Combine Ceiling Turret

"With that much security, there must be something good in there."

- Barney Calhoun

The Combine Ceiling Turret is a stationary pulse sentry weapon used by the Combine.

Overview
The Ceiling Turret is a Combine turret built into the ceiling of a room. These types of turrets are indestructible and have a wider firing arc than that of a regular Combine Sentry Gun. Ceiling Turrets are static, and cannot be moved. They are used to guard important Combine structures (such as the Overwatch Nexus). They are sometimes only activated by laser trip wires. In Episode One, several Ceiling Turrets are seen trying to fire without any ammunition. This suggests that turrets don't have an infinite amount of ammunition, suggesting they have not received maintenance and have fallen into disrepair (although this could be due to a mechanical malfunction as well). It can also be noted that these turret models bear a striking resemblance to Ceiling Cameras, though slightly larger.

Half-Life 2
In the tunnel leading to Ravenholm, there are 2 Ceiling Turrets. Strangely, they have a blinking red light, and they do not fire at Gordon Freeman. This may suggest that they have been reprogrammed to prevent Zombies from reaching Black Mesa East.

Ceiling Turrets are also present in the Overwatch Nexus, in the laser tripwire room. They appear dormant until one trips the wires: past this point, the game becomes impossible as the doors seal and the turrets deploy. Strangely enough, if the player is unable to continue the game if he touches the lasers and seals the doors, the failure message does not appear and the game does not reload, leaving the player trapped in the now-inescapable room until he dies or resets. Even if the player can find shelter, it does not matter, as the turrets have unlimited ammunition, but they can still be destroyed by the player.

Half-Life 2: Episode One
During Episode One, two Ceiling Turrets are noted as having run out of ammunition after firing at overwhelming numbers of Zombies and Antlions. However, the turrets still attempt to fire, unaware of their lack of ammo, which is evident by clicking trigger-like sounds when one points at organic things. This is also more evidence that the Combine are losing control of City 17. It is unsure how exactly the Turret's ammunition is fed into the barrel, or how it is loaded. This also raises several questions, as the turrets seen in the Overwatch Nexus in Half-Life 2 never run out of ammunition.

Tactics

 * There is no way to destroy the turret; the only way to stop it is to shut it off.

Behind the scenes

 * Early brush Ceiling Turrets, actually Wall Turrets, can be found in the WC mappack map " ", in an underground tunnel recycled for the tunnel found at the very start of the Episode One chapter Lowlife. There their cameras mounted on a mechanical arm are constantly searching the area for enemies.


 * A Wall Turret model can be found in the Half-Life 2 Beta files. It is mostly similar to the retail Ceiling Turret, except that it was to be mounted on walls and has no animations.

List of appearances

 * Half-Life 2
 * Half-Life 2: Episode One
 * Half-Life 2: Episode Two