the penacle of protoss strength. As such, people WILL kill it first, it remains slow, which is its only draw back. (slow like arbiter slow, not unupgraded overlord slow.)
It can have decent Air attack, so it can go toe to toe with a BC. But it wont have a decent air to ground, but that will be supplimented with the planet cracker. This attack is SOOO PROTOSS that I sincerely hope Blizz will have it on the final release.
spell wise, it can be balanced with high cost of casting, or long cool downs, there’s nothing that’s not balancable, but there’s little reason to not have this high tech piece of tech for the protoss…
Currently, protoss doesn’t have the ‘high tech’ feeling to it I am afraid, they look they are just on par with terrans, but know how to gate stuff in.. that’s it. The mothership will change all that.
Blizz will do it right. I have faith in Karune and the teams in Blizz.
The mothership should have the same role as the thor except being an air unit in order to maintain the paper-scissor-rock balance of the starcraft genre. Given that the zerg does not have a mega-HP unit, this is the correct way to go. Sadly, the thor does not have a role either, but the thor and the mothership should have similar roles except one is for air and the other is for ground, provided there is one. Time for blizzard to put their creative cap on for a 2-bird with 1-stone solution to this mess.
@GutenMorgen - “the paper-scissor-rock balance”
That shit is the oldest, most overexploited and silliest RTS mechanic of them all. Starcraft is a competitive game, a lot more that those “play them once and let them rot” games, so I say good riddance and may that thought never cross the mind of any blizzard employee!
@TenGZ - are you serious?
Blizzard wants to achieve the following:
Neither impossible to defeat, nor underpowered
Neither impossible to field, nor very mobile
Neither a must-have, nor a impractical to tech to
If its a must kill where is the choice? People should be made to choose whether they (try to) slaughter the army first or go for the mothership for whatever reason. Say the mothership has a small fast attack(good for tackling small units) and the other army is capital ships(say warp rays). When you battle that with your fleet do you go for the MS which is ineffective against your fleet or against your enemy’s fleet which is effective at tearing yours to bits’n'pieces in seconds!
I don’t want to bicker, but the counter argument against the ‘no super units’ is a little flawed - that generally being:
“the zerg queen is already a unique unit, no reason not to have a super unique unit for the Protoss too.”
Well the queen doesn’t seem to be working either. The thors also find themselves in an overlapping pickle.
Clearly these three units were all originally designed to be super units, and are having a very hard time fitting into the game.
It’s good that this is happening - they’re obviously trying to be flexible with the design - but if it doesn’t fit, it doesn’t fit. I’m reckoning there are alternatives already in the works.
I think people are missing the point about no super units.
There is nothing wrong with them. For sure you can find ways to balance it in the game.
But Blizzard already said they want it to be different from WC3. They’re trying to make SC2 more about macro and micro (which is what you get with super/hero units)
The mothership was designed to be a super unit. It doesn’t fit in SC2. I think they should scrap it and come up with a completely different unit.
sorry i meant “more about macro *than micro”
voted for damage and disruption: i want the mothership to be the ultimate damage disher and wif a disgusting repertoire of disgusting spells like black hole and stuff….it IS scary…and a mothership is supposed to be like that, shuldn’t it?
To be honest, I hate all these options. Why try so hard to find a role for a unit that should not be? You say ‘glorified Arbiter’ as if the Arbiter wasn’t one of the most interesting units in SC:BW. If it turned into a new Arbiter I would be thrilled.
Here’s a crazy suggestion: The Mothership gets abilities based on what you’ve built/researched. If you tech-rushed to get it, it’s really no better than a Carrier. If you took the time to actually have a decent strategy, it has abilities based on that strategy. It loses and gains abilities based on what you build/research when units/buildings are built/die.
Hi bargamer, your suggestion sounds like TD to me
See Goosey (#46) has a good idea.
Replace the mothership with an arbiter. Then you don’t have super unit problem (see #43)
Maybe you can keep the mothership in single player, and then you can keep it all powerful, with the blackhole and planet cracker.
