Jehryn
Legacy Member
Hieronder is een vroege guide over alle Terran units, Build order's & tactics. Voor alle terrans die beginnen met SCII (en de rest 
) is het zeer sterk aangeraden dit verschillende keren te lezen.
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SC2 Macro Power, The Orbital Command:
Starcraft 2 is all about macro- and Terran’s have there fair share of macro mechanics to be aware of. The Orbital Command (or OC), is the primary macro facility for Ts and, if used properly, is the most useful item in the terran arsenal. It allows them to mine faster, scout instantly, reveal cloaked units instantly, and get you out of a supply block at a key moment. Effective use of the OCs energy (and constant use of its energy) will correlate directly with your win/loss rate. Quick tips for your OCs are:
- First, and foremost, ALWAYS have it hot keyed. Intermittently (when you have a free action), click your OCs hotkey and check for available energy often.
- Don’t let energy store up past 100 EVER, and only let it go past 50 if you think you may need a scan for tactical purposes (seeing up a cliff, or spotting Dark Templar, Banshees, Ghosts, or other cloaked/burrowed units).
- Always drop mules at the highest qty resource available- what I mean is don’t drop a mule on a mineral that has only 400 mineral points remaining if there is one available to you with 1000 mineral points remaining. This will keep your workers harvesting efficiently and not unnecessarily reduce the number of mineral patches available to harvest from.
- Always upgrade any expansion to an OC (if your not going to turn it into a planetary fortress) either before you send it over to the expansion, or if built at location before you start SCV production. The amount of income provided by mules (~250- 270 over the course of its life) and the amount of utility provided by another orbital command should not be underestimated.
- Some neat tricks with mule drops:
o If you see banelings coming to blow up a wall on your base (or going at a group of marines) drop a mule infront of them to soak up some of the damage. Technichally this is costly, (~250 minerals that would be mined by the mule), but often keeping your army (or your base) alive is more important than the minerals mined from the mule. This can be a game winning play if you drop it at just the right moment.
o The same trick can be used to take the opening shot of a siege tank so you can move your army in safely to kill it.
The Planetary Fortress-
The Pfort is the biggest, baddest, defensive structure in the game, and only requires and engineering bay to build. With its SCVs repairing it, it can handle a small to medium sized ground force from any race with relative ease. You should always have a few missile turrets to back up a pfort investment. This would be built in the place of an orbital command, so it should only be used if absolutely necessary; as it effectively costs you all the extra minerals and scans you would get from an orbital command.
- This can be used as a way to early expand on maps with a natural expo ( steppes of war, lost temple, kulas revine etc) against protoss and zerg. Be careful when doing this strategy because it leaves you open for drops, but it is also a highly effective way to get an early resource advantage on your opponents. I recommend not getting pfort against terrans since siege tanks can out range the pfort.
- Always get the range upgrade for turrets if you build a planetary fortress. The same goes for the armor upgrade, but it isn’t a top priority.
- Amazing for island expansions. Flying a command center unupgraded to the island on Scrap Station and then turning it into a pfort allows it to nearly hit the whole island, making it nearly invincible to a drop harass, or an incoming nydus worm (especially with good turret placement)
- While I am not a big fan of this idea- you can attack protoss and terran bases with planetary fortresses, and use them to contain enemies in their bases. (I would highly recommend practicing this many times with friends before attempting it on the ladder). The method is simple, build a few command centers, fly them to a location, land them all, and upgrade them all into pforts. Meanwhile, send over SCVS (optimally in a medivac) to repair the buildings while they upgrade --- Thanks Krowser for:
A small pointer for flying over a CC and attacking someone with a PF. You can load up to 5 SCVs in a CC. So you wont actualy need a medivac to carry them.
Missile Turrets:
Your main static defense as a terran, hits air and colossi only. Mostly good for being a detector and protecting yourself from drops / harass
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- Turrets are better in groups, but also they need to cover all of your harvesters (if you fear air harass).
- If you are building them as your primary form of detection, always make 2 instaed of 1. Dark templar kill them in just a few hits, so it dosen’t hurt to have extra. (plus, they are cheap!)
- Rarely, but it will happen, you will find yourself without a single unit that attacks air. Its never a bad idea to build a few turrets just incase your opponent hides his starport/stargate/spire. Don’t go overboard but don’t leave yourself undefended, either.
Sensor Towers
Sensor towers hover under a lot of controversy- they are expensive (almost as much as a siege tank), and easy to locate and destroy. That being said, they can be invaluable if used to stop incoming drops, or spot enemy troop movement early to allow you to setup your defenses before being attacked. Here are my rules of thumb for sensor towers:
- Don’t build sensor towers if you are on the offense most of the game. Use your resources for combat units.
- Build sensor towers anytime you find yourself unsure of what your opponent is doing. It will provide a certain sense of security which will allow you to progress down the tech tree and expand without worrying about unseen attacks to the back of your base.
- Any time you can cover both your main and an expansion with a sensor tower, it is probably a good investment. The amount of time you get to move your army into position can be the difference between winning and losing a tight game.
Marine:
The Terran’s lowest tech unit, the marine is a versatile unit that can and should be used all game, every game as one of your primary army units. The marine’s strength is in numbers, and cost to dps ratio is quite high. They are the only tier 1.0 unit that can attack air, and get awesome upgrades with combat shield, and stim pack. However, the marines are squishy, and fall quickly to any concentrated fire or fire from units with splash damage (hellions, siege tanks, and colossi all ravage marines easily). The marine, while strong on its own, needs to be supporting your other army units in order to be the most effective it can be. Points for marines:
- Don’t leave them in the front: Marines are best suited to be positioned behind your higher tech, more HP units. Don’t put them in the front where they will die before they can do their damage.
- Getting combat shield is important- +10 hp is an additional 22% hp for your marines. However, it is important to ration your early game gas— See the section on “early game gas” for notes on how to spend your gas resources.
- Use stim pack sparingly- Try to use stim packs only when actively engaging your opponents- Marines low overall hp should force you to be stingy with your stimpacks until you have a few medivacs hovering overhead.
