Starcraft 2 Terran Support Units

Starcraft 2 Terran Units and Structures ---> Terran Support Units (you are here)

The Starcraft 2 Terran army has 3 powerful support units that can significantly increase Terran power when used correctly.

Support units are units that would never be the primary constituent of an army or strategy but rather are used to increase decimate the opponent and increase the strength of regular offensive units.

The Starcraft 2 Terran Support Units are the Ghost, the Medivac, and the Raven.

Ghost (see the Starcraft 2 Ghost article for more details on this unit)

Cost: 150 minerals, 150 vespene gas, 2 supplies
Requires: Barracks with Tech Lab attached and a Ghost Academy

The Ghost is not a traditional support unit in that it does have an auto-attack of its own. It also has a variety of special abilities and is much better than Starcraft's original Ghost.

Snipe is a default skill (no research required) that deals 45 damage to biological units. It also only costs 25 energy (Ghosts can charge up to 200). As a result, a pack of Ghosts can inflict serious damage on Zerg players with snipe alone, taking out Hydralisks in 2 blows, Drones in 1, and Mutalisks in 3.

The other default Ghost ability is EMP. This electromagnetic pulse inflicts 100 damage to Protoss shields (makes Immortals very vulnerable) and reduces all special unit energy to zero. It also temporarily reveals cloaked units.

This is very effective versus Infestors, Dark Templar, Banshees, High Templar, and any unit that relies on energy.

In the presence of a Factory, you can build a Nuclear Missile for 100 minerals and 100 vespene gas at the Ghost Academy. This missile causes 300 damage to units in its area of effect and causes 500 damage to structures. It is a very powerful way to destroy enemy expansions and automated defensive structures.

Ghosts can cloak with the research of Personal Cloaking (150 minerals, 150 vespene gas), letting them go invisible for the cost of 25 initial energy and just under 1 energy per second.

Raven

Cost: 100 minerals, 200 vespene gas
Requires: Starport with Tech Lab attached

The Raven is not only the most underused Starcraft 2 Terran support unit, it is possibly also the least used Terran unit period!

The Raven is the Terran detector as it can see cloaked units. It also has some unique abilities.

It can build an Auto-Turret for 50 energy which does surprisingly good damage versus ground and air units. Getting a few Ravens and then spamming these turrets is an effective technique when resources are limited. 

The Raven can build a Point Defense Drone for 100 energy, which can block up to 10 enemy "missile attacks" (any ranged attack that you can see). It does not effect Marine fire (which is a good thing).

With the Seeker Missile research (150 minerals, 150 vespene gas), the Raven can produce a powerful bomb which deals 150 direct damage and 100 splash damage for 100 energy. Due to the high energy cost, the Ravens cannot spam this ability. However, 2 Ravens using Seeker Missiles can cause massive amounts of damage to an enemy's army. It has a large amount of splash damage so it works great on clumped units.

Medivac

Cost: 100 minerals, 100 vespene gas
Requires: Starport

The Starcraft 2 Terran support unit known as the Medivac combines the function of the original Dropship and Medic into one unit.

If you aren't familiar with Starcraft 1, this means that the Medivac both heals friendly biological units (such as Infantry or even a friendly Zerg player's units) and can transport ground units in the air.

A very common use for this is to mass Marines, Marauders, and Medivacs. This way you have the power of Marines and Marauders but you also have a unit which can heal them. This makes the Medivac a very popular unit even if the player has no intentions of performing a unit drop.

The Terran race has some of the most powerful and unique support units in Starcraft 2. Do not let them go to waste!