Blizzard Reiterates: Mothership being crappy is a-ok

Well, perhaps not in those words, but the meaning is the same
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There are some units that just aren't going to be used at "high" levels of play and the Mothership is probably one of them. We currently don't have any plans to change this unit.

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Yes, I understand (as Nethaera outlines later) that Blizzard doesn't want to make too many drastic changes resulting in dire, unforeseen consequences, but the fact that they were perfectly happy to put in a largely useless unit into their multiplayer game is just unacceptable from a game design standpoint. You want to give the player greater choice, not false choices, especially not units whose own description calls them "their oldest and most powerful weapons" which "can instantly destroy squadrons of enemy ships or even entire planets." It's doubtful if the MS could beat anything one-on-one at the moment, never mind groups of units.

And no, trick plays like Vortex + Archons doesn't count (how many people are going to tech to both Mothership and Archons consistently?); outside of highly situational instances at best the MS is a somewhat decent base defender, due entirely to its ability to recall better units back to base, and with the cost spent building her you might as well just make a larger army instead and get the same outcome.

Nor does it make much sense as a support unit, as some argue it should be considered as (despite going against its unit description, but whatever), as even here it fails utterly: it is far too slow, far too expensive, and its abilities too lacking compared the former Protoss support flyer, the Arbiter, which you could get more than one of.

What the Mothership needs is some massive changes to justify its continued inclusion into multiplayer. Base stats need to be increased across the board; at the very least, for a unit of its cost, the Mothership should be able to defeat a Battlecruiser one-on-one. It needs at least one powerful damage-dealing spell, offset by corresponding costs and disadvantages (i.e. Vortex which does damage, but needs more mana to cast and still sucks in friendly units). It also needs useful support spells too; cloaking is just blah, Mass Recall is still a good ability, but I wouldn't mind if both were replaced by Time Bomb and, for example, some sort of aura ability (MS would make for a great Shield Battery replacement). Since the Mothership would be awesome now instead of sucking, its cost in min/gas/supply would similarly need to be adjusted, and it would keep its current one-unit limit and place in the tech tree.

I wish you could make more than one MS, increasing it's shield would be also nice

I fully agree. I loved the idea of the Mothership. I loath its implementation.

Blizzard has already confirmed they're good w/ worthless units. Protoss clearly has the most, so I can't wait for the 2 expansions when they add even more.

The Mothership in all honesty should be a game wining unit or at least game breaking unit
it's expensive by itself and to tech add to that : there can be only one unit at a time

bring back the WWI 07 Mothership, it was very well balanced back then

Why do you even get starport as protoss...

If you can't see how a well placed vortex can make you win then I can't help you there... The mothership is well balanced and worth the cost. The arbiter was not balanced. In fact, the arbiter is one of the major reason why SC1 was so unbalanced at lower level for T in TvP. One recall in your base and you were pretty much dead or at least the 2 side were gonna base trade for sure. Yes, there were counter measures (mine your base so they'll recall on the mines and suffer a lot of damage, intercept with science vessel) but TvP was so APM intensive for T that at lower levels, you would probably lose anyways.

The mothership ended up being a huge letdown in this game :(

well, we already have paper planes, x-ray chechup flights, mini-bombardments and they're all damn expensive...

i think a circular snail was an interesting choice...

but really though, i'm hoping for there to truly be an all general purpose flyer for protoss in the future or a powerful spellcaster but really, i'm waiting for another potential complaint on the mothership from a low bronse player so it'll be nerfed once more...

bah, who am i kidding, i'll keep trying forever... i can't be mad at a game...
....
only the players...

@Blazur
no one honestly thought an ability like the black hole would remain, right?

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Originally Posted by senervo

@Blazur
no one honestly thought an ability like the black hole would remain, right?

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Not in the least. What I was hoping for was a unit that was a little more clever than the current incantation with some new abilities or spells. For the most part it's just a slower, more expensive arbiter that hardly sees the light of day. Given that I'd rather they just kept the arbiter in instead of this boring evolution.

When blizzard showed of the moma ship for the first time it had some real cool ability, but during time they removed the planet cracker, the time bomb, the black hole and the warp to another pylon, so what does it have now! xD at least give one of them ability's back 2 it! ;) sure cloak field are great but the unit is so slow so your army will get ahead,

Scrap it and replace with Arbiter! ;)

If the Mothership's abilities cost 50 energy instead of 100, THEN it might be worth getting.

it's the fighting capabilities that suck.