- Mid game, spread a few marines throughout your bases in order to have a “first response team” for incoming drops or air raids.
- Marines make excellent backup for every other terran unit, and they should be used nearly every game in quantity.
- Due to their low damage, +atk upgrades are a must for later in the game, because high armor units will just ignore the marines otherwise (a fully upgraded ultralisk would take 1 damage a shot from an un-upgraded marine)
Marauder:
The primary terran 1.5 tier unit, this is your heavy shock troop. High HP, good damage with bonus damage to armored, and upgrades to increase their damage output, speed, and slow ability all make this a powerful unit that often will show up in your army compositions. This unit falls into the “tank” category of units, so often it makes sense to move these to the front lines of battle and let them soak up damage. Some pointers for marauders:
- Stim pack at will- the high hp of marauders makes them be able to perma-stim basically. Don’t be afraid to stim pack for every fight with marauders, as it improves their combat effectiveness by a great deal, and allows you to outmaneuver your opponents, even before you get the concussion missile upgrade.
- Concussion missile is a great upgrade if you are attempting to get map control, however if you are playing defensive it is less of a priority to upgrade. EDIT: since the patch lowering the cost and time to build, if u have 1 marauder this upgrade is worth getting.
- “stim kiting” involves using marines + marauders (with stimpack + concussion missle upgrades) to slow enemy units and continually move, then attack, then move, then attack (etc) to keep your units out of range of theirs while still killing all of their units. The term kiting comes from you moving so their units look like they are on a string following your units at a distance that is just outside their firing range (optimally). Zealots and roaches are primary kiting targets, as well as secondarily stalkers and sentries.
- Marauders do excellent damage to armored targets, always focus fire on armored targets first (immortals, siege tanks, stalkers, roaches, ultralisks, thors, etc
The Reaper:
O how I love the reaper. Definitely my favorite unit from all 3 races to come out in SC2. Its fast, has paper thin armor, is super maneuverable, and does ridiculous damage to light units and buildings. I have won the game with a single reaper before, but have also lost games from overproducing them. Their absurdly high gas cost (50/50) prevents you from teching AT ALL if building this unit in any kind of numbers, but that shouldn’t deter you from using them. They make excellent scouts all game, and if micro’d properly are basically unkillable, save for running into a Stalker with blink. All that being said, however, they do not hold their own in a standup fight, and because of this are basically useless on certain maps (Steppes of War, and to a lesser degree, Scrap Station), where access to the back of your opponents base is limited, (even with cliff jumping). Here are a few ways to use the reaper properly (Please note that the following bullets apply only if you want to use reapers in that game… I know its obvious but some people are thick 
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- Set your build order so that you can get the reapers as soon as possible, as the earlier they get out the more effective they are. The most common (and efficient) build order for fast reapers is : 10 Rax 10 Gas 11 Supply 12 Tech Lab 12 Orbital Command. This build does not cut production by very much and allows reapers in your opponent’s base well before the 4 minute mark. The reapers getting to their base early will also alert you of any fast teching being done, and will give you time to prepare for any style of attack your opponent could mount.
- Try to micro each reaper independently. They are much more effective solo than in groups, especially until you get their speed upgrade. On Desert Oasis, you can be bouncing up and down the cliff behind their mineral line with impunity against zerg and protoss, as long as you have each reaper going up and down at different areas, forcing their units to chase you (probably with little success).
- Zerg’s who fast expo (15 hatch, or 14 pool 14 hatch) will lose every game to a fast reaper build when micro’d properly. From all my experience (even against higher platinum ranked players when I’m only a gold ranked player), there only options for defending the FE from reapers early is to pull their queen from their main, and stop drone production in favor of zerglings. If you force this behavior, you are already at an economic advantage. In addition, they pull their defenses to their expo, you can easily begin running from expo to main and back to harass the harvester line, which will force them to make some static defenses, further damaging their economy.
- The hardest part about using reapers is maintaining macro while microing the reapers. Make shore your barracks and at least 1 scv for building are hotkeyed, so you can maintain production while harassing your opponents. This is EXTREAMLY important, as failing to build while destroying your opponent’s harvesting nets you no advantage whatsoever.
- Players catch on quickly to reaper harasses and set up defenses accordingly, so as soon as you feel that your reapers aren’t going to be able to do cost effective damage, pull any living ones you have left to the xel’naga towers on the maps, and use them as scouts for the duration of their lives. If you have 3+ reapers still alive at that point, make sure to keep them busy scouting, and use them to back door your opponent and punish them if they attack you, or as either a diversionary attack at an expo when your main army wants to push on their main. They are extremely useful for this purpose alone, but probably not worth the investment if you weren’t harassing with them early.
8 Rax Proxy Reaper Breakdown:
(NOTE: ik zelf het op silver nog nooit tegen een terran verloren met deze BO op voorwaarde dat zij zelf dit niet deden
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SCVS 1-5 Minerals
SCV 6 Scout -> Proxy
7 SCV
8 SCV
8 Rax
8 Gas
9 SCV
9 Tech Lab
10 Reaper
10 Orbital Command
11 Reaper
11 Supply
12 SCV
Pump SCVs + Reapers until you feel they have lost effectiveness, get 2nd gas around 17-18 supply count.
move your rax back to home base.
VS ZERG: Put up 2-3 more raxes at your home base + pump MnMs
Vs Terran: Tech to banshees or tanks + vikings, depending on how badly you screwed them with the reapers.
Vs Toss: Tech to banshees.
You should proxy close to their base, and directly OFF the path to your own base from their base (to limit the chances of them spotting the proxy). Note that if they spot the proxy as terran or zerg there really is not much they can do to go kill it, so all it means is that you have to micro a bit better with your reapers because they will know they are coming. If you REALLY want to win off this rush, send the SCV that build the barracks into their base and start up a bunker as soon as the first reaper arrives. Follow up with "LOL" when they start cursing you out.
