Thor

"Hear 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 is much more manuverable than its Odin predecessor.

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, which Raynor's Raiders hijacked. The Raiders' chief engineer Rory Swann reverse engineered a schematic of the thor from examining the Odin prototype.

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

Combat Roles
The thor's primary roles are 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 marines 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, but the attack is not as effective against heavily armored air units such as battlecruisers.

The thor is countered by range, mobility, and certain anti-armor units. It doesn't deal enough splash damage to effectively deal with massed units such as marines, zerglings and zealots.

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 Media Blitz mission.

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.

Development
In early builds, the thor could be constructed by SCVs in the field, though is now built from the factory. The thor "structure" used to cost 300 minerals/ 300 gas/ 6 supply/ 100 seconds, hotkey T.

The thor had a slow turning speed in the BlizzCon 2007 build, enabling units such as the Cobra to destroy it easily with micromanagement. It now turns fairly quickly, and the turning speed is no longer a balancing factor.

The thor was scaled down in size as it was vulnerable to micro-ing from smaller units that could be built in only a fraction of the time and resources required to build a thor. In StarCraft II beta patch 12, the thor was shrunk from a 1.375 base to a 0.8125 base size.

By March 2008 the thor was shrunk from its original size and can move faster in order to suit its anti-air role better. However, its anti-ground attack was weakened.

Previously the thor could not be transported.

The powerful and bulky thor of early development was resurrected as the Odin, a special campaign unit found in StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty.

The thor lost the Mechanical Rebirth ability for multiplayer by May 2009. Blizzard's internal playtesting showed the ability to be impractical. It was retained as a campaign ability in Wings of Liberty.

250mm Cannons (Previous Version)
Artillery Strike was a powerful long-ranged area-of-effect attack. To use the Artillery Strike, the thor had to expend energy, then it "stabilized" itself as the cannons on its back were lowered. The four 250mm bombardment cannons alternated raining damage upon the area. This ability needed to be researched. The ability was later removed as it conflicted the with the 's splash damage attacks.

Known Pilots

 * Sandin Forst
 * Tychus Findlay (piloted the Odin)

Trivia

 * In Norse mythology, Thor is the son of Odin. This is reflected in-game, since Odin is the first Thor, and the Thor was built after him.