Here we have a clash of two Sci-Fi franchises looking for bragging rights. I don’t know enough about the Mass Effect universe to give a fair estimation on who would win, so I’ll leave it to the good hands of the FactPile readers.
Who wins?
Here we have a clash of two Sci-Fi franchises looking for bragging rights. I don’t know enough about the Mass Effect universe to give a fair estimation on who would win, so I’ll leave it to the good hands of the FactPile readers.
Who wins?
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its not really a fair comparison with halo recovered from war vs mass effect just devestated by one.
But what are the number right now on firepower on me reapers vs halo dreadnaguhts. even with all of halos firepower reapers have experience edge and depending on which ending mass effect does like synthensis then this fight could be completly different.
Hypothesizing on what Halo 4 UNSC may or may not have is nearly as pointless as claiming current incarnation ME is from the bit where the old man tells the kid stories about “the Shepard”.
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In fact, canonwise the latter has more merit as it is part of an officially released canon source while all the Halo 4 talk revolves around mid-development PR teasing of an unreleased product.
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Current incarnation means the latest released canon source.
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Hypothesizing on what Halo 4 UNSC may or may not have is nearly as pointless as claiming current incarnation ME is from the bit where the old man tells the kid stories about “the Shepard”.
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In fact, canonwise the latter has more merit as it is part of an officially released canon source while all the Halo 4 talk revolves around mid-development PR teasing of an unreleased product.
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Current incarnation means the latest released canon source.”
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The latest released canon source would be gameplay videos of Halo 4 and Glasslands.
“ Can’t UNSC spawncamp near the relays and just destroy them as they come? “
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Camping near relays to ambush incoming forces is a time honored technique often used in ME. Battle planners take that into account and there are a number of weapons and techniques that were originally developed for that situation, like for instance the disposable Javelin packs that are temporarily attached to capital ships that normally do not carry missiles since the ambush is likely to happen at closer ranges than the capital ships normally fight at. Also spamming tremendous flocks of missiles tends to keep the enemy busy dealing with them while the commanders size up the situation, and the jettisoned empties help provide a certain amount of ECM as well as the ships shedding the extra weight in preparation for full maneuvers.
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“ I know this is probably a very unhelpful fact because sooner or later people are gonna state ME uses different communications but can’t UNSC block all the communications of the Citadel fleets and make it pretty much hard for the Citadel fleets to plan a well coordinated attack or to call for help, since the UNSC Savannah had done that to the Corvette on Reach and blocked the ship from calling for help and such. “
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Jamming a corvette and jamming an entire major installation with fleets in support is orders of magnitude in difference. Add in the fact that the Citadel has its own hidden internal mass relay (which the Reavers usually use in their initial surprise attack) in addition to the system one there are too many ways messages can get in and out physically on top of the regular communications channels and the undetectable communications system the Reavers and their in-galaxy cronies use to set and spring the trap whatever it may be.
Can we stop the bs and just give halo the FP award already.
Then Chief lit the rings and Shepard lit the crucible. THE END
“2. Battle Incarnations
All combatants are considered to be at their current incarnations, or most recent incarnation prior to death and/or incapacitation that would prevent them from engaging in battle at optimum efficiency, within their own continuities unless otherwise specified by the battle’s scenario.”
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I wonder how this one works when for combatants who’ve been pummeled to a mere shadow of their former selves…
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Depends on how you define “incapacitation” really.
@Galorian
Doesn’t matter. Even if you take ME before the final battle in ME3, they will still lose. If will be less if a stomp but they lose nevertheless.
“Even if you take ME before the final battle in ME3, they will still lose.”
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The extended various endings except “refuse” had them rebuilt and trying to go further then they already had been before. Green and Blue left them with the combined knowledge of the previous cycles and reaper stuff.
Not sure if that helps but whatever.
@Lowk
Its better than the previous endings. Though I’m still waiting on Halo 4 to seal the deal, just a few more months now…
“Its better than the previous endings.”
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Especially Reaperman/woman Shepard. lol, it’s like batman….. if batman was several giant flying robots of destruction and various land based monstrosities.
@Lowk
Remember that episode from the Batman cartoon series where Robot Aliens similar to the Reapers show up and try to destroy Earth, but then Batman & friends just use some sort of satellite signal to defeat them at the end?
Should Halo get the FP award? I think Halo has earned a victory here.
@Lowk
It’s just that halo has so many tools to f**k with ME. Things like destroying the mass relays, NOVA bombs, the flood and the Halo array. Even if you take ME at full strength they won’t have the tools to deal with them even if they do win battles with Halo. And all of the above will do ALOT of damage.
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So if it’s ME at it’s peak, halo will want to avoid direct conflict and use one of their doomsday weapon which will inflict a crapload of damage. Then when ME is sufficiently weakened, go in for the kill.
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If it’s ME from anyone of the endings, halo can just kill everything.
” So if it’s ME at it’s peak, halo will want to avoid direct conflict and use one of their doomsday weapon which will inflict a crapload of damage. Then when ME is sufficiently weakened, go in for the kill. ”
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Doomsday weapons have a nasty habit of biting both sides even if the side that uses it does not realize it at first… that is why they are called “Doomsday” weapons.
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Destroying mass relays requires first finding them without the ME forces knowing that it has been found and reinforcing its defense (which they can do much faster than a Halo force could call in reinforcements) or else a big battle to fight their way in and pound it apart, it is not a simple and easy pushbutton thing.
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Nova bombs are apparently rare since one that was critically needed to stop the flood before they got loose either did not arrive in time to be deployed or was not available at all for an absolutely top priority mission. It is not a ‘doomsday weapon’ either, just a very big and apparently rare strategic weapon.
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The flood could be a problem, but between the Reavers, the Geth, and other machine intelligences they could probably be taken care of. They are not really a ‘doomsday weapon’ as such any more than the Reavers are anyway, just a particularly gross and disgusting opponent.
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Lighting off the rings is actually a classic doomsday weapon and would kill off the biologicals of both sides leading to at best a no win scenario. ME has the crucible if anyone is stupid enough to start a suicide weapon match anyway and while there are some ring shelters so that a few biologicals from the Halo side could survive apparently nothing stops the crucible and everyone gets it.
Um… If you’re on a halo ring, just lock the halo in time and they won’t get affected by the crucible… And you could just use a few halo rings… If the forces are in shield worlds or out of range… The users on the rings should survive… Halos can provide more selective destruction as well.
And it’s been said that shield worlds can be more powerful and selective than the halos? Something like that but we know little about it.
In a super weapon race, halo wins.
Time lock, time lock, time lock.
And no one has said where the 50 ships per month figure comes from yet… Imagine using the genophage tower with flood.
On the topic of the Halos:
Activating them would hurt the Halo side more than the ME side. They are located in Halo space, and nobody there (pending return of the Forerunners in 4) has the capability to move them.
Also pending the return of the Forerunners in 4, even if they Rings affected everywhere (which they won’t, due to battlefield size) that would leave the match as Flood and Sentinels vs (pending ending) Geth, Reapers, AI and VIs, and potentially everyone else post-Synthesis ending.
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As for the Flood, current-incarnation Flood are a non-factor, if they even still exist in the main Halo galaxy.
‘Doomsday weapons have a nasty habit of biting both sides even if the side that uses it does not realize it at first… that is why they are called “Doomsday” weapons.’
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Can you tell me any of the above options will inflict more halo than ME other than the halos? And maybe doomsday weapon is not the best name to use, should have gone with WMDs.
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‘Destroying mass relays requires first finding them without the ME forces knowing that it has been found and reinforcing its defense (which they can do much faster than a Halo force could call in reinforcements) or else a big battle to fight their way in and pound it apart, it is not a simple and easy pushbutton thing.’
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As for defending them, perhaps you missed the part where halo is largely ahead of ME in terms of space combat. Also if ME concentrates enough forces on one mass relay to successfully to defend it against halo, halo can just switch targets to another lessly defended mass relay. So unless ME has enough forces to defend every single mass relay… Also the fact that halo can just sneak in and destroy it. Jump right beside the mass relay, release the slipspace bomb and jump away before they can react. Then 3 seconds later BOOM.
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‘Nova bombs are apparently rare since one that was critically needed to stop the flood before they got loose either did not arrive in time to be deployed or was not available at all for an absolutely top priority mission. It is not a ‘doomsday weapon’ either, just a very big and apparently rare strategic weapon.’
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Nobody knows for sure whether or not the NOVA bombs can be easily produced or exactly the opposite. The thing is that at the battle of reach the NOVA bomb is a prototype and obviously will be in small numbers. Given the gigantic amount of nukes the UNSC have, I’m inclined to think that their production of NOVA bombs would be quite high although quite low when compared to their production of their normal nukes. But I don’t have proof so I will just go with the super rare NOVA bombs.
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The thing is that they will only require a few NOVA bombs. They are not going to waste one on a dreadnought/reaper, they only going to use it on an important planet like Earth, important locations such as the Citadel and on a bunch on clumped up enemy ships…like the gigantic fleet at the final battle of ME3 . Once they manage to do so they most likey win. ME is not the zerg, if halo does manage to destroy a huge amount of their dreadnoughts and/or reapers using a NOVA bomb it would take them years(decades for the reapers) to rebuild their ship numbers back to the level they had before. In which their military has been effectively neutered.
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‘The flood could be a problem, but between the Reavers, the Geth, and other machine intelligences they could probably be taken care of. They are not really a ‘doomsday weapon’ as such any more than the Reavers are anyway, just a particularly gross and disgusting opponent.’
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Yeah, the geth and the reapers would probably take care of the flood. They take care of them by killing them. KIlling the flood which used to be their former allies, using up time and resoucres. Potentially nuking their planet to help contain the flood. All because of a few flood spores/infection forms. And they have no guarantee of stopping the flood from stealing one of ME’s ship and spreading themselves onto another planet. In which case they will have to repeat it again and again. All cuz of a few few flood spores/infection forms. The geth and the reapers also have no way of making the planet habitable once the flood have their way with it. They can stop an early infection by nuking it but after a certain point the planet won’t be habitable for a loooooonnnnggggg time.
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‘Lighting off the rings is actually a classic doomsday weapon and would kill off the biologicals of both sides leading to at best a no win scenario. ME has the crucible if anyone is stupid enough to start a suicide weapon match anyway and while there are some ring shelters so that a few biologicals from the Halo side could survive apparently nothing stops the crucible and everyone gets it.’
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The halo array can be moved and it’s life-wiping radius can be adjusted. So move it to the middle of ME’s galaxy and adjust it so it dosen’t affect halo’s galaxy. And while the UNSC and the covenant don’t know and don’t have the means to do so, the forerunners are in halo 4 and in Halo: Primordium it is revealed that the greater ark in still present and a UNSC ship is heading towards them along with 343 gulity spark.
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Firstly the crucible has a weakness in that its effects are spread with the use of mass relays and therefore limited to ME’s version of the milky way. And even if the space magic can reach Halo, they won’t do much harm.
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Green- Does nothing to halo. May make the geth and the reaper vulnerable to the flood and the halo array. Lightly damages the mass relays.
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Red- Kills off the UNSC’s AIs. Makes life a little inconvenient for them while they try to make more AIs. Does no damage to the the covenant. Kills off the geth and the reapers , aka the two most powerful forces in ME.Lightly damages the mass relays
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Blue-Lightly damages the mass relays
“As for defending them, perhaps you missed the part where halo is largely ahead of ME in terms of space combat.”
But they’re not. They’re about even, actually.
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“Yeah, the geth and the reapers would probably take care of the flood. They take care of them by killing them. KIlling the flood which used to be their former allies, using up time and resoucres…”
Exaggeration, much? Current Flood are almost totally useless, if they even still survive as a ‘species’.
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“The halo array can be moved and it’s life-wiping radius can be adjusted.”
Pending the return of the Forerunners in 4, nobody alive in the Haloverse knows how to do either of these.
‘But they’re not. They’re about even, actually.’
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Proof pls.
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‘Exaggeration, much? Current Flood are almost totally useless, if they even still survive as a ‘species’.’
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Explain to me how are they weak. As I have said, for the price of a few Flood spore/infection forms they could potentially wipe out an entire planet’s population and render it uninhabitable.
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‘Pending the return of the Forerunners in 4, nobody alive in the Haloverse knows how to do either of these.’
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Halo: Primordium it is revealed that the greater ark in still present and a UNSC ship is heading towards them along with 343 gulity spark. And the librarian is alive.
“Proof pls.”
All the calcs that were posted earlier in the match? UNSC and Systems Alliance are about equal (SA slightly superior), the Covenant is around the same level as the main Council races and the Geth, and the Reapers are actually laughably superior (by about an order of magnitude or so).
This is all assuming no Forerunners, though. If 4 shows they’re actually still around (and I’ll be disappointed if it does) this’ll probably change if they’re anything like their Forerunner Trilogy incarnation.
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“Explain to me how are they weak. As I have said, for the price of a few Flood spore/infection forms they could potentially wipe out an entire planet’s population and render it uninhabitable.”
The fact that, as far as we know, the entire Flood infestation was wiped out during the events of Halo 3, except for *maybe* a few unconfirmed specimens on the other Halos (whose locations are unknown)? If you think they’re still around and usable, you’ll need proof.
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“Halo: Primordium it is revealed that the greater ark in still present and a UNSC ship is heading towards them along with 343 gulity spark. And the librarian is alive.”
Figures the one book I haven’t read yet has all the relevant stuff in it.
Regardless, the UNSC isn’t actually at the Greater Ark yet, has no idea how to use it even if they are (and Spark admitted on the regular Ark that he was unfamiliar with it, being made for Installation 04 and all. Same probably applies to the Greater Ark). And we’ll need details on the Librarian. She may be alive, but is she in any condition to actually help (i.e. does anyone else know where she is, has she shown any CIS that would prevent her from helping, etc)?
“All the calcs that were posted earlier in the match? UNSC and Systems Alliance are about equal (SA slightly superior), the Covenant is around the same level as the main Council races and the Geth, and the Reapers are actually laughably superior (by about an order of magnitude or so).”
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I’m pretty sure the calcs from the rest of the match do not support that claim.
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It seems that ME space capabilities lie somewhere between the UNSC and the Covenant, although much closer to the UNSC. However. the Covenant have weapons IDEALLY suited to pulverising anything in the ME arsenal. Because all ME ships are protected by KB, they’re very vulnerable to PEW. Well the Covenant have close range weapons littering their ships which are PEW, a powerful “medium” ranged Plasma Torpedo which may not be a PEW, but is still VERY hot and as such is still quite effective against ME. Then there is the loooong range sniper weapon the Energy Projector, which is a laser that can outrange even the UNSC SMAC (and it’s already been proven that Halo’s effective range far surpasses ME’s.
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So yes, the UNSC is roughly on par with ME. However, even one CCS-class and some support ships, could likely turn any fight with ME greatly to Halo’s favor. Add in an Assault Carrier with it’s Energy Projector, and ME will lose half it’s forces just trying to get in range
@Zazax
In Halo Cryptum, it clearly states that the Halo’s can not only move on their own but be fine tuned to strike at a precise targets.
