Mothership Update

[arsedestroyer]

wow the vortex animation looks sweet.

[Jconant]

no...vortex takes units out into some...other dimension...w/e you would like to call it; they can't attack or be attacked until vortex ends.

[Gifted]

It's a statis field that doesn't show it's targets and can continously absorb additional targets.

[The_Blade]

Do you guys believe "stacked units" can be holded together with the help of Force Fields?

[Triceron]

Can the mothership get sucked into their own Vortex?

[Nicol Bolas]

However, are we sure that units within cannot be fired upon from outside?

It certainly looks that way. None of the Colossi or Stalkers try to shoot at the trapped Ultralisks, Hydras, and Roaches.

Can the mothership get sucked into their own Vortex?

It's hard to tell from the way the game shows the location of air units, but I don't think so. It doesn't look like it affects air units.

[Wankey]

It affects all units except mothership (look at June Broll, once his phoenix were useless, they just dropped them into the vortex to prevent them being destroyed my hydralisks)

[Triceron]

Wondering if shields, HP or Energy regens during Vortex too. I imagine it would be good to use on your own units if you were waiting on a cooldown and needed just a little more time to get that spell off.

[Jconant]

My guess: mothership's weapon attack payload is altered to deliver the same amount of damage (or more overal), but limited to X dps per target and constrict the circumstances in which it can target more than one at a time. a powerful support caster that also has recieved a speed buff would be op if also had the firepower of a battlecruiser, so they had to limit the strength of this vessel, but not make it unable to kill things by itself.

I've made these observations from the most recent video... I made a similar post elsewhere, but since then I have been thinking carefully about it...and wish to elaborate on my prediction

The mother ship is capable of firing up to 3 targets at once.

total dmg value per attack-
12 (6x2) [less than or equal to] X [less than or equal to] 40 (20x2)

facts known

• all the zerg were north of the mothership
• there are 6 "laser battery" discs, evenly spread out around the ship (2 on every third of the chassis)
• every attack animation a pair fired together at one target (so the damage total could be done with 2 attack rolls)
• each pair that fired were always next to one another
• the mothership fired 3 times at 1 specific hydralisk before it died. Upon the third hit, the hydralisk was also hit by a colossus sweep (almost instantaneously...slightly after the blue beam animation though, so its unknown which truly killed the hydralisk)

There are a set of blue "discs" from which the mothership fires beams of electrical blue energy. the attack was always a pair of beams directed at 1 target. Each third of the body has its own pair of discs. As the mothership rotates, the pair of laser "batteries" that fires at its target that were in range alters to whichever 2 are closest and/or maintains a line of sight/range (if its the latter, the line of sight ranged is limited). Never during the video were any other pair of batteries in range of a zerg (there were other multiple individual batteries in range, but never one that was also next to the third closest/in range) Ergo its possible that the mothership will use all its weapons if every 2 batteries can hit a target.

The limitation straightforward. The mothership is not meant to be an assault craft, so to illustrate this its weapons are organized in such a way that it can always defend itself, regardless of which side can attack. Furthermore it can return fire on units approaching it from several directions. It has a potential for high dps. It is possible that each attack is doing 40dmg. I would unleash hell when its in the fray...so its up to the player to risk being aggressive with this unique unit. Or they can play safe and still be able to make pot shots at targets near it.

I suppose blizzard wanted the ms to be faster, but not enable players to kite enemies with it 8x8 attack.

dmg numbers (I read someone making a comment about this on this forum; you know who you are and I thank you/credit you for noting this. I went and watched the video over again and did my own math to see if he/she was correct. Based on my math the guess was approximate)

below is the damage range of the mothership I calculated has based on the information about the hydralisk. Because dmg values in starcraft 2 are integers I altered the math above to the lowest possible integer .
11 1/3 (5 2/3x2) [less than or equal to] X [less than or equal to] 40 (20x2)

edit: my math characters aren't showing correctly so bear the type in the math

[Blazur]

I'm really curious, how would you ever use "leviathan" as a verb?

Blizzard has really taken extreme measure to leviathan progress of SC2 over the course of 3 years.