Dealing With Carriers

[madmarttigan]

As I have been playing the AI over and over I have come across one thing that still gives me a lot of trouble. I know half of it is my fault for not pestering them enough, but how do you deal with carriers as a protoss player when you have a more balanced mix of units made. It seems like stalkers and phoenixes are useless. Psionic storm got super nerfed and I don't think immortals attack air. Should I try archons, or perhaps just make more carriers than them? Protoss used to have scouts which were some of the strongest Anti air units in the game and now they feel like a phoenix is a replacement? bleh

Terran vikings aren't that great but at least I've got thors, battlecruisers /w y cannon, and seeker missiles. I think seeker missiles have the potential to be the new Psionic storm. I still have a little trouble with a mass of carriers as terran, but I don't feel like their AA is as worthless as protoss.

To be honest I haven't really had this issue with zerg because the comp is so easy to overwhelm early on with zerg and I haven't gotten the chance to let them build up to carriers lol. I don't know how corruptors weigh in on the AA fight. I know you can always have a crap ton of hydras to take care of business though! They should bring back scourge imo though.

[Gamewiz]

First off, just like you said, you don't pester them enough. If they are massing carriers than there isn't a true "counter", aside from massing (and by massing I mean maxing out supplies) the race's anti-air. For terran, either mass marines, with stim and shields, with medivacs, or mass vikings (which do work, you just don't build enough).

If you are protoss, either mass phoenixes, stalkers, or void rays.

Just hope you can mass enough and hope for the best.

It's the same thing when someone asked a blizz dev "What do you do if the other player masses 30 battlecruiers?" His response: "Don't let them mass battlecruisers." These are tier 3 units, you should NEVER allow your opponent to mass tier 3 units, or you are doing something horribly wrong.

[mysticalmage13]

There is a neat feature in Starcraft 2 which i just found out recently. The hotkey is F12, there it shows the tech tree and also the units for each race, furthermore, when viewing a specific unit, you can see their corresponding strengths and weaknesses, which unit are they strong against, and which unit they are weak against.


Anyway, it says their that carriers are weak against void rays if you're talking about protoss but i still have to test it out myself.


Edit: Posted late, Gamewiz basically stated it right. 

[madmarttigan]

Wow thanks for that one, that is pretty nifty.

[Photon]

With 0 or +1 ground weapon upgrades sentries do more dps than stalkers; not sure about +2; pretty sure +3 will make them stronger dps as they gain 2 damage per upgrade due to the vs armored bonus. Sentries also have guardian shield, very powerful tool VS carriers I'm not sure if it reduces each hit interceptors fire by 2, or just 2 overall but without upgrades it'll reduce interceptor damage by 40%-80%; if you counter their weapon upgrades with armor upgrades(or shields) you can basically tank through their damage.

Overall a grouping of sentries, stalkers(because sentries alone are gas heavy), and if you want some air then include void rays(be sure they target the carrier not interceptors to build up damage) A big key is to keep a good guardian shield going to protect your units and focus firing, try that out and see how it goes.

[ESL|Dynasty]

As I have been playing the AI over and over I have come across one thing that still gives me a lot of trouble. I know half of it is my fault for not pestering them enough, but how do you deal with carriers as a protoss player when you have a more balanced mix of units made. It seems like stalkers and phoenixes are useless. Psionic storm got super nerfed and I don't think immortals attack air. Should I try archons, or perhaps just make more carriers than them? Protoss used to have scouts which were some of the strongest Anti air units in the game and now they feel like a phoenix is a replacement? bleh

Terran vikings aren't that great but at least I've got thors, battlecruisers /w y cannon, and seeker missiles. I think seeker missiles have the potential to be the new Psionic storm. I still have a little trouble with a mass of carriers as terran, but I don't feel like their AA is as worthless as protoss.

To be honest I haven't really had this issue with zerg because the comp is so easy to overwhelm early on with zerg and I haven't gotten the chance to let them build up to carriers lol. I don't know how corruptors weigh in on the AA fight. I know you can always have a crap ton of hydras to take care of business though! They should bring back scourge imo though.

Hokay. Lets imagine both you and your opponent play protoss and have pretty much thge same tech up speed and mineral/gas mining rates (pretty much the same resources gathered). To counter carriers you need to think it logicaly. Big units are outrageously weak against smaller yet more units. This being said, you can try to counter them with phoenixes and archons. You basically have to place the phoenixes in automatic atack mode near the carriers to kill as many interceptors as possible and micro the archons to target the carriers and take em down one by one. You can use a couple of halucinations too 

[ShadowTiger]

i havent fought carriers much, but i would suggest vikings against carriers, simply because they outrange carriers. Do a hit and run you dont need that many, just dont let them reach your base, fight them in the open.