‘All the calcs that were posted earlier in the match? UNSC and Systems Alliance are about equal (SA slightly superior), the Covenant is around the same level as the main Council races and the Geth, and the Reapers are actually laughably superior (by about an order of magnitude or so).’
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All the calcs showed that a UNSC FRIGATE is a little weaker than a DREADNOUGHT. Same thing with the Covenant. A sovereign class REAPER is about the same level with a Covenant frigate and/or destroyer. Notice that they left out the UNSC and Covenant equivalent of their Capital ships.
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‘The fact that, as far as we know, the entire Flood infestation was wiped out during the events of Halo 3, except for *maybe* a few unconfirmed specimens on the other Halos (whose locations are unknown)? If you think they’re still around and usable, you’ll need proof.’
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Halo: Primordium showed that Installation 07 had flood research facilites. And yes the UNSC know where this halo is.
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‘Figures the one book I haven’t read yet has all the relevant stuff in it.
Regardless, the UNSC isn’t actually at the Greater Ark yet, has no idea how to use it even if they are (and Spark admitted on the regular Ark that he was unfamiliar with it, being made for Installation 04 and all. Same probably applies to the Greater Ark). And we’ll need details on the Librarian. She may be alive, but is she in any condition to actually help (i.e. does anyone else know where she is, has she shown any CIS that would prevent her from helping, etc)?’
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Well since the Librarian is shown to be the single reason life exists in the galaxy, she will probably be willing to help.
Why didn’t Halo get the FP award yet? We’ve been comparing the cannon fodder of UNSC to the flagships of Alliance/Citadel fleets. The God-Ships and Space-Cthulhus of Mass-Effect barely compare to Covenant corvettes/frigates/light destroyers.
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Basically in Ground Battles ME wins but in space Halo stomps and then glasses the leftovers. Now I wonder, would a few Scarabs fuck up a Destroyer-class Reaper? Well probably the mining scarab on Halo: 2 would skullfuck a destroyer. Not sure about the Halo: Reach/Halo: 3 scarabs though.
“but in space Halo stomps”
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That is the problem. Total stomps don’t get awards.
I don’t understand how this is a stomp, its not like the UNSC/Covenant are just going to casually run over the ME universe with no resistance. Unless a Forerunner dreadnought gets thrown in I don’t think its going to be a stomp… but maybe thats just me.
“I don’t understand how this is a stomp”
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I also don’t think this is a stomp, I was partly using his terminology.
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One question I have: Do MACs change in power as their ships get bigger or do they just have more and are able to put more power into them?
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Even though Alliance Dreadnoughts fire power is equal to UNSC MACs (which I will assume as most people seem to agree on that) the UNSC ships only have 1-2 of them, plus they are slower firing, and most of ME’s ships are much smaller and maneuverable, so they can avoid the fireing arcs of UNSC ships reasonably well. The other ME faction’s dreadnoughts are bigger and more powerful than the Alliance’s and the Reapers are around twice as long and have even more advanced main guns which are around 132-454 kt. Also the slow fire of MACs will allow KBs to regenerate.
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So if it is true that MACs take 3 shots to down Covies shields, one Reaper can one shot covies shields and probably pretty much destroy a UNSC ship. Additionally Reaper beams and thannix cannons would destroy unshielded UNSC ships and just cut through them like butter since the titanium they use is not good at dispersing heat. And even though the broadside cannons are not as powerful, there are many more of them so they would severely strain shields and still inflict massive damage to ships.
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ME could use similar tactics they did against the Reapers, coming out of FTL behind UNSC ships and blast them while turning around.
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ME would fair better against the Covies than the UNSC because their armor is designed to disperse heat when hit and their KBs would still be slightly useful and they are much more maneuverable and more likely to be able to dodge. With the Reapers taking out Covie’s shield’s, another Reaper, or fleet could finish of the ship.
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ME also has the advantage on ground, so they could run raids on Halo’s planets and space stations and would almost always win. ME might even be able to avoid space battles and use asari commandoes, indoctrination, and other espionage to weaken Halo.
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Maneuverability will not be a big disadvantage for ME due to Rule 4 “and it is assumed no one side will have an undue disadvantage. This neutral setting will incorporate all associated elements for all combatants to operate at maximum efficiency.” so there will be a Relay network, so unless Halo spends a bunch of time and resources trying to destroy them all ME will be able to move around.
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So while Halo does have an advantage in space, ME can compensate using their advantages in maneuverability and ground combat and space ninjas. The UNSC ships are just big glass cannons to ME and the Covies can be partially countered by Reapers.
The Pillar of Autumn is just as maneuverable or even more maneuverable than Citadel fleets, as shown in Halo: Legends. Although not quite full canon, I think it still represents a Halcyon’s maneuverability.
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I don’t think the dispersing heat will help much.
“A warship’s kinetic barriers reduce the damage from solid objects, but can do nothing to block GARDIAN lasers, particle beams, and other forms of Directed Energy Weapon (DEW). The inner layer of warship protection consists of ablative armor plate designed to “boil away” when heated. The vaporized armor material scatters a DEW beam, rendering it ineffectual.” Doesn’t that only count like Covenant pulse lasers? Plasma can still boil away the armor no? I don’t know much about DEW’s.
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Wouldn’t the sheer numbers of Halo’s navy be enough to probably demoralize Alliance fleets? Although Reapers have no fear, they are smart and they know they can’t beat the thousands (Potentially tens of thousands) of ships the UNSC and the Covenant have.
“The Pillar of Autumn is just as maneuverable or even more maneuverable than Citadel fleets”
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A lot of ME’s fleet are Normandy size or a bit bigger so they should be able to fly circles around dreadnoughts let alone the bigger Halo ships. But to be honest, I have not seen any Halo space battle video, the only one I found didn’t have much of anything in it.
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” Doesn’t that only count like Covenant pulse lasers? Plasma can still boil away the armor no? I don’t know much about DEW’s.”
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I think the pulse laser would be scattered by ablative armor, the plasma’s mass would blocked by KBs and the heat would be dissipated by the armor. I read that UNSC’s main problem with the covies is that their armor could not handle the heat.
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“Wouldn’t the sheer numbers of Halo’s navy be enough to probably demoralize Alliance fleets?”
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How big are Halo’s fleets? I can’t remember the numbers. I didn’t think there were many if we are using post Halo 3. There are thousands of ships of the combined and at least 20,000 Soverign class Reapers and 100,000 destroyer class Reapers.
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How I got that number:
The Leviathan of Dis was a Reaper that crashed around 1 billion B.C. and assuming 50,000 years per cycle that is 20,000 cycles. And then assuming one suitable race and 5 others to account for Sovereign class and Destroyer numbers. Now there may have been Reaper casualties but there is no indication of how long the cycle was in effect before Leviathan crashed.
‘A lot of ME’s fleet are Normandy size or a bit bigger so they should be able to fly circles around dreadnoughts let alone the bigger Halo ships’
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Good thing that said frigate sized ships are almost useless in this against the covenant. And the weapons that halo has should negate most of their advantages too. Weapons like the archer missiles which chases after their target, plasma torpedos which also chases after their target at half the speed of light, pulse lasers and energy projecters which travel at near the speed of light and thus undodgeable.
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‘I think the pulse laser would be scattered by ablative armor, the plasma’s mass would blocked by KBs and the heat would be dissipated by the armor. I read that UNSC’s main problem with the covies is that their armor could not handle the heat.’
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Except that covenant pulse laser are shown to be superior in every way to to their ME counterparts. And there is a codex quote on how the Thanix cannon can inflict heat damage on a reaper. And I have showed how covenant plasma is hotter than that of a Thanix cannon. Also the fact that yes a plasma torpedo has mass. But that means that it has kinetic energy. Even if has the mass of a single grain of sand it’s 0.5c velocity should allow it to have enough kinetic energy to smash throught every one of ME’s ship’s KBs except for maybe dreadnoughts and sovereign class reapers.
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‘In the case of a Reaper capital ship, these kinetic barriers can hold off the firepower of two dreadnoughts simultaneously, but three clearly causes strain, and four typically results in destruction. Weapons designed to maximize HEAT damage, such as the Thanix series, show better results against the Reapers than pure kinetic impacts.’
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‘There are thousands of ships of the combined and at least 20,000 Soverign class Reapers and 100,000 destroyer class Reapers.’
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What utter BULLSHIT. We have never seen that many reapers ever. At the end of ME2 and at the end of ME3, we saw what less than a thousand reapers? Besides if they had so many reapers, ME would have gotten stomped hard, especially since at the start of ME3 they only had about a hundred dreadnoughts. And the fact that with so many reapers, they would have the numbers to attack every single ME planet at the same time. But they didn’t. And at the final battle at the end of ME3, where are the rest of the reapers? Are you telling me that they left 1% of their fleet to guard the greatest threat know to reaper kind since forever and the rest of the fleet when and played with space magic.
“ ME would fair better against the Covies than the UNSC because their armor is designed to disperse heat when hit and their KBs would still be slightly useful and they are much more maneuverable and more likely to be able to dodge. With the Reapers taking out Covie’s shield’s, another Reaper, or fleet could finish of the ship. “
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” Also the fact that yes a plasma torpedo has mass. But that means that it has kinetic energy. Even if has the mass of a single grain of sand it’s 0.5c velocity should allow it to have enough kinetic energy to smash throught every one of ME’s ship’s KBs except for maybe dreadnoughts and sovereign class reapers. “
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The KBs would be more than just slightly useful against the Covenant plasma weapons, plasma is not very dense and does not have a lot of mass and it travels (according a quote from one of the books someone posted a page or two back) at 0.5C so it is the ideal thing for the KBs to swat out of the way or stop dead in its tracks on all points. They literally could not have designed a weapon that fits the maximum efficiency protection profile of the KBs closer if they tried. The same would go for the plasma stream weapon that the Covies use for glassing, it may pop UNSC frigates like party balloons but it would have little chance of getting close enough to a KB protected ME ship to even warm the hull. The KBs protect the hull from interstellar dust and gasses when the ships are going FTL, how would hot charged gasses going at half light speed plow through the barriers any better than essentially the same thing going twice or more that speed?
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“ Good thing that said frigate sized ships are almost useless in this against the covenant. And the weapons that halo has should negate most of their advantages too. Weapons like the archer missiles which chases after their target, plasma torpedos which also chases after their target at half the speed of light, pulse lasers and energy projecters which travel at near the speed of light and thus undodgeable. “
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You seem to be forgetting that the frigates are the ones that carry disruptor warhead missiles, and Halo has nothing that would blunt the damage from direct Mass Effect Field weapons like that so any missile hits would do their full considerable damage. Also frigates are more likely to be mounting the advanced compressed nanotube Asari armor that is so expensive but so much better than the regular ablative stuff. That would force the Halo forces to concentrate large numbers of their small weapons on all of the frigates to try to make sure that the advanced armored ones do not get through to launch Javelins and that need for concentration would quickly tie up their secondary weapons while the primary weapons (the MACs) would have little chance of hitting them unless some canon source shows the Halo ships maneuvering considerably better than the slow and stately “2001 A Space Odyssey” style the trailers show.
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“ Except that covenant pulse laser are shown to be superior in every way to to their ME counterparts. And there is a codex quote on how the Thanix cannon can inflict heat damage on a reaper. And I have showed how covenant plasma is hotter than that of a Thanix cannon “
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The Thanix is an MHD weapon that incorporates among other things fissionable material. It is entirely possible that the MHD field carries a lot of energy itself that would convert to heat on impact and also it is not inconceivable that the impact could smash the uranium component into a tight enough wad to cause a nuclear reaction further heating the projectile so it would not necessarily be limited to the melting or even the vaporization point of the metals making up the projectile. Also if the Thanix does not take care of the target before the frigate gets into Javelin range the two weapons systems together should do it in short order.
‘The KBs would be more than just slightly useful against the Covenant plasma weapons, plasma is not very dense and does not have a lot of mass and it travels (according a quote from one of the books someone posted a page or two back) at 0.5C so it is the ideal thing for the KBs to swat out of the way or stop dead in its tracks on all points. They literally could not have designed a weapon that fits the maximum efficiency protection profile of the KBs closer if they tried. The same would go for the plasma stream weapon that the Covies use for glassing, it may pop UNSC frigates like party balloons but it would have little chance of getting close enough to a KB protected ME ship to even warm the hull. The KBs protect the hull from interstellar dust and gasses when the ships are going FTL, how would hot charged gasses going at half light speed plow through the barriers any better than essentially the same thing going twice or more that speed?’
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Total enegry is what matters to KBs. It does not matter if the enegry is spread out or heavily concentrated. Anyway as I have said a a grain of sand traveling at 0.5c already has kiloton level of firepower and a plasma torpedo probably has alot more mass than a grain of sand. So it should drop the KBs of frigates and cruisers which are anywhere from sub-kiloton level to low single kiloton level for the strength of their KBs. And their KBs stop a projectile by stopping it dead cold, it does not slap it away. Only the CBT does that. Oh and the reason that their KBs can resist the impact of interstellar dust and gasses at FTL speeds is because of the mass effect field which the ship surround around itself in-order to go FTL. It reduces the mass of anything that passes through and thus reduces the kinetic energy it has.
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‘You seem to be forgetting that the frigates are the ones that carry disruptor warhead missiles, and Halo has nothing that would blunt the damage from direct Mass Effect Field weapons like that so any missile hits would do their full considerable damage. Also frigates are more likely to be mounting the advanced compressed nanotube Asari armor that is so expensive but so much better than the regular ablative stuff. That would force the Halo forces to concentrate large numbers of their small weapons on all of the frigates to try to make sure that the advanced armored ones do not get through to launch Javelins and that need for concentration would quickly tie up their secondary weapons while the primary weapons (the MACs) would have little chance of hitting them unless some canon source shows the Halo ships maneuvering considerably better than the slow and stately “2001 A Space Odyssey” style the trailers show.’
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Wank, wank and wank. Proof that the Disruptor Torpedoe are that powerful. Cuz in ME it seems that it’s only useful for taking down KBs. If they are so powerful why hadn’t ME load all their ships with thousands of them and get rid of Thanix cannons and mass accelerators all together? I mean it could be that Disruptor Torpedoes are so powerful that one of them causes a dreadnought to rip itself apart or that it is quite weak and only strong against KBs requring frigates to rely on their sub-kiloton weapons after said Disruptor Torpedoes takes care of the enemy’s KBs.Probably the latter since we have have never seen disruptor torpedoes display the power to actually destroy anything. And again proof that a huge number of frigates use the very very expensive silaris armor.
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‘The Thanix is an MHD weapon that incorporates among other things fissionable material. It is entirely possible that the MHD field carries a lot of energy itself that would convert to heat on impact and also it is not inconceivable that the impact could smash the uranium component into a tight enough wad to cause a nuclear reaction further heating the projectile so it would not necessarily be limited to the melting or even the vaporization point of the metals making up the projectile. Also if the Thanix does not take care of the target before the frigate gets into Javelin range the two weapons systems together should do it in short order.’
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Proof. And since you want to play the wank game let’s use the hundred kiloton per archer missile from halo ghosts of onyx at the same time. And also some proof on the firepower of the Javelin. As said before it could be powerful to rip a reaper a new asshole(unlikey) or as weak as a biotic’s warp.
