Even if one were to get ahead enough and choose to win via mothership instead of conventional units, there are plenty of ways to deal with the mothership. The cost that it takes to perform the cheese ($8000) isn't normally worth the effort, but it can throw your opponent off balance like you mentioned.Īlso, teching straight to mothership would almost always end in getting run over by tier 1 units.
Still, when people do that, they just sell the buildings next to the mothership and shoot it down with a few APCs, venoms, etc. I played at least 5000 matches on my old computer (before I got steam) and the only way to do anything with the mothership was to do a very precise cheese with the mastermind which allows you to summon the mothership by placing the signal transmitter in your opponent's base, and then telling the mothership to kill the signal transmitter.
You can sell everything next to the mothership and the chain reaction won't spread.