The Strider is a large three-legged Combine Synth. The Striders serve as the Combine's main heavy ground assault unit during their Hour Wars and much of the First Multiverse War. It is capable of pursuing hostiles in both confined streets and open plazas, even crouching down to fire at enemies who seek cover under overhangs or in bombed-out buildings. The Strider's body is covered in a smooth brown carapace or exoskeleton. On the "head" of the Strider is a rapid-firing pulse cannon, with a heavier warp cannon suspended below. The three long legs of the Strider are tipped with sharp spikes and a rosette of finer, hair-like spines.
While walking about or attacking, Striders produce many different vocalizations, such as growls, groans, whoops, and howls; when killed, they give a mournful cry. In addition, Striders will leak a yellow substance when damaged, and their carapace contains a large, somewhat human-looking brain.
While technically classified as a light armored unit by the Combine military, the Strider is surprisingly durable for something that light and frail looking, as it takes 9 RPG rounds and 5 Tank rounds just to take one Strider down. This in turn caused much of Alliance military actions involving the strider amounts to focusing fire solely on the Strider in a combined arms approach, a tactic they borrowed from the Imperium. The Golmar Resistance, and later the Human-Vortigaunt Federation have created a countermeasure against the three legged biomachines, in the form of the Madison Device, which is a fairly large sphere like object meant to be thrown at a Strider and fired on it with anything on hand with the resulting explosion tearing it apart entirely. However, these devices are hard to manufacture and quite dangerous as it requires a soldier to both get close to a Strider to plant it onto them and to fire on it in which time the individual is killed either by the Strider themselves or its' accompanying units.
Another unique device that could take down several Strider's in fact was the Torque device, this device was Dat'yuchud in origin and could be fired and take down a strider from mounted fortifications or literally rip them apart from a high vantage point or on top of a building.
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- Like many Synths, the Strider was created form the genetic strands of an original species.
- Striders were occasionally referred to as "Big Greg" by members of the Lambda Resistance.