Telepads vs Landing pads, an assault on reason

KristallNacht wrote:tl;dr

but from what I saw, RL makes more convincing points. It's entirely impractical for them to use the teleportation spires, especially considering all the information we have on covenant assault tactics throughout the canon.

1. They don't have them.
2. The purpose of the spires was undetected deployments, which is COMPLETELY against Covenant Engagement Doctrine. Why would the baddest group of motherfuckers in the galaxy need to hide away?

Exactly, the Covenant are like the Klingons of the Halo unvierse, which is why they use plasma swords, and largely short ranged weapons and not sniper rifles. I'm sure the Elites would be foaming at the mouth to be the first to touch down on Reach to kill as many humans as possible before dying gloriously in battle.

Then in the later games, they apparently use long range weapons for some reason, because the Devs thought the Covenant needed alien versions of the human weapons and vehicles because Halo 1 wasn't EPIC enough. Because the aliens need to be alien humans and not aliens.

And with that, Rasq, go right on and post the Covenant Ranged Weapon debate.

BBJynne wrote:

KristallNacht wrote:2. The purpose of the spires was undetected deployments, which is COMPLETELY against Covenant Engagement Doctrine. Why would the baddest group of motherfuckers in the galaxy need to hide away?

It's not like the routinely use active camo on their soldiers and vehicles or anything...


Oh wait

except when do we see active camo on elites? infiltration teams dealing with artifacts. No vehicles have ever been active camo'd and the only time anything was hidden at all was during reach.

The Covenant used camo on the Pillar of Autumn, and that's not an artifact. Also, in TFoR the Covenant ordered their ships so that they would appear to be asteroids, basically camoflauge.

Angatar wrote:The Covenant used camo on the Pillar of Autumn, and that's not an artifact. Also, in TFoR the Covenant ordered their ships so that they would appear to be asteroids, basically camoflauge.

Actually, no, they used Osoona's as the Prophet's eyes an ears, but it's clear the elites didn't like doing such an honorless task. They tried to capture Captain Keyes and ultimately they did. I can't quite recall if they were also going after Cortana, but they were looking to capture Keyes alive, something best done when Keyes wouldn't get himself killed or kill himself if he knew he was about to get captured by space aliens.

The Covenant fleets always appear to mass-slipspace wherever they go, probably from a station similar to High Charity or the UH, the point being they're always clustered when they jump anywhere. Them appearing as a an asteroid or a comet within the slipspace dimension by the UNSC listening posts is just a side effect and probably not something they could foresee. I think when they zoomed in on the comet shaped fleet, they could make out some of the extrusions as the profiles of known Covenant ships, so they weren't really hiding it. I guess the alternative to the ships jumping together is if they spread out and arrived at equadistant points around the planet so they would get blown up faster. I'm sure whichever Shimpaster ordered that attack would get an earful from the prophet of reasoning and logic.

Rasq, please post your rebuttal here now, so we can get the Halo Remake thread going. If an argument isn't balanced in terms of the abundance of evidence favoring one side over the other, then the argument is mean.

Mean =/= Logical.

Ringleader wrote:Rasq, please post your rebuttal here now, so we can get the Halo Remake thread going. If an argument isn't balanced in terms of the abundance of evidence favoring one side over the other, then the argument is mean.

Mean =/= Logical.

You know what?
It's going to come. But it's not going to be a point by point rebuttal, hein? Just gotta get stuff typed up, gotta...

Ringleader wrote:I made myself look like an idiot here? Ohh, gee, I promise next time, I'll make up a theory, sell it as fact, and expect you to believe it, then come across less then convincingly so I appear to be the underdog. Everyone loves the underdog.

I went about doing so in a mean way, so I must be wrong.

Ringleader, I was wrong to use terms that suggested that my theory was fact. But look around you. You are not doing yourself any favors with your condescending attitude. So why continue to post like that?

Now for my points
Teleporters
-Saying that the gravity lifts are 'original' is not true. The concept dates back to the old UFO movies/cartoons, where a UFO would beam a light at something and pull it up. They're more commonly known now as tractor beams. Don't know where a teleportation/tractor beam has been used before, so I guess that's rather original.
-The teleportation is a canonical part of the Haloverse, Ringleader, regardless of its use as plot grease. The Forerunner had it, and the Covenant would probably have had access to it. That is not certain proof that they would have teleporation technology, but it's a good indicator.
And 343 Guilty Spark may not have teleported the Chief directly to the index because of protocol or how the teleportation system was set up.. The security and doors inside the Library were intended to keep Flood out and only let in a Reclaimer. It didn't work very well, but that's really the nature of the Flood, isn't it?
Teleportation outward from the Index storage makes sense, as whatever has gotten there in the first place would have passed or destroyed the security on its way in. Forcing it to walk back through potentially Flood-Infested checkpoints is redundant.
-Yeah, the Phantoms (and the Spirits in Halo Wars >.<) had gravity lifts without a teleporter. For all we know, cruisers might have a more technical system because they have multiple cargo holds.
-The assertion that we can't know if a Covenant ship uses teleportation unless we've seen the schematics ignores the fact that we HAVE seen the floor layout. Multiple cargo rooms with gravity lift/teleporation plates, and only one gravity lift outside backs up the teleportation theory.
-There's multiple cargo rooms around a single gravity lift room. This is probably for structural reasons. Still, a teleportation system solves the problem of hauling equipment from one side of the ship to another.
-