“In Halo Cryptum, it clearly states that the Halo’s can not only move on their own but be fine tuned to strike at a precise targets.”
And unless someone can convince the Librarian to help (and it can be prove she knows how to do this too) nobody knows how to do either.
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“All the calcs showed that a UNSC FRIGATE is a little weaker than a DREADNOUGHT. ”
No, it showed pretty much everything on a frigate is roughly half/a third the strength of the ventral gun on a Dreadnaught, which ignores its ~200 other (smaller, but still potent) railguns.
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“A sovereign class REAPER is about the same level with a Covenant frigate and/or destroyer. ”
If memory serves the Reapers were calc’d to be in the low megatons. This is a zero or two above anything the Covenant have, even on their largest ships. Hell, Energy projectors (you know, the biggest, meanest weapon in the Covenant arsenal) were calc’d to be double-digit kiltons per second.
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“Halo: Primordium showed that Installation 07 had flood research facilites. And yes the UNSC know where this halo is.”
And nobody alive in the Haloverse would ever in a million years let them out again. CIS, man.
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“Well since the Librarian is shown to be the single reason life exists in the galaxy, she will probably be willing to help.”
That has little bearing on anything. Is she willing to help the UNSC and Covenant fight ME? Do they even know where she is/that she exists?
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“Wank, wank and wank. Proof that the Disruptor Torpedoe are that powerful. Cuz in ME it seems that it’s only useful for taking down KBs.”
That would be because ME has the specific thing required to counter them, which Halo doesn’t.
‘No, it showed pretty much everything on a frigate is roughly half/a third the strength of the ventral gun on a Dreadnaught, which ignores its ~200 other (smaller, but still potent) railguns.’
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No, for one the broadside guns and the spinal mounted main gun of the dreadnought cannot be used simultaneously unless the dreadnought is surrounded. Also the broadside guns are comparable to a shotgun, powerful but really inaccurate. The dreadnought has get to close to the frigate to use it’s broadside guns. It also has to turn… well to it side to use it’s boardside guns, presenting a biger target. Also while in the process of turning it cannot fire any of it’s weapons. Also you are also leaving out the frigates stock of shiva nukes and it’s 1200 archer missiles.
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‘If memory serves the Reapers were calc’d to be in the low megatons. This is a zero or two above anything the Covenant have, even on their largest ships. Hell, Energy projectors (you know, the biggest, meanest weapon in the Covenant arsenal) were calc’d to be double-digit kiltons per second.’
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Reaper firepower is 132 kilotons low end and 454 kilotons high end. And this is their main gun, while also has quite a long charge time. Anyway the reason why the Energy projectors are so effective is because they bypass KBs, they travel at near the speed of light making it impossible for reaper to avoid them and that they have a much longer effective range than reapers. This also proves that you have no idea what you’re talking about. Go and read the last 10 pages and tell me how are ME going to win.
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‘And nobody alive in the Haloverse would ever in a million years let them out again. CIS, man.’
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$10 bucks say ONI unleashs them again, they seem to think short term and would use them to aid them in the war first and worry about the consequences later.
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‘That would be because ME has the specific thing required to counter them, which Halo doesn’t.’
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Explain further pls.
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‘In Halo Cryptum, it clearly states that the Halo’s can not only move on their own but be fine tuned to strike at a precise targets’
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I’m not so sure about this. Can the halo create a portal on it’s own or does it require some assistance such as a ark? Can someone pls elaborate?
Key’s loop, that’s all the proof you need.
Assuming that all the UNSC techs about the same as the Infinity (That still has to be confirmed) should be interesting.
P.S Calling in now, Cyclops II is going to kick ass.
““Wank, wank and wank. Proof that the Disruptor Torpedoe are that powerful. Cuz in ME it seems that it’s only useful for taking down KBs.””
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www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dmy_qUSMOWY
5:00-end
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Shows what disruptors can do plus the maneuverability of frigates. The torpedoes are good at taking out KBs but they also are devastating against hulls too.
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“Weapons like the archer missiles which chases after their target, plasma torpedos which also chases after their target at half the speed of light, pulse lasers and energy projecters which travel at near the speed of light and thus undodgeable.”
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While pulse lasers may be undogeable they are the weakest, also dont they have a visible charge glow much like the collector ship? Plasma torpedoes are not undodgeable, the UNSC have done so, therefore smaller faster ships should have no problems.
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“Good thing that said frigate sized ships are almost useless in this against the covenant. ”
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Once their shields are down the thannix and disruptor torpedoes would wreck the hull and Reapers can take out Covie shields.
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” If they are so powerful why hadn’t ME load all their ships with thousands of them and get rid of Thanix cannons and mass accelerators all together?”
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Because they can be shot down by GUARDIAN and don’t have a very long practical range.
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“Reaper firepower is 132 kilotons low end and 454 kilotons high end. And this is their main gun, while also has quite a long charge time.”
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www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLlAObjR-gs
5:00
A Reaper in the upper right hand corner shoots 2 beams withing a second.
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“What utter BULLSHIT. We have never seen that many reapers ever. ”
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They invaded an entire galaxy. They still were fighting all across the galaxy when earth was attacked and why should they be concerned, no one in over a billion years had any success with the crucible. Also they outclass everyone else so they don’t need to stick together. Is there anything wrong with my logic? We know how the Reapers operate, they create one Soverign class Reaper and multiple destroyers each cycle, cycles happen about every 50,000 years, there was a Reaper that crashed 1 billion B.C., and there is no indication that the cycle changed between then and ME1.
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” Besides if they had so many reapers, ME would have gotten stomped hard”
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They did. The only way the Alliance had any ships left it that they ran away and didn’t engage the Reapers head on.
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“Reaper firepower is 132 kilotons low end and 454 kilotons high end”
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Which is equivalent to around 7 MAC rounds every few seconds.
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” they travel at near the speed of light making it impossible for reaper to avoid them and that they have a much longer effective range than reapers.”
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ME has FTL accuracy to drop out behind Reapers, Reapers could drop out of FTL behind or above the Covies. Also, energy projectors have a visible charging time and are in fixed positions so they probably have a limited fireing arc.
“Reaper firepower is 132 kilotons low end and 454 kilotons high end”
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Which is equivalent to around 7 MAC rounds every few seconds.”
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Sorry but kinetic energy =/= thermal energy. It takes over a mega-joule of thermal energy to do what a bullet with double digit kilojoule of k.e. can do.
“Sorry but kinetic energy =/= thermal energy.”
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True, Reaper beams are liquid. ” Rather, its massive element zero core powered an electromagnetic field suspending a liquid iron-uranium-tungsten alloy that shaped into armor-piercing projectiles when fired. The jet of molten metal, accelerated to a fraction of the speed of light, destroys targets by impact force and irresistible heat.”
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So it is both kinetic and thermal energy.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dmy_qUSMOWY
5:00-end
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WTF is wrong with you? That dosen’t look like a disruptor torpedoe at all. In fact it looks more like mass accelerator rounds which just proves my point.
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‘While pulse lasers may be undogeable they are the weakest, also dont they have a visible charge glow much like the collector ship? Plasma torpedoes are not undodgeable, the UNSC have done so, therefore smaller faster ships should have no problems.’
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Yeah good thing they will be used primally to destroy frigates and fighters. Halo already enough weapons to destroy everything else. Anyway I recall Doppelganger saying how bad ME hulls are against lasers and how weak ME lasers based on how the eye thing in the above video drilled it’s way into the Normandy and how it got taken down by small arm fire. And nobody debunked him.
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The only instance of a UNSC ship dodging a Plasma torpedoe is using the Keyes Loop and that’s only because he used a destroyer to take said Plasma torpedoes shots for him. If not the Plasma torpedoes would keep chasing and chasing and chasing him until it finally connects.That what makes it so powerful, it will just keep chasing it target. And it’s 0.5c velocity. And space combat in ME takes place in ranges of tens of thousands of kilometers. And that the extreme range. So it should take a fraction of a second for a Plasma torpedoe to reach it’s target.
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‘Because they can be shot down by GUARDIAN and don’t have a very long practical range.’
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That’s why you load up a few hundred thousand of them and swarm the enemy with overwhelming numbers.
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‘They invaded an entire galaxy. They still were fighting all across the galaxy when earth was attacked and why should they be concerned, no one in over a billion years had any success with the crucible. Also they outclass everyone else so they don’t need to stick together. Is there anything wrong with my logic? We know how the Reapers operate, they create one Soverign class Reaper and multiple destroyers each cycle, cycles happen about every 50,000 years, there was a Reaper that crashed 1 billion B.C., and there is no indication that the cycle changed between then and ME1.’
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That would only make sense if there was a dozen dreadnought lurking around every planet. There is about only a hundred dreadnoughts ever build. It would make sense if the reapers had to use their extremely slow FTL to travel across the whole milky way, but they use the mass relay network which allows them to easliy traverse the galaxy. If would also make sense if they didn’t know about the attack or the threat the Crucible posed. But they did, the TIM warned them and they were ready and waiting. They even moved the Citadel to earth to better defend it. It would make sense if they had left some ships behind to backstab the reapers while they were distracted. But no, every single ship they could muster was there in the final battle. So why I must ask, why were there less than a thousand reapers fighting for the fate of their entire species.
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Also your explantion of reaper numbers is flawed. Firstly there is no prove that the culling takes place every 50,000 years. That is just the amount of time between the Prothean and the current generation. It could take place every million or so years for all you know. Also you know the Protheans and how they could not get made into reapers? That could happened any amounts of times. And you know the race that build the gigantic mass accelerator that punched a hole straight a reaper and created a gigantic canyon on a planet at the same time. Think of how much reapers they must have killed before going down. Yeah, it could be that every few cycles or so some races decides to fight back and kills a number of reapers before being snuffed out. I mean look at the fight ME is giving the reapers.
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‘They did. The only way the Alliance had any ships left it that they ran away and didn’t engage the Reapers head on.’
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Then explain the ending of ME3. Why could they hold the reaper forces back and inflict quite an huge amount of casualties on the reapers? And this is while having about a hundred dreadnoughts for the whole of ME.
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‘Which is equivalent to around 7 MAC rounds every few seconds.’
‘Once their shields are down the thannix and disruptor torpedoes would wreck the hull and Reapers can take out Covie shields.’
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Which is why halo are going to focus all of their firepower and ships on the reapers and dreadnoughts and wipe them out before they start DPSing halo down.
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‘ME has FTL accuracy to drop out behind Reapers, Reapers could drop out of FTL behind or above the Covies. Also, energy projectors have a visible charging time and are in fixed positions so they probably have a limited fireing arc.’
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Yeah but at the same time the Covenant can also do the exact same thing to ME.
Ah, alright. From the cut scenes in ME 3 it looked to me like a laser.
“Wank, wank and wank. Proof that the Disruptor Torpedoe are that powerful. Cuz in ME it seems that it’s only useful for taking down KBs.”
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The bypass shields. The real damage is in that they cause ship armor to eat itself.
===
” I mean it could be that Disruptor Torpedoes are so powerful that one of them causes a dreadnought to rip itself apart or that it is quite weak and only strong against KBs requring frigates to rely on their sub-kiloton weapons after said Disruptor Torpedoes takes care of the enemy’s KBs.”
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Don’t think It was ever mentioned that one Disruptor causes a an entire dreadnought to rip apart. Most likely it’s contained to wherever it hits/explodes since that would be the area where the field happens. I think several of them could probably help in crippling since it would be punching holes around a ship if they hit.
Disruptors don’t destroy shields they penetrate to get to the target underneath.
“ Total enegry is what matters to KBs. It does not matter if the enegry is spread out or heavily concentrated. Anyway as I have said a a grain of sand traveling at 0.5c already has kiloton level of firepower and a plasma torpedo probably has alot more mass than a grain of sand. So it should drop the KBs of frigates and cruisers which are anywhere from sub-kiloton level to low single kiloton level for the strength of their KBs. And their KBs stop a projectile by stopping it dead cold, it does not slap it away. Only the CBT does that. Oh and the reason that their KBs can resist the impact of interstellar dust and gasses at FTL speeds is because of the mass effect field which the ship surround around itself in-order to go FTL. It reduces the mass of anything that passes through and thus reduces the kinetic energy it has. “
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Where does it say that only total energy matters? All the sources I can find state that with the barriers light fast moving objects are stopped or forcefully deflected (deflected in the case of rotating barrier type) easier than slow moving heavy objects. Also the description of the basic barrier mentions a repulsive effect which implies that anything but a direct perpendicular hit would tend to skitter off so a grazing hit that has enough mass and energy to punch through dead on would be less likely to do so hitting off axis. The description for KBs in power armor (same basic system as the ships but smaller scale) uses the example of they will stop mass accelerator rounds but still allow the wearer to sit without knocking the chair away. This is also illustrated by ships in the cutscenes taking weapon hits ok but breaking up like stacked matchsticks from a lower impact energy ram. If the barriers simply worked like a solid shell that reacted to kinetic impacts like a normal object then it would have looked more like an armored car being hit by a truck and spun away from the slow impact. One could say it acts a little like Kevlar, good against fast moving but relatively light bullets but useless against hammers or even arrows which are much slower but have total energy in the same general range as the gunshots but more mass (and yes, I know there are other factors in play with real Kevlar like impact area and weave -separation but the illustration works if not taken too far).
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The Covie “energy beams” could be nasty depending on which description is used (“charged matter” like the primary description says would be deflected but if it is really a particle beam like some of the other descriptions state and not a plasma stream it would ignore the barriers) but their plasma would be nearly useless.
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ME cruisers are the ones with the short end of the stick since they are not as likely to be upgraded or simply as new as the frigates and are not naturally as maneuverable as the frigates or as heavily armored as the dreadnaughts. To add insult to injury the Thanix gives the frigates almost as good of a short to medium range punch as the cruisers, and combined at knife fighting range with the Javelins they probably have more punch than the cruisers since the cruisers accelerators would be useless at Javelin range and they are apparently not as far along with the Thanix upgrades as the frigates.
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“ Wank, wank and wank. Proof that the Disruptor Torpedoe are that powerful. Cuz in ME it seems that it’s only useful for taking down KBs. If they are so powerful why hadn’t ME load all their ships with thousands of them and get rid of Thanix cannons and mass accelerators all together? “
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Javelins (and other torpedoes) are knife fight range only, Thanix cannons work from knife fight range out to somewhere in the short to medium range for mass accelerators, and mass accelerators have the longest range of all of them. Why would they limit themselves to the space equivalent of melee range when they can use a mix of weapons to be able to fight at any range? Also cruisers and dreadnoughts do mount Javelins in disposable weapons pods clamped to the hull when they think they will need knife fighting offensive weapons. As to the power of the Javelin system see the clip:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvN6lGPd9VQ
at 04:15 Normandy launches Javelins at a shields-down Sovereign and at 4:17 you see the hit. The unstable asymmetric mass effect field rips through Sovereign and some of it can be seen exiting the other side and continuing on while the effects set in motion by its passage cause massive internal explosions in the Reaper that (along with normal weapons fire from other ships) eventually tear it completely apart. With barriers up and ME field countermeasures disrupter torpedoes like the Javelins (which are the most powerful disrupter weapons so far) are not bad weapons but when those defenses are not available they are devastating. Halo ships have no control of mass effect fields so like the unconscious Sovereign they would not be able to do anything to smooth the effects to keep from taking the maximum damage from them.
