Thor

"Feel the thunder!"

- A thor pilot

The thor is a huge, powerful terran mechanical unit.

Overview
"If there's one thing we've learned over the years, it's that sometimes you just need someone who likes to smash things."

- Dominion recruitment file.

Named after the Norse god of thunder, the thor is a class of siege-walker. It is armed with a pair of "Thor's Hammer" particle accelerators (fired from the arms) and Javelin missile launchers (for use against aerial opponents). It can optionally be outfitted with 330mm barrage cannons and ATX has developed an "immortality protocol," allowing a thor to repair itself in the field as long as its hull remains intact.

Thors only require a single crew member, and those in service during the Second Great War were more manuverable than the Odin incarnation.

History
The thor stemmed from the Terran Dominion Thor Project, a program that resulted in the creation of the Odin. By 2502, the thor had been developed and had become public enough that the Dominion's best thor operator, Sandin Forst, became famous. Forst took part in an anti-zerg operation on Mar Sara that year, where he vanished. During the Second Great War, the Terran Dominion utilized the thor in defending areas such as New Folsom Prison.

The Raiders' chief engineer Rory Swann reverse engineered a schematic of the thor from examining the Odin prototype. The Raiders received their first thors during the attack on the UNN Studios.

Game Unit
The thor can be transported by the Hercules dropship and medivac dropships. One thor fills up the medivac's entire capacity, transforming into a cube-like shape and hanging from underneath.

Combat Roles
A thor's primary roles is to act as the spearhead, a big tough unit that can push past an artillery barrage or fortified positions or push into an enemy base and lead s into battle.

Its other primary role is to defend allied units from air attacks with its powerful anti-air weaponry. It works well against light air units like s, but the attack is not as effective against heavily armored air units such as s.

The thor is countered by range, mobility, and certain anti-armor units. It doesn't deal splash damage to ground units, therefore, it cannot effectively deal with massed units such as marines, s, and s.

A popular strategy with the unit is the "thor harass" (sometimes called "thorship"), similar to the reaver harass of StarCraft. It involves pairing the thor with a medivac dropship, combining the thor's power and the mobility of the latter.

Wings of Liberty
The thor can be unlocked after playing the mission "Media Blitz", and made available after Rory Swann scanned the schematics of the Odin and made it less expensive to produce.

Thor vs Siege Tanks
Some features that existed on the thor in previous builds led to a concern that its role was overlapping with that of the siege tank. Unlike the siege tank, the thor is an assault unit rather than a siege unit. Its ground attack has much less range than a siege tank's 120 mm cannon, so it is exposed to enemy fire while attacking.

Another difference from the siege tank is that the thor can also function as a ground to air attacker.

Known Pilots

 * Sandin Forst
 * Tychus Findlay (piloted the Odin)

Trivia

 * In Norse mythology, Thor is the son of Odin. This is reflected in the StarCraft lore where the thor is derived from the Odin prototype.

Quotations

 * See: StarCraft II Thor Quotations