Dextro Xur-pattern Spirit

"Marines called them Spirits because they were death reincarnate. They'd come out of nowhere, without a word, and just start dropping Covies in our front yard."

- Lieutenant Tara Nguyen

The Type-25 Troop Carrier, designation as the DX-class dropship by the Covenant and commonly known as the Spirit, is a infantry and logistical dropship and utility craft manufactured by Assembly Forges. The Spirit served as one of the primary transport crafts of the Covenant military, and is now utilized by the Swords of Sanghelios' army.

Design details
The Spirit is a moderately large craft, being 33 m in length. The dropship is an angular, tuning fork-shaped spacecraft with two parallel personnel bays along the exterior of each "prong". The pilot's compartment is located at the rear, between the twin troop bays. 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 lifts the Covenant use to commute between the ground and hovering ships. This same gravity-beam is used to ferry payloads to their destinations. The hull of the Spirit is unexpectedly robust and the pilots are well protected in the dropship's aft cockpit. A Spirit is more likely to survive combat zones that would be considered suicidal for the somewhat more fragile Phantom.

The Spirit's awkward split-fuselage design and claustrophobic troop bays have proven to be a significant disadvantage for the dropship. The features may make troop and vehicle deployment a difficult and frustrating affair for the pilot, as well as a distressing experience for the Spirit's passengers. These disadvantages proved even more troublesome for its occupants after the United Nations Space Command learned to exploit the Spirit's predictable deployment methodology.

Crew and complement
As dedicated transports for infantry and vehicles, the Spirit is capable of carrying up to thirty passengers—with fifteen being held in each troop bay. Up to two light-armored vehicles such as two Ghosts, one heavy-armored vehicle such as a Wraith, or other possible payloads such as supply canisters for ground troops. As aforementioned, these payloads are ferried underneath the dropship via its gravity hoist.

Ground personnel can also be retrieved to the dropship via the dropship's gravity lift.

Propulsion
Capable of powered flight and hovering, the dropship appears quite cumbersome and awkward to pilots based on battlefield observations. Despite this, the Spirit has been known to reach speeds of 350 km/h while cruising and has a maximum speed of 1099 km/h.

While these dropships have life support for use in the vacuum of space, they do not have a slipspace drive. During Operation: FIRST STRIKE, a Spirit was modified with reinforced metal 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 the slipstream on its own accord.

Armament
Spirits are armed with a singular rotating, low-mounted heavy plasma cannon, located directly below the cockpit of the dropship. Though the weapon serves a defensive role, the cannon is capable of delivering substantial damage to ground troops and vehicles. Unlike the humans' conventional bullet projectiles, the superheated plasma fired from the cannon travels slower and are ineffective against fast-moving objects, and is only effective as a fire support during deployment of troops. Office of Naval Intelligence analysts have determined that the Spirit's solitary armament appears to be a slightly older variation of the cannon mounted on the Type-25 Shade turret.

Known Spirits

 * Brilliant Gift – Destroyed inside Infinite Succor during the Battle of Installation 04.

Halo: Combat Evolved
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 thanks to the turret that lies underneath its belly. When dropping off troops, the Spirit will be stationary in mid-air for a few seconds, before descending and opening its troop bay doors. In rarer cases, the Spirit may stay suspended in midair; the troops that disembark may actually die from the fall. Spirits can also deploy Ghosts and Wraiths into the battlefield. Like Pelicans, Spirits follow a set path: they appear from around the background, arrive at the battlefield, deploy troops, take off and disappear around the corner.

The Spirit, including its turret, is indestructible. In addition, its heavy, bulky armor can protect those resting within the troop bay doors.

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.

Halo Wars
In Halo Wars, the Spirit only appears on the campaign and cannot be used in multiplayer or Skirmish. It is a fast dropship used to deliver quite large amounts of troops on the battlefield. Unlike Halo: Combat Evolved, the Spirit is not indestructible: 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 and Halo: Reach.

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 sports a weapon similar to the Concussion Rifle, which is significantly more powerful but fires only one bolt at a time and at half the speed. It remains indestructible, but its turret can be shot off with enough firepower. In Firefight mode, destroying the turret grants the player who did so a two credit bonus and a kill with whatever weapon they are using (counting towards the specific commendation for that weapon and towards any weapon related sprees).

Trivia

 * The Marathon logo can be seen on the front of the cockpit.
 * The Spirit dropship was erroneously designated as the "Type-28 Troop Carrier" during the development of Halo: Reach; this was soon corrected following the release of the game. This error, however, persists in the 2011 edition of the Halo Encyclopedia.
 * The Spirit is jokingly known as the "tuning fork" among Bungie employees due to its shape. Lorraine McLees described the Spirit as "having the coolest rear-end of all the Covenant ships".

List of appearances

 * Halo: The Fall of Reach
 * Halo: Combat Evolved
 * Halo: The Flood
 * Halo: First Strike
 * Halo Graphic Novel
 * Breaking Quarantine
 * Halo: Ghosts of Onyx
 * Halo: Contact Harvest
 * Halo: The Cole Protocol
 * Halo Wars: Genesis
 * Halo Wars
 * Halo Legends
 * Origins


 * Halo: Evolutions - Essential Tales of the Halo Universe
 * The Return
 * Halo: Reach
 * ''Halo: Fall of Reach
 * ''Invasion
 * Halo: Glasslands
 * Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary
 * Halo: The Thursday War
 * Halo: Spartan Assault
 * Halo: Escalation
 * Halo: Mortal Dictata
 * Halo: Nightfall
 * Halo: Spartan Strike
 * Halo 5: Guardians