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“ And again proof that a huge number of frigates use the very very expensive silaris armor. “
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I never said a “huge number” of the frigates use it, I said the frigates are more likely to have that upgrade than the cruisers and dreadnaughts because of the expense and that if the Halo ships do not treat all of the frigates like they have it then the ones that do have it will get through to launch their torpedoes before the Halo ships can bring extra firepower to bear on them which will play merry hell with their fire priorities already pressed to keep up with the number of (unusually agile) ships and missiles. The only hard facts about its use are that it is a readily available though very expensive upgrade and some unspecified number of ships use it.
-
“ -
‘The Thanix is an MHD weapon that incorporates among other things fissionable material. It is entirely possible that the MHD field carries a lot of energy itself that would convert to heat on impact and also it is not inconceivable that the impact could smash the uranium component into a tight enough wad to cause a nuclear reaction further heating the projectile so it would not necessarily be limited to the melting or even the vaporization point of the metals making up the projectile. Also if the Thanix does not take care of the target before the frigate gets into Javelin range the two weapons systems together should do it in short order.’
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Proof. And since you want to play the wank game let’s use the hundred kiloton per archer missile from halo ghosts of onyx at the same time. And also some proof on the firepower of the Javelin. As said before it could be powerful to rip a reaper a new asshole(unlikey) or as weak as a biotic’s warp. “
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The Javelin was demonstrated in the first clip, this next clip shows the Thanix cannon taking out a cruiser in two shots. The Collector cruiser fires its main gun at 6:53 which Normandy dodges fairly easily, Normandy returns fire with its Thanix cannon at a fairly long range at 7:05 which hits at 7:09 causing a large blue-white explosion, then Normandy dodges the next main gun shot from the cruiser and maneuvers around to make an attack run from a different angle and closer range and fires the Thanix again at 7:26 and hits less than a second later and completely transfixes the ship with the stream and the Normandy has to dodge the flying debris from the exploding cruiser.
-
The documentation says the Thanix hits with very nearly the firepower of a cruisers main gun though with much more heat. Unfortunately none of the cruiser lengths are given so it is impossible to determine exactly what the kiloton equivalent of that is directly. Since a small scout frigate like the Normandy is somewhere between 75 meters and about 230 meters depending on whether the length is determined by the offhand 747 comment or the floor plan is projected into the silhouette of the ship I used 160 meters as milddlish ship length to figure the normal mass accelerator yield at 0.98kilotons. The small Everest class dreadnought’s 800 meter launcher is rated at 39kilotons and the 1000meter launcher of Destiny Ascension comes out to about 60.5 kilotons (and DA’s side guns come out to about 13.8 kilotons judging from the length of the ‘wings’ they are mounted in btw), so the cruisers must put out something in between the scout frigate and the dreadnaughts so probably something in the 15-30kiloton range and the Normandy class frigate mounts twin Thanix guns that fire simultaneously. Considering three shots from a 64kiloton MAC can take out a Covie capital ship the firepower of ME ships is not as hopeless as some would claim.
-
Archer missiles are described in some literature as conventional warhead missiles and in others as nuclear, and as pointed out some of the Archer launch doors have nuclear hazard symbols painted on them while others do not. The most likely solution to this seeming contradiction is that some of them have nuclear warheads and some (probably most) do not which makes a lot of sense since many would be destroyed by anti-missile fire and mixing in hoards of cheap conventional missiles would keep up pressure on the anti-missile defenses and keep them guessing and the nukes would make ignoring them and assuming the armor will stop them an unacceptable risk (much like situation with the advanced armor frigates mixed with normal ones).
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“ www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dmy_qUSMOWY
5:00-end
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WTF is wrong with you? That dosen’t look like a disruptor torpedoe at all. In fact it looks more like mass accelerator rounds which just proves my point. “
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Except that the mass accelerator is mounted in the fuselage where it can use the length of the ship and not just the front to back length of the wing and the torpedo racks are slung under the wings between the fuselage and the thruster pods which is clearly where they are coming from. Mass Effect torpedoes go faster than Halo missiles and do not look like chemical rockets spewing fire, the only thing you can see clearly of the torpedo is the purplish white trail of its antiproton thrusters and mass effect field. (I have heard a theory that the missile itself could not be seen anyway because the mass effect field lenses the light too much to get more than a blur, but that is not canon as far as I know of, just a fan theory).
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I better post this thing before it gets novel length….
Sorry for the double post, but the second link (the one about the Thanix cannon) did not come through when I read the post so here it is:
“WTF is wrong with you? That dosen’t look like a disruptor torpedoe at all. In fact it looks more like mass accelerator rounds which just proves my point.”
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Have you played ME2? If you don’t upgrade to Thannix the Normandy uses the Javalin system which it two disruptors shot at the same time.
“Initially, the Normandy is armed with two Javelin disruptor torpedo launchers mounted on the joints between its wings and primary hull”
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” Anyway I recall Doppelganger saying how bad ME hulls are against lasers”
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ME’s hulls are designed to vaporize and scatter energy weapons so they are no impervious, but they can defend against lasers until all the layers of armor are bunt off.
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“That’s why you load up a few hundred thousand of them and swarm the enemy with overwhelming numbers.”
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They could, but that would be expencive and wasteful. Thats why they get close and fire a bunch of them.
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“Also you know the Protheans and how they could not get made into reapers?”
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That is only speculation, and even if reaperization only worked half the time, there would be 10,000 Soverign Reapers and 50,000 Destroyers.
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” I mean look at the fight ME is giving the reapers.”
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Not very much, the Reapers easily overran all of the races homeworlds.
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” Firstly there is no prove that the culling takes place every 50,000 years.”
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True, but most information I have read say that the come around every 50,000 years.
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“Then explain the ending of ME3. Why could they hold the reaper forces back and inflict quite an huge amount of casualties on the reapers?”
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They had the Asari, Turians, and a bunch other fleets combined. If you remember the beginning, The Reapers crushed an Alliance fleet and earths defenses before anyone knew what was going on.
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“E lasers based on how the eye thing in the above video drilled it’s way into the Normandy and how it got taken down by small arm fire. And nobody debunked him.”
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The Oculus uses a particle beam not a laser, and the one that got into the Normandy lost its outer shell. If you look at the others in ME2 and 3 they have an engine and things stinking out of them that the one in the Normandy dind’t have. Also their durability has little to do with their firpower.
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“Ah, alright. From the cut scenes in ME 3 it looked to me like a laser”
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I does, I thought they were lasers too.
The UNSC isn’t really a factor in space combat- their MAC rounds are so slow they’re unlikely to ever hit anything, their armor is so weak a ME frigate would rape them and if they fire enough archer missiles to overwhelm the GARDIAN systems the ME ships could simply outrun them.
.
It’s kind of redundant to compare UNSC vessels with ME dreadnaughts when even frigates have the firepower to take them out…
On Reach, I saw the Corvette have around 9-10 plasma torpedo launchers on it, and that’s on a scout/weak cannon fodder ship, they were firing so rapidly it overwhelmed a ship of stronger caliber (Large Frigate). And what about the 300 ODP’s on Earth those could tear so many ships apart?
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Also the AI’s from Halo could potentially destroy weapons targeting system and such that the Citadel forces and maybe Reapers use.
I think there would probably be a crap ton of ships in the UNSC Navy, since they use Frigates as cannon fodder. The Covenant fleets would probably be enormous, since they average around 500-1000 capital ships. And there is 10 known fleets, and probably a shit ton more task forces. Now what about the Giant Spherical ship that the Prometheans used in Halo: 4? That thing looks mighty dangerous and considering how mysterious Requiem is, they might have even more of those.
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We’re only talking about the Covenant and UNSC, I know I already brought this up but the trillions of sentinels on Onyx would prove a valuable asset against ME considering they could focus their fire and vaporize all the ships and fighters in seconds.
Wait the fleets don’t average 500-1000 capital ships, that’s absurd, I think 300-800 is more reasonable. That’s only counting the capital ships, probably 3 or 4 times as many frigates, destroyers, and corvettes.
Crap I forgot, Sorry for quad-posting, but even though only 5 fleets are known in the UNSC they’re numerically organised, the highest number is the 16th fleet, that makes for potentially 18 fleets if you count the home fleet and the Epsilon fleet. And disregard the 10 covenant fleets, there is 18 (known) fleets. That’s a shit ton of fleets.
” know I already brought this up but the trillions of sentinels on Onyx would prove a valuable asset against ME considering they could focus their fire and vaporize all the ships and fighters in seconds.”
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Other people have said that they cannot leave Onyx, but I dont know for myself.
“. That’s a shit ton of fleets.”
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How many do they have at the end of Halo 3?
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What do other people think about my Reaper number estimate?
“We’re only talking about the Covenant and UNSC, I know I already brought this up but the trillions of sentinels on Onyx would prove a valuable asset against ME considering they could focus their fire and vaporize all the ships and fighters in seconds.”
That’s because Onyx has been pretty much destroyed.
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“What do other people think about my Reaper number estimate?”
I see nothing wrong with it. I actually see it as a low-end, since that crashed Reaper most likely was not the first cycle. IAmTaco is just nerd raging.
” I actually see it as a low-end, since that crashed Reaper most likely was not the first cycle”
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Yah, I figured that would help cover any casualties incurred over the cycles.
@Pienis
“Now what about the Giant Spherical ship that the Prometheans used in Halo: 4? That thing looks mighty dangerous and considering how mysterious Requiem is, they might have even more of those.”
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Thats a Promethean cryptum, I’m not even sure if those things are space worthy. Its really just a floating tomb with a defense system iirc. However, the main theory is that it’s the Didact’s(Leader of the Prometheans) cryptum. If it proves true, it would mean team Halo finally has full control of the Halo rings and most(if not all) Forerunner tech.
“various major non-Reaper ME fleets have ship numbers in the thousands to tens of thousands each ”
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Yea, but judging by the Quarians, even sinlge person shuttles or fighters are included in that number. So the equivelent would be like counting every Longsword, Pelican, Sabre, and any other UNSC space farring vessel, same goes for the Covenant.
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“they seem to think short term and would use them to aid them in the war first and worry about the consequences later.”
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That’s ONI’s specialty…..
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“If it proves true…”
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Then the Didact solos.
If Didact (Or another Forerunner) is confirmed in December, I think that ME is screwed.
” If Didact (Or another Forerunner) is confirmed in December, I think that ME is screwed. ”
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They are eventually anyway since ME is over with and Halo is still going, and the tendency for games and stories to get power inflation with every new version.
“They are eventually anyway since ME is over with and Halo is still going, and the tendency for games and stories to get power inflation with every new version.”
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ME isn’t over, Shepard’s story is, but they’re continuing with the universe. Thankfully.
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However I think Halo 4 will most certainly seal the victory.
Can we finally play as a Hanar? The one from ME 2 who doesn’t play by the rules?
“ME isn’t over, Shepard’s story is, but they’re continuing with the universe. Thankfully.”
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While I’m hoping against it the soon to be stories seem to be prequels. Right now there anime-ifying a James Vega story and the comics/books all seem to be pos ME3…. Anime Krogan lol.
cdn.dualshockers.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Mass-Effect-Paragon-Lost-Anime-Art.jpg
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“Can we finally play as a Hanar? The one from ME 2 who doesn’t play by the rules?”
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No, we will never play that hanar. The game would be to easy.
@Lowk
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Why must everything be made into an anime? -_-
“Why must everything be made into an anime? -_-”
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Maybe they thought Anime was allowed fore more flashier action then other forms of mdia or something. I personally was hoping they’d due something in the style like the Take Back Earth trailer.
Favorite thing about this match up os every major mass effect character can beat a halo character 1v1 but because of halos superweapons in space its an easy win for halo. UNSC should seriously upgrade thier lackluster conventional weapons.
On an a side note where are people getting thier numbers for halo firepower?
On an a side note where are people getting thier numbers for halo firepower?
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Games, books, comics, etc.
I would like to speak about secondary weapon and speed of the ships as I don’t think those points have been written :———————————————————————-
first about the FTL capabilities , according to that page halo.wikia.com/wiki/Slipstream_Space#cite_note-eleven-3 covenant ships are able to travel 900 light years per day whereas UNSC ships can only travel 2 light years per day . On the other hand Citadel FTL is 10-20 light years per day and as for the Reaper it seems it is ‘only’ 30 light years per day ( see masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/FTL ) . As for the precision of slipspace jump it is said than USNC FTL is very imprecise in contrary to the Covenant who can appear anywhere. The latter has an enormous advantage, let’s take an example : one covenant with an energy projector against 10 major Reaper ships . We assume they both one-shot themselves . Energy projector is said to have an effective range of 100 000 km, reaper main gun should have an effective range of only 10 000 km as their main gun fires round only at a fraction of the speed of light . Then the covenant ship should be able to kill at least 3 Reapers before they can fire AND as soon as they can fire, the covenant ship just FTL 120 000 km behind … again and again ….You see what I mean, right ? That can be generalized to any covenant ship has near light speed weapon (plasma torpedo ?) . Since we use USNC after war we should believe the majority of USNC ships has been upgraded with covenant FTL and surely energy weapons .——————————————————————————————————Now I will talk about the USNC frigate vs Citadel Dreadnought, at the lowest estimation one standard USNC frigate has one MAC (round of 600 t at a speed of 30 km/s = 64 kt TNT ), 120 archer missiles ( one may have a yield of 1 to 20 kt ), 3 shivas nuke ( 30 Mt ) whereas one citadel dreadnought has one main gun which fire a 20 kg round at a speed of (I don’t remember very well) 10 024 km/s which gives us a kinetic energy of 32 kt but its speed is far far higher = longer range and its rate of fire is 5 times higher . One ME dreadnought also has torpedo and others weapons but broadside guns can’t be used as the same time as the main gun . Speaking about ME torpedo, in contrary to what others people think, it looks they are way inferior to even archer missiles : first the number : ME torpedo seems to be counted among the hundreds at the very maximum ( I would say that no ME ship has more than 30 torpedoes …) and their range is basically 1000 km or so with a speed of something like 350 km/s ( my guess ) whereas archer missiles are already lunched at range like 50 000 km ( standard Halo long range engagement ) their speed seem to be at least one hundred time higher than ME torpedo . Covenant point defense guns are able to destroy 50 % of a vague of archer missiles . Given the speed of archer missile, it shows that actually any Covenant ship would be able to destroy 100% ME torpedoes whereas even a dreadnought wouldn’t be able to destroy more than 10% of the 120 archer missiles of a UNSC frigate. So potentially one UNSC after war frigate can destroy alone at least 3 ME dreadnought : the frigate slipspace jumps into the middle of the ME ships, uses its main gun (-1 dreadnought) , use 40 archer missiles + 2 nukes on one dreadnought and 80 archer missiles + 1 nuke on the another dreadnought …The same strategy can be used on even a capital Reaper ship ….———————————————————————Didn’t I just proved that the weakest Halo ship beats the strongest ME ship ???——————————————————————————————————————————Also about the Flood, while it is true they aren’t many left, it is not a problem: the USNC can use its own people to feed the flood!!! Then they put a couple of spore in banshee able to use slipspace then they crash each banshee in one civil word . It’s a doomsday scenario for ME and it’s 100% legit ( universe battle ) !! Remember that one spore can potentially conquer a whole continent under 3 hours ….. By the way, the flood keeps its memory, it means that if a gravemind is created, it should remember forerunner technology given enough time to build it !!!!!! ———————————————————————————————————— Onyx sentinels solo all ME by themselves right ? Don’t forget NOVA bomb too and super MAC too …; I really think this match is worth an award, it is after all one of the match with the most comments, even more than Star Wars vs Halo .
