The DX-class Dropship, otherwise known as the Spirit, is a Covenant infantry and logistical transport craft.[1] It is generally thought that they ceased to be in widespread use after the Battle of Onyx.
Background
Spirits are angular, tuning fork/U shaped spacecraft with two parallel personnel bays along the exterior of each "prong". They are known to be used to transport Elites, Jackals, Grunts, and Brutes. Hunters have been reported being seen coming out of the bays. Spirits have been known to ferry Covenant vehicles within the blue colored energy field between their prongs, usually Ghosts and Wraiths, or other small objects such as supply canisters. Around the time of the Battle of Earth, it would seem that the Spirits were completely replaced with the more heavily built Phantoms, though, since great numbers were probably produced, were still used in the Battle of Onyx. A modified Spirit was used by Spartan 117 to get him and his team aboard the Unyielding Hierophant in Operation: First Strike. During the Battle of Harvest, a destroyed Spirit was used by the Huragok, Lighter Than Some, as raw material to create a vehicle that would later be adopted by the Brutes as the "Brute Chopper".
It is speculated that the Spirit is not designed for combat drops, but is instead a Cargo transport, though it is armed with a heavy plasma cannon. The lack of effective offensive or defensive weaponry coupled with the small troop carrying capacity of the Spirit tends to support this. During the events of the Battle of Installation 04, Spirits were the dropships the UNSC encountered on Alpha Halo.
Operation
The Spirit is a moderately large craft, similar in size to the Pelican dropship of the UNSC. Capable of powered flight and hovering, this dropship appears quite cumbersome and awkward to pilots based on battlefield observations but has been known to reach speeds of 350 kilometers per hour while cruising and has a suspected maximum speed of 1100 kph.
The craft is a dedicated transport of infantry and vehicles. As such it possesses only one defensive weapon, a heavy plasma cannon nearly identical to that of the Shade plasma turret. The weapon is located beneath the main fuselage of the vessel. It fires slowly but with fairly high accuracy. The gun's invincibility makes up for it's bad defense of the ship, as each bolt from the cannon takes a long time to reach its target, allowing for easy evasion especially when in a vehicle.
The Spirit possesses two troop bays each capable of holding four Grunts, Jackals or Elites. Within each of these bays there appears to be a door hinting at the possibility that more soldiers could be unleashed from deeper within the vessel. Each of these troop bays has two doors that open and close vertically; however, they do not close fully and leave a small opening along the length of the bay. Keen eyed snipers can take advantage of this and terminate soldiers before they even touch the ground.
Between these extended personnel bays, an energy field fluctuates visibly as it generates the ship's anti-gravity propulsion (similar in appearance to the energy pulse of the "Gravity Lift" elevators the Covenant use to commute between the ground and the hovering ships). This same gravity-beam is used to ferry Shades, Ghosts and other ground vehicles to their destinations.
While these dropships have life support for use in vacuum, they do not have a slipspace drive. In Halo: First Strike, a Spirit was modified so it could be launched out of a ship already in Slipspace. Even with this modification, the Spirit became severely damaged after the exit and was still unable to travel into Slipspace on its own accord.
Appearances
In the games, Spirits appear in Halo: Combat Evolved, Halo Wars and Halo: Reach, as the primary dropship of the Covenant. They do not make any appearance in Halo 2, Halo 3, or Halo 3: ODST, having been replaced by the sleeker, larger, heavier and faster Phantom. In the books, they are mentioned in Halo: The Fall of Reach, Halo: The Flood, Halo: First Strike, Halo: Ghosts of Onyx, Halo: Contact Harvest, and the Halo Graphic Novel.
It is not specifically known why the Spirit was removed from Halo 2 and 3, however it could be that the Phantom was in the process of replacing it as a newer model, or that the Phantom was preferred by Bungie.