“# Goosey — July 22, 2008 @ 8:55 am
To be honest, I hate all these options. Why try so hard to find a role for a unit that should not be? You say ‘glorified Arbiter’ as if the Arbiter wasn’t one of the most interesting units in SC:BW. If it turned into a new Arbiter I would be thrilled.”
I f|_|cking agree… bring back the arbiter, it was waaaay more useful than the “motership” and shouldn’t be left behind.
Cut the Mothership, cut the Thor and cut the queen… I think that the guys at Blizzard can be a little more creative and give us something better than the “overpowered”, “unique” or “super” units…
The thor is a glorified goliath that can’t be transported, the mothership seems a less useful glorified arbiter… and the queen looks like glorified Kerrigan..
C’mon… u can do better Blizzard… I love how Starcraft is going, but some things need to be tweaked
A mix of super battery and disruption will be good.
Give it decent speed, 1-per-player is cool too. About time Blizz does something different and give Protoss some POWER that people will fear.
and yeah.. the art can change a bit…
Why not let the player decide?
If the mothership is customizable in-game, it gives the player to gain superiority in the area he wishes, though i expect that to be hard to balance.
Otherwise, I vote for a Battleship specialising in dealing massive damage to ground units/buildings.
Nikasi: What does TD mean?
Thought i would like all the roles to be combined together XD!!! I still think battery is the best cause.
-Unique Role
-No other units have this role
-TANKER!!!
-Hard to die
-Mothership = motherly figure = protect??? (lmao)(lol)(roflmaowtime)
*If* the unit stays in with that name & art, a mix of super battery and support fortress would fit best with the idea I have from it being a command ship. That said, I guess I’d prefer if it was scrapped entirely from multiplayer in favor of a returning arbiter. Give it a different name, art & abilities if you wish, so that people don’t complain that the game is too much of a refreshed SC1 (which is what I’d like), rather than a truly new game. A spell-using support unit is what you’ll end up to anyway, so why not go for it directly? And by the way, scrapping the Thor wouldn’t hurt either IMO.
All the massive damage options are overlapping with other units (carriers and wrap rays).
Some ideas in the comments that I found interesting (I’m not saying all of them should be applied, just that they should be discussed):
- the resource cost for some abilities. That would allow to give it more powerful abilities and still have some balance.
- transformed nexus. Fits nicely with the mothership name. Might be hard to balance as that would make it a really long build time if you create a new nexus just for that, but too short if you reuse an existing one.
I like the idea of it being called down from orbit. Have it set simular to the nuke role, sort of a short term super weapon to help ur boyz issue a beating. It could be called down, hangs around for a min or 2 unleashing its power then after that it retreats back up to orbit to cool down. The cost of calling it could be the same as a nuke, but has a longer wait period.
Side note, when it drops out of orbit, it should cast a huge shadow darkening the map. Ok back to the idea ..
The power of the mothership depends on what u have teched (eg, planet cracker, blackhole etc) but it should have an above average air and ground attack strength with solid armor and sheilds. Sounds like a one off super weapon with a huge advantage for the protoss? Yes but there is a twist. If the mother ship is destroyed, all protoss units with in a certain area get smoked as well. Say a simular area to a nuke. Also, once its killed, thats it for the game. No more rebuild. This would make it a “go” choice for attack, but also add a little risk with it as well. In saying all that, “I voted other”
As you were …
I think at the current state, the whole population is so split about the mothership, either way it happens will piss off a major group of people. (which is the cost of open discussion sometimes.)
So I suggest the following:
Create 2 units.
- One is a rebuilt/re-balance of the Arbiter, serving a similar role as air caster, though doesn’t really have an strong attack. Give it the timebomb ability and rebalance the unit. This will be an expensive spell unit for advance players to micro with.
- the other, the unique 1-only unit, a protoss shield mother-battery, gives all protoss troops a boost in shield regeneration,
Shield Battery: give the shield regeneration ability a burn out timer, so if the unit is out of mana, the ability ends, will be a good means of balance. (speed of the mana burning of the ability will be good balance.)
