Don't forget that this is not a balance suggestion, but how I believe that units should function in sc2. If the carrier ever would be removed (or significantly nerfed) there would have to be buffs somewhere else for protoss or nerfs in terran/zerg lategame. I am specifically eyeing the Broodlord when it comes to that as it has very similar issues to the carrier.
A possible way would be to change the mothership again to allow something like the Arbiter back into the game. However, that would change Protoss entirely and add another caster unit on the side. Then again, I was never a fan of the mothership in the first place. It feels extremely tacked on to the game.
Totally agree with both cases - Broodlord and Carriers. I think what would help a lot in Broodlord case is lowering broodling HPs and make them not collide with other units (similar to colossus with lesser ground units) so you would kill them faster and you would be also still able to get under them to kill them more easily.
one suggestion I read many years ago before Disruptors and Liberators existed is that you pick a circle in the map and your Interceptors go and engage any enemy within that circle, then you can choose them to take another circle (after a cooldown) or to come back to the Carrier. Carriers do still have a cast time, but they are free to move after that and have a more generous leash range, and if you want to evade the Interceptors you just micro around the circle area, like you would against Liberators. And also you can have different abilities and upgrades, like bombers that do extra dmg against armored targets, or fighters that do extra dmg against air, or assault parties that do extra dmg over time against land units.
@@ParleLeVu BCs are in a weird boat where they're really best used for harass and not much else. In TVZ you might be able to make a case, but overall the BC is just really weak compared to other races' T3 units. Use it against protoss, and they easily get countered by mass stalker or voidrays. Use it against terran, and they're already be weak due to the tons of vikings built due to the TVT meta. Its the strongest vs zerg, yet it can still be defended by mass hydra or many queens, and can be held easier especially if the zerg makes vipers. Its the only t3 unit in the game where it only really shines when you rush it and use it for harass, because theres so little to counter it early, but it always becomes less valuable as the game goes on.
The essence of it would be "If you were a lot better then you could win against this opponent and that means that the game is perfectly balanced because I have no idea what balance is".
He also states that he doesn't think it's imbalanced at about 4:45 he thinks it's just a bad unit. Bad to watch, bad to play with, and bad to play against. Bad to watch: slows down the flow of the game way too much. Bad to play against: interceptor range and priority limits micro capabilities of the non-carrier player. The lack of control required to use the carrier allows the attacker to focus more with casters. Bad to play with: it doesn't gain significant value from being microed. What it's capable of is fairly static from Gold to GM, meaning as you play faster/better players it doesn't retain its value as much as other units. Essentially it's a crutch at lower levels to get to higher levels but because of its poor scaling it becomes less significant at higher levels.
Yeah. not imbalanced, since it has hard counters. I think the big complaint here is that it is just boring in regards to gameplay and a low skill unit.
@@peterthepeter7523 The hell are you talking about. The point is "its not IMBA because you can just get better and win. You lost because you are bad, not because the enemy is using unbeatable units".
The swarmy nature of this unit always screamed Zerg to me but this is such an iconic unit. Instead of removing them I would love to see scourges and lockdown(possibly by a unit other than ghosts) reintroduced as counters.
@@Max-sz9ez The Viper's abduct is closer to what I have in mind, but doesn't force the opponent to decide between defending the unit(s) or pulling back.
@@xXNightsWatchXx Possibly some type of self healing mechanic similar to the Reapers or Mutalisks would make sense against capital ships, but I wouldn't want to see it in other situations.
You could disable its "attack" and give it an ability that marks something to send interceptors at, if the mark disappears(target dies/out of range etc) something else has to be marked or interceptors go back kinda like cyclone lock on but instead of projectiles, it launches interceptors. Also could consider putting a short cooldown on it or no retargeting until the marked unit dies/gets out of range, stuff like that. rip mass carrier amove
Fuck all boring about it. If your going to say this, it's boring that Zerg can remake an army instantly. PROPER FUCKING BORING GAMEPLAY. Your talking about depth in the game, yes coz Zerg can a-move an army into you, without even looking at the screen if they so choose, and then insta remax? Yeah, real depth buddy.
I would like to kind of a rework of the carrier. Give them an activated ability to release the interceptors (instead of releasing them automaticly on attack command). The interceptors have a time limit they can stay on the battlefield before they need to return to the carrier. That way it is more micro intensive and gives them a window where they are vulnerable when the ability is on cooldown.
@@pablovirus Except the Interceptors cannot go beyond the leash range like the swarm hosts, but instead "swarm" around the carrier for the time. Maybe give the carrier a normal attack itself which does as much damage as a pheonix, but a lot more with interceptors for a short time on cooldown
@@app2530 the aircraft carrier from RA2 only has 3 interceptors, which only fire 1 volley before going back to reload. Each interceptor is also extremely fragile, but replacements are free. The leash range is enormous, but the carrier is completely defenseless against other aircraft or naval ships. Basically it's a unit that sucked and no one ever used it. Your mention of other games reminded me of it.
Carriers in BW (and even WoL) served the role of an air unit that out-ranged static defenses. This mirrored the Guardian from Zerg and the Battlecruiser (specifically with the Yamato Cannon) from Terran. Side note: the control group limitations in BW make the Carrier even higher on the easy-to-use scale (higher supply units means more supply per control group). There were a number of things in BW that made Carriers a bigger risk. They started with 0 Interceptors, meaning they were vulnerable to attack. They also had certain interactions where low-health interceptors wouldn't come out, so Plague became a big counter. In HotS, the Protoss "air siege" role was also taken by the Tempest. If Carriers are to stay in the game, then they should have a role that is separate from the Tempest. There are two ways I can see this working: 1) Make the Carrier a different kind of glass cannon than the Tempest. The carriers themselves should be rather tanky, but the interceptors should not. Let's nerf interceptors down to 20/20 HP/Shields. Maybe even increase the Carrier's health as a result. The carrier itself becomes a tank, but its weapons are quickly whittled down. Harstem mentioned critical mass being important, so this should make it easier to remove that critical mass rather quickly. It also allows the opponent to benefit from the current AI, where interceptors would just be shredded, and then the Carrier becomes a 6-supply shell. Or an 8-supply shell, if we change that value as well. In this regard, the Carrier becomes a unit that can quickly be disabled, and is then just taking up supply. It would be easier to hunt down than a tempest. Whether to go Carrier or Tempest would be based on whether you are more worried about snipes or splash. It doesn't perfectly fix the F2 problem, but it does make Carriers more of a consideration than a win button. 2) Make the Carrier a tank unit. This solution is simple: reduce the number of attacks from each Interceptor from 2 to 1. This will effectively halve the damage potential of the Carrier. It means critical mass takes longer to reach. It means Void Rays and Tempests become much more attractive for their damage potential. The Carrier may still be very strong if you have 130 supply of them, but players would be encouraged to mix up their army. The carrier itself becomes airborne cover for sniping ground units, and the interceptors become distractions for the AI. If they are still too strong, then we can do some of the above as well: increase the supply to 8, or decrease the Interceptor health to 30/30.
I think 2) will only enhance the turtle play. But I think 1) would work perfectly. Heck, I think maybe even decrease the interceptor build-time as a "buff" to balance. Then against a high anti-air DPS army, these interceptors will do more harm to the economy then to the enemy. And I am pretty sure it does fix the F2 problem, since for most anti-air units, the interceptors are exactly what they should aim for. This would increase the micro for the carriers as well, because you almost always want to move them away from the battle field so that their interceptors won't get killed one by one as they pop out.
This doesn't solve the issue outlined in the video. He didn't say he believe that the carrier is OP. The problem with the carrier is the gameplay not the balance.
The problem was never that the carrier is to strong. It is that (1) microing it makes things worse, (2) microing against it can make things worse, (3) it encourages turtling and avoiding fights. All the above makes the game less fun. Your suggestions do not address any of these issues.
Funny thing is that carriers in BW have a very high mico or rather apm potential, as they're not supposed to ever stop moving (unless attacking) because that means the interceptors go back inside which causes the next attack to be delayed. I always felt like the solution in SC2 could involve making the Interceptors untargetable.
Just change the interceptor function. Make the carrier siege. Somewhat faster than siege tanks and liberators and more like fast borrow for mines and lurkers. Make interceptors non-targetable so the unit AI doesn't require absurd micro-ing of defensive units and the carrier body is the target. Then interceptors have to be made but not remade.
I feel like stripping the carrier of it's interceptors and then hunting it down with AA is THE anti-carrier micro tho, making the interceptors untargettable would have the opposite effect of what we want.
Would love to see some shift in power towards other units in the protoss army, gateway army (T1/T1.5) feels so crappy compared to the other races past early game.
Gateway units unfortunately have to be intentionally crappy due to warp-ins and the existence of the warp prism. Being able to spawn your units all the way across the map near instantaneously is massively powerful. It's the reason that all gateway units (actually all protoss units) only have one tier of upgrades (blink, charge, and glaives), while the other races get 2 upgrades for most of their core units. (Stim + Combat, Stim + Concussive) for terrans, (Metabolic boost + Adrenal, Hydra range + move speed, lurker burrow + range, ultra armor + speed).
@@bayanzabihiyan7465 Personally, I want to see Gateways buffed and Warp Gates nerfed. Gateways should have a faster build time than the counterpart Warpgate cooldown. A choice between build speed and convenience, instead of a 100% upgrade.
@@danielskrivan6921 true, plus it could help with protoss early game as they take so long to bring out any units, though you would need to either remove or decrease the price of warpgate
@@squibbae if it cannot deploy interseptors while having auto attack, it will make some sense and would be cool, not that useful, but still interesting
I have been on this hill dying alone for years! and finally FINALLY someone with more authority and recognition says it. Harstem I am but a lowly Low Master Protoss but be the change we need to see, show the other Protoss that turtling to Skytoss is NOT the way PvZ should be played. Lets get back to crushing Zerg with efficient unit trades and sharp timings. Seriously you have no idea how many years I have been on this train for. How much I want to see this change!
Absolutely, I quit playing the game over ZvP, I just got so tired of someone walling off and then coming over with the air deathball A-move. I _know_ I can beat that, but at my skill level vs the amount of effort they are doing (just camp and deathball) it completely demotivated me.
Until Lurkers don't dominate all protoss ground with ridiculous efficiency, there's not going to be much room for any PvZ lategame that isn't skytoss. All-in timing attacks can still potentially work in the midgame, but if it goes to late game tech, if you're not skytoss, you're basically dead.
About reworking/repurposing the Carrier, there's also another factor that I think tends to be overlooked: that the unit has a almost 25 year long history of being THE iconic Protoss capital ship. I'd argue that: 1) one cannot give it the Tempest treatment (repurposed during HotS development from anti-air splash to long-range siege) at this point and drastically change how it works. That ship has sailed. At the very least, it should continue to be slow and have Interceptors, or it wouldn't be the Carrier anymore. 2) Along with the Marine and the Hydralisk, I think that the Carrier is an iconic part of what defines the Starcraft races and it would be sad to see it removed from the game. Keep it around IMHO, but yeah, feel free to tweak how Interceptor release/recall, enemy unit targeting etc, works.
Mostly agree (and for my biases I play Protoss). However, I would much rather the Carrier was actually removed (or ideally replaced) than nerfed to unviability but left in the game. I think there are changes that could be made that might make it less problematic and still viable (e.g. significantly increase interceptor cost), and I think those would be best. However, if you're going to deliberately make it a useless unit, please just remove it entirely.
Interceptor cost wouldn't weaken a typical carrier all in though. If protoss fights into spores too often they loose anyway. Maybe removing them entirely would really be better. Protoss have the most air units anyway, 8: 5 from stargate 2 form robo + Mothership. Zerg has 4+ 3Overlord varinats, Terran 6. Maybe another ground unit, for example a more stable and reliable alternative to disruptors would be cool. Sth different against lurkers and tanks.
I think Harstem is only suggesting a huge nerf as a compromise for the reality that Blizzard is way more likely to fiddle with numbers than to just delete a whole unit from the game. If there was an real chance that they would delete it, I think he'd push for that instead.
You nerf it in specific areas so that it becomes a niche unit or serves a specific purpose (and make sure that the purpose is different than that of the Tempest).
Would it be more interesting if the carrier was changed to be a spellcaster that used a certain number of fighers for spells instead of energy? Thoughts I had include sending out a fighter a long distance to get vision, deploy a group to bomb a ground target you have vision of, and "intercept" where the fighters circle a friendly unit and shoot enemy air units for a few seconds while being untargetable. After completing their mission (assuming they don't die on a long-range one), they leave a smoke trail back to the carrier and then take time to recharge.
Could be cool if "spawn 8 interceptors" was an ability that cost energy + minerals, and the interceptors died after N seconds (like MULEs do). So carriers become more of a tactical unit rather than a flying siege tank that just continually grinds down enemy armies from a safe distance. In lower-leagues, people could then trick protoss to cast all his carriers to release interceptors, run away, repeat, then stomp him when they're low on energy - not massive amount of micro or intelligence needed.
@@HellecticMojo That was why I said they have a figher limit and use fighters to cast "spells" INSTEAD of energy. They don't use energy and can't be feedbacked, and EMP will only deplete their shields.
Also - what if the Carrier was like a kind of flying production structure and interceptors were a more fairly costed, individually controllable unit that costs supply, but still has a very low build time (and still have a leash range to the Carrier). I think that could be more balanced and quite fun. EDIT: since some people seem to be getting the wrong idea - maybe I worded this poorly. I'm NOT suggesting the Carrier actually become a structure (it would still be able to move and still cost supply).
@@3d_win I'm not suggesting it become static at all. I'm not really suggesting it become a structure, just for it to function a bit more like a production structure than it currently does.
Maybe reintroduce the graviton catapult upgrade, and decrease the extended leash range (from 14 perhaps all the way down to 10 or 8). That way, carriers have much more poke potential, and enemies aren’t punished as hard when retreating. Also, change attack priority around perhaps so that interceptors are at equal or lesser attack priority. I’m bad at sc2 but if I had to pick some changes those would be it.
Hyper-focus on micro has been a plague on the Real-Time "Strategy" genre for an extremely long time. Warcraft 3 made good moves with liberal use of autocast spells, allowing players to focus most of their combat attention on hero actions, and reducing unnecessary base micro actions so that the player could focus on map awareness and control. SC2 brought in forced base micro mechanics and significantly more manual-only abilities, which taxes players to do little busywork tasks that there is no good reason for them to have to do. In a "strategy" game, wins and losses should not be primarily decided by actions-per-minute and twitch reflexes. That is the realm of the first person shooter, or the MOBA. Strategy games should involve outsmarting your opponent on a larger scale. In this case, a strong unit that attacks with a swarm of expendable units should have cost-effective counters, such as anti-air with significant splash damage so that it can outpace swarm unit production and neutralize the threat.
