Pit Drone

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Pit Drone
General information
Faction	Race X
Type	Soldier
Individual information
Health	40/40/110
Weapon(s)	Scythe-like claws Head spike
Game information
Entity	monster_pitdrone
Designer(s)	Brian Martel

 

"I'm afraid I've trapped myself here to escape those beasts."

― Black Mesa scientist

The Pit Drone is a small Race X alien encountered within the Black Mesa Research Facility after the Resonance Cascade. First encountered in Half-Life: Opposing Force’s fourth chapter, Missing in Action, it lies right under the Shock Trooper in terms of Race X hierarchy.

Overview

• Pit Drones are short, bipedal creatures with a head that sports a pair of black eyes (one on either side), tentacle-like appendages near the creature's mouth, red-white pimples on both sides of the body, and rows of sharp spikes protruding from pores on the creature's forehead when in attack mode. A Pit Drone's arms end in long, scythe-like claws, which can be used to make vicious slashing attacks.

• Pit Drones have some reptilian characteristics, such as smooth, leathery skin, splayed feet, and small eyes, as well as canine, as their noises resemble distorted dog noises.

Behavior and skills

• Pit Drones are fast and fairly intelligent, typically traveling in packs of five or six, and are capable of making flanking movements to quickly surround their prey.

• The Pit Drone has two forms of attack:

• Firing its head spikes with acid jets when at long range. The head spikes typically replenish themselves when the creature briefly moves its arms behind to "reload", and the creature may sometimes briefly take cover to replenish the spikes. When idle, the spikes are kept inside the head.
• Charging towards their target to deliver a deadly slash from their claws.

• When a Pit Drone dies near another and there is no enemy nearby, the creature will show to resort to cannibalism, and briefly eat at the other creature's corpse.

• Strangely, Pit Drones will attack a Shockroach left without a host, despite it being part of Race X.

Behind the scenes

At some point in the game's development, Pit Drones were originally wearing a grey device behind the forehead, which was to be used by Shock Troopers to control their minds and use them as scouts or slaves, similar to the Vortigaunt collars. They would also force them to fight with the device in case they fled.

Pit Drones use the artificial intelligence of Bullsquids from the original game. They were modified to not recognize the aliens from Xen. However, they attack Headcrabs^[i] on sight. This is believed to be an error in the code. The developers accidentally left in a special feature called "Nemesis". This overrides their AI, and makes them only attack specific enemies listed in their code (in this case, the nemeses of Bullsquids), and ignore the player.

Gallery

Pre-release

• 

  Early model with "mind device".

• 

  Early Pit Drones attacking Shephard, with the "mind device" visible.

• 

  Ditto.

• 

  Ditto.

• 

  Staged screenshot of Shephard being chased by Pit Drones in an early version of the Loader room in Sector C.

Retail

• 

  The Pit Drone model, without spikes.

• 

  Spike model.

• 

  Pit Drone attacking Shephard.

• 

  Pit Drones in Black Mesa's Waste Processing Area 3.

• 

  The Pit Drone chamber in Sector G.

List of appearances

• Half-Life: Opposing Force