Planet cracker: Then also give it the planet cracker ability, give it a LONG COOL DOWN, but again, everything can be balanced if you control the power output/cool down, I would suggest make the unit unmoveable with using the planet cracker, so in reality, it is an ability to just bust ONE BUILDING INSTANTLY, or any any unit dumb enough to walk close to the beam. Though this ability is now much watered down, it will be a quick way to take down a command center or a Zerg Hive. Now you might say 5 warp-rays can do the same, true, but it will take 5 warp rays and some time to focus the beam, this one BOOMS it instantly.
Make this Unit rather large and eye pleasing. It has some air superiority, but cost for cost, it is hardly justified, though the shield regeneration ability is a nice edge to have.
Option: To make it more powerful, give this unit one last ability: WORMHOLE: with this ability, you can connect to points on a map, and all YOUR OWN units can run through this hole in either direction. (so it is like recall, but both ways) So allowing a mothership to have a wormhole openned on your base is a very bad idea.
Just brainstorming. Hope our critics won’t mind. =)
this poll is plain silly, obviously a lot of people cannot voice their opinion in just one vote.
I like the idea of having a mothership available to you in “high orbit” in planet stages “sub space” in space platform stages. What if you spend resources to send down the mothership to any area visible on the field of play and the mothership has to sit there immobile and level the field. The twist is that you can recall the mothership back to high orbit before its destroyed to self repair and be “summoned again” after a few minutes. If the mothership doesn’t make it out alive…tough thats it. No more mothership for you during this match.
I voted Disruption and Damage. It seems to fit its design the best: the Carrier is more of a straightforward attacker but the Mothership wreaks havoc in a more indirect way.
Personally I like the idea of the Mothership being a super unit. But if Blizzard is against super units that everyone is obviously going to go for, then it should be scrapped, simple as that. I don’t want the Mothership to go the way of the Thor: to originally be an awesome power to be feared, then reduced to “Arbiter 2.0″
How about it having no normal attack, just having the planet cracker and black hole? The energy required to produce such massive AOE abilities justifies its obvious size. That would make it obviously a base breaker. Also it should only have moderately slow speed. That way if caught alone it would be extremely vunerable.
i vote for 6 # Super Troop Carrier. hiding units in such a building can be a big advantage when you seeking strategy that conceal your true unit strength
Here’s hoping they might combine some mothership types.
Then again, if the devs went back to the ‘there can be only one’ setup, having multiple mothership to choose from might be a good idea (Something between 2 and 3 types?).
Support Fortress. The Arbiter had some truly innovative abilities that dignified the advanced-tech, enigmatic Protoss. I’d like the MShip to be a successor with a similar following.
Abilities I like are timebomb, building cloak, and possibly planet cracker. I don’t want to see it provide a conduit for warp-in because that role should remain with the Phase Prism, and it’s too similar to the Recall ability. Also PLEASE don’t even consider bringing back black hole. It’s rediculous to allow a unit to instantly decimate entire fleets with the press of a button.
I’d like you to keep the restricting that only allows production of one MShip per game. That’s a unique idea and is befitting for a mothership. Make it a dominating force which you want to use carefully at the risk of losing, and it should be expensive and much later on in the tech tier, just like nukes. The pinnacle of Protoss evolution.
As an aside, I think this unit looks exquisite and dearly hope Blizz is able to find a role for it.
Another idea which I had earlier is to make the Fleet Beacon’s provide a node for warp-in, rather than your stargates or nexus. By doing so you have some control over where you can warp them in, and offers new functionality to a building which traditionally has only offer a tier unlock and researches. If you’re brave enough, you can build a proxy beacon to facilitate travel across large maps.
i like 54 and 57’s idea for the mother ship to play some defensive role.
this is just a shot in the dark but what if the mothership could boost friendly sheilds within a decent radius at the expence of the mothership’s hp? that way it keeps with the protoss ideas of sacrifice (eg tassadar) as well as the mothership playing a passive agressive role (which all overly protective moms do)