Liberator
Equally good vs ground units compared to BC
Much better vs Tempest and Void Rays
Can produce 3 liberators at the same time as one BC (with reactor).
Vulnerable to storm.
BC
Lose much DPS if behind on attack upgrades.
Slow to produce.
Weak vs Tempest and Void Rays except if in really high numbers that are hard to reach in normal game.
Not vulnerable to storm.
Basically apart from not being able to teleport liberators seems to be a much better choice in late game TvP compared to BCs. With 2 reactor starport you get all the liberator support you need. It is much easier to transition to mass liberators compared to mass BCs.
Is there any reason to go BCs compared to liberators in late game TvP or are liberators the superior choice?
When Protoss starts making carrier/tempest, I have no idea why Terrans don’t bother going Battlecruiser. I would say the main reason why they are scared to transition into BC is because of how effective stalkers can be against them. Unless there’s a critical mass of BCs, the stalkers will do pretty well. Of course, the Terran should have some tanks and liberators, so again, not really sure. But the armor of BCs is insane, making the damage of carriers nearly useless. Tempests can pick away at BCs a little bit, but if you have enough BCs or if Protoss makes too many tempests, you can just warp onto them and blast away everything with yamato.
BCs also handle storm much better. When you have a huge clump of vikings or liberators, you can easily take ~400+ damage a second under storms. With BC’s, this isn’t as big of a problem. Liberators are actually extremely good at dealing with air when you have enough of them. This is because of their splash damage (and why their AA got nerfed a long time ago). But again, the high templar storms are extremely good. That’s why you see pros mass viking rather than mass liberator - because of the superior range.
I can’t think of any reason why Terrans never transition to mass BC in TvP. Perhaps they are too stupid to. If someone could enlighten me, that would be great.
They make vikings. They make liberators. Both ships. Medivacs complement bio really well. Liberators do okay. I wouldn’t say vikings complement bio. Nonetheless, you are still making ships in the late game. Protoss is making the transition for T3 units that have a minute long production, Terrans should do the same (but they rely on T1/T2 to win)
BCs are damage sponges. Theyre useful against carriers because of their high armour and large healthpool. Carriers themselves are rather ineffectual against NCs because each interceptor has two attacks, meaning BC armour is counted twice as a result - so instead of having 6 armour at +3, theu effectively have 12 armour against carriers.
However, BCs also build slowly, and are incredibly expensive, so getting a fleet of BCs large enough to deal with both the carriers and tempests that get added in is a difficult task in itself. If you can manage it and can get good yamatos off, you can win the fight against a carrier/tempest late game army.
Upgrades, expense, infrastructure, build time and range, generally. BCs are the most expensive non hero unit in the game, they lack the range necessary to really compete with other capital ships, youre effectively setting yourself behind on upgrades with a unit that you cant afford to be trading out, but also doesnt have the range to actually stay out of a fight, yet you also need to stay alive long enough to transition into mass BC to do so, which often involves fighting with an ever shrinking army while you’re buying time. The infrastructure necessary to make the transition is incredibly expensive too, and perhaps most damning of all is the cost of each BC as well.
Also, BCs are designed as a more anti-ground unit given that their air to ground attack is stronger than their air to air attack is. You are effectively relying entirely on yamato to deal damage to the opposing army, and then teleporting away to repair. Youre pretty much guaranteed to lose BCs to tempests doing this too, so your only other option is to TP on top of your opponent’s army and hope theyre stupid enough to sit still and take the yamatos, and then die to the BC’s AA on top of that.
Vikings do not synergize with bio. They’re good at shooting down colossus for bio, but they take storm hits all the same unlike tanks or liberators (when dealing with ground). BCs are super well rounded. They will work well with anything, especially things with ranged DPS.
Upgrades: you only need ship weapon upgrades, because chances are, you should be upgrading vehicle/ship armor already. Protoss has to start from scratch with weapon/armor upgrades.
Expense: it’s 50 minerals/50gas more than a carrier, and in the late game, assuming even skill, Terran has a better economy than Protoss.