Brood war was popular precisely because of micro. The reason it became so important to this series is because of the clunky AI of the original game, which could be improved drastically by quick and precise unit control. It's not a plague but one of the main causes of it's success. The problem sc2 has is that the AI is amazing and there's no cap to the number of selected units. The carrier exemplifies the worst kind of battles in the game and as Harstem points out, actively prevents you from making them fun or interesting.
@@Jake-mp7ex Popularity notwithstanding, there's not much point to a "strategy" game wherein the dominant technique involves circumventing the clunky UI and controls. If it drastically changes the power dynamic to improve the UI and controls, then the old status quo was bad and needed to go. Fundamentally, you agree with me. Because you wouldn't think that removing the automatic attacks from units, forcing the player to click twice for every standard attack in the game, would be an improvement on account of it demanding more precision and control from the player. RTS wasn't supposed to be that kind of game. But that's been the status quo for so long that everyone acts like it's normal to have battles won by precise control and micromanagement, rather than superior planning and strategy. It's not really much of a "strategy" game when you're micro'ing individual marines to avoid 5 HP of damage in an engagement.
@@daviddavidson505 While I see your point and agree that starcraft is microintensive, I heavily disagree that fights are primarily decided on micro, it's decided on strategy first, you may have jaedong's micro if you take shitty fights in bad choke points or have bad decisions or macro. Ya dead. Yes you can push the value of some units with micro, that's the beauty of starcraft and makes the game so good and memorable but of course the strategy aspect is the principle factor in this game, the micro and speed of this game just adds spice and originality
A first try could be lowering the priority of the interceptors and see how things go. Making a small change in this game makes people readapt and suddenly the game ends up being totally different and unexpected
Instead of removing game elements you dislike, suggest adding what's missing to improve them, which in this case is a micro element to improve their effectiveness. Perhaps this could decrease the relaunch time or adding a spell.
Adding a button to prelaunch the interceptors and reducing the interceptor withdrawal range to 9 or 10 would solve this problem without needing to nerf the unit out of existence. It would also add an interesting tactic of deciding when to prelaunch the interceptors, as doing so could truly or falsely signal to the opponent that you intend to take the fight.
IMO the Carrier needs to cost more and have a longer build time, at the very least. People are building far too many far too early. Better still if it had to go into a siege mode to launch the interceptors i.e. it was a static, sitting duck that actually required some thought. Right now you can just A-move them and it's insta-gg. At Plat and below right now that's all anyone ever does and I don't need to tell you how boring that is.
The carrier makes lower league T/Z v P really dull (even sometimes at the top level) Protoss players can just bunker up on 2 or 3 bases with a million photon cannons to prevent drops, and max out on carriers. I would at least like some experimentation to stop the auto-targeting by certain units of the interceptors (perhaps it still makes sense for certain units where the fire rate / splash damage justifies it) to see where this leads, and if the play still isn't interesting either redesign or remove them. Protoss has sufficient air options already. However I think Harstem makes other good points as to why the carriers are badly designed anyway. They echo my own. Terran used to have an effective counter in the form of the seeker missile. Without doing the sums it seemed fair as far as air units are concerned - you'd need a similarly expensive army of Ravens and good micro to ambush anyone who went for mass carriers. Those were happy days :)
I love countering skytoss. Its simply too easy. Widow mines, thors, and scvs. Or even mass stalkers with a few archons works effectively. As for a zerg build that indirectly counters, hydra ultralisk with some vipers and festors. All of these work most of the time, and you can do way dumber stuff to counter airtoss. Also, usually the reason the other team even gets 8+ carriers is because nobody ever attacks. Typically these armies are useful against ground armies too. So they arent pure anti-airtoss.
@@fjoiewafno depends. Most of my team games i just play terran and do hellion drops. I try with toss, and have a 70% win rate when playing 4v4 as toss and only 50% with terran. Diamond 3. And when im playing 1v1 PVP airtoss i literally always win. Especially if i go phoenix and tempest. Lately my 4v4 terran win rate went way up, got 700 kills in a 1 hour 20 match using liberators and tanks.
Hey Captain :D I am looking for a video cutter for my own channel. And i was wondering how you found hamster? I would like to find someone similar or slightly lower of skil, that can make fun of me and does think for themselves in editing. Its not easy to find a good cutter like him. So how did you do it? Any suggestions?
Do you think enabling micro of the carrier, for example: whenever a/the carrier(s) is kiting, the interceptors will be sucked up. (reducing the outcome damage) would it be a good nerf or not?
That doesn't fix anything. One of the complaints registered was that carriers force hard deathball commits because the damage ramps up and the leashes forces opponents to hard engage as well. You just enforce A moving even harder.
What if we give the intercepters a limited amount of fuel. You would treat the little ships almost like a spell and choose when to launch them. You can either attack at the farthest range once before the intercepters return or you can hit 5 times in a row if you're targeting an enemy that you're on top of. It would make the carrier a lot more tactical and make skill a lot more important. We could fiddle with the damage and speed as necessary.
^^^ Your fuel idea is really cool! I've brainstormed "spellcast style interceptors" before but I like the trade-offs and decision making of your solution.
This is actually the best idea I’ve seen so far. Close in for a big burst of damage or poke but either way your losing your DPS output for awhile giving the army a window of weakness meaning you don’t want too many carriers in the army.
I agree so much with all these points. The Carrier is one of the staples of late game Protoss, but it doesn't improve in any way whatsoever from micro. That in itself prevents us from seeing the Carrier as an exhibition of the brilliace of individual players... and this is linked to why Protoss so rarely wins major tournaments; it's impossible to take this unit to the next level through individual skill. When Maru controls a Marine push, you can tell Maru is using those units, rather than someone else; when Serral controls a Hydra-ling army, you can tell it's Serral. Their control of space and positioning is obvious. It changes the outcome of the fight, and that's why they win so many tournaments, and that's why they are fun to watch. But with the carrier, you can't tell the difference between Zest's carriers, and some random Platinum player's carriers. They are doing the exact same thing. There is no opportunity to change the outcome of the fight on the side of the Protoss with this unit. Thus, the Carrier will thus never be an illustration of a player's skill; it will only ever be an illustration of the Carrier's skill. One of the things that makes Starcraft amazing in the first place is because this is a strategy game where it feels like everything that happens, is the extension of you, the player, and your mind and your skill. And we only feel like this because our micro makes the difference between our army winning and losing. Carriers are a glaring exception that allow you to sit back and relax and literally do nothing while your autopilot army wins the game for you. It's a terrible unit! So let's get rid of it!
Maybe a way to rebalance it could be to introduce different types of Interceptors? I remember in the Terran gameplay trailer for very early Starcraft 2, Battlecruisers were displayed to have on-the-field, individual upgrades for their ability - one had a yamato cannon, another had a wide area laser battery, etc. Perhaps a way to make Carrier fights more interesting would be to give similar properties to the Carrier. They *are* meant to be capital ships, floating fortresses in their own right, and they are an iconic unit of Starcraft 2. Maybe when they're being rolled out, players can pick what type of interceptor an individual Carrier can produce, either locking that Carrier into that selection with an appropriate visual change or they can alter their interceptor-loadout on the fly. This would, hopefully, reward players for pre-planning and scouting, as they would be able to load their Carriers with interceptors that matched the situation. Then again, the highest I've gone is Gold and that was two years ago, kek.
I think the leash range, target firing with interceptors, and bringing interceptors out before fighting are actually pretty big elements of the carrier micro wise.
So great to hear this from a (primarily) Protoss player. As a diamond T (yes, I know, OP), I feel a strong need to one-base rush a P opponent to prevent him/her from getting into the late game and release the monsters (storm, disruptor, carrier) on me. Maybe nerfing late-game and boosting early-game P units would ease the pressure for an early rush and make the game more fun for P players as well. E.g. limiting the number of interceptors in a given airspace could reduce the deathball effect, while carriers could remain useful units in low numbers.
Then what do you do if the protoss 3 gates you on 1 base too? Is your tank out by 3:50 latest? Feel like if you go stim marine you are gonna lose to some stalker micro unless you have a sieged tank.
@@EvilSmonker If I see there is no nexus in the natural, I can go tech lab -> marauder + concussive, and build a bunker in my main. The problem with this though is a hidden startport. Then I just die to a single oracle :)
@@gergelymarton Wouldn't you be slowing down your stim timing? The moveout would be late enough to get a natural and disrupters/collusi assuming the toss does not just let you into their natural without microing back. idk I feel like 1 base all in TvP has not been meta for a very long time considering how good protoss early game can be with shield batteries, but I am a aggressive/cheese toss so take everything I say as you will lol.
I don't understand why they gave the HT a weak attack allowing protoss to F2 A-move and not lose their spell casters, but didn't do the same for the infestor (which is also a huge target).
@@74HC138 or why the disruptor can be a moved to death when F2'd. I personally like all spell casters having auto attack ever since WC3, but the lack of consistency between all the caster units are weird.
I think they should remove interceptor aggro so units would just A move into carrier directly Killing interceptor only works when carrier count is low anyway and if that's the case you can always just hold position.
That's usefull sometimes and the main problem you can't really target interceptors if they haven't priority. For example if you have big marine-ghosts-medivac army and protoss poking you with carriers (warp-in a bit suicide zeals-come to 8 range - realise interceptors-pull back carriers under batteries-cannons and disruptors) the only chance of having good trades here is actually targeting interceptors first and then the other stuff which was thrown at you(cause nothing falls back faster then interceptors). And hold-position micro is the worst thing that could happend cause, you know...storm,disruptors,colossus.
@@jonsolo32 no because Protoss also has ground units. Queens prioritize air units, but if the interceptors don’t have aggro then queens will start hitting the zealots on the ground, which is not what you want since queens suck against zealots
as a master league terran i have never been able to beat carriers. i do play mech tho but i have tried everything from mass viking to mass viking with ravens to mass liberator to thors.. nothing works and the fact that low levels can beat masters with 80 apm by just making carriers is just messed up
If you give them a maxed army of carriers, maybe. However that sounds completely off as they will die way before the 10 min mark though if they are that much worse, or you are doing something very wrong like trutling. Also, I've had many instances where I had a good mass of carriers and I was hard countered by mass thors. So your over-reliance on bio for everything is another likely issue.
@@Leonhart_93 "I've had many instances where I had a good mass of carriers and I was hard countered by mass thors" maybe your just bad at micro. (wouldnt be supprised with u low apm protoss's) at the end of the day everything this Pro level Grandmaster protoss is saying about his whole race is true
@@SlimStarCraft The best you can do is insult me based on the race I like? Try better if you want an actual response. Or perhaps you just wanted a fight.
Only if you buff ms of the carrier. It’s just another floating target after you nerf them that much (mothership?). Why discriminate so hard against strategy in favour of mechanics in rts? It should be okay for low apm units and strategies to exist if they’re competently executed strategies.
It's crazy how unique people's experiences with this game can be. In my experience with online PvP carriers have been nearly useless. They're expensive, slow and, their only attack can be totally neutralized pretty easily. But, this is in gold league and below. I'm sure the pros can make better use of them. :)
Yeah this isn’t the typical experience of most gold leaguers. My guess is your macro sucks and you build only carriers. Even if you go straight carriers you can overwhelmed units like Vikings or corrupters though if there’s a supply mismatch. But yeah it’s a unit that fights better in a group but doesn’t require any real attention while doing 60 DPS and having the interceptors tank slot of incidental damage. If you added in Templar and archons to the control group you’ve got a really hard to beat army (better with 2 CG’s). The archons and storm zone corrupters and Vikings. The carriers kill literally everything in seconds. The other problem is let’s say I go corrupters to counter your carriers. If I lose you now have a critical mass army that’s hard to stop and kills anything I make. If I win the corrupters can pee on buildings to damage them but it’s slow, has a massive CD, and you can warp in a round of stalkers to annihilate them. Basically zerg has to commit a huge amount of resources and supply to kill carriers with a unit that’s only good at killing carriers. Your carriers are never dead supply.
@@OpiatesAndTits nah, my macro is really good. It's micro management that I suck at. Which probably means I'd be better at Protoss but, ironically, I don't like them. I pretty much only ever play Zerg or Terran. So, consider this as an outsider looking in. That being said, I've been playing the game since it game out in 2010 and, in my experience, carriers are only good for beefing up an existing army. They take roughly 90 seconds to build with chrono boosting and not counting the time it takes to build interceptors. You need about six or seven carriers to make an effective group and, if your opponent just lets you build carriers for 12 to 15 minutes of game time, you're probably gonna win either way. Also, like I said before, carriers are easy to cripple. If I have one or two hydra for each carrier killing interceptors, I've found that I can pretty reliably kill all their interceptors before they can kill all my hydras. It's even easier with groups of marines. Then your opponent has a really expensive group of useless units floating around. I can build an entire, Zerg army in the time it takes my opponent to build six carriers. I can destroy entire bases before my opponent even shows up with said carriers. Then I can cripple them with hydras by just shooting their interceptors. Carriers are great at supporting armies but they make an absolutely shit army on their own. Which, ironically, is exactly how a lot of players keep trying to use them. LoL :P
Have interceptors follow the commands their carrier receives, so if the carrier kites back, the interceptors kite with it. Have the interceptors come out twice as fast, increase the latch range, and remove the leash range or reduce it to be at most 2 more than the latch range. Might need to tweak the HP too depending on how it plays. This would make it less punishing to kite for both players. I think it would be more enjoyable to play against because it would allow more control over the engagement, and it would be more enjoyable to play with because the interceptors responding to commands would provide a greater sense of control over what the army does.
I thought about making the carrier more microable and my idea was that every carrier gets its own "fleet" of interceptors that can be used as if they were one unit (like a viking or scout that can be microed (they might need a different attack for this)) but can: a) be controlled seperately from the carrier (with a fixed range limit on what they can attack like the siege tank) b) can be manually deployed and called back at any time c) reduce the carriers movement speed while deployed and increase its movement speed when they are inside the carrier that way you can micro the interceptosr but while they are out the carrier is vounerable to be rushed down so its not free to have your interceptors out at all times by doing that the protoss can micro and has to decide weather its better to keep the movement speed or commit to deploying I would appreciate feedback if thats a good idea or not (Edited for clarity)
The movement speed would be an issue because it would make it even harder for carriers and what the carriers attack to disengage from the fight. Harstem was complaining that carriers tend to end games because neither the carrier, nor the targets of the carrier can disengage from the battle without losses
@@stephenkumalo3202I think you have a point but in my mind the carriers act more like siege tanks sacrificing mobility for attack power but need good positioning and with the speed increase the carriers can acually try to disengage from the battle but in return cannot deal dmg while doing so. In addition to that it would be possible to give the carrier a fixed range (with an indicator for the protoss and the opponet) in which the interceptors can attack. This way the opponent can decide to leave the range (like with lurkers or siege tanks) and be certain that the carrier is to slow to just chase them and the interceptors cant follow for an unreasonable distance.
