Marine

"You want a piece of me, boy?"

- Terran Marine

The Marine is the basic infantry unit of Terran forces.

History
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 powered armor suit and 'rifle' sidearm combination. 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 made heavy use of stimpacks.

Terran Confederacy and Dominion
A significant proportion of the Confederate Marine Corps was manned by "culturally challenged" who had been "resocialized" via brain surgery, implants such as aggression inhibitors, and resocialization tanks. 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-300/400 Powered Combat Suit and a C-14 "Impaler" Gauss Rifle. The rifle propels an 8 mm "spike" at hypersonic speeds through the use of electro-magnets. The Slugthrower was a common sidearm.

The fall of the Confederacy and its replacement by the Dominion saw an increase in volunteer recruitment, but not enough to supplant "resoc" conscription. Marines continued to use variants of the C-14 many years after the Brood War. . At some point the Slugthrower was replaced by the more powerful Flak Pistol.

United Earth Directorate
UED marines were equipped much to the same standards as their colonial counterparts although, on the whole, they exhibited 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.

StarCraft
Compared to the other base units (the Zealot and Zergling) the Marine is a 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 (equal) damage. Stimpacks further increase effectiveness by increasing movement speed and firing rate at the cost of 10 hit points. 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), along with anything that does splash damage.

Abilities

 * Stim Pack Tech

Upgrades

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

Quotations
"I vote we frag this commander."

"How do I get out of this chickens**t outfit?!"

"Oh my god, he's whacked!"

"You want a piece of me, boy?"

"If it weren't for these damned neural implants you'd be a smoking crater by now!"

"Give me something to shoot."

"Are you gonna give me orders?"

"Ahh thats the stuff!" (using stimpacks)

"Ahh yeah!" (using stimpacks)

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 which may be attached to grenade launchers. The Marines can also carry flak pistols which inflict area-of-effect damage.

Upgrades

 * Marines will be able to receive an upgrade that increases their hit points by 15. Once upgraded the marines' game model will change to include a shield and bayonet.   Marines will have two more upgrades beyond the weapon and armor upgrades; stimpack and U-238 shells (abilities possessed by Marines at BlizzCon 2007).

Background
In-game, they behave similarly to the marines from Aliens, even quoting lines from the film.