SgCombine the majority of numbers comes from the book The Fall of Reach .
@therealbs, Legion from ME vs Linda from Halo. Or Jorge vs James, Noble Six vs Ashley, Kat vs Tali, Arbiter vs Grunt. Tartaraus vs Wrex, Arlacke company vs Blue team.
Legion is the name taken by the gestalt consciousness formed by 1,183 geth programs inhabiting a unique geth “mobile platform”, he is proficient with a sniper rifle. That’s literally all the data I can find about his actual ability’s. ( I’ve realized that the ME wiki doesn’t give a lot of technical data, and pretty much repeats everything said in the games, which is not much.)
Linda is unmistakable for her remarkable abilities with the sniper rifle. Linda is unshakable and persistent, demonstrating time after time again that her abilities with a sniper rifle are far greater than those of any other Spartan in known combat. During the Fall of Reach she was hit by several overcharged bolts from plasma pistols and plasma rifles which penetrated her armor and flesh all the way to the carbonized bone. One of the globules of plasma hit her in the back of the skull. Linda was recovered by a John, but her vitals flatlined, and she was presumed dead.
She was placed in cryo and was revived some time later. Only a few days later (She was told she needed at least a few weeks to recover), Linda, with some of her best and potent shooting skills, managed to shoot Elite pilots right out of their airborne Banshee fliers one-handed and hanging upside-down from a cable.
That’s all I’m going to say for today.
@Finalsacre
Actually it’s not just 120 archer missiles it’s 1200. 40 missile pods and 30 missiles in each pod.
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I’m on Halo’s side but I’m not sure I can agree with some of the things you say though. I don’t think the UNSC might be using full-on energy weapons but they’ll probably deploy a few prototypes that are almost as effective. The Sentinels+Super Mac’s+ A Few NOVA’s=Solo? I think this is too much of a stomp for an award but it’s a long strewn fight and it might be worth one.
The Super MACs are useless, assuming that the CO of the ME forces in whatever system it is has a functioning brain.
They’re immobile (well, effectively so) targets, with a relatively small (in space terms) weapons envelope – as long as you stay a light second or two out, and maintain basic evasive maneuvering, while watching their fire arcs, to cripple ballistic targeting, you’re the next best thing to untouchable, whereas your ships can launch bombardments against them from across the system if you want to, assuming you’ve done the math for it.
@Pienis
-You are right about the 1200 missiles . It’s only make things worse for ME .
-I think so . But even the navigation improvement is enough . “Transportation” is a enormous advantage .
-About the Sentinels : in Ghost of Onyx , onyx sentinels are able to merge to together to increase exponentially their firepower and shield . One sentinel is weak but 45 was enough to destroy a covenant battleship . Then 50 is already more than enough to destroy any ME ship . However Onyx is said to be composed of trillions sentinels . If it true then that means Halo has potentially 20 000 000 000 sentinel group … Although it is surely by far less as maybe not all the sentinels can fight . It should still be enough to solo ME ( blame the Forerunners … ) .
-NOVA is like a joker, if a hundreds of ships are together one suicide frigate with a NOVA can destroy them all . At the end of ME 3, one NOVA would have surely destroyed every Reaper ships + citadel ships ( one they were near the Reapers)+ the atmosphere of Earth . And there is no way to counter such a attack ( because of slipspace …)
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“The resulting explosion occurred between a Covenant outpost planet Joyous Exultation and its moon, Malhiem, scorching half of the planet and shattering the moon. The resulting winds on Joyous Exultation flattened cities and spawned tidal waves. Radiation flooded the planet and killed everything living on it, penetrating the surface of the planet to its core. Every ship within the NOVA Bomb’s range, save for those on the opposite side of the planet, boiled and vaporized in an instant. It is unknown what the Covenant did with the planet, but it is no longer capable of supporting life.”
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From Halo Wikia which itself use Halo Ghost of Onyx .
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Super MAC are fixes, yes, their ranges is nevertheless extremes . Speed of a super MAC round : 120 000 km/s . Speed of MAC round from ME dreadnought : 4000 km/s . So one SMAC is 30 times faster !! The rate of fire is 5 shots/s for the SMAC . Even if the SMAC don’t move, other USNC ships can take the hits to protect the SMAC as seen in the Fall of Reach . If ME ships want to destroy a SMAC, they would need to go no further than 16 000 km while SMAC can shot them 250 000 km before ! That’s only of course true if the line is clear but it is still a incredible advantage for the defense . Good point for ME, SMAC are only for the most important human world ( before the war, 16 were around Reach, 300 were around Earth … ) . It’s not like UNSC would need to defend anyways . As I already said the Onyx + Flood + silpspace surprise attack is already enough to overkill ME . ( I really like my Flood strategy, can anyone finds a flaw in it ? )
- I wonder what would happen if a Halo ship slipspaced when in contact with a relay … I think it would most likely be destroyed as the Covenant supercarrier was during Halo Reach . If Halo can destroy the relay then it is even more over for ME as pre-war Covenant FTL ( and surely after-war UNSC) is 30 times faster than Reaper FTL .
-Halo vs Star Wars was even more unfair, yet it got an award … If we ignore the “super factions”, the difference of power between Halo and Mass Effect is only roughly 5-10 . The difference between Halo and Star Wars was more than 100 000 !
-Of course all I said is only about space combat. ME kills Halo on the ground, no contest . But only space matters, any UNSC soldier would say that after seeing helplessly his world glassed .
@Kytheros
I’m sorry I have missed some points in your post ; especially about anticipation : while it should theoretically be possible for both ME and Halo, actually I think that would be the case for Halo . Let’s me explain :
-The maximum combat for ME is 10 000- 20 000 km : their targeting system isn’t used to shoot at range like 100 000 km instead of SMAC which are build for it . It’s also likely the precision of ME MAC becomes too low at extreme range like 100 000 .
-Even if in quiet condition ME ships can look such a tiny target at more 100 000km, in a fight it would be very very different :
-no visual : the fire, plasma, nuclear explosion will block it
-no thermal sensor : see above
-no electromagnetic sensor : because of MAC and plasma
-whereas SMAC and more generally Halo ships are used to aim at such conditions .
-about the reaction time, I’m sure everyone agrees that AI > VI . Someone made a comparison with calculations one day but I can’t find it .
Conclusion : my argument about the SMAC is still correct, isn’t it ?
“-The maximum combat for ME is 10 000- 20 000 km : their targeting system isn’t used to shoot at range like 100 000 km”
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I believe he was referring to something like detecting from afar Using Long range sensors, trying to predict the path of the SMAC, then firing in that direction from far enough away. Since SMAC seems like a somewhat stationary target.
At least that’s what I got.
@Lowk
But wouldn’t the stations have some sort of emergency thrusters on them, to keep from bumping into each other?
meant to add
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It could help them in maneuvering a bit.
First of all, that velocity figure for the SMAC is one that has been discredited.
Second, the SMACs are powered by ground-based power facilities. They need to remain in more or less the same place to retain power, even assuming they have more than stationkeeping capability.
Third, they’re stationed in orbit around planets. ME ships can, in theory at any rate, utilize their FTL capabilities to repeatedly reposition themselves in between firing patterns such that, assuming they start at sufficient range, all patterns will land on target (enter their target volumes) at the same time. That means even a single ME ship could, in theory, assuming they’ve done the math right, which shouldn’t be that difficult, put every accelerator round it carries into a specific target volume more or less simultaneously, subject to the size of the target volume, the physical size of the rounds relative to the target volume (ie, if there are too many rounds to fit in the volume at once, you either need a larger target, fewer rounds, or you get a lengthened bombardment duration) and the accuracy of their math (and the measurements their calculations were based on) … the size of the target volume is constrained by the accuracy of the math and the amount of ammo available. Now, I’m going to make the wild and crazy assumption that if there are SMACs orbiting the target planet, ME will send more than one ship.
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While space is big, the volume around a planet – especially that which a SMAC platform can reliably operate within, is relatively small.
As for the ‘difficulties’ of targeting the SMACs from genuinely extended ranges … they’ve been vastly overstated. If you’re launching a bombardment from the kinds of ranges I’m thinking about, while you’re not actually that close in absolute terms, you’re presumably doing your target observations before the battle starts – which means, there are no nukes or anything going off to block your visuals. For that matter, once you’ve done that, assuming you’re a distance out, they literally cannot stop you from watching long enough to obtain decent targeting data for their stations (such as SMACs), even assuming they know you’re there before you start launching. Remember, lightspeed lag applies both ways, but for stations, they’re relatively predictable, and have anemic maneuvering capabilities at best. Put enough rounds downrange, even if you’re only aiming at the area around the planet, and not anything specific, and all the stations (SMACs included) are going to have a bad day.
The Covenant had to close to SMAC range, because they only carry energy weapons – they don’t carry weapons that can be used for cross-system bombardments. ME doesn’t have to close to SMAC range unless they choose to (and they’re not going to unless they’ve trashed every station in orbit first).
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On ME ranges for ship to ship combat, yeah … ME ships maneuver, and are generally pretty nimble for their size, and since their primary weapons are ballistic, effective weapons ranges are limited against ships. SMACs aren’t ships. They possess even more limited maneuvering capabilities than regular stations, due to their need to be powered by ground stations. They have stationkeeping capability, and that’s about it.
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They don’t need much because Halo ignores MAC recoil, and unless your math people are absolute idiots, you don’t put stations into orbits that will cause them to impact other stations. I’m going to assume that the UNSC is competent enough to work out orbits for their stations that will not see them running into one another. I don’t think that’s an unreasonable assumption, since we can run the math for that today. Admittedly, the more things you put in orbit the more complex the work gets, but still, Halo may be filled with incompetents and idiots, but I don’t think that they’re quite that far gone.
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Look, SMACs are, for all intents and purposes, sitting ducks against a halfway competent foe that can throw rocks. Since the UNSC can throw rocks, I really don’t know why they had SMACs in the first place – prior to contact with the covenant, the only possible enemy (the rebels) would have mass driver technologies – which means that they could throw rocks. The Covenant appears to have lacked the capability (or the imagination) to throw rocks at the SMACs from outside SMAC range.
“First of all, that velocity figure for the SMAC is one that has been discredited.”
) If I understand correctly, you are telling me that ME ships can place themselves around the planet so as to hit every side of a SMAC leaving no escape ?
It would logical but where did you read that ? Is the speed down to 0.04c instead of 0.4c ?
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“Third, …”
Nice point ( well I think, there is 20% of chance I didn’t understand
Or that they will be always able to find firing pattern to reach their target given enough time and calculation even at very long range ?
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“If you’re launching a bombardment from the kinds of ranges I’m thinking about, while you’re not actually that close in absolute terms, you’re presumably doing your target observations before the battle starts ”
You’re 100% right . And even the SMAC aren’t really fixes ( because the planet isn’t either ), they should no doubt be able to integrate the movement in their math .
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“The Covenant had to close to SMAC range, because they only carry energy weapons – they don’t carry weapons that can be used for cross-system bombardments. ”
I’m doubtful on that point .
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“They don’t need much because Halo ignores MAC recoil…”
No need to think further . Halo is very unrealistic and very often incoherent . The simple fact that a SMAC is 100 000 times more powerful than a standard MAC is illogical .
“Second, the SMACs are powered by ground-based power facilities.”
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That leaves them vulnerable to ME ground attack teams.
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What sensors does Halo use? I have looked but couldn’t find anything other than radar.
That leaves them vulnerable to ME ground attack teams.
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Sure
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What sensors does Halo use? I have looked but couldn’t find anything other than radar
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And I couldn’t have done better . There is no information about that subject, I’m sure of it .
“ As I already said the Onyx + Flood + silpspace surprise attack is already enough to overkill ME . ( I really like my Flood strategy, can anyone finds a flaw in it ? ) “
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From what I hear there are few if any flood left alive at this point in Halo, that sounds like a fairly substantial flaw in that strategy. Also ME has so many inorganic forces that their biological ones do not have to engage the flood at all which would leave them rather short on recruits.
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“ Actually it’s not just 120 archer missiles it’s 1200. 40 missile pods and 30 missiles in each pod. “
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The missiles still have to get through the anti-missile defenses, and the archers are so slow and fly too straight from too far away to have much chance to avoid them. The reason ME missile ranges are so short is that they have to burn their fuel very rapidly to get up to enough speed to get in while the GARDIAN is busy destroying other missiles, fighters, and frigates, and also to add suddenness to it so the defenses have to juggle their calculations and fire schedules. Archers would have to be fired at knife fight range just like their ME counterparts to have any hope of getting through the defenses. The way the Halo missiles are shown in the cutscenes the GARDIAN system could pick them off at leisure. By ME3 the defenses were so good that they started using two-stage missiles with six independent torpedoes being launched from the first stage bus to make firing solutions more complex on the terminal leg of the run. On top of that Archers are much lighter than the ME torpedoes because they are not artificially increasing their mass which makes it harder for them to get through the ME barriers despite their slow speed.
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“ It would logical but where did you read that ? Is the speed down to 0.04c instead of 0.4c ? “
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It has always been .04c, someone read the number wrong a long time ago and had the decimal in the wrong place and it keeps on coming back from people quoting old posts.
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“ That leaves them vulnerable to ME ground attack teams.
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Sure “
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True, especially since Halo does not have biotics or any other ME field detectors which would make an SRV coming in dark almost completely undetectable until someone sees them on the ground.
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“ “If you’re launching a bombardment from the kinds of ranges I’m thinking about, while you’re not actually that close in absolute terms, you’re presumably doing your target observations before the battle starts ”
You’re 100% right . And even the SMAC aren’t really fixes ( because the planet isn’t either ), they should no doubt be able to integrate the movement in their math . “
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A funny quote that backs up the long range fire capability and also explains why the ships do not normally use the mass accelerators beyond the range where they cannot miss their target is on the TV Tropes website (it is an accurate quote from a gunnery officer in the game chewing out a pair of subordinates for being careless):
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“I dare to assume you ignorant jackasses know that space is empty. Once you fire this hunk of metal, it keeps going till it hits something. That can be a ship, or the planet behind that ship. It might go off into deep space and hit somebody else in ten thousand years. If you pull the trigger on this, you are ruining someone’s day, somewhere and sometime. That is why you check your damn targets! That is why you wait for the computer to give you a damn firing solution! That is why, Serviceman Chung, we do not “eyeball it!” This is a weapon of mass destruction! You are not a cowboy shooting from the hip!