@@saytix2878 Your idea is honestly pretty cool. I'm reading it again, and it's pretty dope. I think I have too much nostalgia for the carrier, and that ultimately makes me not want it to change too much.
I think the brood lord is the same in a lot of ways. AND those little fuckers block all ground units from moving into range. Intercepters atleast aren't. But i agree that the carrier doesn't bring a lot of fun to the game.
carriers should be at least difficult to micro, that way whenever someone uses it really well it'll feel more rewarding than just make double digit carrier and a move to win
How? Like needing to green box the interceptors to move them around or something? It’s a fine concept “difficult to micro” but what does that mean in practice?
I agree, however I think the goal when punishing carriers shouldn't be direct nerfs on the carrier, but rather the massing of specifically just carriers or getting more than say 4-5 carriers, *I don't think a race's optimal army composition should be one unit.* I think a way to do this could be to reduce either it's air damage or ground damage and force Toss to have other units to deal with the other air/ground units? *Keeping in mind that I'm usually just a casual platinum/low diamond player.* Another change, could be to have *two stances on Carriers?* Perhaps a slower movespeed stance where the intercepters can be sent out quicker, and a higher movement speed stance that forces the intercepters back in? *Similar to Medivac boosts,* but with different speed parameters obviously. You could even have *two types of intercepters* that could be made? *Anti-air or Anti-ground?* Or additional options or different options (such as lower-health incercepters with higher DPS, or Higher-health with lower DPS). Either way, the *general way to balance is to either make the unit more specialised or weaker with the same versatility* (in my opinion). Another way would be to perhaps reduce the *movement speed* of carriers and make them more susceptable to fungal growths or EMPs? perhaps in conjunction with balancing the health/shields of carriers or intercepters to make them more vulnerable? Perhaps adding one more range to fungal (however that ability already feels oppressive at times), or even bringing back some form of ghost disable (does this exist on the raven already?) that makes carriers impotent for a period of time and forces interceptors back. I think it's a little more forgivable leaving carriers slower because Protoss has the recall ability? but it might be too slow and lead to heavy losses? Love your work @Harstem!
imo it just comes down to how carriers can all stack into a ball. Imo massive air units should require a large footprint where no other massive air units can occupy. That way carriers deathball is super dispersed, and less devestating. One carrier is rarely a problem, it's a heavy unit, takes a while to kill, but isn't invincible,, but when a player can mass 10 or so carriers into the space of one carrier,, they can do a ton of damage and be really hard to degrade. Thors are a good example,,, they are heavy, they hit hard,, but usually only a few at once and the engagement size can be controlled. Because carriers can stack, they can have maximum effect on a controlled portion of the opponents army. If they occupied space and couldn't simply stack up,, they could be buffed, make more sense for the money, be more durable as single units,, and never be OP enough to require the nerfs they currently have. (because actually,, they cost a lot, and one carrier alone is a little bit useless. Nothing gives me more confidence than knowing they have one or two carriers, because I know they will diminish instantly, and the other units will be so much fewer that they too won't be able to deal significant damage)
If it was up to me, I'd rework the carrier into a air siege unit similar to the Liberator, with a cone-shaped zone in front of the nose to make it visually distinct from Lib circles. Interceptors would only serve the role as ammunition, no longer being targetable or killable by any means (mineral costs could be shifted to the production cost) and each carrier starts with a full set of 6 or 8. Their method of attack would be completely different as well, quickly launching out in squadrons of 3 or 4 graviton catapult-style and dealing a short heavy burst of damage to a single target before returning back to the carrier. While one squadron is retreating the other is launched, so a carrier would be more dangerous the closer enemies got to it and less dangerous at their maximum range.
Interceptors don't have a higher priority; they have the same as everything else, except they are closer to the hydras than other units. SC2 has essentially only 4 different priority levels: Threat, non-threat, non-combat, structure. Threat: caster or units that can attack you. (aka interceptor to anything else, zerglings to zealots but not to voidrays) Non-threat: fighting unit that can't attack you (zergling to any air, missile turret to any ground that's not a colossus) Non-combat: overlord, probes, etc Structures: all structures except cannons, turrets, crawlers. That's why you'll see a voidray ignore a roach and shoot at a queen; roaches are non-threats while queens are treats. Easiest way to test this is to have a single marine amove on a interceptorless carrier, have the carrier build a interceptor while the marine is shooting, and see that the marine stays on target and doesn't switch to hitting the interceptor, as would be the case if the interceptor has higher target priority. (marine will switch target if its shooting a hatchery and a zergling hatched; that's what higher priority looks like). Side note, Thors don't prioritize air either, despite what many people claim. Their anti air range is just longer than their anti ground range, so they start shooting air before they even get in range to start shooting ground.
Another issue with them and with all flyers tbh is that they can stack on top of each other and attack at the same time overwhelming their targets. while ground units have to spread around their targets or even wait for some of their comrades to die before replacing them in attack range. Some fine tuning of the collision logic could make deathballs far less viable
Give it the Interdictors from Co-Op that Collarion (Fenix's Hero Carrier has), have them used like aircraft in Deserts of Kharak where you can give them a target zone to essentially patrol they drop two bombs then return to the Carrier and give them a relatively weak and close ranged A2G weapon for self-defense, with Interceptors only being able to attack air. Maybe increase the Carrier's supply to 8, make Interceptors squishier then they are now and lower the carrier's movement speed slightly and try to lean into the Carrier being a higher then average commitment unit. Other then that, I'd argue to reintroduce Scourges and Devourers to the Zerg Roster in some form or another and give Terrans something to either hinder the Carriers themselves or deal with the Interceptors easier. I'm just spitballing ideas though, but I think less "removed" and more "reworked".
Can we just appreciate that for this 10:06 video, Kevin spent at least 52 minutes in Unit Tester, and Hamster probably another 2-3 hours in editing, balancing audio etc. That's a ratio of 1:18 - it took Harstem and Hamster 18 times longer to make this video, than it did you to enjoy it. As a small youtuber myself, I just wish this was more common knowledge. It's a ******* load of work.
I generally like the existence and concept of the carrier as a unit, but do understand the somewhat clunky unexciting role of the unit at the same time. Definitely agree that it could be tweaked to be better (not stronger).
I don’t really see an issue with the carrier. An effective protoss army will have multiple support units to keep those carriers from being picked off and it makes perfect sense to take the squishy interceptors out first in the hydra example. That said deathballs can be boring and perhaps air units should have some collision mechanics added to prevent them from clumping up too much, this would make it harder to protect them and focus their power in a small space.
one suggestion I read many years ago before Disruptors and Liberators existed is that you pick a circle in the map and your Interceptors go and engage any enemy within that circle, then you can choose them to take another circle (after a cooldown) or to come back to the Carrier. Carriers do still have a cast time, but they are free to move after that and have a more generous leash range, and if you want to evade the Interceptors you just micro around the circle area, like you would against Liberators. And also you can have different abilities and upgrades, like bombers that do extra dmg against armored targets, or fighters that do extra dmg against air, or assault parties that do extra dmg over time against land units.
I believe it would be great to nerf the interceptors' DPS and add some special abilities like low damage splash bombing or medium damage solar beam, to be called manually once in a while. Of course, it all should be somehow different than the Yamato gun or the Void Ray.
Might be smart to reduce the damage that carriers do vs air. That would at least force the protoss to mix up their unit comp and micro the carrier targeting for optimal damage.
may be a good idea. Really carriers do not require any thinking what your opponent is up to. it kills all other unit compositions and bases equally well.
Interceptor should never reenter the carrier, never fly away, and attack from any angle. So it could do less damage at border and full damage at center, making it a strategic weapon that you control the dangerousness of the distance in exchange for damage!
Maybe make interceptors lower in the attack priority or even not targetable at all and then give carriers an ability to deploy interceptors, either to an area pr just near the carrier.
My solution would be to make carriers cost 2 more supply, but also have slightly more health/shields. That way they can be a viable late game capital ship to soak damage in a bigger fight, but you can't mass enough to provide all the DPS by themselves. You'd need to supplement them with other units.
I think it would be cool for the deployment of interceptors to be an ability you need to cast on a single target, then once the target is destroyed the interceptors go back into the carrier. Then, have the cooldown be dependant on how many interceptors survived. You'll probably have to tweak the numbers a bit to balance it, but I see this change putting the carrier into a different role entirely.
I always thought it would be interesting if you could modify the attack priority of units on the fly. Like, say if you alt-click a unit, then all selected units now have that unit as their highest attack priority. But would probably make ling runbys broken as you could just ignore cannons and swarm the workers
It would make banelings useless in TvZ if you could just tell your marines to auto-target banelings. And also it would make players like Clem and Maru who have spent hundreds of hours just practicing that single skill no longer stand out for their ability to target fire banes so masterfully.
@@KrossFire330 yeah, would probably change the game too much. Would be an interesting mechanic in a new RTS though if it were designed with that in mind from the start.
Protoss is too air heavy not to have the carrier. Spore crawlers would destroy skytoss without carriers. For example. If the colossus had immunity from air attacks I would be okay with it. But really how do you expect to attack a terran base without carriers? Maybe if tempests had a buff on their attack speed. Something has to fill in the gap. Toss is too fragile.
The Problem with Sc2 is that the game is too Air Heavy besides BCs and Carriers look at the air units in Broodwar they were dynamic they were exciting they were flawed. Wtf is a Voidray or a corruptors weakness? The only way to beat them is more supply. And they are boring af
@@catra195 such a good point to bring up. In SC1, the carrier was a superior air unit, but it had more air hard counters like scourge and wraiths, which I'm pretty sure were cost-effective for dealing with expensive carriers. Also I think protoss had a harder time turtling in sc1, so I don't think rushing to carriers without a ground army first, was viable. I'm no expert tho.
@@will.roman-ros yea exactly BeastyQt made a good point too, even if you get T3 units that doesn't mean they just beat everything the right T1 and T2 units can still counter them. Which I think makes for a fun back and forth head game as opposed to just mass BC or Broodlord or Carriers and chew through 3 remaxes of your opponents army and a move their main and you win
When I first played the campaign of SC1 as a child, I was blown away by this unit. It was my absolute favourite simply due to how it functioned. I had never before seen anything like it in an RTS before. It is one of the signature units of StarCraft, similar to the Terran Siege Tank and the Zerg Zergling and Hydralisk. Making a StarCraft game without these units is like making an Omelette without eggs, or a Lord of the Rings world/story without Elves and Dwarves. Units like this need to be made to work, and work well and fun; the Carrier is simply no easy task to make work for competitive play, it needs a master gamedesigner to work on it; not the interns and token hires.
my suggestion would be make them semi-casters like the BC. reduce the range the interceptors can be from the carrier but add modes similar to the liberator where the carrier sieges up (becoming unmovable) to gain the range they currently have. To compensate for the regular mode reduced range and the siege mode reduced movement I would let the interceptors launch instantly or at least much faster. This lets the carrier fulfill its current role but reduced the micro-management requirement inequity between carriers and other units.
The carrier is like a swarm host, just make the units have timed life and manually launched with a press of a button. No minerals, just a cooldown for each one built. Problem solved -- it requires micro and you have to retreat and wait for reloading making them highly vulnerable.
Could just make the interceptors more expensive. Means The protoss has to get something done with them because a back and forth stalemate will bankrupt them.
honestly this is all really why carrier should have an actual attack, having that reason to move in and attack with them would help with the engagement feel. Nerf the interceptors to be a more defensive mechanic rather than core attack (think a release interceptor button like that one HOTS mission with the hyperion) and make the carrier damage come from the giant ship itself. Clolarion from coop would be a great example if tweaked, have a massive anti-air laser, move the bombing interceptors to be a melee range carrier attack to ground, microing to get over the enemies ground units to bomb them while zoning out the air with your laser and timing your release of interceptors to intercept damage would make it one of the most micro intensive and rewarding units instead of the least.
So basically they’d have powerful beam attack against air and the interceptors would need to be microed to bomb the ground units? Encouraging putting the carriers up front. Yeah I was thinking the opposite though the interceptors are meant to zone anti air while the carrier itself has a powerful anti ground weapon. Things like hydras get burned but they murder interceptors while the interceptors are meant to zone/tie up enemy air units. The carrier has to move in close to use its powerful AG weapons and it creates some push and pull. The carrier can’t just sit back and kill everything and if they sent out the interceptors alone they’ll get butchered by spores, queens, or hydras (marines, cyclones, ghosts as well). The siege role goes back to the tempest. The interceptors support the void rays.
Remove the ability for units to shoot interceptors. Make the number of interceptors proportional to the shield (Full shield on Carrier 8, Half shield 4, O shield none). Et voilà. you have a unit with a mecanic, where both the attacket and the defender have to play around. + EMPS screw them, while batteries help them. (more things to play with)
the sc2 developers have always known the design of carriers was a problem, but the unit is so iconic and beloved by the fanbase (going back to 1998) that it had to stay i could be misremembering, but i could've sworn they declared their intent to remove carriers in either HotS or LotV to make space for the tempest, but the fans rejected that proposal. not sure what the solution is. i think in some single-player modes or potential patches the carrier's interceptors were a storm-like spell, which could mix things up
Yeah carriers were already problematic in BW and still are to this day. Harstem's arguments here pretty much apply to BW too. Not necesarily an OP unit, but a unit that sucks the fun out of everyone involved, even the viewers lol.
