Missile turret

"I hate these things. They can sense me even when I'm cloaked. We should take these out."

- Sarah Kerrigan

The missile turret is a terran defense building designed to destroy air units and detect invisible and burrowed units.

Overview
Missile turrets are inexpensive structures that fire the "Longbolt Missile". The system may be computer controlled to automatically engage aerial targets. A secondary manual control mode allows the system to fire at ground targets as well. Turrets are also equipped with a tracking scanner that allows powerful sensors capable of detecting cloaked vessels to center in on an identified target. Running on a set of power cells, a missile turret is able to operate independently for at least forty years.

The characteristic diffusion of information between the terran factions, frequently through clandestine or illicit methods, has made the missile turret a standard defense system in the Koprulu Sector. Refinements to the system continue to be disseminated in a similar fashion.

StarCraft
The missile turret is a detector and has no ground attack. Unlike the photon cannon and spore colony that deal normal damage, missile turrets deal explosive damage making them less effective against small targets like mutalisks.

In the early game, missile turrets are a cheap and effective means of air defense. In the late game their lack of upgrades makes upgraded goliaths more attractive. Upgraded goliaths deal damage faster and, most importantly of all, have the mobility to concentrate against enemy air fleets.

Missile turrets are only a serious threat against a determined air attack if built in clusters. Otherwise their immobility means they can be destroyed piecemeal.

StarCraft: Ghost


In StarCraft: Ghost, Nova was able to manually operate missile turrets in singleplayer.

StarCraft II
Missile turrets feature in the gameplay footage of StarCraft II released in May 2007. They are able to attack the protoss colossus units; Blizzard has confirmed that this is because the colossus is so tall that it counts as both a ground and air unit for the purpose of what attacks are able to hit it.

Missile turrets now fire two missiles per "volley". Each missile does 5 damage, with +2.5 damage against "medium" units and +5 damage against "armored" units. This effectively matches the amount of explosive damage inflicted by the StarCraft I version of the missile turret (10 vs small, 15 vs medium, 20 vs large units) except armor applies twice.

Upgrades
Missile turrets can be upgraded to "hit harder".

Wings of Liberty Upgrades
Missile turrets can toggle between these modes.

Development
Missile turrets used to rely on sensor towers and radar towers to detect enemy units. However, by the GDC 2008 build they could detect by themselves. By May 21st, 2009 they had lost their detection ability again.