— The Gunnery Chief from Mass Effect 2 tells it like it is.
“
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If they do not care what happens to the surface of the planet behind the SMAC (which in this debate they would not) then it is the perfect cross-system target range to take the satellites out from beyond the range that the SMAC could hope to hit a mobile target.
‘The missiles still have to get through the anti-missile defenses, and the archers are so slow and fly too straight from too far away to have much chance to avoid them. The reason ME missile ranges are so short is that they have to burn their fuel very rapidly to get up to enough speed to get in while the GARDIAN is busy destroying other missiles, fighters, and frigates, and also to add suddenness to it so the defenses have to juggle their calculations and fire schedules. Archers would have to be fired at knife fight range just like their ME counterparts to have any hope of getting through the defenses. The way the Halo missiles are shown in the cutscenes the GARDIAN system could pick them off at leisure. By ME3 the defenses were so good that they started using two-stage missiles with six independent torpedoes being launched from the first stage bus to make firing solutions more complex on the terminal leg of the run. On top of that Archers are much lighter than the ME torpedoes because they are not artificially increasing their mass which makes it harder for them to get through the ME barriers despite their slow speed.’
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I’m going to have to call bs on this.
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‘Since lasers move at light speed, they cannot be dodged by anything moving at non-relativistic speeds. Unless the beam is aimed poorly, it will always hit its target. In the early stages of a battle, the GARDIAN fire is 100% accurate. It is not 100% lethal, but it doesn’t have to be. Damaged fighters must break off for repairs.
Lasers are limited by diffraction. The beams “spread out”, decreasing the energy density (watts per m2) the weapon can place on a target. Any high-powered laser is a short-ranged weapon.
GARDIAN networks have another limitation: heat. Weapons-grade lasers require “cool-down” time, during which heat is transferred to sinks or radiators. As lasers fire, heat builds within them, reducing damage, range, and accuracy.
Fighters attack in swarms. The first few WILL be hit by GARDIAN, but as the battle continues, the effects of laser overheat allow the attacks to press ever closer to the ship. Constant use will burn out the laser.
GARDIAN lasers typically operate in infrared frequencies. Shorter frequencies would offer superior stopping power and range, but degradation of focal arrays and mirrors would make them expensive to maintain, and most prefer mechanical reliability over leading-edge performance where lives are concerned. Salarians, however, use near-ultraviolet frequency lasers with six times the range, believing that having additional time to shoot down incoming missiles is more important.
Lasers are not blocked by the kinetic barriers of capital ships. However, the range of lasers limits their use to rare “knife fight”-range ship-to-ship combat.
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‘Only fighters and frigates enter CLOSE “knife fight” ranges of 10 or fewer kilometers. Fighters loose their disruptor torpedoes, bringing down a ship’s kinetic barriers and allowing it to be swarmed by frigates. GARDIAN lasers become viable weapons, swatting down fighters and boiling away warship armor.’
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In flight, torpedoes use a mass-increasing field, making them too massive for enemy kinetic barriers to repel. Because extra mass retards acceleration, torpedoes are easy prey for defensive GARDIAN weapons and must therefore be launched at extremely close range to be effective.
To prevent damage to the parent craft, torpedoes must be “cold-launched” meaning they are released before their thrusters ignite. Aligning with its target trajectory, a fighter releases a torpedo and immediately thrusts away, while the torpedo continues to coast towards its target. After the fighter is clear, (no more than a second after launch) the torpedo activates and its mass field and thrusters away from the fighter and towards its target.
Torpedoes are the main anti-ship weapon used by fighters. They are launched from point-blank range in “ripple-fire” waves reminiscent of the ancient Calliope rocket artillery launchers (thus their popular nickname “Callies”). By saturating defensive GARDIAN systems with multiple targets, at least a few will get through.’
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So no the GARDIAN systems cannot even destroy a fighter at close ranges of 10 km or less. Compare this with the covenant pulse lasers which managed to completely melt 60 centimetres worth of armor with a few shots and doing this from a range of 3000 km. The same scene also has the Archer going 3000km in about a 20 seconds. And we have this www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWAtKnegAyM. Where a handful of fighters go up against the Normandy a.k.a the most adavanced ship in ME with no no doubt the most advanced GARDIAN system around and yet they fail to dispatch the oculus even though they are in extremely close ranges and can be brought down with small arm fire.
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Archer missile can also track their target and are typically also fired in swarms to avoid point defenses. Just like ME. And considering that GARDIAN systems have a range of 10km, how close do you think a fighter has to be to launch their payload? 1 km will be my guess and good luck getting that close to a covenant warship before their pulse lasers snipe them out of the sky. And if we use real world physics the covenant pulse lasers will only get stonger the closer ME get due to diffraction. And consider what I’ve said about pulse lasers melting 60 centimetres worth of Titanium-A from a range of 3000km and what they will do to fighters at ranges of 10km(the ranges fighters fight at btw) And compare this to the GARDIAN system which requires multiple hits to drop a single fighter. And we still have the archer missile hundred kiloton range and I have a low end speed of a archer going at 27,777km per second which implies a huge amount of kinetic energy more so than a dreadnought round.
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Where did you get the distance and archer speed?
I wonder how many ships the humans have left after the war, they had 800 places.
Did anyone see the forward unto Dawn trailer? Looking at the chief running with the marines, his size! It’s intimidating! That’s John in his teens. How much guardian firepower would a longsword be able to take? They’re really huge.
Also I wonder what requiem has that could scare the people on the infinity. And also the flood is not all gone, the primordial tells they will come back. I wonder who fights the hardest, people in mass effect or people in halo. Why did I say that?
So what would be needed to make mass effect surrender/die?
“ I’m going to have to call bs on this. “
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On which part? And for what reason?
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“ So no the GARDIAN systems cannot even destroy a fighter at close ranges of 10 km or less. Compare this with the covenant pulse lasers which managed to completely melt 60 centimetres worth of armor with a few shots and doing this from a range of 3000 km. The same scene also has the Archer going 3000km in about a 20 seconds.”
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What scene? It appears your link did not take. GARDIAN would have no problem taking out fighters in its range, it takes out frigates at those ranges too though it takes a lot longer than fighters, and missiles are generally one-shot kills. Notice that at the start of an attack wave the GUARDIAN does not miss, it hits with every shot until the system starts overheating at which point occasional missiles get through. That 20 second run is an eternity as far as the system goes, it would not only have the missiles approach vectors figured out exactly, it would have figured out the most efficient order to destroy them in, laid the guns on the correct vectors and waited patiently for the missiles to come into the figured killing zone. It would have also sent course recommendations that could be used to dodge them or string them out to the ships main computer as well. Another point is that the 10 kilometer range is for alliance ships that use infrared lasers, the Salarians and a few others prefer ultraviolet lasers that have an effective range of 60 kilometers even though they are more expensive and require more maintenance.
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It looks like Covenant pulse lasers are combination offensive/defense weapon from the description, and the armor damage is not from one laser, it is from a whole salvo of them together.
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“ And we have this www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWAtKnegAyM. Where a handful of fighters go up against the Normandy a.k.a the most adavanced ship in ME with no no doubt the most advanced GARDIAN system around and yet they fail to dispatch the oculus even though they are in extremely close ranges and can be brought down with small arm fire. “
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Those were not fighters, they were Reaper-tech Oculus drones known for their incredibly advanced armor. Despite the Oculus armor being far tougher than any fighters only one made it through far enough to launch the boarding module. I take it you did not notice that the Oculus drone went from a cylinder with an eyeball stuck in the front end to just the spherical eyeball section when they were fighting it in the ship? The boarding module does not have much armor on it and it loses much of its energy and cannot raise a good barrier in that form either. That is the only reason why they were able to take it out with hand weapons after it got on board.
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“ And considering that GARDIAN systems have a range of 10km, how close do you think a fighter has to be to launch their payload? 1 km will be my guess and good luck getting that close to a covenant warship before their pulse lasers snipe them out of the sky. “
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Your guess would be wrong then. Missiles can be launched at ranges greater than 10 kilometers; the problem is that launching them from more than knife fight range gives the GARDIAN systems too long to take them out so they go in as far as they think they can get away with before firing. Considering that Archers are fired from so far out means that the anti-missile defenses of Halo ships is probably not as good as MEs or like ME they would not bother to waste resources giving the missiles so much endurance because they would not get through the defenses with the anti-missile systems tracking them that long. Archers are like anti-ship cruise missiles, they are slow over a long distance, while the ME missiles are all about acceleration, ECM, ECCM and dodge and do not mount slow long duration engines.
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“ And consider what I’ve said about pulse lasers melting 60 centimetres worth of Titanium-A from a range of 3000km and what they will do to fighters at ranges of 10km(the ranges fighters fight at btw) And compare this to the GARDIAN system which requires multiple hits to drop a single fighter. And we still have the archer missile hundred kiloton range and I have a low end speed of a archer going at 27,777km per second which implies a huge amount of kinetic energy more so than a dreadnought round. “
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A single pulse laser does not melt 60 centimeters of armor, doing that takes a whole bank of them firing in salvo. Concentrating fire on a full sized ship that has that much armor is not the same as shooting down fighters, and Halo ships seem to do moderately well at both while ME concentrates on doing an excellent job of stopping missiles and fighters at knife fight range.
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I would like to know where you got that speed figure for the archer missile, at that speed it is considerably faster than a MAC round which is highly unlikely to say the least. In fact near the top of your post you give an example of archers travelling 3000km in 20 seconds which comes out to 150km per second which is considerably lower than that ‘low end figure’ of 27,777km/s unless you are using the European notation where commas are used in place of decimal points and it is actually just short of 28km per second.
‘Those were not fighters, they were Reaper-tech Oculus drones known for their incredibly advanced armor. Despite the Oculus armor being far tougher than any fighters only one made it through far enough to launch the boarding module. I take it you did not notice that the Oculus drone went from a cylinder with an eyeball stuck in the front end to just the spherical eyeball section when they were fighting it in the ship? The boarding module does not have much armor on it and it loses much of its energy and cannot raise a good barrier in that form either. That is the only reason why 4hey were able to take it out with hand weapons after it got on board.’
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They didn’t even brother to use their GARDIAN. I didn’t see any laser flash followed by a charred spot on the Oculus followed by Joker yelling ‘Commander, the GARDIAN got a track on them but their amour is too tough. I can’t get through it.’ Rememder that this is the frist time they encounter the Oculus so they won’t know that their amour strength. And yes the Oculus gets stripped of most of it’s amour but it’s biggest weakspot aka the huge glowing eye is still there. Why can’t the 100% accurate GARDIAN target those and before you talk about KBs remember that the GARDIAN system bypasses KBs. Any proof on it’s ‘advanced armor’?
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‘A single pulse laser does not meltk60 centimeters of armor, doing that takes a whole bank of them firing in salvo. Concentrating fire on a full sized ship that has that much armor is not the same as shooting down fighters, and Halo ships seem to do moderately well at both while ME concentrates on doing an excellent job of stopping missiles and fighters at knife fight range.’
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Not a single shot then, my bad. But a handful a of shots did indeed melt through melt 60 centimeters of armor. They did not concentrate fire on one part of the ship, they were aiming at various parts of the ship. And did you read the part where they were doing that at ranges of 3000km and how much more powerful it would have to be at ranges of 10km and closer due to diffraction of the laser. And the fact is that the archer will take about a second cross the 10km range and impact a ME ship. So can the GARDIAN system in a single second track the hundreds/thousands of archer missiles, calculate the appropriate action to take for each missile send out a laser for each archer missile and get each and every one of them? And even if it did it would probably be overheating by then and the next wave of archer missiles would finish the job.
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Compare this with ME’s disruptor torpedoes and frighters. From the very moment the battle starts they will be vulnerable to pulse laser fire. And they can’t even contribute to the battle until they travel to the knife ranges of 10km and in the minutes it takes to travel that far they will be taking constant pulse laser fire which at those ranges will inflict a crap-ton casualties.
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‘GARDIAN would have no problem taking out fighters in its range, it takes out frigates at those ranges too though it takes a lot longer than fighters, and missiles are generally one-shot kills’
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Not what the codex says.
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‘Since lasers move at light speed, they cannot be dodged by anything moving at non-relativistic speeds. Unless the beam is aimed poorly, it will always hit its target. In the early stages of a battle, the GARDIAN fire is 100% accurate. It is not 100% LETHAL, but it doesn’t have to be. Damaged fighters must break off for repairs.’
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So they can’t even cripple a single fighter much less destroy it.
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‘Notice that at the start of an attack wave the GUARDIAN does not miss, it hits with every shot until the system starts overheating at which point occasional missiles get through. That 20 second run is an eternity as far as the system goes, it would not only have the missiles approach vectors figured out exactly, it would have figured out the most efficient order to destroy them in, laid the guns on the correct vectors and waited patiently for the missiles to come into the figured killing zone. It would have also sent course recommendations that could be used to dodge them or string them out to the ships main computer as well’
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Some proof of this happening pls. And the way you describe it makes it sound like no missile attacks ever make it through the GARDIAN system…oh wait. And the archer missile is superior to the disruptor torpedoes in every way expect maybe in it’s destructive capacity. And I have explained for ranges of 10km it would take 1-2 seconds for the archer missile to reach it’s target.
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‘Another point is that the 10 kilometer range is for alliance ships that use infrared lasers, the Salarians and a few others prefer ultraviolet lasers that have an effective range of 60 kilometers even though they are more expensive and require more maintenance.’
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Aka the weakest space military in ME. And that just means that they break down even faster and leave them vulnerable to the 1200 archer missiles in a single UNSC frigate.
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‘Your guess would be wrong then. Missiles can be launched at ranges greater than 10 kilometers; the problem is that launching them from more than knife fight range gives the GARDIAN systems too long to take them out so they go in as far as they think they can get away with before firing.’
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Wrong! Firstly the GARDIAN system only has a effective range of 10km. If a ME missile were to be lauched at 20km it would be safe for the frist half(10km) of it’s journey. Think about it this way, how about instead of ME’s GARDIAN system being so awesome, they are forced to use this method of launching disruptor torpedoes at super close ranges because the disruptor torpedoes are shitty. You know the whole sluggish acceleration and being forced to sit there for 1 second to prevent damage to the frighter. At that speed it could take a gigantic amount of time crossing the 10km and thus a sitiing duck for the equally shitty GARDIAN system. Thus they would have to use much faster fighters and frigates to transport them to such short range that it would take only a few seconds to reach their targets. And the fact that since disruptor torpedoes can’t track and chase down their target, at ranges of 10km and with that low speed they will tend to miss. You know that thing that happens when you sent a slow projectile at a rapidly moving target. That could be another reason why they launch their disruptor torpedoes at close ranges. Now if the disruptor torpedoes were described as super agile and fast, able to weave it way around obstacles and chase down ships then yes your argument would make sense. But no it’s just a case of the disruptor torpedoe being shitty instead of the GARDIAN system being super awesome.
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Now compare this to the archer missiles. They can cross a distance of 10km within seconds and they track and chase down their target so they don’t have to worry about it overshooting or missing the target thus allowing them to be used at long range.