Infrastructure: you should have at least 2 starports at this point, and at least 2 tech labs. It’s a very cheap transition compared to Protoss (fleet beacon, multiple stargates).
Equal build time to carriers. Equal supply. Its actual attack range is low, this is true, but yamato cannon has a range of 10 and we all know that in close range, BCs can instantly wipe out a fleet of carrier/tempests.
I never said build only BCs. You should have a fair viking count along with your BCs. No one says to only make mass carriers either - they usually have storm/archon and tempests.
This same argument applies to transitioning to any different type of army for any race. Protoss has to make the transition from ground to air as well. Same for Zerg. It’s all the same, you gradually trade out army for a greater tech army.
A fleet beacon is 300/200. A stargate is 150/150. A starport is 150/100. A fusion core is 150/150. You may need a few extra tech labs, but tell me, what is it that makes infrastructure incredibly expensive compared to Protoss? I know you’re going to make an argument about economy, so let me get ahead of you and say again that Terran economy > Protoss economy in the late game.
This would only be against a ground army. Yes, you are quite reliant on yamato. Any other race would be too if they had a spell that could deal 280 damage in a few seconds and then teleport away in another second. It is a very reliable and powerful spell that pays for itself upon casting.
Bingo - that’s what you do. Jump on top of them with a good BC count. That’s why Protoss needs to find a good balance between tempests and fighting units - if they make too many tempests, they get jumped on and lose instantly. I guarantee you they are not fast enough to run away if you TP right on top of them. I guarantee it - unless they recall. 100% you will be able to TP on them and yamato, their only chance is to focus down the BCs, and chances are, they will only kill 2 before you blast away half their fleet with yamato. There’s your solution.
Depends if you’re going tank based or WM based. If you’re going tank based, chances are you’re going to be going for mech weapons, which means your armour and ship weapons are going to both be at 0/0.
Not for a BC transition. For liberators, sure - you can have 2 port and reactor them, but you’re still needing at least 3-4 more starports for a mass BC transition, and as you’re doing your transition you need to keep your opponent off your back long enough for you to reach that critical mass of BCs with the ever dwindling army that you’re trying to switch out of.
Not with chronoboost.
If you’re engaging, you literally have to TP onto your opponent’s army, rapid fire yamato each tempest and then hope that you did enough damage to them to actually keep your BCs alive. This is particularly important facing air units because otherwise tempests kite and kill BCs all day.
No. Absolutely not. Re-watch Maru vs Parting game 2 again. There was no point, at any time that Maru’s economy was ahead of Parting’s in the lategame - before you argue that Mules give Terran the economic advantage, that’s only partially true, as you want to use a lot of your energy on scans as well to keep an eye on the opposing army.
You also have to be able to defend your bases effectively against Zealot/Blink DT runbys consistently, as well as any air army on the other side. Unlike Toss, Terran doesn’t have recall. That’s why they rely so much on PFs. Getting into a situation where you’re able to actively push the opponent’s side consistently and take ground, trading enough whilst also maintaining an economic lead is incredibly difficult to do in TvP.
Yes, but unlike Protoss, Terran doesn’t have a front-loaded army that allows them to mass reinforce their ground army or rapidly reproduce Templar/archons, and their shield upgrades apply to everything they have. And again, they have chronoboost, which allows them to produce their “standard production” units (stargate, robo) faster. They also don’t have recall for defense.
As for Zerg, they have the benefit of having centralized production and rapid rebuild, in addition to the best vision and mobility in the game bar none.
Terran’s vision is based on their sensor towers and scan. They don’t have chrono and all their production is “Standard” production.
I’m not saying a mass BC transition isn’t possible. What I AM saying is that it’s significantly harder to do vs Protoss because you have to be significantly ahead - and if that’s the case, you pretty much could have killed them before making that transition anyway. And if you’re trying to do it from even or worse, behind… Well, you’re going to be having a really, really hard time of doing so.
There’s a reason that we rarely ever see Terrans transition from Bio into Mech for example. More often than not the transition can take a full 5 minutes of game-play time.
