I seem to lose against carriers no matter how far ahead I am in a game. I'll have 3/3 ups on bio, +3 attack on vehicles, and still lose against ~ 0/1 carriers with marines, thors, widow mines, and vikings (obviously target firing carriers).
The fact that carriers can now run away combined with the removal of the thor's single target AA ability makes carriers extremely difficult to deal with right now. I've tried thors, cyclones, mass bio/drops, mass viking/liberator/BC, mass widow mine, etc.
Please don't reply with "don't let protoss get carriers." Assume we're there already and protoss has carriers.
Has anyone been successful with dealing with carriers cost efficiently?
I imagine you feel the same way I do about playing against mech as a protoss. I solution is probably taking lots of bases and denying portis bases, due to his lack of being able to protect many locations. I would mainly avoid the fleet with your bio army while working your way up to battle cruisers in a safer remote location. Counter attack like a madman once they move out. Try to spread the fleet out and then pick off smaller groups. But I dont know. Id love to try it with you.
To me, it seems a macro issue, unless we are talking about 35+ min games (in HotS time). In order to make Mass Carriers really worth it, Storm has to be out, which means LATE game. In that case, army control is also heavily important, as you mandatorily need Ghosts and EMP in a lategame situation, which is the only terran unit you did not name here. 2 good EMPs would easily take 40% of the Protoss HP out in a second, which is a very big deal. Specially with Adepts now in the Toss arsenal.
Transitioning to Carriers is extremely expensive, time-consuming, quite exploiteable early-midgame, and relatively easy to contest (not just straight counter) with good anticipation with Bio+Viking, also WM heavy. You should be able to contain severly and pressure Protoss, build some Orbitals and turrets, and expand while he is contained. Macrowise, Marines and Mines should be very cost efficient vs interceptors, and economic midgame should favor Terran heavily (comparing it to a passive Protoss).
But if you arrive to that point in the game that wars are long, economic, and with bank and Lategame units come in decent numbers, try to outmacro Protoss, remove SCVs for Mules, and go full Maru (Bio+Mine+Viking+Ghost heavy + Nukes). Cyclones are also a good addition, but you need armor. Statwise, Cyclones should destroy Carriers.Also look for WoL Mass VikingBCGhost if it gets to Skytoss.
Today's game in Proleague (Classic vs Maru) was a priceless lesson of late game TvP.
IMAO Thors are a waste since the AoE is very small and interceptors spread, and the other AA mode is garbage (less impactful than a viking). Cyclones are good, but as vikings, you need numbers. And having the right numbers of everything in a BioMech strat is hard.
god willing with the next patch they're going to let the cyclone shoot up w/ no upgrade and that means u can start accumulating cyclones earlier and when toss goes for air transition u can punish just like in BW.... late game u can use mobility to shut down new/ninja expansions down and use mines and cyclones slowly widdle down the fleet... u can unburrow mines if he doesn't commit all interceptors and burrow them again when they all launch he wont have money to remake
I'm primarily a Zerg player, so I haven't encountered this issue on your level, but I think that Thor's single target AA mode needs an anti-armor and/or anti-massive boost. The Goliath-Carrier relationship worked so well in BW because the Carrier could use terrain to overcome the cost efficiency that Goliaths could achieve against them in the open field. We need a similar mechanic in LotV so that a grounded unit is the Terran's cost-efficient response to Carriers.
On July 29 2015 08:55 crown77 wrote: god willing with the next patch they're going to let the cyclone shoot up w/ no upgrade and that means u can start accumulating cyclones earlier and when toss goes for air transition u can punish just like in BW.... late game u can use mobility to shut down new/ninja expansions down and use mines and cyclones slowly widdle down the fleet... u can unburrow mines if he doesn't commit all interceptors and burrow them again when they all launch he wont have money to remake
First we have to nerf its ground damage to oblivion before we can do that, but I really would like to see the cyclone become an anti-air staple and replace the thor entirely in all compositions where ppl are getting them in order to help with anti-air. The moving shot is just dumb against ground units, but against more mobile air units that can use terrain to escape, it could prove to be very interesting.
I just reformatted my PC for Win10, so I don't have any good replays at the moment. I'll post in the future if I have a good example.
I think that the main issue that I'm having is that I've been playing mech vs Protoss for quite a bit now, so my usual TvP strategy revolves around being defensive in the midgame, which lets Protoss get carriers. I feel like I'm forced into going bio TvP in order to punish carriers, but I hate going bio, especially now that ghosts can't snipe HTs. I've been trying to do some kind of bio mech liberator hybrid, but that too has a relatively weak midgame.
So if I do my mech stuff, Protoss scouts it and goes Carriers, and I don't have much of a way to punish it. If I do bio, then I usually end up playing a more "regular" (HTs, archons, etc) TvP, which I'm not the biggest fan of doing, but I might have to return to doing that.
I'm going to try to figure out a way to punish Protoss that tries to go carrier with some kind of midgame push. The problem is that I have to attack basically the second they start carrier production or I'll get overwhelmed.
On July 29 2015 08:49 CannonsNCarriers wrote: How about another way to frame the question:
When you have a mass of carriers, what have you lost them to?
Carriers right now are cost efficient versus every unit and unit comp in the game in LOTV. This is not my opinion - it is objective fact. There is nothing in the game that can kill carriers, i would recommend testing it in the unit tester for people that do not believe me.
With that said, the only current "counter," if you can call it that, to the carrier from Terran are widow mines getting lucky shots on masses of interceptors.
If you play mech, try to go avilo lategame cyclone+mine™ and use mines to take out the interceptors and lock onto the carriers. If you play bio...mass marines should work...but for some reason actually doesn't in practice. You need mass mines with marines as well.
Otherwise, at the current moment carriers beat everything and anything cost for cost in LOTV.
On July 29 2015 16:37 Big J wrote: BCs do technically counter them. Even without using Yamato they should win due to their 3armor rendering the interceptors harmless.
Problem is that carriers built much faster and BCS need yamato upgrade and is very vulnerable to feedback. Cyclone mine generally does better as liberators are squishy and succumb to carrier dps fast before they can start working on interceptor counts
BC on equal count will kill carriers with focus fire but carrier not only builds faster, but can release interceptors and run away.