Starcraft 2 Terran central

This is to be the central topic for starcraft 2 terran strategies, comments about units, theories, tactics, opinions etc.

(Because I want to leave the main post alone, this is the only time I will double post in this topic)

So seems that the current breakdown of races and players in our group for sc2 is the following:

Zerg: Vroop
Terran: Amos Kern-Perets,
Protoss: Emily Zhang, new addition Kelvin Chang, new addition Michael McGrew, new addition Felix Zhou

So anyways on to business:
I have been practicing as terran (although the protoss looks so awesome with ultra graphics settings)
So since we all know I suck, my training process has been slow but is making progress, I have been improving hotkey use skills and macromanagement (my micromanagement is pretty damn bad). But there are some things I realize I need to just know:
I need to get a good early game build order, anyone got one (don't suggest an sc1 build order).
I need to learn how many of a unit I need for it to be effective (example: too many marines wastes time and minerals, too little marines die without being useful and thus become a waste of time and money) so if anyone could make a super post about some squad compositions for terrans(ex 5 marauders and 10 marines - I don't know if that is a good squad composition, that was just an example).
We need to get some terran sc2 strategies up also.

So this is a long needed update to the strategies:

NOTE: First and foremost terran always need to know what the enemy focus, part of being a good terran is being a great counter, not just trying to win with your units strengths, and as such info on the enemy is crucial, especially towards the phase when alot of heavy construction for the later part of the game will occur.

Vs Protoss: You need to know what the build is so I will break it down to the basic counters for the 4 generic protoss strategies:

Colossi + Stalkers : Just a giant mass overrun strategy, with warp gates able to spam stalkers and colossi getting pumped out of robotics bays this strategy is probably one of the easiest to counter but because of the versatility of this build you are likely to be in for major losses even if you win. So air is not going to work, banshees fall like flies and vikings wont help for anything against stalkers which do more damage against armored units and can hit air and ground. Instead, the standard mechbuild backed up by scanning will be the key to victory here, that means chug those tanks and thors out, in probably the best case, the protoss will come to attack first, focus down the colossi so the protoss can't see onto your base. Now with the colossi down you will decimate the stalkers down below with all that splash damage from the siege tanks and in addition the stalkers can't blink up without line of sight and you are already blocking the entrance up with tanks. When the force goes down mobilize your thors and tanks and take out anything that comes by.

Now for the second method of handling this, a bit harder to pull off, but I have seen it happen, to wayne (and my vikings, but that is because I was too lazy to move them). Using 1 maybe 2 well placed nukes to cripple enemy forces and using anything from tanks to banshees to finish off the job. But obviously this is alot harder to pull off because you need to either time it really well for when the units are coming your way or risk it on when they are fighting you.

Void ray mass or carrier spam: Heh if you catch them in the act of this strategy you will be fine, as soon as you see a warp gate or 2, mass those vikings, even just one reactor starport will do, they will destroy anything that moves in the air, from there you can even use the ground form of the viking to finish off the job.

DT's : phef, scans are solid work on this one, just make sure you have a scan to spare and you keep an eye out for the invisible. Watchout this usually comes coupled with warpgate masses which you need lotso siege tanks to counter.

Warpgate mass: A nasty way to get tons of units early in the match, seige tanks are probably your best counter to anything they pull here.

I haven't seen almost any protoss mass play immortals which is ironically the best play against terran mech build

urgh terran is going to take a while, and alot of micro.

I will put up zerg counters when I do more zerg matches but in the mean time: most zerg will go muta mass or hydra mass, tanks against hydras and vikings against mutas, that about all. AND WATCH OUT FOR DAMNED NYDUS WORMS.