Ghosts:
Ghosts are meant to be support casters for your army. They do this job AMAZINGLY WELL. While they don’t fare too well in combat, EMP and Snipe are 2 of the best abilities in the whole game imo, and both do their jobs nicely. EMP does 100 shield damage to any unit/ building with shields, and drains all energy from the target. This works on buildings as well, so a cloaked ghost can EMP an Orbital Command to prevent it from scanning the ghost. This one ability makes the ghost worth building against protoss every game, and against any terrans that use Ravens (or their own ghosts), but is mostly useless against zerg (although it is funny to EMP queens). Quick notes for Ghosts:
- Emp everything that protoss has, if possible. Hit anything with energy first, and high templar should be your #1 priority for EMPs.
- Snipe is amazing at picking off an EMP’d high templar. Tough to micro but worth it if you can click fast enough.
- Snipe is the only reason to build Ghosts vs Zerg (unless your nuking). Snipe kills drones in a single shot (but regular attacks kill them in 2 or 3 depending on attack and armor upgrades), so its best used to kill hydralisks, roaches, and mutalisks. Spamming snipe with 3-4 ghosts will kill a zerg army ridiculously fast. Also can EMP infestors which can be situationally amazing.
- Snipe works good against terran armies as well, but probably not worth the cost of the ghost.
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- If you can EMP a group of medivacs in a MnMnM mirror fight, you win, no questions asked.
NUKES:
Ahh nukes. Theres something about them that just makes you smile when you land one on someone. Quick note about nuke mechanics: (check this link! Tactical Nuke - Liquipedia Starcraft 2 Wiki
Nukes have a 20 second drop time- but because the game timer is FASTER than actual speed, 20 seconds turns into about 15 seconds (if anyone knows the exact gametime to actual time ratio, please please let me know).
Since you can click on the “Nuclear Launch Detected” popup to center on the nuke, it is much, much harder to nuke effectively in SC2- even though the overall power (and ease of getting) the nuke is increase. Still, nukes can be powerful both on offense and on defense:
Offensive Nuking: Nukes are going to be mainly used in the lategame, when you have a few extra resources to spend on extra ghost labs, and you will need cloak for your ghosts as well (while not a necessity, defiantly the way to go). Good targets for nukes are harvester lines, groups of supply depots / pylons, and retreat points for enemy units. To be the most effective, you should place multiple nukes at once (Personally, I find 3 is the magic #). Every time you launch an offensive nuke at your opponent, you should be simultaneously moving whatever army you have to an attack position. What’s the good of the confusion caused by nuking if your not going to take advantage of it? It is a TACTICAL nuke, after all.
Defensive Nukes: Nukes can be used at choke points to prevent pushes on your bases. A well placed nuke will either force a retreat, or, simply destroy your enemies ENTIRE ARMY!!! This has only occurred for me a few times, but when it does, oh it is glorious. The amount of time granted to you by a single nuke can be enough for those next 2 thors to pop out, or for that critical upgrade to be done (stimpack, +1, whatever it may be). In addition, it will force your opponent to really think about your ghosts when attacking the next time, and you can almost defiantly squeeze some kind of advantage out of that (the advantage will depend on the matchup, and the unit composition being used against you). 100 minerals / 100 gas is a pretty low cost if you are already going to get ghosts for the matchup, but the 150/150 for each ghost and the 200/200 for the upgrade AND the 150/50 for the ghost lab makes getting nukes just for defense too costly.
Hellions:
Hellions, are fast, slow attacking, units that do extreamly well vs. light armored units and workers and have a line damage splash. They are best used as flanking units against zerg armies, terran bio balls, and protoss armies with lots of high templar and zelots, or as harassing units to attack mineral lines. They blow up pretty easily, however, and are useless against static defenses, so only use them for harassing if you think you can get some free attacks against harvesters without running into any cannons or crawlers. They are excellent for fast drop strategies on mineral lines, and for keeping your opponent busy in their base while you macro. Quick notes for Hellions:
- Infernal pre-igniter is a must if you are going to use this unit. Nearly doubles the damage done to light units.
- Always try to line them up on the sides of enemy armies for maximum DPS.
- Don’t put them in the same control group as other army units, as they are much, much faster than all other terran ground units.
Siege Tanks (non-siege mode)-
Un-sieged siege tanks fire faster than their counterparts did in SC1, so even though the damage output seems low (15+2 per attack upgrade), the DPS is higher than it seems. Unsieged tanks could be used in somewhat of a SCBW FD push, since they outrange most early-game units and can kite pretty easily.
In addition- Recently i have found that unsieged tanks do superbly against most protoss armies, as they have + damage to armored units and attack quickly. This makes them ideal for killing Immortals (I personally didnt see that one coming), and stalkers.
Siege Tanks (siege mode)-
Extreamly Long range, has splash damage that can kill your own units if your not careful, and high damage. Amazing vs every ground unit in the game except Immortals- and good against those too if you hit one with an EMP first. Always support your siege tanks with marines and marauders, or thors and marauders (etc, basically just support them).
-Sensor towers can spot for your siege tanks, even without vision if you have a red blip on your map your siege tank can shoot.
-I find siege tanks are best used with support of Vikings, to give them vision of their maximum range, and support against opposing air units (this is especially important in TvT but, more on that later). Using Vikings in combination with siege tanks in TvT is almost standard play at this point, and is often the primary point of contention in those games.
- Siege tanks in groups melt hydralisks and roaches, and are amazing at defending zerg attacks at your main door.
- Walking siege tanks: (This mini-guide will focus on an early game siege tank push, as it covers the basics of a siege tank attack. Later in the game you can do the same things, it will just involve more units, more micro, and will generally be more difficult.) To actually push on someone’s base with siege tanks, requires quite a bit of micro and a lot of attention. Siege tanks are surprisingly fragile, and because of this it takes some work getting used to this push. To begin, you need a siege tank, at least 1 flying unit, and a decent support group for your siege tank (usually a few marines and marauder will do nicely).
