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. Koprulu Sector marines are generally equipped with powered armor suits and rapid-fire C-14 rifles. 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, they 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 rifle is the standard issue weapon for Alliance marines, though the E-9 rifle and C-7 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. Counseling 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.

Some marines had barcodes tattooed or branded onto their foreheads.

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, also known as "smiths", are equipped much to the same standards as their colonial counterparts. Instead of the C-14 gauss rifle, they are equipped with the C-141 AC Gauss Rifle, the C-150 Ronin pistol 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 heavily-armored 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.)

Quotations

 * See: StarCraft I Marine Quotations

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.

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 rifle, respectively. In addition, they were stated to possess gravity boots.

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
The marine is very similar to its StarCraft I counterpart.

Confederate Marines

 * Gunnery Sergeant Andre Madrid
 * Lon
 * Cliff Nadaner (formerly)

Alpha Squadron

 * Lieutenant Scott (formerly)
 * Lieutenant Emily Swallow
 * Sergeant Roosevelt Brannigan
 * Jacobs
 * Malkovitch

Gamma Squadron

 * Gunnery Sergeant Mitch Tanner
 * Private Malkovich

417th Confederate Marine Corps Platoon

 * Lieutenant L. Z. Breanne
 * Sergeant Jon Littlefield
 * Private Ardo Melnikov

Sons of Korhal marines

 * Private Somo Hung
 * Private Saunders
 * Private Tibbs

Dominion Marines

 * Captain Bock
 * Lieutenant Haggs

Omega Squadron

 * Private Jin-ho Lim
 * Vistor

The Annihilators

 * Major Esmerelda Ndoci
 * Captain Spaulding
 * Sergeant Hammond
 * Sergeant Mack
 * Sergeant McGillion
 * Sergeant Vincent
 * Corporal Flanigan

Raynor's Raiders

 * Jim Raynor
 * Lieutenant Deke Cavez
 * Sergeant Lisa Mannix
 * Private Lance Messner
 * Chuck Ayers
 * Tychus Findlay
 * Ari Patel
 * Melinda Squire

United Earth Directorate Powered Infantry

 * UED security guards
 * Harry
 * Johnny
 * Marine 384DTA47631

Alliance Marine Corps

 * Corporal Kurtz
 * Private Dennis Wiker

Mercenaries

 * Rosemary Dahl and her followers &mdash; Aiden, Kate, Sebastien, Tom and Marcus Wright
 * LaGrave of Hale's Commandos

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.