In my business app class I am doing a Powerpoint presentation, and the topic I chose (my choice, obviously) was countering carrier happy Protoss players. I have it pretty well down, but I can never mount an effective defense as zerg. Everything I try can be countered by decent micromanagement by the protoss player. I’ve tried scourge, which seldom work; muties die too fast; as do hydras; and devourers fire too slow to be effective. I really need to know how to counter them because most everyone I play just rushes to carrier and builds 2 groups and some arbiters, and versus zerg the rip through a base with virtual impunity.
In my oppinion, it’s best to mix it up a bit. A few Mutas/Devourers along with some Scourge.
Another thing: If his primary strategy is to max carriers, then that’ll take him awhile. Rush him before he can get a good number of them.
We’ve gotten pretty good at getting to carrier fast. They refuse to play any map with fewer resources than BGH. I prefer pissing people off with early zealots, while saving for either a big fleet or a bunch of archons (which are great carrier killers). The terrans and 'toss both have great anti-air strategies, while the zerg just have what, muties and scourge micro? I’m doing this in response to one friend of mine who can never survive once 24 carriers start ripping through his hive cluster. I suggested that he learn to better manage his troops, but it doesn’t seem to help much. Scourge get owned by the attack-move command. Or they end up killing an interceptor.
He has been able to put up a decent fight, dropping 24 down to 8 before he dies, but that isn’t good enough.
Use hydralisks with some scourge and devourers on carriers. The devourers will make their armour weaker with the poison spores, scourges do beautiful damage against carriers, and a large amount of concentrated hydralisk fire on one carrier will take it down very fast. I don’t overly recommend mutas if corsairs are there since the fast splash damage will destroy them quite fast. It works kinda like this:
Mutas > Scouts > Devourers
Hydras > Carriers > Mutas
Hydras/Devourers > Corsairs > Mutas
Devourers do alright against Carriers. The problem is that they attack slow, and the carriers can do a lot of damage against them pretty fast. Oh, and defilers are nice anti-air units. Use Dark Swarm on your hydras, and air units won’t touch them. Throw some plague on them too, and the toss air force is toasty.
Oh, and do note, your entire force can just be stopped with a Dark Archon and some High Templar. Got to love the Protoss.
Amen to that. The protoss are easily my favorite race. If only they hadn’t toned down storm a few patches back (1.08 I believe) 'cause it used to be almost 3x as strong as it is now.
So defilers with the hydras work… I’ll have to have him try it. Does dark swarm protect buildings or is it just units? If it helps buildings too then it may just ruin my carrier micro.
And just how are mutas > scouts? I thought it was the other way around. If I know that my opponents are going air I’ll build 2 groups each of scouts and corsairs and own everything they send.
Well, Storm doesn’t need to be 3x as strong as it is now. Protoss are strong enough as is.
Dark Swarm protects buildings too I do believe- I haven’t played in a bit, so I don’t remember completely.
Well, here’s part of it.
Scouts can’t do full damage to Mutas since Mutas have light armor I do believe. Scouts, therefore, have their attack power greatly reduced. Plus, mutas only cost 2 support instead of the 3 which scouts cost, and mutas have a much lower cost to produce (Scouts will eat up your resources fast. Of course, in a money map, this isn’t as big of a deal.) The Mutas also have that bit of splash damage which helps even more when you have large groups of them. You can easily overwhelm Scouts with a group of mutas since the splash damage does add up quite a bit when you have say 36 mutas.
shows how often I play zerg… The splash damage is pretty nasty, usually I stasis field them when the show up en masse so that I can deal with bigger threats/ kill their production line.
To answer the questions: Swarm does protect buildings, Mutas are better than scouts (when you consider cost/supply), and Psi Storm was toned down way before 1.08. I don’t exactly know when.
Aw, hell man, just throw in some Hydras and Defilers with a couple of Devourers as shock absorbers, and throw Scourge at them. The Carriers can’t deal with Scourge at all. You’ll kill at least one scourge per squadron of eight Scourge you send at them. Just hotkey your scourge from 3-8 or something and that’s 6-8 carriers gone, guaranteed. (unless they also have Corsairs).
