Hive Soldier DroneReport

English：Hive Soldier Drone　·　Races

The combat caste, bred to guard the Hive and keep the Workers in line — the toughest Hiver, the dimmest, and the only subrace that cannot wear so much as a hat.

Soldier drones are created to protect the hive and enforce control over the workers. Stronger and less intelligent than the workers. Ones that seek freedom are rarer, and usually only find work as mercenaries. — in-game race description

The Hive Soldier Drone is the armed caste of the Hive system. For the biology and social structure the race shares, see the Hive overview; this article covers the Soldier — a body optimised for close combat and stripped to the bone in every other respect.

That body is a deliberate trade. Bulkier than the Hive Worker Drone, but pushed to an even lower intelligence, and what the exchange buys is a pugnacious, fearless temperament. Guarding a hive requires neither fear nor pity^{[V1 0:02:16]}.

Build: the only Hiver body that can actually take a hit

The Soldier's health layout stands alone among Hivers: 200 in the head and 100 in every other part (the Worker's torso is only 75, the Prince is a flat 80 everywhere), making him the only Hiver who can absorb a blow head-on.

The price is speed: both top speed and combat move multiplier are the lowest of the three subraces, so he can neither catch up nor get away. A hunger rate of 0.6 is still below a Human's, but it makes him the biggest eater among Hivers.

No helmet: a structural flaw with no fix

The Soldier is the only playable race in the game completely barred from equipping anything in the head slot — Workers and Princes merely have partial restrictions; the Soldier cannot put on even a cloth hat.

This is not just lost armour value. Kenshi ties nearly all sandstorm and acid-gas protection to headgear, which leaves the Soldier permanently without any defence against either weather type; the sole substitute is Swamp Ninja Rags at a mere 20% resistance. Anyone taking a Soldier into the Ashlands or the acid-fog regions should be prepared: there is nothing you can do to keep him alive there.

Shirts are restricted too, limited to the Hiver-only tops that leave the arms uncovered; with no feet, the boot slot stays empty forever. In practice the Soldier is a body that only works in clean melee situations.

Skill profile: two bonuses, nine penalties

• +20%: Melee Attack, Toughness
• −20%: Armour Smith, Cooking, Engineer, Farming, Field Medic, Perception, Robotics, Science, Weapon Smith

Put another way, the Soldier is below par in most of what the Worker is good at, and his specialisation is concentrated in exactly two places: Toughness and Melee Attack — a single-purpose caste built to guard the hive and keep the workers in line^{[V2 0:05:30]}.

This is one of the most lopsided growth curves in the game, more extreme than the Shek's three bonuses against nine penalties, because the Soldier does not even get a Strength bonus. His bonuses cover swinging a blade and getting hit; the other nine penalties precisely wall off every non-combat career path. Perception −20% rules out crossbowmen, Field Medic −20% rules out medics, Engineer, Robotics and Science at −20% make him nearly useless for Base Building and research, and −20% to both smithing skills means he cannot even make his own gear.

As a player character: is he worth it?

The advantages are tightly focused: the only Hiver with a positive combat bonus, with +20% to both Melee Attack and Toughness for very fast growth; 100 HP limbs make dismemberment markedly rarer than for other Hivers; and 200 HP in the head means he is almost never one-shotted by a headshot.

The disadvantages are just as focused, and no amount of equipment can offset them:

1. The head slot stays empty forever, hard-capping both total armour value and weather protection
2. Nine production-skill penalties make him dead weight inside a base
3. Slowest speed of the three, so disengaging is difficult
4. No Strength bonus, so carry weight and damage ceiling both fall short of the Shek

The conclusion: a Soldier is a fine pure front-line meat shield and levelling tank, but a poor choice as a squad's only fighter. Recruitment channels are narrow too — the Wiki leaves the "Game Starts" field blank on the Soldier page (the Worker page lists eleven), so in practice you get one from a unique recruit or by freeing a slave:

• Ray — a mute slave whose tongue was cut out by his previous owner, bought from the Bar fly for roughly 1,000 Cats at either Eyesocket in the Stormgap Coast or the Slave Markets in the South Wetlands. Having no tongue, he cannot talk to any NPC
• Soldier Drone Swordslinger — a randomly named unique recruit, thrown out by his owner for "taking food back off a thief", asking around 7,500 Cats

Soldiers inside the Hive

Soldiers in Western Hive Villages split into patrolling town guards and shop guards who never leave their posts. All carry Ancient-quality polearms, a rag loincloth and a basic first aid kit, and wear no armour at all — Strength values of 37 to 43 put them above most wilderness bandits, but their kit is bad enough to cancel that out. The "Royal Soldier Drones" guarding the Hive Queen's Hill Hut sound impressive but are equipped identically. Once the Queen is killed or kidnapped, these Soldiers pour towards the player's outpost for revenge.

The Soldier's mind is the least capable of any Hiver, which is why they so rarely leave the Hive — they are content to stand guard, with no room left over for doubt.

One fact that contradicts the description

The race description says free Soldiers "usually only find work as mercenaries", yet the game files show that Soldier Drones never appear in the Mercenary Guild. They are instead scattered across functionally similar roles: guard and military posts among the Tech Hunters, Manhunters, Traders Guild, United Cities and Mongrel; bandit outfits like the Rebel Farmers, Yabuta Outlaws and Scavengers; and the Empire Peasants, Rebirth slaves and Shinobi Thieves.

Southern Soldiers

The Southern Hive Soldier's statistics are nearly identical to the Western version, the sole difference being the absence of the Perception −20% penalty. In practice, though, they are unrecruitable: every Southern Soldier character is a Droneguard, Elite Droneguard or Armoury Droneguard, all flagged as military characters and therefore failing the recruitment check, and their dialogue packages contain no branch for recruitment after purchase or release. Obtaining a Southern Soldier depends entirely on slave spawns under factions other than the Southern Hive.

See also

• Hive ｜ Hive Worker Drone ｜ Hive Prince ｜ Hive Queen
• Western Hive ｜ Southern Hive ｜ Deadhive
• Combat ｜ Statistics and Skills ｜ Armour ｜ Environmental Hazards
• Races ｜ Shek

Video citations

1. The Origins of the HiversHeroInHisHead
2. Kenshi: History of the HiversCivilizationEx