For protoss you may as well have a couple high templar, the 80 damage is useful against ALL units. Otherwise get a large army of stalkers and blink underneath the carriers, and make sure to get upgrades for ground armor and weapons.

I would not suggest pheonixes against carriers, use void rays with air weapons upgrade for a great counter to carriers. In fact, in PvP there is no reason not to build void rays, great against all higher tier units.

[cloak123]

First off, just like you said, you don't pester them enough. If they are massing carriers than there isn't a true "counter", aside from massing (and by massing I mean maxing out supplies) the race's anti-air. For terran, either mass marines, with stim and shields, with medivacs, or mass vikings (which do work, you just don't build enough).

If you are protoss, either mass phoenixes, stalkers, or void rays.

Just hope you can mass enough and hope for the best.

It's the same thing when someone asked a blizz dev "What do you do if the other player masses 30 battlecruiers?" His response: "Don't let them mass battlecruisers." These are tier 3 units, you should NEVER allow your opponent to mass tier 3 units, or you are doing something horribly wrong.

ya but in sc1 it was balanced enough to use a mix of tier 1 and tier 2 units to easily Micro down mass air, Goons and arbiters for example, or Goliath and science vessel.

[uber1984]

Use the Void rays, and micro manage them so they all fire on one carrier at a time instead of the carriers little interceptors, and carriers drop like they are flies.


a trick to this is to hold down the shift k, and tap A for each carrier, and as one carrier pops the units will begin instantly attacking the next one... and with sc2 the que system seems to be limitless


basically micro management is the key to taking out carriers.


cheers,
uber1984

As I have been playing the AI over and over I have come across one thing that still gives me a lot of trouble. I know half of it is my fault for not pestering them enough, but how do you deal with carriers as a protoss player when you have a more balanced mix of units made. It seems like stalkers and phoenixes are useless. Psionic storm got super nerfed and I don't think immortals attack air. Should I try archons, or perhaps just make more carriers than them? Protoss used to have scouts which were some of the strongest Anti air units in the game and now they feel like a phoenix is a replacement? bleh

Terran vikings aren't that great but at least I've got thors, battlecruisers /w y cannon, and seeker missiles. I think seeker missiles have the potential to be the new Psionic storm. I still have a little trouble with a mass of carriers as terran, but I don't feel like their AA is as worthless as protoss.

To be honest I haven't really had this issue with zerg because the comp is so easy to overwhelm early on with zerg and I haven't gotten the chance to let them build up to carriers lol. I don't know how corruptors weigh in on the AA fight. I know you can always have a crap ton of hydras to take care of business though! They should bring back scourge imo though.

[crazian]

it'll be interesting to see 150 marines vs 20 carriers....I'll go try that.

[formerself]

Use the Void rays (...) and carriers drop like they are flies.

Definitely Void Rays! Been playing on bnet almost all day and 8-10 void rays completely slaughtered my mothership and 8 carriers.

[ProtossSC2]

Though I haven't played much at all, I also agree on getting Void rays to counter those carriers as Void rays have great damage against armored units

Another thing I would like to add is the Mothership together with those Void rays, though I never tried this but I think it's possible.

Send in a small wave to the mass carriers and when those interceptors starts flying out , use the mothership ability to vortex them all in and then move in with d void rays or another way is just vortex half of it's army in and take those remainings on.

Correct me if im wrong I have only played a couple times & getting owned by AI.. lol .. can't wait to play online/multiplayer

[starscraft-2-fan]

As I have been playing the AI over and over I have come across one thing that still gives me a lot of trouble. I know half of it is my fault for not pestering them enough, but how do you deal with carriers as a protoss player when you have a more balanced mix of units made. It seems like stalkers and phoenixes are useless. Psionic storm got super nerfed and I don't think immortals attack air. Should I try archons, or perhaps just make more carriers than them? Protoss used to have scouts which were some of the strongest Anti air units in the game and now they feel like a phoenix is a replacement? bleh

Terran vikings aren't that great but at least I've got thors, battlecruisers /w y cannon, and seeker missiles. I think seeker missiles have the potential to be the new Psionic storm. I still have a little trouble with a mass of carriers as terran, but I don't feel like their AA is as worthless as protoss.

To be honest I haven't really had this issue with zerg because the comp is so easy to overwhelm early on with zerg and I haven't gotten the chance to let them build up to carriers lol. I don't know how corruptors weigh in on the AA fight. I know you can always have a crap ton of hydras to take care of business though! They should bring back scourge imo though.

corruptors own carriers if u have like 10 of them against the amount the AI comes with the corruptors win