Is the MS crappy? To an extent, yes. I can't speak to the upper levels being a bronze (soon to go silver :) ), but I can say it is quite useful at the lower levels, second among Toss air to the Void Ray. Carriers and Phoenixes are only good in masses of 6+, 10+ for Phoenixes in non-harass situations (which are very few). Carriers' best weapons are the multiple targets the Interceptors create. DPS is not as good as SC1.

MS cloaking makes it very difficult to target what actually needs to be targetted, especially in team games where one player fast techs to MS and the other masses voids or blinkers or something. The cost is more prohibitive in a 1v1, but the cloak can be a game changer, especially when the enemy is mostly air, w/ MS and snipes your mobile detectors with regularity and impunity as they move through your base. You almost always have to kill the MS first, which wastes much of your army, leaving you open to a quick turnaround of the now uncloaked army. Cloaked voids and Thors are unstoppable.

Microing your army with an MS is almost too easy also. Simply send your MS on its way with your army on follow, with your trigger finger ready to micro your forces at a moment's notice. Once in battle, attack with everything but the MS, setting it to follow the slowest unit type in your army (ex. for 1v1: carriers or immortals) and not moving too fast otherwise. The only units an MS is truly vulnerable to are Voids, Vikings and BCs (with Yamato only; w/o Yam can get dicey depending on what the MS is cloaking). Mutas can be difficult as well. Vortex is helpful here.

Recall is very much the same as SC1, or would be if the MS was a little faster. Besides, a proxy pylon or 2 or a few warp prisms are equally efficient, so this ability is not a good fit.

This does not, however, apply as easily to the upper levels of competition because (a) armies need to be replenished more often, increasing the resource strain of the MS's cost, and (b) the amount of stuff being micro'd and macro'd at diamond and platinum and gold vastly exceeds that of the bronzes and silvers, so an MS could be an apm sink akin to how spawn larvae was initially viewed.

All of that said, having watched many castings of many SC1 tournament games (thanks to Husky and HD and youtube in general), I must admit the MS seems much less used than any SC1 unit that ever went unused. It has utility, but there is just enough downside to sway many of us away from it.

To those who say they want the MS to have an attack spell: the arbiter never had an attack spell, and it's attack would make the current Phoenix attack seem palatable by comparison. Vortex is essentially a larger scale stasis field (in terms of # of affected units) with a different mechanic and artwork.

All in all, the MS is flawed, but not useless.

i would instantly love the ability to hallucinate MS's...
that'd be the protoss equivalent of lift-off buildings and hilarious damage-sinkers...

alas... balance stuff and the damn speed and all...

The MS is in a fairly sorry state atm and doesn't really serve any purpose outside of VERY niche rolls. Personally, there are two changes that I would love to see, then it might be worth while to get in a longer game if you already had it in mind to get Carriers...

Make it as fast as a Carrier. Does it really need to move as slowly as an un-upgraded Overlord? Carriers are slow enough as it is, but they Ferrari's compared to MS. Recall is a potent weapon if used right... but even then 1.25 movement speed is hardly gonna make Recall drops dangerous, at least not more so then a Nydus Worm...

Change Vortex to Stasis Field. I mean really... its just a pathetic ability. What was cool about stasis is that you can cut a guys army in half, kill half, then after a bit of time, kill the other half. It was a perfect army splitter, or at least a way to delay timing pushes. Vortex is a pitiful rip off, because it allows new units to get "stasised" after the initial cast. If half your army gets vortexed... you just walk the other half into the vortex and for 10 seconds your army is now invulnerable. If Vortex had a longer duration, or only pulled in the units it hits on cast, then it would be an acceptable ability. As it is now, its just a sad hollow shell of a skill...

Just made my post in the BN2 forums:

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The unit is a huge waste of resources. Vortex is interesting and can be used to break into a base, but that's it. The unit is 400m 400g and guaranteed to die without doing much else.

It should at least be very resistant to damage and move at a decent speed. I don't care about the attack.

But seriously, they could just put the Arbiter back in. At least it moved at a decent speed, so you could micro it, and you could build more than one, so you could have a spare if one died, and could cast a lot more than with this single useless Mothership. Oh, and the Arbiter was used in pro games back in the time, so they actually traded a pro-grade unit for one unusable at high play levels.

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a bit more speed would be nice.

What about if you could crono boost the mother ship to make it travel 50% faster? It does come from the nexus so why not! :D Or be able to bye a upgrade for improved speed?

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Originally Posted by MuppZA

What about if you could crono boost the mother ship to make it travel 50% faster? It does come from the nexus so why not! :D Or be able to bye a upgrade for improved speed?