This is probably very true but also, games grow and mature and evolve. I don't think there's anything wrong with keeping carriers really close to their original design but not working on old SC1 mechanics like building fighters, costing minerals to do so, and the fighters being attackable units. Brood lords are interesting and balanced still. Re-imagining carriers around current play paradigms doesn't mean they go away or change entirely. It's fine to have a spiritual successor or just an evolution of an idea. People who like mass carriers suck anyway :P
It’s huge they have 14 leash which I think gives them an effective 15 leash range if they work like brood lords. Either way 14 is the longest range unit in the game. Worse the interceptors are out for like 40-45 seconds that’s around 2400 damage total output from one carrier before armor factors in. With 8 carriers they do nearly 20k damage in that 40 second window.
make it so that interceptors can only attack air to air (like the mini air-fighters that they are) and then give carriers an activated spell ability similar to the motherships original (alpha) air to ground ability that deals massive damage to everything directly underneath it
I'd reduce the leash range to maybe 1 longer than the launch range so that it's easier to disengage from without having the carrier launch against something only for the interceptors to return immediately. And as a few other people have said, giving the "I'm attacking" target priority to the carrier instead of its interceptors would probably help a lot. Then what if you redesigned the way carriers' launch system works to act more like a spell caster. Instead of training interceptors for minerals, you build up charges over time, activating the ability launches all the interceptors you have built up and is on auto-cast by default, but recovering an interceptor is only worth half a charge instead of a whole one (represents re-arming vs re-building) and make the launch mechanics a bit like battle star Galactica where the fighters all launch from their tubes instantly but have a relatively long recovery animation. that way the carriers have a short period between strikes where they're more vulnerable and there is an advantage to switching the carriers to manual launch control if you have the APM for it so that they can't be baited out leaving the carriers vulnerable. I think it would give the carrier a lot more micro and counter micro potential without changing its flavor too much or stepping too much on the swarm host. if you wanted to make them more complicated, you could also think about giving them multiple interceptor types like a fighter that's basically the current one but shorter launch and leash range for up close and personal DPS, an interdictor that is anti-ground only with something like a mini banshee attack, and an interceptor that is anti-air only with something like mini scout missiles that do a little bit of damage to nearby targets.
As a Zerg player, yeah Brood Lords have the same problem. BLs are really easy to micro in combat, which is nice since the Zerg lategame is so spellcaster-heavy, but it's the same issue that Harstem has with carriers. I think I would prefer BLs to be more like Swarm Hosts, where you can launch an attack and then run away but still micro the locusts. It makes me wonder if that's a good solution for both - make broodlings and interceptors controllable, so suddenly your micro becomes important.
I think that's only part of it though. This is ignoring most of the other points that harstem made -- it's not just about the micro. When brood-lords enter the game, there are always many fights, and most of them are quite entertaining. Yes, the micro might be easier for the person with broods and harder for the other person, but that's the actual strength of the "capital ship" class. It's only when combined with the fact that they are *not fun* that it becomes a problem. Remember, he didn't say that carriers were OP, he said they made the game suck. Carriers promote death-ball style of army control, whereas brood-lords don't do that so much. Carriers promote a boring ending, where the players just stumble into a fight that has "is what it is" with no opportunity for either side to back off and re-engage from a different angle. Carrier fights are all-or-nothing, which makes it always a boring lead-up and to an all-or-nothing gamble. Brood-lords don't do this so much, and in fact, brood lords are always an exciting addition to the game. Their slow, strategic, positional play always creates opportunities for unique pushes and counter-attacks on either side.
I think broods are extremely vulnerable tho, because you need something to defend them with/cant leave them out in the open, when carriers and bc's go brrrrr 😅 that being said, i love carriers, but they should get countered abit harder so micro becomes more important. So less shields/hp/movement speed even maybe
Would making Interceptors controllable, so the basically fly around Carriers and you can select them as units, maybe make this better? It would at least require a bit more micro
No, because they would still be a screen which is what's keeping carriers super safe. They are essentially flying zealots where they got enough speed and are disposable to the point where the boon of the unit is that you don't need to micro them.
How about significantly reducing the range at which the interceptors stat out, but adding an upgrade that allows carriers to get a short burst of speed like the medivak. That way, the protoss has to move their carriers to stay just out of reach of the enemies but stay inside the interceptor range, making for some potentially cool micro?
Carrier should be a campaign unit like the Warhound and the Leviathan. It's a cool unit to bash the AI with but it is NOT a good unit for balanced, competitive play
Lets not forget, that pre HOTS Blizzard actually did want to replace the Carrier with the Tempest. However community backlash , mostly on the grounds on how nostalgic and iconic the boat was, kept it in. Anyway that the version I heard.
Other than the range issues - a potential 'fix' could be that the Carrier begins with a full bank of interceptors, but it costs a large amount to replenish, say 50-60 minerals per interceptor. Hear me out for the reasoning below =) Late game, it would mean the same engagements, because the player could have more cash by the late game (potentially), but earlier on in mid-game, they are just as powerful for a single battle, but less viable overall with the risk of losing those interceptors, because cash is a prohibiting factor of damaging battles. So their power remains, but it costs a significant amount to just brute force through everything. This would reduce the incentive for a player to just go straight in to an engagement with a carrier death ball, because they would need to mass a larger (late game) stash of cash before it was 'as' viable. So for that last part - In the event that the player decides that they just want to turtle and mass carriers with an additional set of support units - the cost of those support units would increase the risk that the player would have spent their 'interceptor replenishment money'.
So, it is imbalanced? ;-) Edit: I fully support this video and Kevin’s points. Especially that the Carrier is waaay to easy to use, compared to how hard it is to counter it. I don’t know how a different targeting mechanic would work, but interceptor cost should definitely be increased, I think. That way, the risk of fielding a carrier would increase, and a potential loss of a single carrier would be more consequential.
By this logic, should swarm hosts also be removed as well considering they dont add any value with micro. The only thing I can think of is positioning but thats the case with every unit anyways.
They are basically removed, because they’re so bad, that you can only use them against mech without bc‘s. And I think it would be fine if the carrier has like on or two situations, but you won’t the See them in the majority of the games
@@isy6047 lurker micro isn’t that easy but not that hard either. Lurkers get outranked by tanks so you have to micro vipers to obduct tanks and your army to push ghosts back. But they probably need a nerf
My proposed solutions: 1. Keep carrier attack range as is, but reduce the leash range down to only slightly past the launch range. I want carriers to be the workhorse unit of air. A sack of hitpoints with a swarm of high damage babies. We already have the tempest for long range. 2. Carriers get an ability that, when used, launches all interceptors immediately, and forces them to stay out till the ability goes on cd. This gives makes carriers able to engage quickly, but also gives them a window of vulnerability while the spell is on cd, and it also makes them (slightly) less brain-dead to use. 3. Interceptor build time significantly increased, and cost kept the same, or slightly increased. Carriers come with a full 8 interceptors when built. I want losing interceptors to hurt, and I want killing interceptors to feel like a win. A carrier that gets its interceptors completely wiped should be out of action for a long time.
one could also change how the carriers work completely too. instead of releasing a swarm of interceptors make it 4 or 3, and that you can individually control each interceptor to maximize its efficiency. adding another layer of complexity to it, while also adding a vulnerability with little/bad micromanagement. or something like that. I dunno, I don't know sht. But it don't necessarily have to be interceptors at all, maybe just have them drop bombs or something.
I agree that carriers are problematic, but making them useless is less than ideal. Either replace them with another unit (I know ... it's a lot of work for blizzards' sole sc2 intern) or rebalance it. Increasing interceptor cost and changing target priority are all viable venues
If you think the unit promotes undesirable gameplay, it should be replaced or modified equally in power. Not just made worse so that it's never used. Its current power is part of the game's balance.
I have several idea! In the case of carriers: Increase the nuber of interceptors from 6 to 10 or 12 Increase suply requirement from 6 to 15 Increase cost to 450/350 and maybe production time as well Give an ability to send out interceptors to a certain location and the interceptors patrol in this area (area diameters of 6 or something) with the current leash range. They shoud not release automatically. In this case the carrier would be an extreamly vulnerable unit compared to the cost and how small your army would be with them in it. Also you would have to babysitt them to send interceptors to the proper location to zone out incoming thret otherwise the carriers would be easy target for cheeky corruptors, abducts or vikings (if the incerceptors in a wrong side of the army).
i think u are going in the right direction i think interceptors need to get a bit less health, i mean they are clearly to tanky, cost down propably idk give carriers more suppy or nerv thier health pool or something but give them more interceptors more build time maybe... so if someone actually kites you your interceptors die a lot, they should not tank the AA the player should send ground reinforcements to make a proper attack and if the enemy gets to the carriers they should die fast, so propably nerv the interceptor operating range
I agree with you from a previous vid of yours about balance that the carrier should be a support unit that you have a couple and thats it. Maybe add a max 2 or 4 limit to it with some hp buff and nerf interceptor hp + less priority (Also buff mothership) Edit: Give a 2 limit and add that planetcracker beam from the cinematics as an ability. Channeled beam targets the ground and makes an increasing area that dmgs nearby units Or retro thor styled fixed dmg on one unit over a period of time
I couldn't agree more. I'm a protoss main, but the carrier is my least favorite unit in the game. Everything about it is unhealthy for gameplay, especially in the current meta.
I did remember that before actually in beta The Carrier was made the capital ship; there was a concept of Old "Tempest" a carrier like a unit that had a different kind interceptor; Nostalgia won that they added back carrier. Also, carriers used to have a slightly less interceptor max limit, before it was raised to 8. That was an upgraded carrier interceptor limit. The current problem of carriers is their insane DPS: hard to micro anything when everything is getting killed by a swarm of the interceptor.
What if... they made the interceptor auto-deploy latency much longer (takes longer to have all interceptors out of the carriers and fighting) but also add a manually casted ability to the Carrier which allows them to deploy all interceptors almost instantly (or much faster). This ability could have a rather long cooldown to make Protoss think carefully if they want to engage, and it would increase the necessary micro to make the Carrier fight at the top of its strength. This would also make deathballs less deadly since if you manage to disengage after the Protoss uses the Carrier's ability they lose some burst power on the subsequent re-engagement.
I dont play SC but i like the carriers, theyre a cool unit, maybe they could have more units and more supply, so you ahve more individual units and they could be more of a death ball only army where you cant really split them
You have convinced me that Carriers are the best designed unit in Starcraft 2. The need for micro in Starcraft is NOT GOOD. If someone can beat your superior strategy with faster reflexes and no thinking, that's not a strategy game. The only reason Starcraft players like micromanaging is because everyone else quit. Blizzard waited for everyone who hated starcraft 1 to quit, then focused on making starcraft 2 appeal to the people who were still playing. They keep making this mistake. It's why every Diablo game is focused on long term grinding - because the majority of players, who didn't like the grind, only played through Diablo 1 or 2 a few times and then quit, and Blizzard listened to the people who didn't quit. In a real strategy game, where micro doesn't help much, it's a lot less painful to be a newbie, and the skill ceiling is much higher.
I know many diamond players who quit the game due to the void ray - > carrier meta, and I play way less as well since it became a thing over a year ago. I can't really put my finger on what kind of a nerf the carrier should go through, perhaps reducing the health of the interceptors or making them more costly is one way to go, or may be remove the auto make interceptors so that carriers require at least some actions to be good. On the other hand, there are protoss units that require a lot of micro, like the oracle or the sentry, and I don't see them used enough in the lower leagues simply because its way easier winning with carriers, even in Masters, or low GM leagues (perhaps even semi pro). So buffing those units as a compensation for a carrier nerf is also an option, so that high level tosses aren't just nerfed due to this change, and lower level tosses have a reason to start using those over the nerfed skytoss armies.
Don't forget that this is not a balance suggestion, but how I believe that units should function in sc2.
If the carrier ever would be removed (or significantly nerfed) there would have to be buffs somewhere else for protoss or nerfs in terran/zerg lategame.
I am specifically eyeing the Broodlord when it comes to that as it has very similar issues to the carrier.
A possible way would be to change the mothership again to allow something like the Arbiter back into the game. However, that would change Protoss entirely and add another caster unit on the side.
Then again, I was never a fan of the mothership in the first place. It feels extremely tacked on to the game.
Totally agree with both cases - Broodlord and Carriers. I think what would help a lot in Broodlord case is lowering broodling HPs and make them not collide with other units (similar to colossus with lesser ground units) so you would kill them faster and you would be also still able to get under them to kill them more easily.
@@SatikCZE Same goes for BCs.
one suggestion I read many years ago before Disruptors and Liberators existed is that you pick a circle in the map and your Interceptors go and engage any enemy within that circle, then you can choose them to take another circle (after a cooldown) or to come back to the Carrier.
Carriers do still have a cast time, but they are free to move after that and have a more generous leash range, and if you want to evade the Interceptors you just micro around the circle area, like you would against Liberators.
And also you can have different abilities and upgrades, like bombers that do extra dmg against armored targets, or fighters that do extra dmg against air, or assault parties that do extra dmg over time against land units.
@@ParleLeVu BCs are in a weird boat where they're really best used for harass and not much else. In TVZ you might be able to make a case, but overall the BC is just really weak compared to other races' T3 units. Use it against protoss, and they easily get countered by mass stalker or voidrays. Use it against terran, and they're already be weak due to the tons of vikings built due to the TVT meta. Its the strongest vs zerg, yet it can still be defended by mass hydra or many queens, and can be held easier especially if the zerg makes vipers. Its the only t3 unit in the game where it only really shines when you rush it and use it for harass, because theres so little to counter it early, but it always becomes less valuable as the game goes on.
Send it in to 'is it imba or do i suck', then someone who really knows about the game will tell you if it should be removed or not
9:56 he anticipated that
The essence of it would be "If you were a lot better then you could win against this opponent and that means that the game is perfectly balanced because I have no idea what balance is".
He also states that he doesn't think it's imbalanced at about 4:45 he thinks it's just a bad unit. Bad to watch, bad to play with, and bad to play against.
Bad to watch: slows down the flow of the game way too much.
Bad to play against: interceptor range and priority limits micro capabilities of the non-carrier player. The lack of control required to use the carrier allows the attacker to focus more with casters.
Bad to play with: it doesn't gain significant value from being microed. What it's capable of is fairly static from Gold to GM, meaning as you play faster/better players it doesn't retain its value as much as other units.
Essentially it's a crutch at lower levels to get to higher levels but because of its poor scaling it becomes less significant at higher levels.
Yeah. not imbalanced, since it has hard counters. I think the big complaint here is that it is just boring in regards to gameplay and a low skill unit.
@@peterthepeter7523 The hell are you talking about. The point is "its not IMBA because you can just get better and win. You lost because you are bad, not because the enemy is using unbeatable units".
Give the carrier an ability to charge into a target and cause a nuke level damage.... Then call the ability "Tassadar"
As a carrier pilot, I am offended Harstem is trying to get my job removed.
as much as i see carriers are always on autopilot:D
Must be a real tough job.
Dey tuk er jeebs
Learn to code
The removal of carriers will bring new and exciting jobs.
Personally I would like to see some change that keeps the overall power of the unit, but make it need good micro to reach that power
The swarmy nature of this unit always screamed Zerg to me but this is such an iconic unit. Instead of removing them I would love to see scourges and lockdown(possibly by a unit other than ghosts) reintroduced as counters.