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o Start by scouting your opponent’s choke point to see what your up against. If they have their own siege tank, you will need to drop yours into siege mode perfectly outside their sight range(or if they have a sensor tower, or vision, you will need to drop outside their range but still in range to shoot at.. well something). This will take some practice, but isn’t very difficult.
o Once you’ve scouted their choke, move your siege tank into a position where it can do some damage, drop it into siege mode, and start blasting away. Have your next siege tank that’s built move in closer than the first, and drop it into SM.
o Once there is nothing left to blow up in the range of the first siege tank, move it forward, but always leave at least 1 tank in siege mode to fend off any counter-pushes they may attempt.
o Leapfrog your way into their base, and to victory.
Thors:
Thors, while they have their weaknesses, are an awesome option for terran players to chose in the lategame. While expensive and cumbersome, they do huge damage to both air and ground targets at long range, and can be repaired to maintain their longevity. A single thor being repaired by a few SCVs can take on surprisingly large numbers of units. Also, its ability, 250mm strike cannons, stuns units, making it highly effective against low numbers of high priority targets, such as colossi, siege tanks, and even their hard counter, immortals.
- Thors have splash damage vs air, making them a great unit to use vs mutalisks. Their slow speed is compensated for by their long range, and even in small numbers can do great damage vs mutas.
- They single-shot hydralisks – which is awesome.
- While slow, they can be picked up by medivacs and dropped quickly, making them significantly more mobile.
- Don’t send out thors without SCV backup, they become significantly more effective with some SCVs to repair them.
- Thors are vulnerable to immortals, so always use your strike cannon ability on them first, to prevent them from destroying you.
- Thors are also weak to zerglings, another reason to have scvs with them is they will block the attacks of te zerglings on the thors.
Vikings-
Vikings are a multi-role unit, and are good in many situations. They are very powerful against heavy air units (carriers, warp rays, battlecruisers) in air mode, and strong against light armor units while on the ground. They make excellent spotters, and have ridiculously long air range(9). This is balanced, however, by their slow speed and general frailty.
- Vikings are generally a support unit, used to compliment a complete army. They make good escorts for medivacs as well.
- Vikings make decent scouts / harassers in small groups- 3-5 vikings can scout and expo, harass it, and be gone before the enemy army shows up.
- Vikings are not strong vs mutalisks, but can support other ground units in fighting and sniping mutalisks.
- Vikings make excellent snipers for colossi, and this requires virtually no micro at all. Add them to a MnMnM army against protoss and have them handle the colossi before they get in range of your marines.
Banshees:
Banshees are an air to ground gunship that has a decent range, powerful attack, and a reasonable amount of hit points. In addition, it can gain the cloak ability, making it difficult to peruse and great for harassing harvesters and the outskirts of bases. In addition, there are many ways to abuse the fear many players have of this powerful harassing unit:
-Cloak is very gas expensive, however, if you are going to use banshees for harassing, cloak is a must for getting them out alive.
- Banshees are a common go to rush unit in TvT matchups
- A common strategy for terran to use is fast banshees for harass. Recently, I have been using this strategy, but only with a single banshee. Many players will overreact to the sight of the banshee, and make a total anti-air composition with detection. To take advantage of this- my build order goes rax (no add on) factory (tech lab) starport (takes factory tech lab, fac builds a reactor) and then 2 more factories with tech labs and an armory. I build my first one or 2 banshees, then switch to the reactor on the starport to make a few Vikings / medivacs depending on the rest of my army composition. Then I send the banshees to harass while building thors and siege tanks from my factories. Since they over-committed to defending air, their ground defenses will be weak, and the mech strategy will be able to push through.
- Banshees are good as support for any army fighting ground units, and do excellent damage to armored targets.
- Banshees also make excellent back door units, and can be used like reapers to attack harvesters during other engagements.
- Banshees match up supebly against protoss, and can fight their armies head to head, as well as harassing them with cloak.
Ravens:
Wow, this unit is awesome. I thought it would be hard to replace a science vessel (especially without EMP) and make the unit work, but I have to admit I love this unit and its mechanics. All three of its abilities have widespread uses, and it can be used to fill a variety of holes in your army.
- Auto-Turret- Attacks both ground and air and does extra damage to light units.
o Low energy cost so can be used as utility defense and for offense against certain armies.
o Also, can be used to harass mineral lines with no chance for losses.
- Point defense drone- The most underused ability in the game imo- can act like a “defensive matrix” for your whole army. Highly effective and needs to get more use.
o If placed at the beginning of a fight, you will get a few seconds of fire on your opponent before they get to retaliate (for the most part). This is often enough to turn an even battle into a lopsided destructionfest.
- Hunter seeker missile- requires fusion lab tech and an upgrade, but is so worth it.
o Huge AOE damage, but can hurt your own units as well.
o SLOW movement- do not fire it at mutalisks unless they have nowhere to run.
o HUGE energy cost- firing one of these basically will empty out your raven for awhile, so make sure its going to hit.
o Can annihilate multiple workers at once, but may not be too energy efficient at this.
o Massacres zerg armies- especially large #s of hydralisks
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Battlecruisers:
The most expensive and highest tier unit in the terran arsenal, the battlecruiser is a small army on its own. It is more mobile than the next biggest terran unit, the thor, and is effective at lategame defense and offense over large areas of the map. Battlecruisers should be used as support for a larger army, and its Yamato Gun upgrade is extremely effective at both sniping enemy expansions and taking out medium to large enemy targets before they can do much damage to your army. Because of high tech level and cost, it isn’t practical to rush battlecruisers, however a lategame switch to bcs is a reasonable progression from midgame starport play.
- Due to the fact that they take 6 shots when they fire, +attack upgrades are a high priority if you are going to build bcs in any numbers.
- Battlecruisers are unbelievealby good against big units like thors, carriers, warp rays, motherships, ultralisks and broodlords. Using yamato gun on any of those targets is recommended.
- Because they have high hp / armor, it isn’t hard to run them from battle and get them to safety. Always repair damaged battlecruisers, they build too slowly and are to expensive to allow them to needlessly die.