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It must go faster, and that's all. It's movement speed is retarded. Also, it's already expensive and slow to build.
The Arbiter wasn't broken with the speed it had. Is it too much to ask for the Mothership to move at that speed? It's too slow to even try to move it around your army, so that it doesn't dies so easily. An Arbiter would have more chances of survival, and they had half the amount of HP.

Hell, i would prefer for the unit to have fast movement, and be constantly revealed in the minimap to ""compensate"".

I hate how they shit their pants so much about changing anything. They didn't take their chance when in beta, so do it now! But no, i suppose they're going to wait for the expansions, even if that's really the same. Unless the expansions have a beta on their own, they would be realeasing all the changes "in the wild".

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Originally Posted by Norfindel

It must go faster, and that's all. It's movement speed is retarded. Also, it's already expensive and slow to build.
The Arbiter wasn't broken with the speed it had. Is it too much to ask for the Mothership to move at that speed? It's too slow to even try to move it around your army, so that it doesn't dies so easily. An Arbiter would have more chances of survival, and they had half the amount of HP.

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Reason behind the slow moment was probably that it was OP and could jump between pylons, but now that they nerfed all its cool ability's they should make it go faster like the arbiter!^^
At least carrier speed!^^

I'm okay with one or two units being for the lulz like the Infested Terrans were but, if they're going to doom the mothership to this fate, they need to make it cooler and harder to get so that it's as rare to see as Infested Terrans.

This unit was severely overnerfed in the beta due to the prevalence of mothership rushes. Blizzard didn't even let the game evolve one bit, within 2-3 days of someone mothership rushing in some random EU tournament, Blizzard came down hard on the MS. That's just lazy balancing.

Blizzard is taking the easy way out on this, which is not a surprise given their recent track record.

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Originally Posted by MuppZA

What about if you could crono boost the mother ship to make it travel 50% faster? It does come from the nexus so why not! :D Or be able to bye a upgrade for improved speed?

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That's a damn cool idea. Perhaps chrono boosting the MShip could speed it's energy recovery as well...making it an even greater threat.

I'd rather it have lower health, but cheap and quick to build. Then have a research required for training it.

This way, players can make ms in late games. Protoss needs quick recalls to defend critical areas late game, where terrans or Zerg can just drop everywhere. Warp-prisms by the way are also a drop tactic tool but not as worthwhile compared to dropships, and ovies.

There is a nice combo in team games: Vortex and nuke...time it right and when the vortex stops the nukes blows. Hell of a sight!

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Originally Posted by guru

There is a nice combo in team games: Vortex and nuke...time it right and when the vortex stops the nukes blows. Hell of a sight!

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Or Get bainlings, archons in to it, also works with siege tanks, collosus and psy storm, anything with splash damage hurts everything exiting the vortex! :D

But still hard to get the MS in position and not get it killed so a speed bonus would still come handy! :)

I'd say we could make the MS somewhat cheaper from scratch but it works like, say... a colossus or HT... it doesn't start with all of it's abilites but after researching them, makes it extremely potent... this would also delay a rush but make an early MS just for an early attack..

right now, we have an expensive building that's not as powerful as either the carrier or BC and too slow, and overall has abilites not being ready at first...

.. how about either a damage spell upgrade...? or starting faster speed?
or should i shut my filthy mouth and go away...

How about just increase its cloaking range?? If the cloaking range is increased then it's easier to have more units up front blocking units from closing in on the mothership. Even vikings would find it harder to snipe with a cloaking range increase. It would make MS last longer and be more a support unit that stays in the back. It is a huge damn thing. Right now liquipedia says the cloaking field has a range of 5. So most (or possibly all) ranged GtA units can engage the mothership at the edge of its cloaking field. Meaning you need to engage outside the cloaking field to protect the MS leaving your front lines uncloaked.

Seems like the best way to incorporate the mothership now is have it at the back with lots of carriers, void rays or colossus and a big gateway army up front to soak up lots of damage and survive long enough for the carriers/voidrays/colossus to kill everything. But problem is carriers and colossus have pretty good attack range so they can hang back anyways. MS only seems to counter viking/corruptor/VR sniping your carriers/colossus/VRs. The MS seems more like a sacrifice unit and not a support unit. You make it cos it's a big bullseye and basically let him kill it while you destroy as much of his army as you can and when it finally falls hope your leftover army is stronger than his leftover army.

