So the Protoss get a neat little unit, mentioned earlier on this site.
The Mothership.
The first preview story on the StarCraft II website was about this unit, detailing a little bit about its origins and how it ended up on the battlefields of the current iteration of the game.
Now, to clarify, this unit is not little. It takes no small amount of work to get this thing in the air, and you can only have one at any given time.
But.
Once you do, it gives you a whole host of benefits. It can fire at stuff, naturally, but that stuff can be on the ground or in the air. One of the most important things about StarCraft II is knowing which units do what. If you take a whole bunch of Siege Tanks to an air battle, you’re going to be coming back to base with a big heap of scrap and a bruised ego. You need to know what stuff does, and be prepared to counter if your enemy does stuff that you’re not really ready for. Such is the joy of StarCraft.
The Mothership is a great deal like an airborne Terran building. It’s slow and ponderous, and not terribly attractive. But unlike a Terran building, it can be destructive at range. It is also a great “protector” unit and can do a great deal to aid any Protoss base.
Here’s why.
First, the Mothership can cloak any nearby units – ground or air, including buildings. This means that there can be a very large space in a Protoss base that is under constant blackout. Sure, a scan will penetrate this, but if your strike force does not happen to include any detector units, you could be right on top of a Protoss Nexus and have no idea.
So, picture this. You roll up to the Protoss base. You’ve got some marines because they’re cheap, easy, and can attack either ground or air. You’ve got a number of Siege Tanks – let’s say ten – and you’ve brought along a few Banshees and one or two Thors because they sound like Arnold Schwarzenegger. You’re good to go.
But all of a sudden, this big circular monstrosity comes floating in and your stuff starts blowing up. Blowing up quickly. Sure, you get your Thors and marines firing away, and you’re actually punching through the shield when all of a sudden space-time itself opens up and you’re hurtled away to some far away dimension where we assume you call the Mothership every weekend and you never miss a holiday at home with the family. Likely, you have a whole host of children to keep her happy and are her “special little guy”.
Whatever goes on in there, though, means that your army is temporarily out of commission. For at least 15 seconds. In StarCraft II, that is an eternity.
Several times, we’ve seen the Mothership used as a defensive unit, and it has worked very well. It allows for a good portion of an entire base and army to be hidden, while simultaneously warping out enemy units. With a little luck and some good old fashioned skill, a player can keep their Mothership alive for a very long time.
Terrans, by way of comparison, don’t really have the same kind of “end unit”. Battlecruisers are great, but they lack the same panache as the Mothership.
Interestingly, using the Mothership is not all that easy. It’s a lot to keep track of, especially if it’s taken on the offensive. As mentioned, you can only have one at a time, and understandably the resource cost is quite high.
At this point in the beta, the Protoss are the undisputedly overpowered race. They’re fun to play, but get a great many advantages over the other two factions, and the Mothership represents merely one good example.
Blizzard seems to be taking this into account and is slowly making the necessary changes, but balance is a tricky thing to find in any game. With luck, this will be a problem that is ironed out sooner rather than “after the game is shipped OMG patch it”.
Ah well. Time to get back to the Beta.
Or…maybe…you should phone your mom. The guilt vortex sucks, man.
