Thor

From The StarCraft 2 Wiki

The mighty Thor is a powerful Terran mechanical unit that has more similarities with the fabled Battlecruiser than the old Goliath.

Contents 1 Background 2 Game Unit 2.1 StarCraft II Unit 2.1.1 Abiliities 2.1.2 Upgrades 2.1.3 Removed (pre-Beta) 3 Development 4 Trivia 5 Gallery

Background

StarCraft II Unit [e]
Thor
Race:	Terran, Tier 2.5
Role:	Heavy Assault
Unit Statistics
Size:	Large
Type:	Ground Mechanical
Speed:	Slow
Transport Slots:	8
Hit Points:	400
Plasma Shields:	N/A
Energy Points:	200
Offence
Armament:	Twin "Thor's Hammer" Particle Accelerators (Ground)/Javelin Missile Launchers (Air)
Ground Attack:	45 (x2)
Air Attack:	10 +6 vs light (x4)
Range:	7 ground, 10 air
Defence
Armor:	1 (Armored)
Sight:	x
Cooldown:	x
Special Abilities
250mm Strike Cannons ( 100) Bombards the target with repeated attacks.
Production
Hotkey:	T
Supply:	6
Resources:	300 200
Build Time:	75
Produced by:	Factory
Prerequisite:	Armory

The Thor Project has been shrouded in mystery since its very beginning. Agents of the Umojan Protectorate were the first to uncover a trail of clues that the Terran Dominion was intent on creating some kind of new terror weapon. The Umojans' curiosity was aroused when they heard rumours that the huge Simonson munitions facility on Korhal IV had been placed under a complete security lockdown by Dominion forces. Something big was in the offing, so big that the workers at the Simonson plant had been virtually placed under arrest to prevent any information from leaking out.

The crack team of spies swung into action to search for leads that would betray the work being undertaken. Hacked cargo manifests showed deliveries of battlecruiser-weight neosteel armor plating extending back over a year. Passive sensors that the spies planted around the facility picked up occasional industrial-strength electromagnetic discharges and regular seismic shocks. An increasing flow of high-ranking Dominion officers was observed coming and going, indicating that theproject was close to completion. Yet beyond these tantalizing pieces of the puzzle, the Umojan team drew a co mplete blank.

The Umojans began to be frustrated by their lack of progress, and frustration can lead to recklessness. A young operative on the team, Ulli Trey, offered to take the risk and try to infiltrate the facility. The team leader was reluctant but out of other options, and so he approved the plan. Trey's approach was flawless: she liquidated the driver of the Dominion commander and took his place. As she had anticipated, the rigorous security checks needed to get through the outer cordon around the facility were focused on the high-ranking officer instead of his lowly driver.

Once inside the facility, Trey released a clutch of nanotech micro-spies to trail the commander as he went deeper into the facility. From this point Ulli Trey could only sit and wait, hoping that the stealth capabilities of her miniature spy drones would be good enough to prevent them--and her--from being caught.

Within a few hours Agent Trey was free and clear, carrying vital information about the Dominion's most significant military development since the Brood War: Project Thor. The micro-spy images showed a huge bipedal war machine armed with two giant particle beams and a dorsal artillery battery that wouldn't be out of place on a battleship. Most disturbing of all was the demonstration that this monster could be built from the ground up by ordinary construction vehicles in an astonishingly short time frame. The Umojan team reported back to Protectorate, thoroughly shaken by their findings and praying that some counter could be found for such a beast.

Game Unit

The Thor is a slow moving capital mech with two primary roles: countering mass armored air units and absorbing massive damage by spearheading an assault. It can almost be considered a much higher variation of the old Goliath.

StarCraft II Unit

The Thor is a mid to late game mechanical unit that can sustain massive amounts of damage due to their increased durability. It is for this reason they are best suited at the very front of any attacking force to help absorb pre-emptive fire from enemy Siege Tanks, High Templar Psi Storm and stationary base defences. This gives the Terrans another option to use in sieges instead of the Siege Tank.

The anti-air missiles of the Thor deals splash damage to all nearby enemy units around the target. Though very effective when taking down groups of heavily armored airships, it has been said that the missiles are not quite enough to effectively destroy a Battlecruiser.

The Thor receives a bonus of +6 damage when attacking light air targets.

The Thor can be transported by a Medivac Dropship. It uses 8 slots, so only one can be carried. They are strong against Banshee, Stalker and Roach; but weak against Marine, Zealot and Zergling.

Abiliities

• 250mm Strike Cannons

Upgrades

• Vehicle Weapons 1-3
• Vehicle Plating 1-3

Removed (pre-Beta)

• Self Repair
• No longer built by the SCV. Now it's built at the Factory when it has a Tech Lab attached.

Development

The first major change to the Thor happened in mid to late December of 2007, as Cavez explains:

But here's what I can tell you about the Thor in the current build:

- He is big, but the art is smaller than what we showed in the last demo, so he takes up less space and he can path a little better.

- He turns fairly quickly. Turn speed is not a balance factor.