If blizzard wants to keep it as it is now as a sacrifice unit then just reduce its build time. If they want to make it a support unit then just buff the cloaking field range. 5 range cloaking seems kinda small considering it's the same as arbiter and MS is kinda much bigger than an arbiter.:P If MS is the arbiter replacement for toss then makes more sense that toss decided to go for one unit with a big cloaking range rather than decided "Let's get a slow, weak version of our arbiters that doesn't give a better cloaking field, is more expensive and we can only have one of." I wonder what's the radius of the mothership. Would be interesting to know how many percent of the cloaking range area is actually right under the mothership. Would a cloaking field range of 7 be reasonable?

Imo scrap the cloaking aura totally and start from there.

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Originally Posted by MuppZA

What about if you could crono boost the mother ship to make it travel 50% faster? It does come from the nexus so why not!

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this would be cool.


I dont beleive in arbitrarily boosting te units speed or survivability; you cant just straight-up compare it to the airbiter with concerns to usefulness, not with balance in mind; the arbiter was never in sc2 post alpha to our knowledge, and replacing MS with arbiter or arbitrarily buffing speed and/ or survivability to any significant extent would probably brake late-game balance.


... having said that, i view MS as rather uninteresting - that point is debatable i will admit, but the pure difficulty of getting it into the right spot at the right time isnt at all reasonable.

IMO, slow speed goes VERY badly with the whole recall concept, i'd rathr have it replaced.. something they could do also/instead is as ive said somehwere else, scale down the radisu/effectivnes of the abilities and trade off that for some movment speed.

... its obvious that blizz is done wih the big strokes of game design for now though; if they come back to the MS, it will be when(if) reinventing the balance for one of the ex-packs.

I have seen it used once by me and once by my enemy. It failed both times.

I never thought I'd say this, but I vote to scrap the Mothership and just have Vortex cast from the Nexus for a cost of 400/400 and 100 energy.

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Originally Posted by DemolitionSquid

I never thought I'd say this, but I vote to scrap the Mothership and just have Vortex cast from the Nexus for a cost of 400/400 and 100 energy.

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Uhm... you mean like cast it everywhere withing sight? Isn't that like a bit too much OP?

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Originally Posted by Norfindel

Uhm... you mean like cast it everywhere withing sight? Isn't that like a bit too much OP?

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it is. the vortex is a skill that can change the tides of battle in one instant. trap half their units and destroy the other half or storm into their base.

I think it would be awesome to replace the cloaking field with the time bomb ability (albeit significantly reduced in power). The Mothership would constantly have that pink field around it, and any enemy unit gets 10% reduced movement and firing speed. Then, enemy units would actually target interceptors, which is kind of the point of getting carriers, and the mothership wouldn't be focus fired down so quickly.

Then, fix vortex so that units cannot enter it after it has been cast, so your interceptors don't fly into it and cut YOUR army in half as well, and increase its starting energy, so that you can actually USE its abilities once you get it.

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Originally Posted by Norfindel

Uhm... you mean like cast it everywhere withing sight? Isn't that like a bit too much OP?

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Originally Posted by MajinX

it is. the vortex is a skill that can change the tides of battle in one instant. trap half their units and destroy the other half or storm into their base.

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Clearly the joke went over your heads. You know, cause the Mothership is basically just the housing unit for Vortex, and all anyone ever gets the Mothership for is Vortex... yeah, you guys are sad.

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Originally Posted by Twilice

Imo scrap the cloaking aura totally and start from there.

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The cloaking aura has a passive ability that kills everybody's frame rate, making micromanagement taxing for players.

I like pie lmao

I think it needs a few more tweaks. Some more shields and definitely more movement speed.

I don't understand why they made the mothership a really slow and useless arbiter that can only be built once. That's such a step backwards, it's so DUMB why they would do that for a sequel.

Mothership should simply be:

One mothership per nexus
Speed increase to match carriers
No weapons (why do we need more useless effects?)
Size decrease a bit
Cost decrease (this unit should be balanced via build time and food cost)
Shield / HP decrease
armor = 0

Add spells that are actually useful. Not like vortex that has little to no gameplay usage (oh crap, half my forces are sucked in... okay I'm gonna purposely suck in all my forces so I get a bit of protection... wtf?? There is absolutely no use for this spell. I can't halve the enemy forces, or force him to retreat. The only time where it's useful is if I want to engage them but my forces haven't arrived yet)

Recall is useless due to mothership's stupidly slow movement

The mothership isn't the mother of all Protoss ships. It's the largest, and by far the most complex. It should be the ultimate spell caster, not an armored capital ship. Again, the arbiter pretty much fits this role.