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‘Considering that Archers are fired from so far out means that the anti-missile defenses of Halo ships is probably not as good as MEs or like ME they would not bother to waste resources giving the missiles so much endurance because they would not get through the defenses with the anti-missile systems tracking them that long.’
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See above.
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‘Archers are like anti-ship cruise missiles, they are slow over a long distance, while the ME missiles are all about acceleration, ECM, ECCM and dodge and do not mount slow long duration engines.’
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Can you read? Haven’t I areadly told you about the archer missiles speed being faster than disruptor torpedoes?
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‘acceleration’
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HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
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‘In flight, torpedoes use a mass-increasing field, making them too massive for enemy kinetic barriers to repulse. The extra mass gives the torpedoes a very sluggish ACCELERATION, making them easy prey for defensive GARDIAN weapons. As a result, torpedoes have to be launched at very close range.’
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The codex outright states that the only reason why GARDIAN fire is so effective against disruptor torpedoes is because of their slow speed. Also while we are in the topic of acceleration since the archer is launched at longer ranges than disruptor torpedoe means that that have more time to accelerate.
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‘I would like to know where you got that speed figure for the archer missile, at that speed it is considerably faster than a MAC round which is highly unlikely to say the least. In fact near the top of your post you give an example of archers travelling 3000km in 20 seconds which comes out to 150km per second which is considerably lower than that ‘low end figure’ of 27,777km/s unless you are using the European notation where commas are used in place of decimal points and it is actually just short of 28km per second.’
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Will be posting the quote tmr.
I agree with IamTaco .
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I still think that any Halo would be able to pick any number of disruptive torpedo whereas ME ships wouldn’t be able to pick more than 10% of archer missiles . .
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About the kinetic barrier, there is nothing that forbid the archer missile to detonate just before they hit the barrier . Anyways with a mass of 10 kg (my guess) and a speed of 150km/s, the resulting kinetic energy is 27 t TNT . Definitively not enough to break a kinetic barrier but one hundred combined with explosive with do the job .
Also I’m more likely to think that actually, their speed is even higher as archer are fired during space combat at range like 30 000-60 000 km which would imply that archer missile takes 200 s to 400 s to reach their target . A bit too long .
Speaking of MAC, first the SMAC, I remember reading definitively 0.4c in the FoR edition 2001, maybe in the new edition it had been edited. Anyways, it is not important.
The most concerning issue which could be the finishing blow is the standard MAC . Description in the FoR : 600 t , 30 km/s , 65 kt TNT worth of kinetic energy. This is without doubt the thing that is wrong . Despite it was written in the book, more than 80% of the game, book, comic tends to show us that 1) The weight of the round is overestimated 2) The speed of the round is severely underestimated . Partial list of reasons:
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Space combat range : 10 000 – 60 000 km : with a speed of 30 km/s, one round will take 333 s at the very least to reach their target . Which is absurd of course .
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Comparison with the SMAC : one has a speed of 12 000 km/s ( 0.04 c) and the other 12 km . No need to be a genius to see one the number is false .
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Comparison with the speed light weapons of the covenant : the title says it all
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Cut scene of Halo 3 : the giant explosion caused by MAC round on the forerunner dreadnought shows us that the kinetic energy is ranged from 100 to 10 000 Mt TNT . The fireball of the Tsar Bomba ( 50 Mt TNT) has a diameter of 8 km but it was a nuclear explosion, to have such a large explosion only by kinetic energy …
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Cut scene of Halo Reach : the hurricane sized explosion seen from the atmosphere caused by plasma weapon implies gigatons of power . Combined with the two following fact , Covenant shield of ship can withstand their own weapon ( 2-3 times for plasma torpedo ) , 2-3 MAC rounds are needed to destroy the shield , it implies that MAC are at least in the Mt TNT range .
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Glassing
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The fact that UNSC ships move even without slipsace by far faster than 12 km/s …
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Possible counter examples : Halo Reach cut-scene :
During the end of the mission where Noble team disables a spire, the MAC shot from the frigate tends to make us believe that the MAC isn’t in the Mt range but it’s safe to assume the the frigate didn’t use its full power so it didn’t kill uselessly spartans .
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Various glassing seen during Halo ODST, Halo Reach :
During Halo ODST, the Covenant didn’t use its full power so as to not destroy the relic near the city .
In Halo Reach, the Covenant didn’t use its full power as there were still soldiers on the ground ( for instance, in the last mission, we can see far away scarabs which explains why the Covenant ship didn’t destroy directly the Pillar of Autumn ) .
Conclusion : the standard MAC cannon is more likely to be able to lunch a round carried 10- 1000 mt TNT of kinetic energy which can be reached if the round weights 600 kg and if the speed is 10 000 km/s ( that way we have 7 Mt TNT )
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Consequence: the weakest Halo ship is 5-10 times more powerful than the most powerful ME ships only with its main gun . If we include the side weapon like archer missile, that single frigate can destroy 10 Reapers at least and alone . ( Remember the slipspace back and worth in one of my earlier post ) .One Covenant ships can withstand a entire fleet of citadel ships, several Reaper ships .
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About the flood strategy, I could explain further but first I need to know what do you think of the argument above .
” fail to dispatch the oculus even though they are in extremely close ranges and can be brought down with small arm fire.”
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It was only killed by small arms after the outer shell was removed, so that is no indication on its durability.
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“The codex outright states that the only reason why GARDIAN fire is so effective against disruptor torpedoes is because of their slow speed.”
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It says that torpedoes are easy prey. I also said as you posted earlier that GARDIAN is %100 accurate so it will have no problem hitting Archer missiles.
Well since I’m currently overwhelmed by free time, I’m going to add one or two … hundreds words.
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About FTL : does anyone have counter argument about destroying a relay by slipspacing it ? It it’s possible then Halo has a ridiculous speed advantage (FTL 30 times faster ) .
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Flood <3
There is no doubt that there is still flood in the Halo verse, there are other halo installations . And living character in the Halo verse knows where they are .
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Also it is likely there is some flood left . Even one is enough . They use that one on a major planet like Earth and assuming the humans don’t fight the evolution, under two day at max you would have a whole billion of cute things .
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Then using space banshee ( at least 100 000 exist ), they send one banshee in each of the ME biological controlled word and more generally any world able to support life . That would cause severe troubles inside the ME space . And in contrary to the Covenant , ME would have a sun of difficulties to purify a flood invasion as their best weapon are only in the megatons range ( nuclear weapon, reaper ship main gun is 450 kt at max ) . The reserve of element zero would be put in question here . To destroy all life in a planet like Earth, at least one hundred thousand to ten million of shots from the Reaper main gun would be needed . ( see asteroid impact ) .
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Even if the Reapers are the main force, having a pressing enemy in your back is not a good thing . Also the Repears can’t develop, while the others can .
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Once is gravemind is formed (which should be done the first day ), all previous knowledge are re gained . In Halo 3 the Gravemind is clearly be able to remember its past . Then it is logical to think that it would also be able to remember Forerunner tech . The gravemind seems also be able to transmit order and knowledge instantly across the univers, it means once a flood colony is formed, they should be quickly able to construct USNC and Covenants ships to occupy other words .
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Even if “only” 1000 flood colonies are formed, maybe even within one year , each colony should be able to construct ships to colonize another thousand world . And so on …
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About numbers, I think that the amount of Halo capital ships at the time of Halo 4 is between 1 000 and 10 000 . About the Reapers, some argument point toward 10 000 and even 100 000 but I believe it is rather close to 1000 as, like it was pointed out before, during the final battle of ME3, there were only several hundreds Reapers . And it’s very likely that was a great part of all they had . Otherwise it makes no sense to leave the most important by far location undefended, especially when you have the relay .
“It says that torpedoes are easy prey. I also said as you posted earlier that GARDIAN is %100 accurate so it will have no problem hitting Archer missiles.”
It isn’t that simple …
Sure once a target is designated, it is hit but the computer still need to do the math .
Against an archer missile, the computer would need to work in 0.02-0.04 s instead of 2-4s, to aim a smaller and also more agile target .
That and the thousand archer missiles ( compared to a hundred torpedo maybe …) .
No no definitively no, the Guardian system would be overwhelmed in a instant .
“ Rememder that this is the frist time they encounter the Oculus so they won’t know that their amour strength. And yes the Oculus gets stripped of most of it’s amour but it’s biggest weakspot aka the huge glowing eye is still there. Why can’t the 100% accurate GARDIAN target those and before you talk about KBs remember that the GARDIAN system bypasses KBs. Any proof on it’s ‘advanced armor’? “
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Exactly, it was their first encounter with them and so they were working out how to deal with them. They do not know how heavy their armor is or what their weak spot may be or even if it has one, so obviously the GARDIAN would not be targeting the eyeball part specially. In ME3 there are flocks of the things acting as fighters and while they seem to be nasty in that role (hard to tell exactly since they cannot be engaged directly in that game) they do not seem to be quite as effective as they were against Normandy that first time so perhaps GARDIAN profiles exist for them since the encounter and they now shoot at the eyeball directly. As to the oculus armor, I cannot crosscheck with the ingame codex right now but the mass effect wiki site is usually quite accurate and most of the entries are word for word from the ingame documentation so here is the defense part of the occulus entry from there:
“Defensive
The Oculus has an incredibly strong armor, which acts as its health.”
And:
“Oculus
Race Synthetic Type Vehicle Faction Reapers Armament Particle Beam Weapon Abilities Unknown Armor Very High Locations Tartarus Debris Field”
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Later on I may have time to chase down the exact ingame entry, but I am sure it says the same..
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Another thing: using Normandy for GARDIAN feats is an inexact representation of the system in fleet battles since Normandy is not an escort frigate; it is a scout/reconnaissance frigate (remember the designation SRV?). It has other priorities and has to sacrifice some capabilities to support the ones critical to its mission. No one ship can do everything well.
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“ Not a single shot then, my bad. But a handful a of shots did indeed melt through melt 60 centimeters of armor. They did not concentrate fire on one part of the ship, they were aiming at various parts of the ship. “
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With the size of the Covie ship they could afford to concentrate on several parts of the ship. Even with the worst fire discipline fire tends to concentrate on recognizable features even in the real world so there would be clumps at various spots.
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“ And did you read the part where they were doing that at ranges of 3000km and how much more powerful it would have to be at ranges of 10km and closer due to diffraction of the laser. “
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Yes I read it; it did not merit a specific comment since it is a natural part of laser operation. ME lasers work the same way, the difference is that doctrine insists that they not fire at targets beyond where their lasers have close to full effect (they seem to have very good efficiency based rules in addition to their generally excellent fire discipline in the ME universe). Since GARDIAN is computer controlled it obviously sticks to that doctrine exactly.
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“ And the fact is that the archer will take about a second cross the 10km range and impact a ME ship. So can the GARDIAN system in a single second track the hundreds/thousands of archer missiles, calculate the appropriate action to take for each missile send out a laser for each archer missile and get each and every one of them? “
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Yes, that is its purpose. You seem to be under the mistaken impression that the GARDIAN system cannot detect and track missiles outside of the 10km envelope where they guns fire. Like the real world phalanx they track them further out, schedule priorities, aim at the point where they will start firing and wait until the missiles get in range. Firing from long range like the UNSC does gives the system plenty of time to pre-calculate and optimize the fire for when they do get in range. Also if it is a single ship against a massive salvo like your scenario seems to indicate it would not be standing still, it would be maneuvering to string out the missiles as much as possible and ME ships are far more maneuverable than Halo ships which would give the archers problems trying to intercept the ship. With more than one ship the combined anti-missile fire would be very effective even without maneuvering, just look at how AGEIS ships support each other and the fleet they are in.
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“ ‘GARDIAN would have no problem taking out fighters in its range, it takes out frigates at those ranges too though it takes a lot longer than fighters, and missiles are generally one-shot kills’
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Not what the codex says. “
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Perhaps you missed the part that says “anti-missile/anti-fighter laser turrets”.
Or this part that comes from the tactics section: ”Only fighters and frigates enter CLOSE “knife fight” ranges of 10 or fewer kilometers. Fighters loose their disruptor torpedoes, bringing down a ship’s kinetic barriers and allowing it to be swarmed by frigates. GARDIAN lasers become viable weapons, swatting down fighters and boiling away warship armor.”
Then there is this quote from the fighter entry: “Starship GARDIAN defenses must be overwhelmed through swarm tactics. Fighter groups can take heavy casualties pressing their torpedo attacks home. Once fighter-launched torpedoes have crippled an enemy’s barriers, the mass accelerators on frigates and cruisers can make short work of them. “
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I do not have to provide additional proof that the GARDIAN system is 100% accurate until it starts overheating since you conviently provide that proof yourself with one of your quotes from the codex in your post #3881. And yes, no missiles are likely to get through until the system starts overheating unless fired in large numbers from very close range, especially since the missiles will have to fight the barrier too which they do not have the ME penetration aids like the mass multiplication trick the ME equivalents use.
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“ … You know the whole sluggish acceleration and being forced to sit there for 1 second to prevent damage to the frighter. “
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Where does it say the cold launch system takes a full second? It only says it waits until it clears the tube: “Like fighter launched torpedoes, Javelins are “cold-launched” for safety reasons, though they use a different approach. Resembling old-fashioned submarine torpedo tubes, Javelin torpedoes come packed in individual sealed tubes filled with compressed, inert gas. Opening the front of the tube causes escaping gases to push the torpedo into the vacuum, releasing a puff of crystals around the mouth of the tube. After completely clearing the tube, the torpedo ignites its thrusters.”
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Even with the mass multiplication slowing the torpedoes down they go visually as fast or faster in the cutscenes than the Halo missiles. Unfortunately neither has any official typical speeds listed to be completely sure, but the visuals do not support claims of superior speed for the archers as far as I can see. And once the ME forces realize that Halo ships do not have ME barriers they can remove the mass multiplication and the torpedoes would be considerably faster than they are in ME and their powered envelope would be much longer, though they might have to modify the targeting system to accept targets further away than they could get away with when fighting other ME units.
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Ironically it is the UNSCs primitive brute force approach of the MAC with its ridiculously massive and relatively slow projectile that make them more of a danger to the ME ships than the Covenant ships are with only their glassing beams and pulse lasers being able to get past the barriers. Intentionally detonating Archer missiles before they hit the barriers would not help the Halo side for the same reason the Covie plasma is useless against the barriers: the barriers handle light fast moving things better than slower heavier things (and of course plasma is about as light as a material object can get, and it travels at half lightspeed, it would be like flinging burning marshmallows at a tank, and that is giving the plasma the benefit of the doubt). Any submunitions would be lighter than the missile and travelling faster which just means it is even easier for the barrier to stop than the missile itself. Since there is no air in space to make a concussion wave the explosive warhead would have no effect on the barrier by that means either (and any hot gas emissions from the combusting warhead would be even more useless than the Covie plasma).
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“ ‘Archers are like anti-ship cruise missiles, they are slow over a long distance, while the ME missiles are all about acceleration, ECM, ECCM and dodge and do not mount slow long duration engines.’