After your preliminary round of scourge throwing move your hydras (upgraded attack, range and movement preferred) in and bring in a couple of Defilers. Don’t Dark Swarm though. Dark Swarm is pretty much useless when the Carriers can just move away, and a good player will simply stay on a cliff or over water. However, the thing they can’t dodge is Plague. Players tend to bunch Carriers together because they offer a bigger punch and tighter defense together. That also gives you the advantage when you’re throwing Plague spells around. Plague them to kill half their total HP and target the main Carrier bodies with your Hydralisks.
If you just like to throw units around and not micro, there’s always the way of the Dev/Muta mix with heavy, HEAVY air armour upgrades. Have 2/3 of your force in Devourers and 1/3 in Mutas, and just go after the Carrier main bodies. I still prefer Scourge though, because they deal with Carriers in a hilariously easy way (unlike those damn Battlecruisers).
I like to micro my carriers, he hates to micro his zerg.
Then you have an inherent advantage already 
Actual unit-to-unit combat is all about microing.
Microing that many units could be tough, all you reall need are scourge and a few hydra.
The trick is in how you use them. If you just send them blindly at your opponent’s carriers, then of course he’s going to kill them off. Instead, wait for him to come to you. You need a lot of scourge to kill off any number of carriers, around 6 per carrier is nice. When he arrives at your base, first send your hydras to distract his carriers and pull them further into your base, then attack the carriers with your scourge. Problem solved.
Oh, and anyone who thinks Psi Storm is underpowered obviously hasn’t played against any decent protoss players. Psi Storm still fucks shit up fast. I lost a game not too long ago simply because the protoss player I was up against managed to Psi Storm all my units right before a critical battle, killing off my infantry and taking my mech down to about half health. Psi Storm is still a bit overpowered if anything.
You have to Micro against carriers. Otherwise you’re going to end up having your units targetting the little fucks comming out of the carriers.
Well, actually, another thing you could do would be to upgrade Hydra attack upgrades like hell and then tell them to hold position and snipe at the Interceptors under a Dark Swarm. You could kill them off if you have enough Hydras (this tactic works well with Marines on Stim coupled with Medics. I don’t know how well it would work for Hydras). And after that just have your Scourge chase them or something
A few Psi storms and that would eliminate the hydras.
You can’t have High Templar fly across water along with your 24 Carriers and numerous Arbiters/Observers.
Erm, not Psi storm, that Disruption Web. I’m not thinking straight today.
And I’m sure a few templar could walk on the same land of the Hydralisks.
For right now we are assuming a typical money map load of 40-50 probes weighing down their supply, leaving them with at best 15 or so supply after the carriers. We aren’t considering an intelligent mix, just a blind carrier rush with an arbiter or two for cloaking and recall. The other races definitely have a huge advantage compared to the zerg in this situation. I would hate to have to micro that many scourge… For the record that would be ~144 scourge and I’ve noticed that you have to keep those idiots on a very short leash if you don’t want to lose them.
We are also not considering a preemptive strike. This is meant to be what to do when they show up on your doorstep. Other than the obvious choice of kissing your ass good bye.
I swear, BGH ruined the game. Part of the strategy of the game should be expanding and taking resource points, and while you should do that in a mega-resource map as well it’s not AS important.
If it was a tenth as strong as it is now, it’d still be powerful to the point of absurdity. A templar-happy toss pretty much can not be killed by a zerg player (Don’t deny it. You remember what you did to SG.).
And BGH isn’t necessarily a “lame” map. It requires a different kind of strategy, but believe me, it takes just as much as non-money maps.
I love when people say they’ll “just” spend 10 000+ minerals on a whim to deal with one attack. In order to even match the productivity of 4 hatcheries pumping out mutas, using scouts, you’d need about 36 stargates, and you’d be spending 3 times as much per dozen, which will get their yellow metallic asses handed to them by a dozen mutas (what corsairs do to mutas, mutas do to scouts.). If you’re gonna play theorycraft, at least remember to factor time and resources into your counterattacks, since that’s what SC is all about.
A better strategy to deal with mutas is to just use temps or corsairs in small numbers, or even photon cannons, rather than trying to build a pseudo-victory fleet…
Shouldn’t this be on the homework board?