This makes no sense. If you’re bio, you make medivacs and tanks. I guess I see the reasoning behind mech weapon upgrades for tanks, but it does absolutely nothing for widow mines. When you get armor, you get something for tanks, widow mines, and medivacs. Perhaps a mech transition would do the trick then. Thors crush carriers and tempests, especially in the current meta.
It’s still a cheaper transition for Terran in comparison to Protoss. It’s also the same argument for Protoss as well.
That’s fair - but there’s also a fair chance all the chrono boosts are being put into air armor/weapon upgrades.
I 100% guarantee if you have a good number of BCs in comparison to the Protoss fleet, you will be able to do enough damage to keep your BCs alive. You should be making vikings too if you’re worried about the range. Contrary to popular belief, tempests do not kill BCs that fast, and if there’s a ton of tempests, you should 100% be able to jump on them without BCs as their army will be too weak to deal long term DPS. Tempests are made to pick away, not fight directly.
Is this the game where he nuked himself in the end? LMAO. First, he fell so far behind in the early game. Let me redirect you to something I said in my reply.
Maru took so much damage. He was pretty much forced to turtle until the really late game where he was finally able to walk a few bio units and ghosts around to do some good damage. For at least half of this super long game, he did absolutely nothing to slow down the Protoss economy. At one point, Parting had a 14 worker lead over Maru. He was behind in general, so your argument is invalid already.
Let me go on to say in the last half of the game, Maru even manages to keep an equal number of bases to Parting, so while Parting has a good bank, Maru was mining more than Parting. Maru himself even has a decent bank at good portions of the game. Maru had a solid economy - that is, for good amounts of this half of the game, his income rate was much healthier than Parting. That’s part of what I mean by having a good economy, or better economy than Protoss.
Let me reverse the argument back to you. You also have to be able to defend your bases effectively against bio/drop runbys and ghost nukes. Unlike Terran, Toss has terrible detection. Their static defense is also useless against nukes. That’s why they rely on having a good buffer of static defense to prevent nukes from directly targeting the nexus. Also, bio units are ranged, so they can easily position themselves away from static defense. Zealots/DTs must either manually target SCVs, kill the PF quick enough that SCVs cannot repair in time, or simply die to the PF, which is what happened in Maru vs. Parting game 2. They just died to mass repair and PFs. Going back to detection, Toss has only oracles and observers. Observers are hot garbage, there’s no debate about that. Oracles are also extremely fragile, no debate here either. One ghost EMP, one viking snipe, so on, your detection is ruined. You make it sound so uneven, but the fact is that it’s much harder for a Protoss to defend than Terran - especially in the late game.
This is what you’re supposed to do in the early/mid game, and no, by the design of this game, that is what the Terran is supposed to do. They generally keep the pressure on while Protoss tries to get that economic lead. Terrans get their economic lead by doing damage to Protoss, or forcing enough army to prevent the lead.
It’s certainly a Protoss advantage to mass warp in gateway units, and that does make the transition difficult, but I never said do the transition all at once. Also, you act like templars have storm as soon as they warp in and archons as soon as 2 templars are made. Those things take time to build up too, and they are extremely fragile up until they have enough energy or are finished morphing. As for shield upgrades, they only apply to the shields of Protoss units. Terrans have a similar thing except it applies to all hitpoints of ships/vehicles (armor). Not a valid argument, especially when EMP completely takes away that advantage.
Chrono boosts tend to go into upgrades. However, it is true that Protoss does have an advantage in this aspect in the late game. You act like recall is like some magic super power, but the truth is, that it can only happen once every 130 seconds. Meanwhile, all you have to do is run away from the base that is recalling. Recall is not an all-powerful defensive move, and there are ways to work around recalling - you can even bait your opponent out of position as your main army walks across the map. It’s called strategic thinking.
This is half true. Zerg has the quickest rebuild in the game, no doubt. It still takes a good amount of time to build brood lords/ultralisks/lurkers though. Also, they don’t have any power units like battlecruisers or carriers. Their army design is fundamentally different than P/T so the overall arguments will be much more different. Also, Zerg is strong, so let’s not go into that too much.