We have lockdown, except it doesnt immobilize, its interference matrix
Let vikings emp muhahahahahahahahahahaha
We already have the disable missilr on the raven but it is not really feasible as a counter for the carrier
@@Max-sz9ez The Viper's abduct is closer to what I have in mind, but doesn't force the opponent to decide between defending the unit(s) or pulling back.
@@xXNightsWatchXx Possibly some type of self healing mechanic similar to the Reapers or Mutalisks would make sense against capital ships, but I wouldn't want to see it in other situations.
Harstem has such a dry sense of humor I sometimes can't tell if he's joking or not.
He′s always joking
Based on how his arguments make sense, I'm going to guess he's not joking.
He's not joking this time and I agree with him.
I mean, yeah after watching the video it's clear.
You could disable its "attack" and give it an ability that marks something to send interceptors at, if the mark disappears(target dies/out of range etc) something else has to be marked or interceptors go back kinda like cyclone lock on but instead of projectiles, it launches interceptors. Also could consider putting a short cooldown on it or no retargeting until the marked unit dies/gets out of range, stuff like that. rip mass carrier amove
I've been thinking this for years. Regardless of balance, it's boring and removes depth from the game. Thank you!
Fuck all boring about it. If your going to say this, it's boring that Zerg can remake an army instantly. PROPER FUCKING BORING GAMEPLAY. Your talking about depth in the game, yes coz Zerg can a-move an army into you, without even looking at the screen if they so choose, and then insta remax? Yeah, real depth buddy.
@@johnmellan1732 you seem to have absolutely no clue about the game
@@johnmellan1732 take it easy
But, how is protoss ever going to fight lurkers in mid to late game tho?
@@matthewsmith546 lurkers need to have a few crumpled up to be efficient, and they are burrowed and can’t move to dodge Disrupter’s ball *hint* *hint*
I would like to kind of a rework of the carrier. Give them an activated ability to release the interceptors (instead of releasing them automaticly on attack command). The interceptors have a time limit they can stay on the battlefield before they need to return to the carrier. That way it is more micro intensive and gives them a window where they are vulnerable when the ability is on cooldown.
Kind of like a flying swarm host
@@pablovirus Except the Interceptors cannot go beyond the leash range like the swarm hosts, but instead "swarm" around the carrier for the time. Maybe give the carrier a normal attack itself which does as much damage as a pheonix, but a lot more with interceptors for a short time on cooldown
Or give them a new ground weapons and make the interceptors an air only attack.
Sounds like the aircraft carrier from rise of nations
@@app2530 the aircraft carrier from RA2 only has 3 interceptors, which only fire 1 volley before going back to reload. Each interceptor is also extremely fragile, but replacements are free. The leash range is enormous, but the carrier is completely defenseless against other aircraft or naval ships.
Basically it's a unit that sucked and no one ever used it. Your mention of other games reminded me of it.
Carriers in BW (and even WoL) served the role of an air unit that out-ranged static defenses. This mirrored the Guardian from Zerg and the Battlecruiser (specifically with the Yamato Cannon) from Terran. Side note: the control group limitations in BW make the Carrier even higher on the easy-to-use scale (higher supply units means more supply per control group).
There were a number of things in BW that made Carriers a bigger risk. They started with 0 Interceptors, meaning they were vulnerable to attack. They also had certain interactions where low-health interceptors wouldn't come out, so Plague became a big counter.
In HotS, the Protoss "air siege" role was also taken by the Tempest. If Carriers are to stay in the game, then they should have a role that is separate from the Tempest. There are two ways I can see this working:
1) Make the Carrier a different kind of glass cannon than the Tempest.
The carriers themselves should be rather tanky, but the interceptors should not. Let's nerf interceptors down to 20/20 HP/Shields. Maybe even increase the Carrier's health as a result. The carrier itself becomes a tank, but its weapons are quickly whittled down. Harstem mentioned critical mass being important, so this should make it easier to remove that critical mass rather quickly. It also allows the opponent to benefit from the current AI, where interceptors would just be shredded, and then the Carrier becomes a 6-supply shell. Or an 8-supply shell, if we change that value as well.
In this regard, the Carrier becomes a unit that can quickly be disabled, and is then just taking up supply. It would be easier to hunt down than a tempest. Whether to go Carrier or Tempest would be based on whether you are more worried about snipes or splash. It doesn't perfectly fix the F2 problem, but it does make Carriers more of a consideration than a win button.
2) Make the Carrier a tank unit.
This solution is simple: reduce the number of attacks from each Interceptor from 2 to 1. This will effectively halve the damage potential of the Carrier. It means critical mass takes longer to reach. It means Void Rays and Tempests become much more attractive for their damage potential. The Carrier may still be very strong if you have 130 supply of them, but players would be encouraged to mix up their army. The carrier itself becomes airborne cover for sniping ground units, and the interceptors become distractions for the AI.
If they are still too strong, then we can do some of the above as well: increase the supply to 8, or decrease the Interceptor health to 30/30.
I think 2) will only enhance the turtle play.
But I think 1) would work perfectly. Heck, I think maybe even decrease the interceptor build-time as a "buff" to balance. Then against a high anti-air DPS army, these interceptors will do more harm to the economy then to the enemy. And I am pretty sure it does fix the F2 problem, since for most anti-air units, the interceptors are exactly what they should aim for. This would increase the micro for the carriers as well, because you almost always want to move them away from the battle field so that their interceptors won't get killed one by one as they pop out.
This doesn't solve the issue outlined in the video. He didn't say he believe that the carrier is OP. The problem with the carrier is the gameplay not the balance.
The problem was never that the carrier is to strong. It is that (1) microing it makes things worse, (2) microing against it can make things worse, (3) it encourages turtling and avoiding fights.
All the above makes the game less fun. Your suggestions do not address any of these issues.
Funny thing is that carriers in BW have a very high mico or rather apm potential, as they're not supposed to ever stop moving (unless attacking) because that means the interceptors go back inside which causes the next attack to be delayed.
I always felt like the solution in SC2 could involve making the Interceptors untargetable.
@@TheDapperHeretic isn't that just the campaign void ray though? Where they just get stronger longer they fight?
Just change the interceptor function.
Make the carrier siege. Somewhat faster than siege tanks and liberators and more like fast borrow for mines and lurkers.
Make interceptors non-targetable so the unit AI doesn't require absurd micro-ing of defensive units and the carrier body is the target.
Then interceptors have to be made but not remade.
I feel like stripping the carrier of it's interceptors and then hunting it down with AA is THE anti-carrier micro tho, making the interceptors untargettable would have the opposite effect of what we want.
Would love to see some shift in power towards other units in the protoss army, gateway army (T1/T1.5) feels so crappy compared to the other races past early game.
Gateway units unfortunately have to be intentionally crappy due to warp-ins and the existence of the warp prism. Being able to spawn your units all the way across the map near instantaneously is massively powerful.
It's the reason that all gateway units (actually all protoss units) only have one tier of upgrades (blink, charge, and glaives), while the other races get 2 upgrades for most of their core units. (Stim + Combat, Stim + Concussive) for terrans, (Metabolic boost + Adrenal, Hydra range + move speed, lurker burrow + range, ultra armor + speed).
@@bayanzabihiyan7465 Agreed, although Zerg can use nydus and terran gets easy "cheap" medivacs.
It IS crappy. it doesn't just feel like it. They don't want us to be able to fight without storm or disruptor since LotV.
@@bayanzabihiyan7465 Personally, I want to see Gateways buffed and Warp Gates nerfed. Gateways should have a faster build time than the counterpart Warpgate cooldown. A choice between build speed and convenience, instead of a 100% upgrade.
@@danielskrivan6921 true, plus it could help with protoss early game as they take so long to bring out any units, though you would need to either remove or decrease the price of warpgate
Carriers should have to enter "seige mode" like tanks but its "interceptor launch mode"
That might not fix the issue with protoss' turtling on bases. If anything it might worsen it.
but tanks also have an auto-attack, so should we give the carrier an auto attack as well?
@@squibbae if it cannot deploy interseptors while having auto attack, it will make some sense and would be cool, not that useful, but still interesting
I have been on this hill dying alone for years! and finally FINALLY someone with more authority and recognition says it. Harstem I am but a lowly Low Master Protoss but be the change we need to see, show the other Protoss that turtling to Skytoss is NOT the way PvZ should be played. Lets get back to crushing Zerg with efficient unit trades and sharp timings.
Seriously you have no idea how many years I have been on this train for. How much I want to see this change!
What compensatory buffs are you proposing to protoss then?
Absolutely, I quit playing the game over ZvP, I just got so tired of someone walling off and then coming over with the air deathball A-move. I _know_ I can beat that, but at my skill level vs the amount of effort they are doing (just camp and deathball) it completely demotivated me.
Until Lurkers don't dominate all protoss ground with ridiculous efficiency, there's not going to be much room for any PvZ lategame that isn't skytoss. All-in timing attacks can still potentially work in the midgame, but if it goes to late game tech, if you're not skytoss, you're basically dead.
About reworking/repurposing the Carrier, there's also another factor that I think tends to be overlooked: that the unit has a almost 25 year long history of being THE iconic Protoss capital ship.
I'd argue that:
1) one cannot give it the Tempest treatment (repurposed during HotS development from anti-air splash to long-range siege) at this point and drastically change how it works. That ship has sailed. At the very least, it should continue to be slow and have Interceptors, or it wouldn't be the Carrier anymore.
2) Along with the Marine and the Hydralisk, I think that the Carrier is an iconic part of what defines the Starcraft races and it would be sad to see it removed from the game.
Keep it around IMHO, but yeah, feel free to tweak how Interceptor release/recall, enemy unit targeting etc, works.
Mostly agree (and for my biases I play Protoss). However, I would much rather the Carrier was actually removed (or ideally replaced) than nerfed to unviability but left in the game. I think there are changes that could be made that might make it less problematic and still viable (e.g. significantly increase interceptor cost), and I think those would be best. However, if you're going to deliberately make it a useless unit, please just remove it entirely.
Bliz’s method for fixing problematic units, beat it with nerf bat until it quits twitching. #Feelsbadman
Interceptor cost wouldn't weaken a typical carrier all in though. If protoss fights into spores too often they loose anyway. Maybe removing them entirely would really be better.
Protoss have the most air units anyway, 8: 5 from stargate 2 form robo + Mothership. Zerg has 4+ 3Overlord varinats, Terran 6.
Maybe another ground unit, for example a more stable and reliable alternative to disruptors would be cool. Sth different against lurkers and tanks.
*cries in swarm host*
I think Harstem is only suggesting a huge nerf as a compromise for the reality that Blizzard is way more likely to fiddle with numbers than to just delete a whole unit from the game. If there was an real chance that they would delete it, I think he'd push for that instead.
You nerf it in specific areas so that it becomes a niche unit or serves a specific purpose (and make sure that the purpose is different than that of the Tempest).
Would it be more interesting if the carrier was changed to be a spellcaster that used a certain number of fighers for spells instead of energy? Thoughts I had include sending out a fighter a long distance to get vision, deploy a group to bomb a ground target you have vision of, and "intercept" where the fighters circle a friendly unit and shoot enemy air units for a few seconds while being untargetable. After completing their mission (assuming they don't die on a long-range one), they leave a smoke trail back to the carrier and then take time to recharge.
Could be cool if "spawn 8 interceptors" was an ability that cost energy + minerals, and the interceptors died after N seconds (like MULEs do). So carriers become more of a tactical unit rather than a flying siege tank that just continually grinds down enemy armies from a safe distance.
In lower-leagues, people could then trick protoss to cast all his carriers to release interceptors, run away, repeat, then stomp him when they're low on energy - not massive amount of micro or intelligence needed.
That just makes the protoss even weaker to EMP and make carrier weak to feedback.
@@HellecticMojo That was why I said they have a figher limit and use fighters to cast "spells" INSTEAD of energy. They don't use energy and can't be feedbacked, and EMP will only deplete their shields.
@@HellecticMojo yes, exactly
@@Necrocidal EMP does not need more value against the protoss.
Also - what if the Carrier was like a kind of flying production structure and interceptors were a more fairly costed, individually controllable unit that costs supply, but still has a very low build time (and still have a leash range to the Carrier). I think that could be more balanced and quite fun.
EDIT: since some people seem to be getting the wrong idea - maybe I worded this poorly. I'm NOT suggesting the Carrier actually become a structure (it would still be able to move and still cost supply).
I don't think the Carrier would need that many changes to become maybe some kind of a static defense-like unit?
@@3d_win I'm not suggesting it become static at all. I'm not really suggesting it become a structure, just for it to function a bit more like a production structure than it currently does.
yeah, if you could micro interceptors, but carriers had to go into a siege mode to launch them, it would make for some crazy micro battles
@@Mysterious-Stranger a structure, meaning 0 supply cost?
@@Mysterious-Stranger Well, all structures are static, and that's kinda what I'm implying. I'm not disagreeing with you.
Maybe reintroduce the graviton catapult upgrade, and decrease the extended leash range (from 14 perhaps all the way down to 10 or 8). That way, carriers have much more poke potential, and enemies aren’t punished as hard when retreating. Also, change attack priority around perhaps so that interceptors are at equal or lesser attack priority. I’m bad at sc2 but if I had to pick some changes those would be it.
That wouldn’t do it
attack priority of interceptors and carriers are the same, the reason interceptors are being targeted is because they are way closer to the enemy
Honestly in some contexts you just made them way better lol
Hyper-focus on micro has been a plague on the Real-Time "Strategy" genre for an extremely long time. Warcraft 3 made good moves with liberal use of autocast spells, allowing players to focus most of their combat attention on hero actions, and reducing unnecessary base micro actions so that the player could focus on map awareness and control. SC2 brought in forced base micro mechanics and significantly more manual-only abilities, which taxes players to do little busywork tasks that there is no good reason for them to have to do.
In a "strategy" game, wins and losses should not be primarily decided by actions-per-minute and twitch reflexes. That is the realm of the first person shooter, or the MOBA. Strategy games should involve outsmarting your opponent on a larger scale. In this case, a strong unit that attacks with a swarm of expendable units should have cost-effective counters, such as anti-air with significant splash damage so that it can outpace swarm unit production and neutralize the threat.
Brood war was popular precisely because of micro. The reason it became so important to this series is because of the clunky AI of the original game, which could be improved drastically by quick and precise unit control. It's not a plague but one of the main causes of it's success.
The problem sc2 has is that the AI is amazing and there's no cap to the number of selected units. The carrier exemplifies the worst kind of battles in the game and as Harstem points out, actively prevents you from making them fun or interesting.