Spirit in Combat
Halo: Combat Evolved
The Spirit is indestructible, unless a mod for the PC version is used to enable one shot kills. If so, it will then simply look as if burned, it will lose its ball-turret, and all occupants will die. No amount of firepower that the player can bring to bear is capable of bringing the ship down if no mods are added. The best tactic, if on lower difficulty levels, is to attack the vulnerable infantry (shoot or toss a grenade) as they disembark from the Spirit. On higher difficulties, this would be unwise; hiding behind cover until the ship leaves is often the best course of action in this situation. Without cover or good tactics, a careless player might die quickly. As well as being able to drop of a rather large amount of Covenant troops on the battlefield, the Spirit is also capable og providing heavy support in combat. When dropping off troops, the Spirit will be staionary in the midair for a few seconds, before descending and opening it's troop bay doors located at the outer side of either arm of the vehicle. Another easy tactic, especially on later parts of the level Halo, is to simply drive your Warthog across the area where the enemies jump out. If done at the right time, you can easily run over all of the disembarking Covenant units.
Halo Wars
The Spirit is used to deliver quite large amounts of troops on the battlefield, including units that normally wouldn't fit inside it, including Hunters, to enhance gameplay. It's quite fast, and quite resistant to damage: it is advisable to take it out just before the troops it carries disembark, as you will then be able to focus your fire on a single unit rather than a dozen. Once the troops are on the ground, it cannot be destroyed. The preferred units for taking down an air-borne Spirit are Wolvarines, Hornets and Hawks. Spirits in Halo Wars don't engage enemy targets and are only seen in the Campaign, mainly on the mission Dome of Light. Spirits in Halo Wars utilize Gravity Lifts to deploy and pick up troops, rather than the side-mounted troop bay doors as in Halo: Combat Evolved.
Halo: Reach
Spirits will be returning in Halo: Reach, as seen in the February issue of Gameinformer. Presumably, they will have the same combat system as in Halo: Combat Evolved.
Known Spirits
- Brilliant Gift - Destroyed inside the Infinite Succor.
Trivia
- The Spirit did not get an official and sanctioned name until Halo: Ghosts of Onyx was released in October 2006. Up until that point, the ship was simply referred to as the "Covenant dropship." Other sources unofficially referred to it as the "Apparition", the "Spook", the "Harbinger", and even the "Bandit", based on the military term for an enemy used by a Marine to refer to a Spirit in Halo.[2]
- The Marathon logo can be seen on the front of the cockpit.
- Lorraine McLees described the Spirit as "having the coolest rear-end of all the Covenant ships".
- Many Covenant vehicles share a similar name to "Spirit". The definition of the word spirit is also similar to that of Phantom, Wraith, Spectre, Ghost and Banshee.
- Captain Jacob Keyes commandeered one of the Spirit dropships to ferry himself, John-117, and a squad of Marines off of the Covenant ship: Truth and Reconciliation during Halo: Combat Evolved. He uses the dropship itself to kill the two Hunters (by ramming them with the prongs) that try to bring the Spirit down, just as it's about to leave.
- According to the Halo Graphic Novel, a Spirit dropship called Brilliant Gift was taken over by the Flood and crashed into the Infinite Succor. This is where they infected the crew and resulted in future Shipmaster Rtas 'Vadum getting his left mandibles cut off by his infected sub-commander. This ship would most likely be utilized by the Flood in their attempt to escape the Installation.
- The Spirit seems to be slower than the Pelican, as described in Halo: First Strike its maximum velocity was "under Mach 1" while the Pelican could reach "Mach 3", although it may be due to the fact the Pelican in question was almost in freefall.
- The Spirit was incorrectly referred to as a Banshee in Halo: The Flood.
- When a Spirit was picking up the Arbiter, after he had captured Ellen Anders, it used a gravity lift to pick him up, showing that some earlier models possibly used gravity lifts.
Gallery
- SpiritonBattlefield.png
A Spirit dropship hovers over a battlefield.
- CovDropship11.jpg
A Spirit fires upon enemy infantry.
- Dropship artwork.jpg
Concept art of the Spirit Dropship.
- Brilliant Gift2.jpg
The "Brilliant Gift".
Sources
Links
Internal
- Phantom- The successor of the DX-class Spirit Dropship.
- D77-TC Pelican Dropship- The UNSC Defense Force's equivalent to the DX-class Spirit Dropship.