Protoss doesn’t have vision period. It’s race advantages. This is partly why Protoss needs recall.
Maru could have easily transitioned to BCs considering his bank and viking count. He was also behind for roughly half of the game. Invalid argument.
So you want the instant gratification of trying to win the game by massing T1 units while your opponent is investing the time to get T3. Talk about broken - evidence that Terran doesn’t need to transition out of T1 to fight in the late game. Bio is so effective…
BC is strong when you can make over 16 or more. To get there is hard esp if you transition from bio. In most cases you will be behind and not get there. Few BCs plus anything else will not stop any protoss late army.
I laughed so bad, 3-3 200/200 BC supply has no counter from the Protoss side, tempests don’t even do a third the work they used to do when they had speed or higher HP pool / damage.
True, but that’s also somewhat irrelevant given the number of bases a protoss typically has at that point.
It’s pretty composition dependent - and personally speaking I prefer using Widow mines in TvP rather than tanks as tanks have a very, very hard fall off and are particularly useless vs chargelot oriented compositions (though they’re decent against blink stalkers and colossus).
If you’re going for widow mines you either get mech armour, or you get ship weapons as you transition into Air units for anti-colossi tech. But I see your point with this.
Cost for cost? It generally works out pretty similarly. It’s definitely not cheaper though.
Oracles and observers aren’t vision? Oracles specifically, at that time provide good vision through revelation, which can’t be understated.
“Tiers” in this game don’t really exist outside of Zerg, and even then only to an extent. This is a game of counters and control, not tiers - it’s not about rushing to “Tier 3/4” and instantly winning the game. If you want that, go play Command and Conquer or something else.
Beyond that, late-game Bio is definitely not “tier 1”, and while Bio is the core composition, it’s supplemented by all manner of other units to be used effectively.
But part of the reason we don’t see a transition from bio into mech is quite simple - they don’t have any real cohesion outside of certain units which fill specific rolls for Bio. Tanks tend to be a liability in most situations due to both friendly fire and the fact that they’re easily picked off because bio often leaves them behind when microing back. They can work, but widow mines serve mostly the same purpose, more effectively and without the draw back of both expense and immobility.
Mech specifically can’t really use bio as a buffer as they’re too squishy and too vulnerable to splash damage - they literally kill their own units. The only real unit that can supplement mech from the bio tech tree is ghosts.
The reality is that Mech and Bio often don’t mix effectively. It’s never been about “not wanting to transition from tier 1 to tier 2 and tier 3”. I thought you were smarter than that.
No, if you are going Bio you only make a few Tanks for early defense against Blink and a follow-up contain before Protoss has the time to tech up to splash and pump out enough Chargelots.
After that point Siege Tanks are a pure liability for Bio. They slow down the army considerably (and Bio versus Protoss is a very mobility-focused match-up), and they risk deadly amounts of friendly-fire whenever Chargelots come into play.
The way that Tanks operate (slowly siege up with the intention to slowly leap-frog forward or hold a direct assault at that location) directly conflicts with the methods that Bio relies on to compete with that mid-late game Protoss army (using mobility to avoid combat until the splash damage units are disabled/killed/on-cooldown, rushing in to take advantage of those weaknessses, and kiting chargelots over long distances).
Unless my sense of timing is off, Bio shouldn’t be using Tanks long enough to get +2 weapons. Bio-Tank should already be obsolete in TvP by that point in the game, so Tanks aren’t even a consideration for further upgrades.
On the other hand, armor upgrades will tend to be neglected because the benefit they provide is extremely mild:
Tanks are effectively dead once the opponent reaches them, so armor upgrades are practically useless.
Widow Mines tend to rely on a single shot from stealth where armor doesn’t even come into play until they are on cooldown.
Vikings and Liberators are more damage focused, so the Terran player is encouraged to go for ship weapons before armor if he/she is upgrading air at all. Secondly, the three most likely sources of damage against these units are Storms, Stalkers and Tempests where armor upgrades. Storm simply ignores armor, while Stalkers and Tempests both upgrade weapons faster than armor and have a tendency to waste extra shots on the same target (such that armor makes less of a difference than this overkill).