- Always bring a few scvs for repairs when using battlecruisers in combat. Increasing their longevity IN BATTLE should not be undervalued.
) is het zeer sterk aangeraden dit verschillende keren te lezen._______________________________________________________________
SC2 Macro Power, The Orbital Command:
Starcraft 2 is all about macro- and Terran’s have there fair share of macro mechanics to be aware of. The Orbital Command (or OC), is the primary macro facility for Ts and, if used properly, is the most useful item in the terran arsenal. It allows them to mine faster, scout instantly, reveal cloaked units instantly, and get you out of a supply block at a key moment. Effective use of the OCs energy (and constant use of its energy) will correlate directly with your win/loss rate. Quick tips for your OCs are:
- First, and foremost, ALWAYS have it hot keyed. Intermittently (when you have a free action), click your OCs hotkey and check for available energy often.
- Don’t let energy store up past 100 EVER, and only let it go past 50 if you think you may need a scan for tactical purposes (seeing up a cliff, or spotting Dark Templar, Banshees, Ghosts, or other cloaked/burrowed units).
- Always drop mules at the highest qty resource available- what I mean is don’t drop a mule on a mineral that has only 400 mineral points remaining if there is one available to you with 1000 mineral points remaining. This will keep your workers harvesting efficiently and not unnecessarily reduce the number of mineral patches available to harvest from.
- Always upgrade any expansion to an OC (if your not going to turn it into a planetary fortress) either before you send it over to the expansion, or if built at location before you start SCV production. The amount of income provided by mules (~250- 270 over the course of its life) and the amount of utility provided by another orbital command should not be underestimated.
- Some neat tricks with mule drops:
o If you see banelings coming to blow up a wall on your base (or going at a group of marines) drop a mule infront of them to soak up some of the damage. Technichally this is costly, (~250 minerals that would be mined by the mule), but often keeping your army (or your base) alive is more important than the minerals mined from the mule. This can be a game winning play if you drop it at just the right moment.
o The same trick can be used to take the opening shot of a siege tank so you can move your army in safely to kill it.
The Planetary Fortress-
The Pfort is the biggest, baddest, defensive structure in the game, and only requires and engineering bay to build. With its SCVs repairing it, it can handle a small to medium sized ground force from any race with relative ease. You should always have a few missile turrets to back up a pfort investment. This would be built in the place of an orbital command, so it should only be used if absolutely necessary; as it effectively costs you all the extra minerals and scans you would get from an orbital command.
- This can be used as a way to early expand on maps with a natural expo ( steppes of war, lost temple, kulas revine etc) against protoss and zerg. Be careful when doing this strategy because it leaves you open for drops, but it is also a highly effective way to get an early resource advantage on your opponents. I recommend not getting pfort against terrans since siege tanks can out range the pfort.
- Always get the range upgrade for turrets if you build a planetary fortress. The same goes for the armor upgrade, but it isn’t a top priority.
- Amazing for island expansions. Flying a command center unupgraded to the island on Scrap Station and then turning it into a pfort allows it to nearly hit the whole island, making it nearly invincible to a drop harass, or an incoming nydus worm (especially with good turret placement)
- While I am not a big fan of this idea- you can attack protoss and terran bases with planetary fortresses, and use them to contain enemies in their bases. (I would highly recommend practicing this many times with friends before attempting it on the ladder). The method is simple, build a few command centers, fly them to a location, land them all, and upgrade them all into pforts. Meanwhile, send over SCVS (optimally in a medivac) to repair the buildings while they upgrade --- Thanks Krowser for:
A small pointer for flying over a CC and attacking someone with a PF. You can load up to 5 SCVs in a CC. So you wont actualy need a medivac to carry them.
Missile Turrets:
Your main static defense as a terran, hits air and colossi only. Mostly good for being a detector and protecting yourself from drops / harass
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- Turrets are better in groups, but also they need to cover all of your harvesters (if you fear air harass).
- If you are building them as your primary form of detection, always make 2 instaed of 1. Dark templar kill them in just a few hits, so it dosen’t hurt to have extra. (plus, they are cheap!)
- Rarely, but it will happen, you will find yourself without a single unit that attacks air. Its never a bad idea to build a few turrets just incase your opponent hides his starport/stargate/spire. Don’t go overboard but don’t leave yourself undefended, either.
Sensor Towers
Sensor towers hover under a lot of controversy- they are expensive (almost as much as a siege tank), and easy to locate and destroy. That being said, they can be invaluable if used to stop incoming drops, or spot enemy troop movement early to allow you to setup your defenses before being attacked. Here are my rules of thumb for sensor towers:
- Don’t build sensor towers if you are on the offense most of the game. Use your resources for combat units.
- Build sensor towers anytime you find yourself unsure of what your opponent is doing. It will provide a certain sense of security which will allow you to progress down the tech tree and expand without worrying about unseen attacks to the back of your base.
- Any time you can cover both your main and an expansion with a sensor tower, it is probably a good investment. The amount of time you get to move your army into position can be the difference between winning and losing a tight game.
Marine:
The Terran’s lowest tech unit, the marine is a versatile unit that can and should be used all game, every game as one of your primary army units. The marine’s strength is in numbers, and cost to dps ratio is quite high. They are the only tier 1.0 unit that can attack air, and get awesome upgrades with combat shield, and stim pack. However, the marines are squishy, and fall quickly to any concentrated fire or fire from units with splash damage (hellions, siege tanks, and colossi all ravage marines easily). The marine, while strong on its own, needs to be supporting your other army units in order to be the most effective it can be. Points for marines:
- Don’t leave them in the front: Marines are best suited to be positioned behind your higher tech, more HP units. Don’t put them in the front where they will die before they can do their damage.
- Getting combat shield is important- +10 hp is an additional 22% hp for your marines. However, it is important to ration your early game gas— See the section on “early game gas” for notes on how to spend your gas resources.
- Use stim pack sparingly- Try to use stim packs only when actively engaging your opponents- Marines low overall hp should force you to be stingy with your stimpacks until you have a few medivacs hovering overhead.