Miscellanea
-Despite the fact that the Frigates could have pounded the shields on the teleportation towers with MACs, the fact that they had you shut them down suggests that they tried, and the shields held. As for nukes and such, assuming they got past the AA turrets, a military commander is probably more willing to spend them against a Corvette menacing an armored column than towers that are probably filling defensive roles.
As for how effective these bubble shields can be if they let a slow-moving vehicle in (Albeit while frying the electronics or something) I say they're about as effective as the bubble shields in Halo 3. =D
-Slipspace bombs might not have been used due to the fact that they are, as per Carter, The Long Life And Possible Death of J. Preston Cole, and Ghosts of Onyx, "The most advanced and expensive equipment Humanity has to offer." Wonder what happens if you have two of them on a single ship, one inactive in Slipspace?
-From what I heard on HBO, the interior of the Autumn was designed near the beginning of the game's development cycle. The exterior was modeled towards the end, and this is one of the biggest reasons why the two don't match up (Aside from Rule of Cool)
-Ringleader's whole point about teleporters being inefficient relies on the teleporters being used for offense and the ships being able to instantly pick up and drop off troops. Corvettes need Phantoms and Spirits to pick up troops (Well, they might have a gravity lift, but dropships are faster), which the teleporters can handle. But if the teleporters are defensive structures around a dig, then their role is to bring in reinforcements from across a continent within seconds. If Corvettes don't have to fill that transport role, then they're free to go on the offense, raiding cities, airbases, orbital defenses, what have you.

Ringleader wrote:

My argument is that the teleporters of Reach are of a PtP system that doesn't require physical linkage, and may be more technical, hence its mounting on a Supercarrier.

That's really not your argument, thats the unfourtunatle factuality of the game. Your argument was that it, made sense I think? And how it was really working in the other games all along!

Yes, essentially.

Ringleader wrote:You know what else can fit inside of a corvette hanger bay? Thousands of troops and not a Teletower.

If you're saying that the upper part of a teleportation tower would have significantly impacted the Corvette's ability to carry troops, I counter with the assertion that such a warship wouldn't have much capacity anyways. The upper part of the tower, folded up like it appears to have been, would hardly have filled the hangar we saw in LNoS.

Ringleader wrote:[Exactly, the Covenant are like the Klingons of the Halo unvierse, which is why they use plasma swords, and largely short ranged weapons and not sniper rifles. I'm sure the Elites would be foaming at the mouth to be the first to touch down on Reach to kill as many humans as possible before dying gloriously in battle.

Can't help but think that a little Flanderization has gone on with the Elites. They are a warrior society, but that doesn't preclude the use of ranged weapons. Hell, the original manual states that they are excellent tacticians.

Shipmasters got their rank through a meritocracy and hundreds, if not thousands, of kills. Doesn't quite happen to a race of death-seekers.

Now for something I posted on HBO, which got somewhat favorable reviews in the thread. I acknowledge that the TFoR timeline is shot, but at least this makes sense of the events in Reach. Feel free to nitpick, just go beyond "that's stupid!"

If you want to know what my theory is regarding the Supercarrier, the Covenant presence on Reach, and why they didn't engage Humanity, keep reading.

To me, it has all the hallmarks of a stealth Forerunner Artifact recovery. A cloaked Supercarrier, able to carry so many corvettes and troops with it, could quickly plunder a sizeable Forerunner reliquary.

The cloaking supercarrier and towers that can mask the energy signatures of an army spread out across a small continent begs the question of what they are hiding from. Certainly not the UNSC; Standard Operating Procedures with a capital ship that large would be to sterilize the Human taint and then get to work excavating. The only other possibility, I think, is to conceal themselves from other Covenant.

-Cloaking would allow them to conceal an excavation from other Covenant that might arrive in-system. The less talking they have to do, the smaller the chance that word might leak back to someone with power.

-We already know that the Prophets have conspired independently and against each other, and the circumstances surrounding their rise to power don't make for a healthy working relationship. Mercy is there because they needed a third body with a pulse (And because he heard you-know-what). Truth was pulled into this by Regret's rash actions and pure ambition. And Regret is far too direct for Truth's taste.

-If one of the Prophets (I'm thinking Truth here. Barring obfuscating stupidity, Regret don't seem like the type) sought to acquire Forerunner artifacts under the table for his own purposes, he could have collected a small task force and headed it with Elites loyal to him. Truth could have kept Regret in the dark about the output of such-and-such a shipyard, and called in favors from particularly devoted Dochas. Regret could have shuffled reserves around and done the same trick with the shipyard to get a single supercarrier.

-The Fleet of Discrete Reclamation (Working title) could have been the fleet that had followed the Sigma Octanus artifact. Having discovered human presence, but maybe not realizing that this Humanity's base of operations, they could have decided to move in stealthily rather than risk a prolonged battle and losing to those orbital MAC guns. Important artifacts, such as the Forerunner database under Sword Base and similar finds.

-Further engagements after Sword Base could have been discouraged due to the impending assault on Reach. The Fleet of Discrete Reclamation needed to get their work done and bugger out fast.