@@Jake-mp7ex
Popularity notwithstanding, there's not much point to a "strategy" game wherein the dominant technique involves circumventing the clunky UI and controls. If it drastically changes the power dynamic to improve the UI and controls, then the old status quo was bad and needed to go.
Fundamentally, you agree with me. Because you wouldn't think that removing the automatic attacks from units, forcing the player to click twice for every standard attack in the game, would be an improvement on account of it demanding more precision and control from the player.
RTS wasn't supposed to be that kind of game. But that's been the status quo for so long that everyone acts like it's normal to have battles won by precise control and micromanagement, rather than superior planning and strategy. It's not really much of a "strategy" game when you're micro'ing individual marines to avoid 5 HP of damage in an engagement.
@@daviddavidson505 While I see your point and agree that starcraft is microintensive, I heavily disagree that fights are primarily decided on micro, it's decided on strategy first, you may have jaedong's micro if you take shitty fights in bad choke points or have bad decisions or macro. Ya dead. Yes you can push the value of some units with micro, that's the beauty of starcraft and makes the game so good and memorable but of course the strategy aspect is the principle factor in this game, the micro and speed of this game just adds spice and originality
A first try could be lowering the priority of the interceptors and see how things go. Making a small change in this game makes people readapt and suddenly the game ends up being totally different and unexpected
Everyday as I am watching TvZ or TvT or ZvZ, I am constantly thinking- "they should nerf carriers"
So much more interesting watching late game in those matchups, even though ZvZ rarely gets there
Yes, but if we nerf something, we must buff something?
@Jorak carriers in pvt doesn't important because we have disruptors, that will give more impact, because splash and stop factor.
@Jorak we need to nerf lurkers, many many people agree with that. And after this we can think about next changes
@Jorak but you see carriers and broodlords on high level tournament rarely then lurkers.
Instead of removing game elements you dislike, suggest adding what's missing to improve them, which in this case is a micro element to improve their effectiveness. Perhaps this could decrease the relaunch time or adding a spell.
Adding a button to prelaunch the interceptors and reducing the interceptor withdrawal range to 9 or 10 would solve this problem without needing to nerf the unit out of existence. It would also add an interesting tactic of deciding when to prelaunch the interceptors, as doing so could truly or falsely signal to the opponent that you intend to take the fight.
IMO the Carrier needs to cost more and have a longer build time, at the very least. People are building far too many far too early. Better still if it had to go into a siege mode to launch the interceptors i.e. it was a static, sitting duck that actually required some thought.
Right now you can just A-move them and it's insta-gg. At Plat and below right now that's all anyone ever does and I don't need to tell you how boring that is.
Problem is, apparently it's not easy to add something that would keep identity of the unit and make it more micro-reliant.
The carrier makes lower league T/Z v P really dull (even sometimes at the top level) Protoss players can just bunker up on 2 or 3 bases with a million photon cannons to prevent drops, and max out on carriers. I would at least like some experimentation to stop the auto-targeting by certain units of the interceptors (perhaps it still makes sense for certain units where the fire rate / splash damage justifies it) to see where this leads, and if the play still isn't interesting either redesign or remove them. Protoss has sufficient air options already. However I think Harstem makes other good points as to why the carriers are badly designed anyway. They echo my own.
Terran used to have an effective counter in the form of the seeker missile. Without doing the sums it seemed fair as far as air units are concerned - you'd need a similarly expensive army of Ravens and good micro to ambush anyone who went for mass carriers. Those were happy days :)
Z v P , corruptors destroy carriers
The protoss can use storm and void rays to deal the corrupters though. If you let the carrier ball get too big it's gg more often than not
Carriers are ruining team games too. 60% of players are playing skytoss and the other players are playing antiskytoss.
Carriers are one of the main reason I quit playing as Zerg
I love countering skytoss. Its simply too easy. Widow mines, thors, and scvs. Or even mass stalkers with a few archons works effectively. As for a zerg build that indirectly counters, hydra ultralisk with some vipers and festors. All of these work most of the time, and you can do way dumber stuff to counter airtoss. Also, usually the reason the other team even gets 8+ carriers is because nobody ever attacks. Typically these armies are useful against ground armies too. So they arent pure anti-airtoss.
@@14soccerplayer1 You must be GM if it's so easy then, right?
@@fjoiewafno depends. Most of my team games i just play terran and do hellion drops. I try with toss, and have a 70% win rate when playing 4v4 as toss and only 50% with terran. Diamond 3. And when im playing 1v1 PVP airtoss i literally always win. Especially if i go phoenix and tempest. Lately my 4v4 terran win rate went way up, got 700 kills in a 1 hour 20 match using liberators and tanks.
@@14soccerplayer1 ya lost me on ultras
Hey Captain :D
I am looking for a video cutter for my own channel. And i was wondering how you found hamster? I would like to find someone similar or slightly lower of skil, that can make fun of me and does think for themselves in editing. Its not easy to find a good cutter like him. So how did you do it?
Any suggestions?
Do you think enabling micro of the carrier, for example: whenever a/the carrier(s) is kiting, the interceptors will be sucked up. (reducing the outcome damage) would it be a good nerf or not?
That doesn't fix anything. One of the complaints registered was that carriers force hard deathball commits because the damage ramps up and the leashes forces opponents to hard engage as well.
You just enforce A moving even harder.
What if we give the intercepters a limited amount of fuel. You would treat the little ships almost like a spell and choose when to launch them. You can either attack at the farthest range once before the intercepters return or you can hit 5 times in a row if you're targeting an enemy that you're on top of. It would make the carrier a lot more tactical and make skill a lot more important. We could fiddle with the damage and speed as necessary.
^^^ Your fuel idea is really cool! I've brainstormed "spellcast style interceptors" before but I like the trade-offs and decision making of your solution.
This is actually the best idea I’ve seen so far. Close in for a big burst of damage or poke but either way your losing your DPS output for awhile giving the army a window of weakness meaning you don’t want too many carriers in the army.
I agree so much with all these points.
The Carrier is one of the staples of late game Protoss, but it doesn't improve in any way whatsoever from micro. That in itself prevents us from seeing the Carrier as an exhibition of the brilliace of individual players... and this is linked to why Protoss so rarely wins major tournaments; it's impossible to take this unit to the next level through individual skill.
When Maru controls a Marine push, you can tell Maru is using those units, rather than someone else; when Serral controls a Hydra-ling army, you can tell it's Serral. Their control of space and positioning is obvious. It changes the outcome of the fight, and that's why they win so many tournaments, and that's why they are fun to watch.
But with the carrier, you can't tell the difference between Zest's carriers, and some random Platinum player's carriers. They are doing the exact same thing. There is no opportunity to change the outcome of the fight on the side of the Protoss with this unit.
Thus, the Carrier will thus never be an illustration of a player's skill; it will only ever be an illustration of the Carrier's skill.
One of the things that makes Starcraft amazing in the first place is because this is a strategy game where it feels like everything that happens, is the extension of you, the player, and your mind and your skill. And we only feel like this because our micro makes the difference between our army winning and losing.
Carriers are a glaring exception that allow you to sit back and relax and literally do nothing while your autopilot army wins the game for you. It's a terrible unit! So let's get rid of it!
Very well explained
Maybe a way to rebalance it could be to introduce different types of Interceptors? I remember in the Terran gameplay trailer for very early Starcraft 2, Battlecruisers were displayed to have on-the-field, individual upgrades for their ability - one had a yamato cannon, another had a wide area laser battery, etc.
Perhaps a way to make Carrier fights more interesting would be to give similar properties to the Carrier. They *are* meant to be capital ships, floating fortresses in their own right, and they are an iconic unit of Starcraft 2. Maybe when they're being rolled out, players can pick what type of interceptor an individual Carrier can produce, either locking that Carrier into that selection with an appropriate visual change or they can alter their interceptor-loadout on the fly. This would, hopefully, reward players for pre-planning and scouting, as they would be able to load their Carriers with interceptors that matched the situation.
Then again, the highest I've gone is Gold and that was two years ago, kek.
I think the leash range, target firing with interceptors, and bringing interceptors out before fighting are actually pretty big elements of the carrier micro wise.
Maybe the carriers should have a lock-on ability similar to the cyclone
But lock-on to what? Cyclones are intended to hit high value targets, interceptors often end up fighting masses of lower-tier units.
Make interceptors move fast near carrier and slower as carrier is further away. This way the carriers are more exposed to increase its damage output
Ahhh I like that
Me: Dear Harstem, Carriers are imba!
Harstem: you suck!
also Harstem: Carriers should be removed!
So great to hear this from a (primarily) Protoss player. As a diamond T (yes, I know, OP), I feel a strong need to one-base rush a P opponent to prevent him/her from getting into the late game and release the monsters (storm, disruptor, carrier) on me. Maybe nerfing late-game and boosting early-game P units would ease the pressure for an early rush and make the game more fun for P players as well. E.g. limiting the number of interceptors in a given airspace could reduce the deathball effect, while carriers could remain useful units in low numbers.
Then what do you do if the protoss 3 gates you on 1 base too? Is your tank out by 3:50 latest? Feel like if you go stim marine you are gonna lose to some stalker micro unless you have a sieged tank.
@@EvilSmonker If I see there is no nexus in the natural, I can go tech lab -> marauder + concussive, and build a bunker in my main. The problem with this though is a hidden startport. Then I just die to a single oracle :)
@@gergelymarton Wouldn't you be slowing down your stim timing? The moveout would be late enough to get a natural and disrupters/collusi assuming the toss does not just let you into their natural without microing back. idk I feel like 1 base all in TvP has not been meta for a very long time considering how good protoss early game can be with shield batteries, but I am a aggressive/cheese toss so take everything I say as you will lol.
What do you do for players that want to play the *Powerful Lategame style* ?
its even more compounded when you factor in that templar have an auto attack making microing them even easier
I don't understand why they gave the HT a weak attack allowing protoss to F2 A-move and not lose their spell casters, but didn't do the same for the infestor (which is also a huge target).
@@74HC138 or why the disruptor can be a moved to death when F2'd. I personally like all spell casters having auto attack ever since WC3, but the lack of consistency between all the caster units are weird.
@@HellecticMojo what would disruptor non-shots look like lol, maybe anti-air?
@@MrCrashDavi Maybe like BW Arbiter shots?
I think they should remove interceptor aggro so units would just A move into carrier directly
Killing interceptor only works when carrier count is low anyway and if that's the case you can always just hold position.
That's usefull sometimes and the main problem you can't really target interceptors if they haven't priority.
For example if you have big marine-ghosts-medivac army and protoss poking you with carriers (warp-in a bit suicide zeals-come to 8 range - realise interceptors-pull back carriers under batteries-cannons and disruptors) the only chance of having good trades here is actually targeting interceptors first and then the other stuff which was thrown at you(cause nothing falls back faster then interceptors).
And hold-position micro is the worst thing that could happend cause, you know...storm,disruptors,colossus.
The issue is sometimes you do want to fight the interceptors, for example when your anti air is queen infestor.
@@xuyifan3703 wouldn’t just pressing hold position when the carrier is out of range so the same thing?
@@jonsolo32 no because Protoss also has ground units. Queens prioritize air units, but if the interceptors don’t have aggro then queens will start hitting the zealots on the ground, which is not what you want since queens suck against zealots
@@xuyifan3703
So, Air Units > Interceptors > Ground Units
as a master league terran i have never been able to beat carriers. i do play mech tho but i have tried everything from mass viking to mass viking with ravens to mass liberator to thors.. nothing works and the fact that low levels can beat masters with 80 apm by just making carriers is just messed up
If you give them a maxed army of carriers, maybe. However that sounds completely off as they will die way before the 10 min mark though if they are that much worse, or you are doing something very wrong like trutling. Also, I've had many instances where I had a good mass of carriers and I was hard countered by mass thors. So your over-reliance on bio for everything is another likely issue.
@@Leonhart_93 "I've had many instances where I had a good mass of carriers and I was hard countered by mass thors" maybe your just bad at micro. (wouldnt be supprised with u low apm protoss's) at the end of the day everything this Pro level Grandmaster protoss is saying about his whole race is true
@@SlimStarCraft The best you can do is insult me based on the race I like? Try better if you want an actual response. Or perhaps you just wanted a fight.
As a low plat toss, even I agree.
Carrier feels like a late game cheese sometimes. Tempest + oracle is so much more fun.
soooooooo make all interceptors come out at once, increase the cost of each interceptor, and nerf the range of the interceptors that are out.
Only if you buff ms of the carrier. It’s just another floating target after you nerf them that much (mothership?).
Why discriminate so hard against strategy in favour of mechanics in rts? It should be okay for low apm units and strategies to exist if they’re competently executed strategies.
@@The_Scouts_Code what? all I was saying is make the carrier more fast paced and less viable to turtle on with no bases.
@@broodlingg will maybe i misunderstood you then.
It's crazy how unique people's experiences with this game can be. In my experience with online PvP carriers have been nearly useless. They're expensive, slow and, their only attack can be totally neutralized pretty easily. But, this is in gold league and below. I'm sure the pros can make better use of them. :)
Yeah this isn’t the typical experience of most gold leaguers. My guess is your macro sucks and you build only carriers. Even if you go straight carriers you can overwhelmed units like Vikings or corrupters though if there’s a supply mismatch. But yeah it’s a unit that fights better in a group but doesn’t require any real attention while doing 60 DPS and having the interceptors tank slot of incidental damage.
If you added in Templar and archons to the control group you’ve got a really hard to beat army (better with 2 CG’s). The archons and storm zone corrupters and Vikings. The carriers kill literally everything in seconds.
The other problem is let’s say I go corrupters to counter your carriers. If I lose you now have a critical mass army that’s hard to stop and kills anything I make. If I win the corrupters can pee on buildings to damage them but it’s slow, has a massive CD, and you can warp in a round of stalkers to annihilate them.
Basically zerg has to commit a huge amount of resources and supply to kill carriers with a unit that’s only good at killing carriers. Your carriers are never dead supply.
@@OpiatesAndTits nah, my macro is really good. It's micro management that I suck at. Which probably means I'd be better at Protoss but, ironically, I don't like them. I pretty much only ever play Zerg or Terran. So, consider this as an outsider looking in.
That being said, I've been playing the game since it game out in 2010 and, in my experience, carriers are only good for beefing up an existing army. They take roughly 90 seconds to build with chrono boosting and not counting the time it takes to build interceptors. You need about six or seven carriers to make an effective group and, if your opponent just lets you build carriers for 12 to 15 minutes of game time, you're probably gonna win either way.