- Mid game, spread a few marines throughout your bases in order to have a “first response team” for incoming drops or air raids.
- Marines make excellent backup for every other terran unit, and they should be used nearly every game in quantity.
- Due to their low damage, +atk upgrades are a must for later in the game, because high armor units will just ignore the marines otherwise (a fully upgraded ultralisk would take 1 damage a shot from an un-upgraded marine)
Marauder:
The primary terran 1.5 tier unit, this is your heavy shock troop. High HP, good damage with bonus damage to armored, and upgrades to increase their damage output, speed, and slow ability all make this a powerful unit that often will show up in your army compositions. This unit falls into the “tank” category of units, so often it makes sense to move these to the front lines of battle and let them soak up damage. Some pointers for marauders:
- Stim pack at will- the high hp of marauders makes them be able to perma-stim basically. Don’t be afraid to stim pack for every fight with marauders, as it improves their combat effectiveness by a great deal, and allows you to outmaneuver your opponents, even before you get the concussion missile upgrade.
- Concussion missile is a great upgrade if you are attempting to get map control, however if you are playing defensive it is less of a priority to upgrade. EDIT: since the patch lowering the cost and time to build, if u have 1 marauder this upgrade is worth getting.
- “stim kiting” involves using marines + marauders (with stimpack + concussion missle upgrades) to slow enemy units and continually move, then attack, then move, then attack (etc) to keep your units out of range of theirs while still killing all of their units. The term kiting comes from you moving so their units look like they are on a string following your units at a distance that is just outside their firing range (optimally). Zealots and roaches are primary kiting targets, as well as secondarily stalkers and sentries.
- Marauders do excellent damage to armored targets, always focus fire on armored targets first (immortals, siege tanks, stalkers, roaches, ultralisks, thors, etc
The Reaper:
O how I love the reaper. Definitely my favorite unit from all 3 races to come out in SC2. Its fast, has paper thin armor, is super maneuverable, and does ridiculous damage to light units and buildings. I have won the game with a single reaper before, but have also lost games from overproducing them. Their absurdly high gas cost (50/50) prevents you from teching AT ALL if building this unit in any kind of numbers, but that shouldn’t deter you from using them. They make excellent scouts all game, and if micro’d properly are basically unkillable, save for running into a Stalker with blink. All that being said, however, they do not hold their own in a standup fight, and because of this are basically useless on certain maps (Steppes of War, and to a lesser degree, Scrap Station), where access to the back of your opponents base is limited, (even with cliff jumping). Here are a few ways to use the reaper properly (Please note that the following bullets apply only if you want to use reapers in that game… I know its obvious but some people are thick 
:- Set your build order so that you can get the reapers as soon as possible, as the earlier they get out the more effective they are. The most common (and efficient) build order for fast reapers is : 10 Rax 10 Gas 11 Supply 12 Tech Lab 12 Orbital Command. This build does not cut production by very much and allows reapers in your opponent’s base well before the 4 minute mark. The reapers getting to their base early will also alert you of any fast teching being done, and will give you time to prepare for any style of attack your opponent could mount.
- Try to micro each reaper independently. They are much more effective solo than in groups, especially until you get their speed upgrade. On Desert Oasis, you can be bouncing up and down the cliff behind their mineral line with impunity against zerg and protoss, as long as you have each reaper going up and down at different areas, forcing their units to chase you (probably with little success).
- Zerg’s who fast expo (15 hatch, or 14 pool 14 hatch) will lose every game to a fast reaper build when micro’d properly. From all my experience (even against higher platinum ranked players when I’m only a gold ranked player), there only options for defending the FE from reapers early is to pull their queen from their main, and stop drone production in favor of zerglings. If you force this behavior, you are already at an economic advantage. In addition, they pull their defenses to their expo, you can easily begin running from expo to main and back to harass the harvester line, which will force them to make some static defenses, further damaging their economy.
- The hardest part about using reapers is maintaining macro while microing the reapers. Make shore your barracks and at least 1 scv for building are hotkeyed, so you can maintain production while harassing your opponents. This is EXTREAMLY important, as failing to build while destroying your opponent’s harvesting nets you no advantage whatsoever.
- Players catch on quickly to reaper harasses and set up defenses accordingly, so as soon as you feel that your reapers aren’t going to be able to do cost effective damage, pull any living ones you have left to the xel’naga towers on the maps, and use them as scouts for the duration of their lives. If you have 3+ reapers still alive at that point, make sure to keep them busy scouting, and use them to back door your opponent and punish them if they attack you, or as either a diversionary attack at an expo when your main army wants to push on their main. They are extremely useful for this purpose alone, but probably not worth the investment if you weren’t harassing with them early.
8 Rax Proxy Reaper Breakdown:
(NOTE: ik zelf het op silver nog nooit tegen een terran verloren met deze BO op voorwaarde dat zij zelf dit niet deden
)SCVS 1-5 Minerals
SCV 6 Scout -> Proxy
7 SCV
8 SCV
8 Rax
8 Gas
9 SCV
9 Tech Lab
10 Reaper
10 Orbital Command
11 Reaper
11 Supply
12 SCV
Pump SCVs + Reapers until you feel they have lost effectiveness, get 2nd gas around 17-18 supply count.
move your rax back to home base.
VS ZERG: Put up 2-3 more raxes at your home base + pump MnMs
Vs Terran: Tech to banshees or tanks + vikings, depending on how badly you screwed them with the reapers.
Vs Toss: Tech to banshees.
You should proxy close to their base, and directly OFF the path to your own base from their base (to limit the chances of them spotting the proxy). Note that if they spot the proxy as terran or zerg there really is not much they can do to go kill it, so all it means is that you have to micro a bit better with your reapers because they will know they are coming. If you REALLY want to win off this rush, send the SCV that build the barracks into their base and start up a bunker as soon as the first reaper arrives. Follow up with "LOL" when they start cursing you out.