Are you talking about a Battlecruiser transition from mech, or a late-game transition from mech into Bio? Those are two very different things.
Battlecruiser transitions from mech are viable and reasonable to pull off because much of the same infrastructure can be reused and the units work very well together. Mech tends to rely on an artillery + front-line model, where the player can just start substituting Battlecruisers as part of the front line after he/she has built up a sufficiently strong army to handle the transition.
A late-game transition from Bio into mech is a foolish waste of time and resources:
Terran can open into mech right at the start of the game, so there is no need to waste resources and time on Barracks, infantry upgrades, and Medivacs that won’t be used later.
Bio-mech mixes (with the exception of Widow Mines) tend to be much weaker than pure mech/sky compositions or Bio-Mine-Viking/Lib compositions because the units usually rely on conflicting playstyles to be effective. Bio doesn’t have the durability for mech’s meat-shield+artillery playstyle, and mech doesn’t have the mobility for Bio’s playstyle (or the units that do are so completely redundant that mixing them is a waste).
This is not cheaper.
Cost is not the only factor. The other factor is how the army functions:
If your intended composition works well alongside your existing army, then you can safely make that transition by slowly building up the production/upgrades for the units you want and incorporating them directly into your current army.
If your intended composition does not work well alongside your existing army, then there is a disconnect where your army will significantly weaken during such a transition; and you may not be able to pull the transition off at all without unless you can keep an increasingly large supply of units completely out of combat until the transition is complete.
Bio and mech depend on conflicting playstyles, so Terran consistently faces that second-case problem whenever the player tries to transition from Bio into Battlecruisers or a heavy mech army. Terran may also have that problem trying to transition from heavy Battle-mech into traditional mech or Battlecruisers; but in that case the problem is alleviated somewhat by reusable production, upgrades, and Hellions/Hellbats.
Protoss never faces that second-case problem. All Protoss units without exception are reasonably durable or they have long range attacks or abilities that allow them to operate safely from behind those durable units; so Protoss can substitute units from different tech branches without a significant loss in power. There is not a single case where a Protosss unit is completely dependent on a playstyle that the other Protoss units cannot follow. Even units like Phoenixes and Stalkers which can use an active kiting style in some cases have enough durability to be folded back into the meat-shield of a larger Protoss army.
That is only true if the Battlecruiser transition is practically already complete.
If it is not, then the Battlecruisers will have to be stuck at home, or they will be easily isolated from the Bio and killed off.
Remember that a Bio army cannot simply engage a Protoss army with splash. Those splash damage units will need to be killed off or disabled first, or Bio will be obliterated or forced into an effective retreat until this is accomplished. In either case the Battlecruisers will end up outnumbered and vulnerable.
I would say the main reason why they are scared to transition into BC is because of how effective stalkers can be against them.
I always took it as BC to punish Toss that uses more zealots since they can do nothing but die.
Stalkers can hold their own against BC, but by what I believe, BC becomes very risky thanks to void ray buffs. Void Rays melts BC even better with this buffs, so with stalkers (basic protoss units) on the mix and BC have a hard time paying their costs.
If you want to shut down a carrier or colossus, I generally go for Raven.
bcs actually do significantly more damage vs ground, so they compliment a liberator fleet very well since it only takes 8-11 3/3 bcs to kill everything on the ground. 25-35+ liberators with aam and emp can deal with any air and can also siege to assist with ground, but bc anti ground is one of the most powerfull of all the starport units, and doesnt need to siege up, so it cannot be shut down by blink stalkers
the yamato cannon also makes the battlecruisers behave like tempests against static defence, removing the need for siege tanks, and can also be used for guaranteed kills against casters
https://drop.sc/replay/16730150
when combined the game becomes a simple escort mission, where the bc just moves forward and liberators guard them from the enemy fleets, liberators are also fast enough to catch tempests, and emp can stop storms.