Also, like I said before, carriers are easy to cripple. If I have one or two hydra for each carrier killing interceptors, I've found that I can pretty reliably kill all their interceptors before they can kill all my hydras. It's even easier with groups of marines. Then your opponent has a really expensive group of useless units floating around.
I can build an entire, Zerg army in the time it takes my opponent to build six carriers. I can destroy entire bases before my opponent even shows up with said carriers. Then I can cripple them with hydras by just shooting their interceptors. Carriers are great at supporting armies but they make an absolutely shit army on their own. Which, ironically, is exactly how a lot of players keep trying to use them. LoL :P
Have interceptors follow the commands their carrier receives, so if the carrier kites back, the interceptors kite with it. Have the interceptors come out twice as fast, increase the latch range, and remove the leash range or reduce it to be at most 2 more than the latch range. Might need to tweak the HP too depending on how it plays.
This would make it less punishing to kite for both players. I think it would be more enjoyable to play against because it would allow more control over the engagement, and it would be more enjoyable to play with because the interceptors responding to commands would provide a greater sense of control over what the army does.
I thought about making the carrier more microable and my idea was that every carrier gets its own "fleet" of interceptors that can be used as if they were one unit (like a viking or scout that can be microed (they might need a different attack for this)) but can:
a) be controlled seperately from the carrier (with a fixed range limit on what they can attack like the siege tank)
b) can be manually deployed and called back at any time
c) reduce the carriers movement speed while deployed and increase its movement speed when they are inside the carrier
that way you can micro the interceptosr but while they are out the carrier is vounerable to be rushed down so its not free to have your interceptors out at all times
by doing that the protoss can micro and has to decide weather its better to keep the movement speed or commit to deploying
I would appreciate feedback if thats a good idea or not
(Edited for clarity)
The movement speed would be an issue because it would make it even harder for carriers and what the carriers attack to disengage from the fight. Harstem was complaining that carriers tend to end games because neither the carrier, nor the targets of the carrier can disengage from the battle without losses
@@stephenkumalo3202I think you have a point but in my mind the carriers act more like siege tanks sacrificing mobility for attack power but need good positioning and with the speed increase the carriers can acually try to disengage from the battle but in return cannot deal dmg while doing so. In addition to that it would be possible to give the carrier a fixed range (with an indicator for the protoss and the opponet) in which the interceptors can attack. This way the opponent can decide to leave the range (like with lurkers or siege tanks) and be certain that the carrier is to slow to just chase them and the interceptors cant follow for an unreasonable distance.
@@saytix2878 Your idea is honestly pretty cool. I'm reading it again, and it's pretty dope. I think I have too much nostalgia for the carrier, and that ultimately makes me not want it to change too much.
I think the brood lord is the same in a lot of ways. AND those little fuckers block all ground units from moving into range. Intercepters atleast aren't. But i agree that the carrier doesn't bring a lot of fun to the game.
In his response to Lowko's balance suggestions, he mentions Brood Lords and Swarm Hosts as similarly problematic units.
carriers should be at least difficult to micro, that way whenever someone uses it really well it'll feel more rewarding than just make double digit carrier and a move to win
How? Like needing to green box the interceptors to move them around or something? It’s a fine concept “difficult to micro” but what does that mean in practice?
I agree, however I think the goal when punishing carriers shouldn't be direct nerfs on the carrier, but rather the massing of specifically just carriers or getting more than say 4-5 carriers, *I don't think a race's optimal army composition should be one unit.* I think a way to do this could be to reduce either it's air damage or ground damage and force Toss to have other units to deal with the other air/ground units?
*Keeping in mind that I'm usually just a casual platinum/low diamond player.*
Another change, could be to have *two stances on Carriers?* Perhaps a slower movespeed stance where the intercepters can be sent out quicker, and a higher movement speed stance that forces the intercepters back in? *Similar to Medivac boosts,* but with different speed parameters obviously.
You could even have *two types of intercepters* that could be made? *Anti-air or Anti-ground?* Or additional options or different options (such as lower-health incercepters with higher DPS, or Higher-health with lower DPS). Either way, the *general way to balance is to either make the unit more specialised or weaker with the same versatility* (in my opinion).
Another way would be to perhaps reduce the *movement speed* of carriers and make them more susceptable to fungal growths or EMPs? perhaps in conjunction with balancing the health/shields of carriers or intercepters to make them more vulnerable? Perhaps adding one more range to fungal (however that ability already feels oppressive at times), or even bringing back some form of ghost disable (does this exist on the raven already?) that makes carriers impotent for a period of time and forces interceptors back.
I think it's a little more forgivable leaving carriers slower because Protoss has the recall ability? but it might be too slow and lead to heavy losses?
Love your work @Harstem!
imo it just comes down to how carriers can all stack into a ball. Imo massive air units should require a large footprint where no other massive air units can occupy. That way carriers deathball is super dispersed, and less devestating. One carrier is rarely a problem, it's a heavy unit, takes a while to kill, but isn't invincible,, but when a player can mass 10 or so carriers into the space of one carrier,, they can do a ton of damage and be really hard to degrade. Thors are a good example,,, they are heavy, they hit hard,, but usually only a few at once and the engagement size can be controlled. Because carriers can stack, they can have maximum effect on a controlled portion of the opponents army. If they occupied space and couldn't simply stack up,, they could be buffed, make more sense for the money, be more durable as single units,, and never be OP enough to require the nerfs they currently have. (because actually,, they cost a lot, and one carrier alone is a little bit useless. Nothing gives me more confidence than knowing they have one or two carriers, because I know they will diminish instantly, and the other units will be so much fewer that they too won't be able to deal significant damage)
If it was up to me, I'd rework the carrier into a air siege unit similar to the Liberator, with a cone-shaped zone in front of the nose to make it visually distinct from Lib circles. Interceptors would only serve the role as ammunition, no longer being targetable or killable by any means (mineral costs could be shifted to the production cost) and each carrier starts with a full set of 6 or 8. Their method of attack would be completely different as well, quickly launching out in squadrons of 3 or 4 graviton catapult-style and dealing a short heavy burst of damage to a single target before returning back to the carrier. While one squadron is retreating the other is launched, so a carrier would be more dangerous the closer enemies got to it and less dangerous at their maximum range.
Interceptors don't have a higher priority; they have the same as everything else, except they are closer to the hydras than other units.
SC2 has essentially only 4 different priority levels: Threat, non-threat, non-combat, structure.
Threat: caster or units that can attack you. (aka interceptor to anything else, zerglings to zealots but not to voidrays)
Non-threat: fighting unit that can't attack you (zergling to any air, missile turret to any ground that's not a colossus)
Non-combat: overlord, probes, etc
Structures: all structures except cannons, turrets, crawlers.
That's why you'll see a voidray ignore a roach and shoot at a queen; roaches are non-threats while queens are treats.
Easiest way to test this is to have a single marine amove on a interceptorless carrier, have the carrier build a interceptor while the marine is shooting, and see that the marine stays on target and doesn't switch to hitting the interceptor, as would be the case if the interceptor has higher target priority. (marine will switch target if its shooting a hatchery and a zergling hatched; that's what higher priority looks like).
Side note, Thors don't prioritize air either, despite what many people claim. Their anti air range is just longer than their anti ground range, so they start shooting air before they even get in range to start shooting ground.
Think bigger; remove the protoss!
Bring xelnagas back 👍👍
Another issue with them and with all flyers tbh is that they can stack on top of each other and attack at the same time overwhelming their targets. while ground units have to spread around their targets or even wait for some of their comrades to die before replacing them in attack range. Some fine tuning of the collision logic could make deathballs far less viable
Give it the Interdictors from Co-Op that Collarion (Fenix's Hero Carrier has), have them used like aircraft in Deserts of Kharak where you can give them a target zone to essentially patrol they drop two bombs then return to the Carrier and give them a relatively weak and close ranged A2G weapon for self-defense, with Interceptors only being able to attack air.
Maybe increase the Carrier's supply to 8, make Interceptors squishier then they are now and lower the carrier's movement speed slightly and try to lean into the Carrier being a higher then average commitment unit.
Other then that, I'd argue to reintroduce Scourges and Devourers to the Zerg Roster in some form or another and give Terrans something to either hinder the Carriers themselves or deal with the Interceptors easier.
I'm just spitballing ideas though, but I think less "removed" and more "reworked".
Can we just appreciate that for this 10:06 video, Kevin spent at least 52 minutes in Unit Tester, and Hamster probably another 2-3 hours in editing, balancing audio etc.
That's a ratio of 1:18 - it took Harstem and Hamster 18 times longer to make this video, than it did you to enjoy it. As a small youtuber myself, I just wish this was more common knowledge. It's a ******* load of work.
I generally like the existence and concept of the carrier as a unit, but do understand the somewhat clunky unexciting role of the unit at the same time. Definitely agree that it could be tweaked to be better (not stronger).
I don’t really see an issue with the carrier. An effective protoss army will have multiple support units to keep those carriers from being picked off and it makes perfect sense to take the squishy interceptors out first in the hydra example. That said deathballs can be boring and perhaps air units should have some collision mechanics added to prevent them from clumping up too much, this would make it harder to protect them and focus their power in a small space.
one suggestion I read many years ago before Disruptors and Liberators existed is that you pick a circle in the map and your Interceptors go and engage any enemy within that circle, then you can choose them to take another circle (after a cooldown) or to come back to the Carrier.
Carriers do still have a cast time, but they are free to move after that and have a more generous leash range, and if you want to evade the Interceptors you just micro around the circle area, like you would against Liberators.
And also you can have different abilities and upgrades, like bombers that do extra dmg against armored targets, or fighters that do extra dmg against air, or assault parties that do extra dmg over time against land units.
I believe it would be great to nerf the interceptors' DPS and add some special abilities like low damage splash bombing or medium damage solar beam, to be called manually once in a while. Of course, it all should be somehow different than the Yamato gun or the Void Ray.
Might be smart to reduce the damage that carriers do vs air. That would at least force the protoss to mix up their unit comp and micro the carrier targeting for optimal damage.
may be a good idea.
Really carriers do not require any thinking what your opponent is up to. it kills all other unit compositions and bases equally well.
Interceptor should never reenter the carrier, never fly away, and attack from any angle.
So it could do less damage at border and full damage at center, making it a strategic weapon that you control the dangerousness of the distance in exchange for damage!
Maybe make interceptors lower in the attack priority or even not targetable at all and then give carriers an ability to deploy interceptors, either to an area pr just near the carrier.
Deploying interceptors is very interesting… almost like casting…
My solution would be to make carriers cost 2 more supply, but also have slightly more health/shields. That way they can be a viable late game capital ship to soak damage in a bigger fight, but you can't mass enough to provide all the DPS by themselves. You'd need to supplement them with other units.
I think it would be cool for the deployment of interceptors to be an ability you need to cast on a single target, then once the target is destroyed the interceptors go back into the carrier. Then, have the cooldown be dependant on how many interceptors survived. You'll probably have to tweak the numbers a bit to balance it, but I see this change putting the carrier into a different role entirely.
I always thought it would be interesting if you could modify the attack priority of units on the fly. Like, say if you alt-click a unit, then all selected units now have that unit as their highest attack priority. But would probably make ling runbys broken as you could just ignore cannons and swarm the workers
It would make banelings useless in TvZ if you could just tell your marines to auto-target banelings. And also it would make players like Clem and Maru who have spent hundreds of hours just practicing that single skill no longer stand out for their ability to target fire banes so masterfully.
@@KrossFire330 yeah, would probably change the game too much. Would be an interesting mechanic in a new RTS though if it were designed with that in mind from the start.
I wouldn't mind making a small balance extension to test out some changes suggested here, just would be nice to have some good players try it out.
Protoss is too air heavy not to have the carrier. Spore crawlers would destroy skytoss without carriers. For example. If the colossus had immunity from air attacks I would be okay with it. But really how do you expect to attack a terran base without carriers? Maybe if tempests had a buff on their attack speed. Something has to fill in the gap. Toss is too fragile.
The Problem with Sc2 is that the game is too Air Heavy besides BCs and Carriers look at the air units in Broodwar they were dynamic they were exciting they were flawed. Wtf is a Voidray or a corruptors weakness? The only way to beat them is more supply. And they are boring af
@@catra195 such a good point to bring up. In SC1, the carrier was a superior air unit, but it had more air hard counters like scourge and wraiths, which I'm pretty sure were cost-effective for dealing with expensive carriers. Also I think protoss had a harder time turtling in sc1, so I don't think rushing to carriers without a ground army first, was viable. I'm no expert tho.
@@will.roman-ros yea exactly BeastyQt made a good point too, even if you get T3 units that doesn't mean they just beat everything the right T1 and T2 units can still counter them. Which I think makes for a fun back and forth head game as opposed to just mass BC or Broodlord or Carriers and chew through 3 remaxes of your opponents army and a move their main and you win
When I first played the campaign of SC1 as a child, I was blown away by this unit. It was my absolute favourite simply due to how it functioned. I had never before seen anything like it in an RTS before. It is one of the signature units of StarCraft, similar to the Terran Siege Tank and the Zerg Zergling and Hydralisk.
Making a StarCraft game without these units is like making an Omelette without eggs, or a Lord of the Rings world/story without Elves and Dwarves.
Units like this need to be made to work, and work well and fun; the Carrier is simply no easy task to make work for competitive play, it needs a master gamedesigner to work on it; not the interns and token hires.
my suggestion would be make them semi-casters like the BC. reduce the range the interceptors can be from the carrier but add modes similar to the liberator where the carrier sieges up (becoming unmovable) to gain the range they currently have. To compensate for the regular mode reduced range and the siege mode reduced movement I would let the interceptors launch instantly or at least much faster. This lets the carrier fulfill its current role but reduced the micro-management requirement inequity between carriers and other units.
Excellent video. Perhaps some arguments hold true also for the Protoss shield battery.
The carrier is like a swarm host, just make the units have timed life and manually launched with a press of a button. No minerals, just a cooldown for each one built. Problem solved -- it requires micro and you have to retreat and wait for reloading making them highly vulnerable.
Sw*rm h*sts are a disgrace to this game
Imagine if multiple races had no-cost attack options. Games could tie too easily... Sealfop has it right.
Could just make the interceptors more expensive. Means The protoss has to get something done with them because a back and forth stalemate will bankrupt them.
honestly this is all really why carrier should have an actual attack, having that reason to move in and attack with them would help with the engagement feel. Nerf the interceptors to be a more defensive mechanic rather than core attack (think a release interceptor button like that one HOTS mission with the hyperion) and make the carrier damage come from the giant ship itself.