Ghosts:
Ghosts are meant to be support casters for your army. They do this job AMAZINGLY WELL. While they don’t fare too well in combat, EMP and Snipe are 2 of the best abilities in the whole game imo, and both do their jobs nicely. EMP does 100 shield damage to any unit/ building with shields, and drains all energy from the target. This works on buildings as well, so a cloaked ghost can EMP an Orbital Command to prevent it from scanning the ghost. This one ability makes the ghost worth building against protoss every game, and against any terrans that use Ravens (or their own ghosts), but is mostly useless against zerg (although it is funny to EMP queens). Quick notes for Ghosts:
- Emp everything that protoss has, if possible. Hit anything with energy first, and high templar should be your #1 priority for EMPs.
- Snipe is amazing at picking off an EMP’d high templar. Tough to micro but worth it if you can click fast enough.
- Snipe is the only reason to build Ghosts vs Zerg (unless your nuking). Snipe kills drones in a single shot (but regular attacks kill them in 2 or 3 depending on attack and armor upgrades), so its best used to kill hydralisks, roaches, and mutalisks. Spamming snipe with 3-4 ghosts will kill a zerg army ridiculously fast. Also can EMP infestors which can be situationally amazing.
- Snipe works good against terran armies as well, but probably not worth the cost of the ghost.
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- If you can EMP a group of medivacs in a MnMnM mirror fight, you win, no questions asked.
NUKES:
Ahh nukes. Theres something about them that just makes you smile when you land one on someone. Quick note about nuke mechanics: (check this link! Tactical Nuke - Liquipedia Starcraft 2 Wiki
Nukes have a 20 second drop time- but because the game timer is FASTER than actual speed, 20 seconds turns into about 15 seconds (if anyone knows the exact gametime to actual time ratio, please please let me know).
Since you can click on the “Nuclear Launch Detected” popup to center on the nuke, it is much, much harder to nuke effectively in SC2- even though the overall power (and ease of getting) the nuke is increase. Still, nukes can be powerful both on offense and on defense:
Offensive Nuking: Nukes are going to be mainly used in the lategame, when you have a few extra resources to spend on extra ghost labs, and you will need cloak for your ghosts as well (while not a necessity, defiantly the way to go). Good targets for nukes are harvester lines, groups of supply depots / pylons, and retreat points for enemy units. To be the most effective, you should place multiple nukes at once (Personally, I find 3 is the magic #). Every time you launch an offensive nuke at your opponent, you should be simultaneously moving whatever army you have to an attack position. What’s the good of the confusion caused by nuking if your not going to take advantage of it? It is a TACTICAL nuke, after all.
Defensive Nukes: Nukes can be used at choke points to prevent pushes on your bases. A well placed nuke will either force a retreat, or, simply destroy your enemies ENTIRE ARMY!!! This has only occurred for me a few times, but when it does, oh it is glorious. The amount of time granted to you by a single nuke can be enough for those next 2 thors to pop out, or for that critical upgrade to be done (stimpack, +1, whatever it may be). In addition, it will force your opponent to really think about your ghosts when attacking the next time, and you can almost defiantly squeeze some kind of advantage out of that (the advantage will depend on the matchup, and the unit composition being used against you). 100 minerals / 100 gas is a pretty low cost if you are already going to get ghosts for the matchup, but the 150/150 for each ghost and the 200/200 for the upgrade AND the 150/50 for the ghost lab makes getting nukes just for defense too costly.
Hellions:
Hellions, are fast, slow attacking, units that do extreamly well vs. light armored units and workers and have a line damage splash. They are best used as flanking units against zerg armies, terran bio balls, and protoss armies with lots of high templar and zelots, or as harassing units to attack mineral lines. They blow up pretty easily, however, and are useless against static defenses, so only use them for harassing if you think you can get some free attacks against harvesters without running into any cannons or crawlers. They are excellent for fast drop strategies on mineral lines, and for keeping your opponent busy in their base while you macro. Quick notes for Hellions:
- Infernal pre-igniter is a must if you are going to use this unit. Nearly doubles the damage done to light units.
- Always try to line them up on the sides of enemy armies for maximum DPS.
- Don’t put them in the same control group as other army units, as they are much, much faster than all other terran ground units.
Siege Tanks (non-siege mode)-
Un-sieged siege tanks fire faster than their counterparts did in SC1, so even though the damage output seems low (15+2 per attack upgrade), the DPS is higher than it seems. Unsieged tanks could be used in somewhat of a SCBW FD push, since they outrange most early-game units and can kite pretty easily.
In addition- Recently i have found that unsieged tanks do superbly against most protoss armies, as they have + damage to armored units and attack quickly. This makes them ideal for killing Immortals (I personally didnt see that one coming), and stalkers.
Siege Tanks (siege mode)-
Extreamly Long range, has splash damage that can kill your own units if your not careful, and high damage. Amazing vs every ground unit in the game except Immortals- and good against those too if you hit one with an EMP first. Always support your siege tanks with marines and marauders, or thors and marauders (etc, basically just support them).
-Sensor towers can spot for your siege tanks, even without vision if you have a red blip on your map your siege tank can shoot.
-I find siege tanks are best used with support of Vikings, to give them vision of their maximum range, and support against opposing air units (this is especially important in TvT but, more on that later). Using Vikings in combination with siege tanks in TvT is almost standard play at this point, and is often the primary point of contention in those games.
- Siege tanks in groups melt hydralisks and roaches, and are amazing at defending zerg attacks at your main door.
- Walking siege tanks: (This mini-guide will focus on an early game siege tank push, as it covers the basics of a siege tank attack. Later in the game you can do the same things, it will just involve more units, more micro, and will generally be more difficult.) To actually push on someone’s base with siege tanks, requires quite a bit of micro and a lot of attention. Siege tanks are surprisingly fragile, and because of this it takes some work getting used to this push. To begin, you need a siege tank, at least 1 flying unit, and a decent support group for your siege tank (usually a few marines and marauder will do nicely).
