Overview
James Raynor is a Terran commander who specializes in infantry units. Most Raynor players will opt for the "bio" Terran style of play, relying on marines and medics to handle anything that the mission throws at them. While he does have access to the Factory and Starport (and even has level upgrades tailored to them), he works best with infantry, and is designed with that in mind when looking over his traits).
Units
Marine: standard, general purpose infantry unit. Usually the unit of choice. Trains quickly and are easily massable since you can produce these from barracks with reactors.
Firebat: anti-light "melee" specialist. Could be good versus Zerg, but I'd stick with marines.
Marauder: anti-armored specialist. Could be good versus Terran/Protoss, but I'd stick with marines.
Medic: healing support unit. These are what make your infantry sustainable. Keep in mind their costs though; they requires a tech lab as well at a non-trivial amount of resources.
Vulture: speedy factory unit. Can deploy spider mines for setting up traps for incoming waves. Sort of gimmicky though.
Siege Tank: the classic mech factory unit. Can switch between a mobile tank mode and a stationary siege mode which grants increased range, damage, and splash damage. Unfortunately Raynor's specialty is in infantry.
Viking: long range air-to-air unit that can transform into a ground-to-ground unit. Sort-of the replacement of the goliath from Brood War. May have some uses in missions where you need anti-air.
Banshee: air-to-ground starport unit. You get an ability to summon several of these for free quickly. For now, there aren't many situations where you'd need to train them.
Battlecruiser: capital class all-purpose unit. Can be trained once you reach level 5. Comes with some abilities, though the most useful one is the warp ability to jump to different locations when needed. I never train these to be honest, but they probably also come with the yamato cannon.
Initial Traits and Abilities
- Call down the Hyperion (360 second cooldown): summon your overpowered battlecruiser anywhere to support your armies or punch a hole in your enemies' defenses. The first time you summon it should probably be used to assist against an initial attack wave. Afterwards it can be used to either supplement an attack, or a quick OH CRAP moment if you have units out of position. Comes with the classic yamato cannon for sniping high HP targets, point defense drones that resemble the ones Ravens can deploy (but last a lot longer), and can jump to any location on the map.
- Orbital Command or OC (150 mineral upgrade from Command Center (CC) ): I'm listing this here because you cannot upgrade your CC with Swann. It is also missing the supply drop ability. But otherwise, it's just like multiplayer. The MULE calldown gets buffed when you reach a certain level too.
- Bunkers/Missile Turrets: listed here for completeness sake. Swann cannot make infantry, so that's one distinction.
Level Upgrades
1) Infantry specialist: your barracks are build 50% faster, and you train infantry units 20% faster.
2) Air Strike (240 second cooldown): allows you to summon 5 banshees anywhere you have vision. They start cloaked and last for a good duration, though at some point, they run out of energy for cloaking. They still provide excellent DPS to support your armies or stop an advancing wave.
3) Nano Projectors: allows you to upgrade Firebats to increase their attack range by 2 and Medics to increase their healing range by 2. Medics are already essential, and this helps keep them behind marines and not run into danger. Quite the useful upgrade.
4) Infantry Cache Upgrade: researchable upgrades for firebats and medics, similar to ones encountered in the Wings of Liberty campaign. The heal speed buff is very nice, and the firebat ones are gravy.
5) Point Defense Drone: allows the Hyperion to place PDDs near it. You get 4 charges each time you summon the Hyperion. They function just like the ones the Raven produces, and last a very long time too. Seems more like gravy more than anything else; the Hyperion itself is very buff and you don't lose anything from the Hyperion "dying" except it leaving the battlefield sooner if its HP drops to zero.
6) Unlock Battlecruiser: allows you to build Battlecruisers from starports. Not that useful save for a couple of niche builds that employ these, and need their ability to warp around to defend key positions. I wouldn't normally build these unless you are playing with someone you know and is aware you are going for these end-tier units.
7) Engineering Bay Cache Upgrade: researchable upgrades for bunkers. Nothing really new or really useful here. Adding a free turret and extra HP for bunkers is ok, but not game changing.