Clolarion from coop would be a great example if tweaked, have a massive anti-air laser, move the bombing interceptors to be a melee range carrier attack to ground, microing to get over the enemies ground units to bomb them while zoning out the air with your laser and timing your release of interceptors to intercept damage would make it one of the most micro intensive and rewarding units instead of the least.
So basically they’d have powerful beam attack against air and the interceptors would need to be microed to bomb the ground units? Encouraging putting the carriers up front.
Yeah I was thinking the opposite though the interceptors are meant to zone anti air while the carrier itself has a powerful anti ground weapon. Things like hydras get burned but they murder interceptors while the interceptors are meant to zone/tie up enemy air units. The carrier has to move in close to use its powerful AG weapons and it creates some push and pull. The carrier can’t just sit back and kill everything and if they sent out the interceptors alone they’ll get butchered by spores, queens, or hydras (marines, cyclones, ghosts as well). The siege role goes back to the tempest. The interceptors support the void rays.
Remove the ability for units to shoot interceptors. Make the number of interceptors proportional to the shield (Full shield on Carrier 8, Half shield 4, O shield none). Et voilà. you have a unit with a mecanic, where both the attacket and the defender have to play around. + EMPS screw them, while batteries help them. (more things to play with)
wow, an interesting idea
the sc2 developers have always known the design of carriers was a problem, but the unit is so iconic and beloved by the fanbase (going back to 1998) that it had to stay
i could be misremembering, but i could've sworn they declared their intent to remove carriers in either HotS or LotV to make space for the tempest, but the fans rejected that proposal. not sure what the solution is. i think in some single-player modes or potential patches the carrier's interceptors were a storm-like spell, which could mix things up
Yeah carriers were already problematic in BW and still are to this day. Harstem's arguments here pretty much apply to BW too. Not necesarily an OP unit, but a unit that sucks the fun out of everyone involved, even the viewers lol.
This is probably very true but also, games grow and mature and evolve. I don't think there's anything wrong with keeping carriers really close to their original design but not working on old SC1 mechanics like building fighters, costing minerals to do so, and the fighters being attackable units.
Brood lords are interesting and balanced still. Re-imagining carriers around current play paradigms doesn't mean they go away or change entirely. It's fine to have a spiritual successor or just an evolution of an idea.
People who like mass carriers suck anyway :P
Yes, thank you. I always hate playing vs carrier as Terran. Now I know why. The range after the interceptor release is annoying.
It’s huge they have 14 leash which I think gives them an effective 15 leash range if they work like brood lords. Either way 14 is the longest range unit in the game. Worse the interceptors are out for like 40-45 seconds that’s around 2400 damage total output from one carrier before armor factors in. With 8 carriers they do nearly 20k damage in that 40 second window.
make it so that interceptors can only attack air to air (like the mini air-fighters that they are) and then give carriers an activated spell ability similar to the motherships original (alpha) air to ground ability that deals massive damage to everything directly underneath it
I'd reduce the leash range to maybe 1 longer than the launch range so that it's easier to disengage from without having the carrier launch against something only for the interceptors to return immediately. And as a few other people have said, giving the "I'm attacking" target priority to the carrier instead of its interceptors would probably help a lot.
Then what if you redesigned the way carriers' launch system works to act more like a spell caster. Instead of training interceptors for minerals, you build up charges over time, activating the ability launches all the interceptors you have built up and is on auto-cast by default, but recovering an interceptor is only worth half a charge instead of a whole one (represents re-arming vs re-building) and make the launch mechanics a bit like battle star Galactica where the fighters all launch from their tubes instantly but have a relatively long recovery animation. that way the carriers have a short period between strikes where they're more vulnerable and there is an advantage to switching the carriers to manual launch control if you have the APM for it so that they can't be baited out leaving the carriers vulnerable.
I think it would give the carrier a lot more micro and counter micro potential without changing its flavor too much or stepping too much on the swarm host.
if you wanted to make them more complicated, you could also think about giving them multiple interceptor types like a fighter that's basically the current one but shorter launch and leash range for up close and personal DPS, an interdictor that is anti-ground only with something like a mini banshee attack, and an interceptor that is anti-air only with something like mini scout missiles that do a little bit of damage to nearby targets.
NO
Harstem, wouldn’t brood lords also fall into the same category as carriers then as their micro req is rather non-existant as well
Broods and Battlecruisers. Maybe thors as well
As a Zerg player, yeah Brood Lords have the same problem. BLs are really easy to micro in combat, which is nice since the Zerg lategame is so spellcaster-heavy, but it's the same issue that Harstem has with carriers.
I think I would prefer BLs to be more like Swarm Hosts, where you can launch an attack and then run away but still micro the locusts. It makes me wonder if that's a good solution for both - make broodlings and interceptors controllable, so suddenly your micro becomes important.
I think that's only part of it though. This is ignoring most of the other points that harstem made -- it's not just about the micro. When brood-lords enter the game, there are always many fights, and most of them are quite entertaining. Yes, the micro might be easier for the person with broods and harder for the other person, but that's the actual strength of the "capital ship" class. It's only when combined with the fact that they are *not fun* that it becomes a problem. Remember, he didn't say that carriers were OP, he said they made the game suck.
Carriers promote death-ball style of army control, whereas brood-lords don't do that so much. Carriers promote a boring ending, where the players just stumble into a fight that has "is what it is" with no opportunity for either side to back off and re-engage from a different angle. Carrier fights are all-or-nothing, which makes it always a boring lead-up and to an all-or-nothing gamble. Brood-lords don't do this so much, and in fact, brood lords are always an exciting addition to the game. Their slow, strategic, positional play always creates opportunities for unique pushes and counter-attacks on either side.
I think broods are extremely vulnerable tho, because you need something to defend them with/cant leave them out in the open, when carriers and bc's go brrrrr 😅 that being said, i love carriers, but they should get countered abit harder so micro becomes more important. So less shields/hp/movement speed even maybe
Broods die way easier, are way slower, and are even tougher to get out, but yes they require no micro just like carriers.
Would making Interceptors controllable, so the basically fly around Carriers and you can select them as units, maybe make this better? It would at least require a bit more micro
No, because they would still be a screen which is what's keeping carriers super safe. They are essentially flying zealots where they got enough speed and are disposable to the point where the boon of the unit is that you don't need to micro them.
May I suggest an option? What about adding scourge to the Zerg toolkit?
How about significantly reducing the range at which the interceptors stat out, but adding an upgrade that allows carriers to get a short burst of speed like the medivak. That way, the protoss has to move their carriers to stay just out of reach of the enemies but stay inside the interceptor range, making for some potentially cool micro?
Carrier should be a campaign unit like the Warhound and the Leviathan. It's a cool unit to bash the AI with but it is NOT a good unit for balanced, competitive play
Lets not forget, that pre HOTS Blizzard actually did want to replace the Carrier with the Tempest. However community backlash , mostly on the grounds on how nostalgic and iconic the boat was, kept it in. Anyway that the version I heard.
Other than the range issues - a potential 'fix' could be that the Carrier begins with a full bank of interceptors, but it costs a large amount to replenish, say 50-60 minerals per interceptor. Hear me out for the reasoning below =)
Late game, it would mean the same engagements, because the player could have more cash by the late game (potentially), but earlier on in mid-game, they are just as powerful for a single battle, but less viable overall with the risk of losing those interceptors, because cash is a prohibiting factor of damaging battles.
So their power remains, but it costs a significant amount to just brute force through everything. This would reduce the incentive for a player to just go straight in to an engagement with a carrier death ball, because they would need to mass a larger (late game) stash of cash before it was 'as' viable.
So for that last part - In the event that the player decides that they just want to turtle and mass carriers with an additional set of support units - the cost of those support units would increase the risk that the player would have spent their 'interceptor replenishment money'.
I like it, force the carrier player to have to do a timing instead of just massing carriers.
So, it is imbalanced? ;-)
Edit: I fully support this video and Kevin’s points. Especially that the Carrier is waaay to easy to use, compared to how hard it is to counter it. I don’t know how a different targeting mechanic would work, but interceptor cost should definitely be increased, I think. That way, the risk of fielding a carrier would increase, and a potential loss of a single carrier would be more consequential.
is imba in gold, but sucks on M1 GM
Nah, he just sucks
By this logic, should swarm hosts also be removed as well considering they dont add any value with micro. The only thing I can think of is positioning but thats the case with every unit anyways.
They are basically removed, because they’re so bad, that you can only use them against mech without bc‘s. And I think it would be fine if the carrier has like on or two situations, but you won’t the See them in the majority of the games
He has said this in other videos for the same reasons.
Agree... shift click is still more than micro with lurkers
@@isy6047 lurker micro isn’t that easy but not that hard either. Lurkers get outranked by tanks so you have to micro vipers to obduct tanks and your army to push ghosts back. But they probably need a nerf
Swarm hosts absolutely require micro.
My proposed solutions:
1. Keep carrier attack range as is, but reduce the leash range down to only slightly past the launch range.
I want carriers to be the workhorse unit of air. A sack of hitpoints with a swarm of high damage babies. We already have the tempest for long range.
2. Carriers get an ability that, when used, launches all interceptors immediately, and forces them to stay out till the ability goes on cd.
This gives makes carriers able to engage quickly, but also gives them a window of vulnerability while the spell is on cd, and it also makes them (slightly) less brain-dead to use.
3. Interceptor build time significantly increased, and cost kept the same, or slightly increased. Carriers come with a full 8 interceptors when built.
I want losing interceptors to hurt, and I want killing interceptors to feel like a win. A carrier that gets its interceptors completely wiped should be out of action for a long time.
one could also change how the carriers work completely too. instead of releasing a swarm of interceptors make it 4 or 3, and that you can individually control each interceptor to maximize its efficiency. adding another layer of complexity to it, while also adding a vulnerability with little/bad micromanagement. or something like that. I dunno, I don't know sht. But it don't necessarily have to be interceptors at all, maybe just have them drop bombs or something.
I agree that carriers are problematic, but making them useless is less than ideal.
Either replace them with another unit (I know ... it's a lot of work for blizzards' sole sc2 intern) or rebalance it. Increasing interceptor cost and changing target priority are all viable venues
Agreed. They cant remove carriers tho as it would mean a complete redesign of the balance of the game. Too much work, at this stage I think.
If you think the unit promotes undesirable gameplay, it should be replaced or modified equally in power. Not just made worse so that it's never used. Its current power is part of the game's balance.
I have several idea!
In the case of carriers:
Increase the nuber of interceptors from 6 to 10 or 12
Increase suply requirement from 6 to 15
Increase cost to 450/350 and maybe production time as well
Give an ability to send out interceptors to a certain location and the interceptors patrol in this area (area diameters of 6 or something) with the current leash range. They shoud not release automatically.
In this case the carrier would be an extreamly vulnerable unit compared to the cost and how small your army would be with them in it. Also you would have to babysitt them to send interceptors to the proper location to zone out incoming thret otherwise the carriers would be easy target for cheeky corruptors, abducts or vikings (if the incerceptors in a wrong side of the army).
i think u are going in the right direction i think interceptors need to get a bit less health, i mean they are clearly to tanky, cost down propably idk
give carriers more suppy or nerv thier health pool or something but give them more interceptors
more build time maybe...
so if someone actually kites you your interceptors die a lot, they should not tank the AA the player should send ground reinforcements to make a proper attack
and if the enemy gets to the carriers they should die fast, so propably nerv the interceptor operating range
I agree with you from a previous vid of yours about balance that the carrier should be a support unit that you have a couple and thats it. Maybe add a max 2 or 4 limit to it with some hp buff and nerf interceptor hp + less priority
(Also buff mothership)
Edit:
Give a 2 limit and add that planetcracker beam from the cinematics as an ability. Channeled beam targets the ground and makes an increasing area that dmgs nearby units
Or retro thor styled fixed dmg on one unit over a period of time
I couldn't agree more. I'm a protoss main, but the carrier is my least favorite unit in the game. Everything about it is unhealthy for gameplay, especially in the current meta.
Such a brave opinion... maybe next episode about lurker micro
or liberators? xd
I did remember that before actually in beta The Carrier was made the capital ship; there was a concept of Old "Tempest" a carrier like a unit that had a different kind interceptor; Nostalgia won that they added back carrier. Also, carriers used to have a slightly less interceptor max limit, before it was raised to 8. That was an upgraded carrier interceptor limit. The current problem of carriers is their insane DPS: hard to micro anything when everything is getting killed by a swarm of the interceptor.
What if... they made the interceptor auto-deploy latency much longer (takes longer to have all interceptors out of the carriers and fighting) but also add a manually casted ability to the Carrier which allows them to deploy all interceptors almost instantly (or much faster). This ability could have a rather long cooldown to make Protoss think carefully if they want to engage, and it would increase the necessary micro to make the Carrier fight at the top of its strength. This would also make deathballs less deadly since if you manage to disengage after the Protoss uses the Carrier's ability they lose some burst power on the subsequent re-engagement.
nice
I dont play SC but i like the carriers, theyre a cool unit, maybe they could have more units and more supply, so you ahve more individual units and they could be more of a death ball only army where you cant really split them
"I dont play SC but i like the carriers" - the only way anyone can like them.
You have convinced me that Carriers are the best designed unit in Starcraft 2.
The need for micro in Starcraft is NOT GOOD. If someone can beat your superior strategy with faster reflexes and no thinking, that's not a strategy game.
The only reason Starcraft players like micromanaging is because everyone else quit. Blizzard waited for everyone who hated starcraft 1 to quit, then focused on making starcraft 2 appeal to the people who were still playing. They keep making this mistake. It's why every Diablo game is focused on long term grinding - because the majority of players, who didn't like the grind, only played through Diablo 1 or 2 a few times and then quit, and Blizzard listened to the people who didn't quit.
In a real strategy game, where micro doesn't help much, it's a lot less painful to be a newbie, and the skill ceiling is much higher.
Zest, "Interesting, I've never seen this unit!"
I know many diamond players who quit the game due to the void ray - > carrier meta, and I play way less as well since it became a thing over a year ago. I can't really put my finger on what kind of a nerf the carrier should go through, perhaps reducing the health of the interceptors or making them more costly is one way to go, or may be remove the auto make interceptors so that carriers require at least some actions to be good. On the other hand, there are protoss units that require a lot of micro, like the oracle or the sentry, and I don't see them used enough in the lower leagues simply because its way easier winning with carriers, even in Masters, or low GM leagues (perhaps even semi pro). So buffing those units as a compensation for a carrier nerf is also an option, so that high level tosses aren't just nerfed due to this change, and lower level tosses have a reason to start using those over the nerfed skytoss armies.