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o Start by scouting your opponent’s choke point to see what your up against. If they have their own siege tank, you will need to drop yours into siege mode perfectly outside their sight range(or if they have a sensor tower, or vision, you will need to drop outside their range but still in range to shoot at.. well something). This will take some practice, but isn’t very difficult.
o Once you’ve scouted their choke, move your siege tank into a position where it can do some damage, drop it into siege mode, and start blasting away. Have your next siege tank that’s built move in closer than the first, and drop it into SM.
o Once there is nothing left to blow up in the range of the first siege tank, move it forward, but always leave at least 1 tank in siege mode to fend off any counter-pushes they may attempt.
o Leapfrog your way into their base, and to victory.
Thors:
Thors, while they have their weaknesses, are an awesome option for terran players to chose in the lategame. While expensive and cumbersome, they do huge damage to both air and ground targets at long range, and can be repaired to maintain their longevity. A single thor being repaired by a few SCVs can take on surprisingly large numbers of units. Also, its ability, 250mm strike cannons, stuns units, making it highly effective against low numbers of high priority targets, such as colossi, siege tanks, and even their hard counter, immortals.
- Thors have splash damage vs air, making them a great unit to use vs mutalisks. Their slow speed is compensated for by their long range, and even in small numbers can do great damage vs mutas.
- They single-shot hydralisks – which is awesome.
- While slow, they can be picked up by medivacs and dropped quickly, making them significantly more mobile.
- Don’t send out thors without SCV backup, they become significantly more effective with some SCVs to repair them.
- Thors are vulnerable to immortals, so always use your strike cannon ability on them first, to prevent them from destroying you.
- Thors are also weak to zerglings, another reason to have scvs with them is they will block the attacks of te zerglings on the thors.
Vikings-
Vikings are a multi-role unit, and are good in many situations. They are very powerful against heavy air units (carriers, warp rays, battlecruisers) in air mode, and strong against light armor units while on the ground. They make excellent spotters, and have ridiculously long air range(9). This is balanced, however, by their slow speed and general frailty.
- Vikings are generally a support unit, used to compliment a complete army. They make good escorts for medivacs as well.
- Vikings make decent scouts / harassers in small groups- 3-5 vikings can scout and expo, harass it, and be gone before the enemy army shows up.
- Vikings are not strong vs mutalisks, but can support other ground units in fighting and sniping mutalisks.
- Vikings make excellent snipers for colossi, and this requires virtually no micro at all. Add them to a MnMnM army against protoss and have them handle the colossi before they get in range of your marines.
Banshees:
Banshees are an air to ground gunship that has a decent range, powerful attack, and a reasonable amount of hit points. In addition, it can gain the cloak ability, making it difficult to peruse and great for harassing harvesters and the outskirts of bases. In addition, there are many ways to abuse the fear many players have of this powerful harassing unit:
-Cloak is very gas expensive, however, if you are going to use banshees for harassing, cloak is a must for getting them out alive.
- Banshees are a common go to rush unit in TvT matchups
- A common strategy for terran to use is fast banshees for harass. Recently, I have been using this strategy, but only with a single banshee. Many players will overreact to the sight of the banshee, and make a total anti-air composition with detection. To take advantage of this- my build order goes rax (no add on) factory (tech lab) starport (takes factory tech lab, fac builds a reactor) and then 2 more factories with tech labs and an armory. I build my first one or 2 banshees, then switch to the reactor on the starport to make a few Vikings / medivacs depending on the rest of my army composition. Then I send the banshees to harass while building thors and siege tanks from my factories. Since they over-committed to defending air, their ground defenses will be weak, and the mech strategy will be able to push through.
- Banshees are good as support for any army fighting ground units, and do excellent damage to armored targets.
- Banshees also make excellent back door units, and can be used like reapers to attack harvesters during other engagements.
- Banshees match up supebly against protoss, and can fight their armies head to head, as well as harassing them with cloak.
Ravens:
Wow, this unit is awesome. I thought it would be hard to replace a science vessel (especially without EMP) and make the unit work, but I have to admit I love this unit and its mechanics. All three of its abilities have widespread uses, and it can be used to fill a variety of holes in your army.
- Auto-Turret- Attacks both ground and air and does extra damage to light units.
o Low energy cost so can be used as utility defense and for offense against certain armies.
o Also, can be used to harass mineral lines with no chance for losses.
- Point defense drone- The most underused ability in the game imo- can act like a “defensive matrix” for your whole army. Highly effective and needs to get more use.
o If placed at the beginning of a fight, you will get a few seconds of fire on your opponent before they get to retaliate (for the most part). This is often enough to turn an even battle into a lopsided destructionfest.
- Hunter seeker missile- requires fusion lab tech and an upgrade, but is so worth it.
o Huge AOE damage, but can hurt your own units as well.
o SLOW movement- do not fire it at mutalisks unless they have nowhere to run.
o HUGE energy cost- firing one of these basically will empty out your raven for awhile, so make sure its going to hit.
o Can annihilate multiple workers at once, but may not be too energy efficient at this.
o Massacres zerg armies- especially large #s of hydralisks
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Battlecruisers:
The most expensive and highest tier unit in the terran arsenal, the battlecruiser is a small army on its own. It is more mobile than the next biggest terran unit, the thor, and is effective at lategame defense and offense over large areas of the map. Battlecruisers should be used as support for a larger army, and its Yamato Gun upgrade is extremely effective at both sniping enemy expansions and taking out medium to large enemy targets before they can do much damage to your army. Because of high tech level and cost, it isn’t practical to rush battlecruisers, however a lategame switch to bcs is a reasonable progression from midgame starport play.
- Due to the fact that they take 6 shots when they fire, +attack upgrades are a high priority if you are going to build bcs in any numbers.
- Battlecruisers are unbelievealby good against big units like thors, carriers, warp rays, motherships, ultralisks and broodlords. Using yamato gun on any of those targets is recommended.
- Because they have high hp / armor, it isn’t hard to run them from battle and get them to safety. Always repair damaged battlecruisers, they build too slowly and are to expensive to allow them to needlessly die.
- Always bring a few scvs for repairs when using battlecruisers in combat. Increasing their longevity IN BATTLE should not be undervalued.