- He has a lot of health (400 right now).

- He's not super expensive (250/200 right now).

- He has a good bonus vs. armored units on the ground and he tends to waste a lot of damage on small units.

- His AA missiles are effective but not crushing. You can over-whelm him with enough air. His pathing size does limit his mobility when trying to chase fast moving air units.

- His shoulder guns are not currently in opperation. If we keep the current design the art will change.

- He does great against Stalkers, and several secret Terran and Zerg units. He also does well against most (but not all) air units.

- He is balanced so that if you kill him and then leave him disabled while he burns down you will do pretty well. If you fight both the Thor and the Disabled Thor then things tend to go pretty well for the Thor (for cost).

- The current Thor is countered by range, mobility or certain powerful anti-armor units.

It was also confirmed in late December 2007 that the Thor had the ability to remain as a "corpse" on the battlefield after first being destroyed. This corpse could then be repaired by an SCV and brought back to life. This has been quietly replaced with a self-repair ability seen in the Evolving Design demonstration video at the WWI 2008.

The Thor also originally required an SCV to construct, as opposed to being internally built from a structure. The idea behind this is the Thor was too large to be created from a Factory and therefore had to be built in the open field. This aspect was removed, and the Thor was placed in the Factory for the WWI 2008 build because the developers thought it allowed too much freedom for the Terrans to have no restriction on the Thors build queue.

Early in 2008, as part of the Q&A Batch 28, the role of the Thor was changed to that of an anti-ground unit where it is assumed it had lost the ability to attack air at this point. This was reversed in late May 2008 when it became primarily focused on anti-air.

A new ground-to-air attack animation for the Thor was confirmed as part of the Q&A Batch 45, plus increasing their ground-to-air range.

As of BlizzCon 2009 the Thor had again reverted back to it's role as originally revealed. This included the use of it's dorsal artillery cannons to "pound the ground."

Trivia

The Thor's name is derived from the Norse god of thunder, also named Thor.

His voice acting fits the unit portrait. The pilot of the in-game Thor has a very thick, sterotypical Austrian accent and quotes many lines from Arnold Schwarzenegger films. He also wears a Thors hammer around his neck, which is an ancient norse symbol of the strength and protection offered by Thor the thundergod.

Gallery

• General StarCraft II Shots
  • In-game Shots
  • Concept Art
  • Unit Models

Closeup of the Thor ingame model.	The Thor ingame portrait.	The making of the Thor.	Thor concept art.
Early screenshot of the Thor using Bombardment.	The Thor destroying a Command Center with Bombardment.	Thor with a Terran army.	A Thor with a group of infantry and several Siege Tanks.
Two Thors help defend against a Terran assault.	Three Thors bombard a Protoss army.	Two Thors help defend the high ground.	A few Thors attacking a Protoss base.
A lone Thor tries to defend against the Carriers.	Several Thors holds the front line.	A Thor under attack from several Carriers.	Two Thors help defend against the Zerg.
A few Thors on New Folsom.

Terran Units (StarCraft II) [e]
Ground Units:	SCV | Marine | Marauder | Ghost | Reaper | Hellion | Siege Tank | Thor
Air Units:	Viking | Medivac Dropship | Raven | Banshee | Battlecruiser
Basic Buildings:	Command Center | Supply Depot | Refinery | Barracks | Bunker | Engineering Bay | Missile Turret | Planetary Fortress | Sensor Tower
Advanced Buildings:	Ghost Academy | Factory | Merc Haven | Orbital Command | Armory | Starport | Fusion Core
Support Buildings:	Tech Lab | Reactor
Hero ground units:	Jim Raynor | Tychus Findlay
Cancelled Units:	Cobra/Diamondback - Firebat - Predator - Medic - Dropship
Cancelled Buildings:	Munitions Depot - Starbase - Shadow Ops

Terran Units (StarCraft I & Brood War) [e]
Ground Units:	SCV | Marine | Firebat | Medic | Vulture | Goliath | Siege Tank | Ghost
Air Units:	Dropship | Wraith | Valkyrie | Battlecruiser | Science Vessel |
Basic Buildings:	Command Center (ComSat Station & Nuclear Silo) | Supply Depot | Engineering Bay | Barracks | Refinery | Missile Turret | Academy | Bunker
Advanced Buildings:	Factory | Machine Shop | Armory | Starport (Control Tower) | Science Facility (Physics Lab & Covert Ops)
Hero ground units:	Gui Montag (fb) | Terran Civilian | Sarah Kerrigan (g) | Samir Duran (g) | Alexei Stukov (g) | Alan Schezar (gol) | Jim Raynor (vul, mrn) | Edmund Duke (st)
Hero air units:	Tom Kazansky (wrt) | Magallan (sv) | Hyperion (bc) | Norad II (bc)
(fb) = Firebat -- (g) = Ghost -- (gol) = Goliath -- (v) = Vulture -- (m) = Marine -- (st) = Siege Tank -- (wrt) = Wraith -- (sv) = Science Vessel -- (bc) = Battlecruiser