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Can you read? Haven’t I areadly told you about the archer missiles speed being faster than disruptor torpedoes? “
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You said they are faster, but that is it. Do you have the average torpedo speeds in km/s to compare them to? Like I said above the visuals do not support a significant speed advantage for the archers.
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“ Also while we are in the topic of acceleration since the archer is launched at longer ranges than disruptor torpedoe means that that have more time to accelerate. “
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In theory that is true, though the few visuals I have been able to find of Halo missiles in flight seem to have them going at a more or less constant speed despite the engine flare. Apparently they are subject to B-movie ‘space drag’.
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This is getting too long and I am out of time for today…
‘Exactly, it was their first encounter with them and so they were working out how to deal with them. They do not know how heavy their armor is or what their weak spot may be or even if it has one, so obviously the GARDIAN would not be targeting the eyeball part specially. In ME3 there are flocks of the things acting as fighters and while they seem to be nasty in that role (hard to tell exactly since they cannot be engaged directly in that game) they do not seem to be quite as effective as they were against Normandy that first time so perhaps GARDIAN profiles exist for them since the encounter and they now shoot at the eyeball directly. As to the oculus armor, I cannot crosscheck with the ingame codex right now but the mass effect wiki site is usually quite accurate and most of the entries are word for word from the ingame documentation so here is the defense part of the occulus entry from there:’
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Still doesn’t explain why they didn’t even bother to use the GARDIAN against them.
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‘Yes I read it; it did not merit a specific comment since it is a natural part of laser operation. ME lasers work the same way, the difference is that doctrine insists that they not fire at targets beyond where their lasers have close to full effect (they seem to have very good efficiency based rules in addition to their generally excellent fire discipline in the ME universe). Since GARDIAN is computer controlled it obviously sticks to that doctrine exactly.’
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No the codex specifically mentions that the GARDIAN is so weak outside of it’s 10km range that it dosen’t do anything at all. And even in it’s 10km range it’s so weak that it takes multiple shots to take out a fighter.
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Only fighters and frigates enter CLOSE “knife fight” ranges of 10 or fewer kilometers. Fighters loose their disruptor torpedoes, bringing down a ship’s kinetic barriers and allowing it to be swarmed by frigates. GARDIAN lasers become VIABLE weapons, swatting down fighters and boiling away warship armor.
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‘Lasers are not blocked by the kinetic barriers of capital ships. However, the range of lasers limits their use to rare “knife fight”-range ship-to-ship combat.’
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‘Another thing: using Normandy for GARDIAN feats is an inexact representation of the system in fleet battles since Normandy is not an escort frigate; it is a scout/reconnaissance frigate (remember the designation SRV?). It has other priorities and has to sacrifice some capabilities to support the ones critical to its mission. No one ship can do everything well. ‘
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‘Frigates are light escort and scouting vessels. They often have extensive GARDIAN systems to provide anti-fighter screening for capital ships, and carry a squad of marines for security and groundside duty. Unlike larger vessels, frigates are able to land on planets. ‘
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‘I do not have to provide additional proof that the GARDIAN system is 100% accurate until it starts overheating since you conviently provide that proof yourself with one of your quotes from the codex in your post #3881. And yes, no missiles are likely to get through until the system starts overheating unless fired in large numbers from very close range, especially since the missiles will have to fight the barrier too which they do not have the ME penetration aids like the mass multiplication trick the ME equivalents use.’
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I don’t think you understand how missile defence systems work. It will take time for the GARDIAN system to aim the laser and for the laser to burn through the missile and it will take another small amount of time for the computer to switch targets and do it again. It is a very very small amount of time but remember what I told you about the archer only needing 1 second to cross the 10km range. Even less if we use our 27,777km/s speed. So a hundred archer missiles cross into 10km range and the GARDIAN system takes out 20 of them. However in the time taken for the GARDIAN system to take out the 20 archer missiles the rest of them have crossed half the distance. Also since they can change their trajectory the GARDIAN system will have to recalculate it’s firing plan taking even more time to destroy the rest. Then the GARDIAN fires again taking out 15(over-heating) of them but then the rest will have reached their target.
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‘Where does it say the cold launch system takes a full second?’
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‘To prevent damage to the parent craft, torpedoes must be “cold-launched” meaning they are released before their thrusters ignite. Aligning with its target trajectory, a fighter releases a torpedo and immediately thrusts away, while the torpedo continues to coast towards its target. After the fighter is clear, (no more than a SECOND after launch) the torpedo activates and its mass field and thrusters away from the fighter and towards its target.’
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‘Even with the mass multiplication slowing the torpedoes down they go visually as fast or faster in the cutscenes than the Halo missiles. Unfortunately neither has any official typical speeds listed to be completely sure, but the visuals do not support claims of superior speed for the archers as far as I can see. And once the ME forces realize that Halo ships do not have ME barriers they can remove the mass multiplication and the torpedoes would be considerably faster than they are in ME and their powered envelope would be much longer, though they might have to modify the targeting system to accept targets further away than they could get away with when fighting other ME units.;
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‘You said they are faster, but that is it. Do you have the average torpedo speeds in km/s to compare them to? Like I said above the visuals do not support a significant speed advantage for the archers.’
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‘In theory that is true, though the few visuals I have been able to find of Halo missiles in flight seem to have them going at a more or less constant speed despite the engine flare. Apparently they are subject to B-movie ‘space drag’.’
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I have already provided a rough estimation of archer missile speed(27,777km/s). Pls show me a video where you see archer missile and disruptor torpedoes speed. Also another advanatge halo has over ME, they can take out 10 disruptor torpedoe for the price of one. As explained earlier the range and power advantage pulse lasers have against ME’s GARDIAN means that they can snipe ME’s fighters and frigates before they can even deliver their payload thus they will have much less targets to worry about. Whereas ME will not be dealing with fighters and frigates, they will be dealing with individual missiles meaning that they will have alot more targets to deal with than usual.
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‘ronically it is the UNSCs primitive brute force approach of the MAC with its ridiculously massive and relatively slow projectile that make them more of a danger to the ME ships than the Covenant ships are with only their glassing beams and pulse lasers being able to get past the barriers. Intentionally detonating Archer missiles before they hit the barriers would not help the Halo side for the same reason the Covie plasma is useless against the barriers: the barriers handle light fast moving things better than slower heavier things (and of course plasma is about as light as a material object can get, and it travels at half lightspeed, it would be like flinging burning marshmallows at a tank, and that is giving the plasma the benefit of the doubt). Any submunitions would be lighter than the missile and travelling faster which just means it is even easier for the barrier to stop than the missile itself. Since there is no air in space to make a concussion wave the explosive warhead would have no effect on the barrier by that means either (and any hot gas emissions from the combusting warhead would be even more useless than the Covie plasma).’
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I have already given you the codex quote which states that Reapers suffer from heat damage from the Thanix cannon. And I have already proved that Covie plasma is much hotter so at the very least ME will be taking quite a bit of heat damage from it. Also you ignored the part where the archer missiles have kiloton firepower and have a speed of 27,777km/s which gives them quite a bit of kinetic energy.
But where do you get that speed from?
There are also space mines that halo can use.
I wonder what kind of advantage can the spartan 4s bring.
‘From what I hear there are few if any flood left alive at this point in Halo, that sounds like a fairly substantial flaw in that strategy. Also ME has so many inorganic forces that their biological ones do not have to engage the flood at all which would leave them rather short on recruits.’
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One flood infection form is enough seeing as they don’t need sentient life to reproduce just biomass. And I have already proved that halo#7 has flood research facilities and yes the UNSC know where this halo is. Anyway you underestimate the flood. Halo will just have to find a remote colony world and unleash the flood and boom instant gravemind. Not only that but then halo will from their one colony world , navigation data on the mass relays and inhabited planets, number of ME forces, ME tech to research and reverse engineere and maybe a maybe a starship or two. And then when a ME force comes to investigate the colony(beginning of ME2 anyone) the flood might infect them and steal their starship. That the flood will render the planet inhabitable for next to nothing. And then halo could using the navigation data, infect hundreds of worlds simultaneously by ‘jumping’ directly above a planet and releasing a couple of flood infection forms. ME will be overwhelmed. The reapers and the geth will be overwhelmed. And the gravemind has some kind of magic hacking power that could help out against the geth and reapers. And the reapers and geth , what can they do? They are basically fighting against their allies, to stop the flood they have to nuke the infection point and fast before the flood spread to the rest of the planet. In which case they will have to nuke the entire planet to get rid of the flood entirely. So once the flood spreads beyond a certain point the planet is effectively inhabitable.
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Also I would like to know why does everbody consider ME ships to be very maneuverable? The only ships that doesn’t just sit there and pound away at their target is the frigates and fighters.
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‘The UNSC isn’t really a factor in space combat- their MAC rounds are so slow they’re unlikely to ever hit anything, their armor is so weak a ME frigate would rape them and if they fire enough archer missiles to overwhelm the GARDIAN systems the ME ships could simply outrun them.’
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I want some prove pls. As mentioned above the only ships that doesn’t just sit on it’s ass are frigates and fighters. And while their MAC are slow compared to dreadnought rounds, what about Cruiser rounds. The firepower the cruiser display means that it’s mass accelerator rounds must be slow indeed and yet they are a viable choice in combat. Their KBs can be brought down with a few disruptor torpedoes which means that a frigate would rape them. Their KBs are sub kiloton which means that a dreadnought can one shot it every 2 seconds and yet they are atill a viable choice in combat.
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“One flood infection form is enough seeing as they don’t need sentient life to reproduce just biomass. And I have already proved that halo#7 has flood research facilities and yes the UNSC know where this halo is.”
But nobody on Team Halo would ever release the Flood. CIS still applies, man.
Wait, I thought CIS doesn’t apply in Universe matches?
‘But nobody on Team Halo would ever release the Flood. CIS still applies, man.’
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As I said before ONI will probably do it. They are the guys who considered nuking civilians to contain civil unrest. Besides they aren’t unleashing the flood on their own galaxy, they are unleashing them on ME’s galaxy. Once the match is won for halo, their two galaxies are brought back to their respective universe the flood will be remain on ME’s galaxy not halo’s.
“Wait, I thought CIS doesn’t apply in Universe matches?”
Doesn’t it? Of course PIS doesn’t, but I was under the impression CIS still does.
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“As I said before ONI will probably do it.”
There’s a big difference between nuking something and unleashing the single greatest threat their universe has ever faced; the very same things that took down the Forerunners.
Another thing. While Universe matches force disparate factions in each universe to fight on the same side, there’s nothing that states they necessarily work togather. There’s nothing forcing, say, the Eldar and Chaos from 40k to work together all buddy-buddy. There have even been fights involving, say, the Tyranids eating everyone, or Chaos hitting everyone with, say, the Obliterator Virus. If they let the Flood out, there’s nothing stopping the Flood from eating them all despite them being on the same team, and then just carrying on the fight itself. So it’s not like they have a “they’re on our team. They can’t eat us” thing going.
‘There’s a big difference between nuking something and unleashing the single greatest threat their universe has ever faced; the very same things that took down the Forerunners.
Another thing. While Universe matches force disparate factions in each universe to fight on the same side, there’s nothing that states they necessarily work togather. There’s nothing forcing, say, the Eldar and Chaos from 40k to work together all buddy-buddy. There have even been fights involving, say, the Tyranids eating everyone, or Chaos hitting everyone with, say, the Obliterator Virus. If they let the Flood out, there’s nothing stopping the Flood from eating them all despite them being on the same team, and then just carrying on the fight itself. So it’s not like they have a “they’re on our team. They can’t eat us” thing going.’
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There is also a big difference in unleashing them in the halo galaxy by giving them the keys to all of their ships and allowing them to spread freely. No, they are unleashing them in a separate galaxy that when they win will be gone from their universe. Halo will control when and where the flood are used. On the ships the flood will most likey be kept in secure storage. And in this match the flood can’t turn on their allies so they can’t steal any halo ships by force. So they be used on ME planets and ships and the only flood in the halo galaxy will be infection forms and flood spore kept in secure storage. And before you talk about how the flood can steal a ME starship and FTL it all the way to halo’s galaxy, remember that ME’s ships have shit FTL and they will run out of fuel way before they can reach halo’s galaxy. And when halo wins the match, all of the flood infected planets in the ME galaxy will get transported into their respective universe.
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Also the flood are intergalactic, whether or not halo lets them out does not change the fact that they will get tested by the flood eventually in the future. Also it is revealed in halo:primordium that the floods does not want to kill every human they can get it’s hands on. They want to test the humans and once they deem them worthy, they back off for a couple of millenium before returing and testing them again. Considering that they have passed the flood’s test during the events of halo 3, the flood will probably not want to test them again for another couple of millenium.
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Also where does it say that people on the same side can attack each other. I never saw people whinning about how the reaper will be more likey to kill ME rather than halo.
Can anyone comment my analyze about the standard MAC ?
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Quote from the FactPile Debating Rules :
” In this instance, all factions are to consider the opposition as a lethal menace to be addressed immediately regardless of PIS or CIS in place, forming an indisputable alliance for that universe. ”
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During Halo 3, the flood were our ally because of the imminent activation of the halos .
It’s not like the flood is a mindless beast .
Halo side doesn’t even need to use the flood on a halo/ME world, releasing the flood on any world with animals would raise the number enough to lunch the invasion . Stopping the rising of the flood is impossible . The only chance is that the ME side kills all flood in the galaxy before the halo side can find one but at the beginning the ME side wouldn’t know where are the halos . .
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“The reproduction of the flood follows a exponentially law, once a now host is transformed, it releases 5-… flood spores that can at their turn infect each one a new host .
It should go like that 1-5-25-100-400-..-… . If we consider that after each iteration, the quantity is multiplied by 3 (that is surely underestimated ) and if an iteration is 5 mins, then by the 19 iterations, the population would already be one billion . That is under two hours ?! Of course in a real situation it would be more slower as the expansion of the flood will be limited by the finite amount of biomass in the area but it gives you an idea of the crazy potential of the flood .
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By the way,as I read my post, I found many errors, I’m sorry for that. if it can help, English is a language I learnt in school. I know no more than 0.5 % of the English language . It doesn’t the fact I can still think logically and mathematically though.
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“27,777km/s which gives them quite a bit of kinetic energy.”
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No it isn’t that much, if we consider one archer missile has a mass of 20 kg, the kinetic energy would be around 2 t TNT .
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Intentionally detonating Archer missiles before they hit the barriers would not help the Halo side for the same reason the Covie plasma is useless against the barriers: the barriers handle light fast moving things better than slower heavier things (and of course plasma is about as light as a material object can get, and it travels at half lightspeed, it would be like flinging burning marshmallows at a tank, and that is giving the plasma the benefit of the doubt). Any submunitions would be lighter than the missile ”
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True . I have counter argument but before I post them, I need to know if you agree with my MAC post as my thoughts are based on this axiom .
“Once the match is won for halo, their two galaxies are brought back to their respective universe the flood will be remain on ME’s galaxy not halo’s.”
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Wasn’t it brought up before that they were apart of some amalgam galaxy?
Well whether it is the case of not, it doesn’t matter, even if all is left at the end of the match is the flood, it’s still a victory for halo .