Mothership (Tal'darim)

"Weakness is a path to death."

- A Tal'darim mothership pilot

The Tal'darim mothership is a unit available in the single-player campaign of StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void. It is a variant of the mothership normally available to players in melee play.

Overview
"The Tal'darim motherships have warped in to strengthen our fleet, I must admit, they are quite impressive."

- Rohana

Tal'darim motherships are Khalai motherships redesigned for total annihilation. Each one is a throne from which a Tal'darim fleet lord oversees the ruin of their foes.

Alarak brought the Tal'darim's motherships to join the Daelaam after he defeated Ma'lash in Rak'Shir and became the new Tal'darim Highlord. The motherships were recognized by Rohana as highly modified from the Daelaam's motherships, with a focus on the total destruction of the Tal'darim's enemies. Some were capable of launching interceptors. Some Tal'darim motherships are outfitted with phase displacement beams, allowing the ships to purify small areas from orbit.

Legacy of the Void
The mothership is the Tal'darim faction choice for the capital ship class in the Legacy of the Void campaign, and the third choice with the and tempest. As in the multiplayer, only one mothership can be active at a time.

The mothership is a terrifically powerful offensive vessel; it can attack while moving and its base attack does very high damage, enough to kill many enemies in one shot. Its Black Hole ability functions differently from the normal mothership, keeping units on the map in a stunned state so they may still be attacked, and its Thermal Lance does 200 damage to all enemy ground units in a line leading away from the mothership. It also has access to Blink, which makes it easier to quickly engage enemies or retreat from battle.

The mothership is a very powerful weapon, but should be used in tandem with other units, as it is easily overwhelmed with superior numbers, especially air units which its Thermal Lance cannot damage. It also costs a significant investment of resources to deploy, but is substantially cheaper than a fleet of carriers or tempests.

Co-op Missions
Alarak can summon the Death Fleet as a calldown ability, summoning a mothership and an escort of destroyers with timed life. The mothership has the same health stats as the campaign version, but the damage stats of the multiplayer version and different abilities.

Quotations

 * See: StarCraft II Tal'darim Mothership Quotations