Dextro Xur-pattern Spirit

Were you looking for the Phantom-class dropship, used in Halo 2 and Halo 3? Type-25 Troop Carrier The Type-25 Troop Carrier (Covenant designation DX-class dropship ), otherwise known as the Spirit or T25 TC, is a Covenant infantry and logistical transport craft.

Design details
The Spirit is a moderately large craft, similar in size to the Pelican dropship. Capable of powered flight and hovering, the 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 1,100 kph. Spirits are angular, tuning fork/U shaped spacecraft with two parallel personnel bays along the exterior of each "prong". The Spirits are dedicated transports for infantry and vehicles. Each of these personnel 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. 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.

They 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. As such it can only possess one defensive weapon, either a heavy plasma auto-cannon, or a light plasma mortar, beneath its main fuselage at a time.

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.

Operational history
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. It is generally thought that they ceased to be in widespread use after the Battle of Onyx.

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 auto-cannon. During the events of the Battle of Installation 04, Spirits were the dropships the UNSC encountered on Alpha Halo.

Halo: Combat Evolved
The Spirit is virtually indestructible in Halo: Combat Evolved.

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 of providing heavy support in combat. When dropping off troops, the Spirit will be stationary in the mid-air for a few seconds, before descending and opening it's troop bay doors located at the outer side of either arm of the vehicle.



Halo Wars
The Spirit in Halo Wars only appears on the campaign and cannot be used in multiplayer or Skirmish. It is used to deliver quite large amounts of troops on the battlefield, including units that normally would not fit inside it such as Hunters, to enhance gameplay. The dropship is quite fast, and quite resistant to damage: it is advisable that players should eliminate it before the troops it carries disembark. Once the troops are on the ground, it cannot be destroyed.

The preferred units for taking down an airborne Spirit are Wolverines, Hornets, and Hawks. Spirits in Halo Wars do not 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
The Spirit in Halo: Reach behaves similarly to its Halo: Combat Evolved incarnation. One significant change, however, is that of its firing operation, which now matches the behavior of the Phantom's plasma auto-cannon. Instead of simultaneously firing three bolts of plasma, it now fires one single bolt and the duration between shots has been nearly doubled.

Appearances
In 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 novels, 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.

Known Spirits

 * Brilliant Gift - Destroyed inside the Infinite Succor.

Miscellaneous

 * 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", "Harbinger", and even the "Bandit", based on the military term for an enemy used by a Marine to refer to a Spirit in "Halo". The designation given in Ghosts of Onyx was the craft's Covenant name "DX class". Its UNSC designation was revealed with the release of new information from Halo: Reach.


 * 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, Banshee, etc.


 * The Marathon logo can be seen on the front of the cockpit.
 * Halo Wars is the only game so far to have destructible Spirits. It is unconfirmed in Halo: Reach although it is more than likely.

In-universe

 * During the First 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 Jiralhanae as the "Brute Chopper".


 * A modified Spirit was used by John-117 to get him and his team aboard the Unyielding Hierophant in Operation: First Strike.


 * 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 used the dropship itself to kill the two Hunters (by ramming them with the prongs).


 * 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.

Mistakes

 * The Spirit was incorrectly referred to as a Banshee in Halo: The Flood.