8) Orbital Drop Pods: units trained from a barracks/factory no longer spawn at the barracks, but will "drop" into the rally point of the barracks/factory. Sort of similar to how Protoss can warp in anywhere, but you don't need to be in a pylon radius. Makes reinforcing your army a heck of a lot easier, that's for sure.
9) Factory Cache Upgrade: buffs for widow mines from vultures and siege tanks in siege mode. Again, you specialize in infantry, but if you decide to go with mech (e.g. goofing around with a Karax ally), the siege tank upgrades are so-so (faster transformations and better armor in siege mode).
10) Improved Calldown: MULE: using the calldown MULE ability will summon 2 MULES instead of 1. This is a major power spike, allowing a huge increase in mineral income, and will allow you to support constant production out of more barracks.
11) Armory Cache Upgrade: why are they giving him these upgrades? Extra range on mech units, and the ability for all mechanical units to have afterburner like speed for 8 seconds. Again, for those who really want to go mech with this commander.
12) Orbital Depots: construction of supply depots is now near-instant (they "call down" depots instead of building them). Another big power spike. This saves worker mining time, and allows for some adjustments in build orders as loss of mineral mining is kept to a minimum.
13) Starport Cache Upgrade: upgrades for the banshee (linear AOE) and vikings (general AOE). Once more, upgrades for a niche build.
14) Hyperion: Advanced Targeting: Giving +2 attack to all friendly units near your Hyperion is a gravy upgrade. You don't have the Hyperion all the time, but this just gives an extra push to any army you bring it to.
15) Mercenary Munitions: a straight up DPS buff to your infantry units. Not much to complain about, but nothing amazing.
Pointers
- If you like to build large squads of infantry, this commander is for you. Focus on building up a large army of marines and medics for all-purpose DPS. At 2 bases, you should be able to support 8-10 barracks, with 3 of them having tech labs for medics, and the rest with reactors for marines.
- You may build a factory just to gain access to an armory for the sole purpose of unlocking upgrades for your engineering bay. I personally don't think you need Starports for anything unless you want to go BCs for some reason.
- The standard opening is 14 depot and 15/16 barracks, then refinery whenever you get 75 minerals while still producing SCVs. You don't have to rush an add-on; you can always have 1 regular barracks building marines slowly while you make additional ones so you can have some standing force for defense or to clear the rocks at your expansion. 2 workers per mineral patch is still optimal - the worker counter still uses the 3 worker/patch notation, so you should technically only need 14/21 workers on minerals per base (the other should be 10/15).
- As you start making your barracks, I would start with having your first one producing marines almost non-stop until your 2nd or 3rd one has completed making their add-ons and are working on upgrades. Stim and combat shields are just as useful as ever, and you want them ASAP. The medic range upgrade can wait.
- You can build your expansion's CC before clearing the rocks. Since you can always simply lift-off and land your CC closer to the mineral line, it would be wise to send an SCV to the expansion and start building before clearing the rocks out. Early expansions in general in co-op missions are recommended.
- Based on who your ally is, you may or may not need to spend extra resources building up an army early. All Protoss commanders have some calldown ability to help against initial waves. Zerg commanders do not get their hero until the second wave, so you may need to coordinate as to how much army you both need. Swann has turrets to help with initial defenses, and should build a couple at your choke point.
- Reserve a hotkey for any building that can produce units, including your OCs. When it's time to build, simply press the hotkey for that building(s) and then press the appropriate key for unit production. I always have all my OCs on one hotkey and all of my barracks on another hotkey. Macro'ing is simplified into pressing 5SS and 6EEEAAAAAAAAAAA... (I hotkey OCs to 5 and barracks to 6; you can use any control group number you wish of course. S for SCVs, E for Medics, and A for marines).
- Though I still have a habit of doing so, it's preferable NOT to use the F2 key to select your entire army. I know the LotV and HotS campaign teach you to do this early on, but it's better to manually add new troops to your control groups. To add units to an existing control group, select the units to add, hold the SHIFT key and press the control group key. If you use the F2 key too often, other units you have positioned elsewhere will be included in your commands. This can be very problematic with position, especially if you control any army that has casters or other special units (observers, vipers, etc). F2 is more of an OH CRAP key when you need everything to come together.
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