Marine

"You want a piece of me, boy?"

- Terran Marine

The Marine is the basic infantry unit of Terran forces.

Background
Marines compose the bulk of most front-line forces, ranging from officially government-sanctioned units and local militias to renegades and mercenaries. Marines are generally equipped with a armor suits and rapid fire small arms. The suit provides full life-support and NBC protection, allowing marines to deploy into environments that would otherwise be inimical to human life.

Despite such material investment into each marine, marines tend to have extremely short combat lives. To improve their effectiveness and odds of survival, many marines make heavy use of StimPacks.

Known Branches
The following known organizations employ Marine units:

Alliance
The Alliance Marine Corps appears to be a relatively small force, free of practices such as neural resocialization. The C-14 Gauss Rifle is the standard issue weapon for Alliance Marines, though the E-9 Rifle and C-7 Gauss Pistol are also in their arsenal.

Terran Confederacy
"The Marines? The Marines are the biggest collection of criminals outside of the Tarsonis City Council"

- Michael Liberty

A significant proportion of the Confederate Marine Corps was manned by "culturally challenged" individuals who had been "resocialized" via brain surgery, implants such as aggression inhibitors, and resocialization tanks. Conselling and drug therapy were also used to help overcome criminal and/or anti-social tendencies. Despite this source of manpower, it was not always sufficient to replace battlefield losses, and instances of law-abiding persons being conscripted and subjected to "resoc" were not unknown. In any case, volunteers were few.

By the time of the Protoss attack on Chau Sara, each Confederate marine was officially issued a CMC-300/CMC-400 Powered Combat Suit and a C-14 Gauss Rifle. The Slugthrower was a common sidearm. Confederate Marines did not require a PEB (Preferred Experience Base) to enlist (or be conscripted as the case often was).

Terran Dominion
The fall of the Confederacy and its replacement by the Dominion (the Confederate Marine Corps being replaced by the Dominion Marine Corps respectively) has seen an increase in volunteer recruitment, but not enough to supplant "resoc" conscription. Marines continue to use variants of the C-14 many years after the Brood War, along with the inclusion of ballistic alloy combat shields in their arsenal. At some point, the Slugthrower was replaced by the more powerful Flak Pistol.

United Earth Directorate
UED marines are equipped much to the same standards as their colonial counterparts although, on the whole, they exhibit much better discipline. Any number of differences in recruitment base, training regimen, etc., may have accounted for this. On the other hand, it would have been appropriate for UED propaganda to promote this impression. Instead of the C-14 Gauss Rifle, they are equipped with the C-141 AC version, the C-150 Ronin serving as a sidearm.

StarCraft
Compared to the other base units (the Zealot and Zergling) the Marine is much more versatile, with a ranged attack and the ability to attack air units. They are useful against all units in general and in numbers, since they do Normal damage. StimPacks further increase effectiveness by increasing movement speed and firing rate at the cost of 10 hit points, enabling Marines able to dish out a surprisingly large amount of damage before being killed. In Brood War, Medics can exponentially increase the effectiveness of Marines since StimPacks can be used more liberally. Counters are heavy units (such as Battlecruisers and Ultralisks), which take little damage from Marine attacks. Marines are vulnerable to units that deal high damage (eg. Dark Templar), splash damage to ground targets (eg. Lurkers, Reavers), and fast units controlled to execute hit-and-run attacks (eg. Vultures, Mutalisks.)

Abilities

 * Stim Pack Tech

Upgrades

 * Infantry Weapons
 * Infantry Armor
 * U-238 Shells
 * Cost: 150 150
 * Upgraded at: Academy
 * Increases Marine range to 5.

Quotations

 * See: StarCraft I Marine Quotations

StarCraft: Ghost


The Marine in StarCraft: Ghost is a heavily armored, slowly moving unit, compared to the more lightly equipped Light Infantry unit. Marines carry powerful Gauss Rifles that may be attached to grenade launchers. The Marines can also carry flak pistols that inflict area-of-effect damage.

StarCraft II


In StarCraft II, Marines will be able to receive a ballistic alloy combat shield upgrade that increases their hit points by 15. Once upgraded, the marines' game model will change to include a shield. Marines will have two more upgrades beyond the weapon and armor upgrades: StimPacks and U-238 shells (abilities possessed at BlizzCon 2007).

Development
Many changes were made to units and structures throughout the StarCraft Alpha and Beta and the Marine was no exception. In the early Beta, Marines were known as Marauders. By mid-Beta, the title of the Marauder had changed to Terran Space Marine mk 2, possibly as a reference to (or derived from) the Space Marines of Games Workshop's Warhammer 40K series. The Marines also had a grenade attack in this version.

By late Beta, the Marine bore great resemblance to its current version. However, they were stated to possess a Pressurized Power Suit and Chain-gun Cannons instead of the CMC Powered Combat Suit and C-14 Gauss Rifle, respectively. In addition, they were stated to possess gravity boots.

Trivia
In-game, Marines behave similarly to the marines from Aliens, even quoting lines from the film. One of these is "How do I get out of this chickenshit outfit?".

Marines were called "Marauders" in StarCraft alpha; the name is now used by a new Terran unit.