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Subject: How Did reach Fall?
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My question is how did Reach fall? In The Fall of Reach Chapter 31 Page 283, it says:
"FLLETCOM didn't really expect anything to attack the Reach military complex. It was the heart of the UNSC military operations. If anything did attack it, the battle would be a short one. There were twenty Super MAC guns in orbit.

So When the Covenant Did attack Reach Page 296:
"How Many? He asked. I count three hundred fourteen covenant ships captain. Cortana replied." ... . "They propelled a three-thousand ton projectile at tremendous speed and could reload within five seconds.

So within one minute they could fire 400 times. If if only the super MAC guns fired it would take just under one minute to destroy every covenant ship assuming everyone of them hit.

on page 297 It says 4 nuclear mines detonated in the center of formation PLUS there was the 150 or so ships firing as well. So with all that theres no way REACH in Space could have fallen. Now when the covenant dropped thousands of troops they might have lost the ground, but The Pillar of Autumn alone had a least a battalion of Marines so the larger Cruisers had to have had more they could have deployed to the ground to hold off the assault.

Now obviously REACH had to fall to go to Halo but they events in the book just don't add up. There would have had be around a 500 ship covenant assault or so. So why didnt Nylund realize all this in change it so it was more probable? Surly he had to check something like this?

[Edited on 04.29.2007 6:07 PM PDT]

  • 04.29.2007 6:05 PM PDT
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Persicsion silp jumps + plazma + sheilds + the Covenant usually win space engagements = the Covenant competely -blam!- the Human defence forces.

Plain and simple.

  • 04.29.2007 6:37 PM PDT
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actually i did my math wrong. its 240 shots in a minute. But still all they had to do was keep shooting for a minute or two while a couple ships guarded against the precision jumps

  • 04.29.2007 6:54 PM PDT

No signature found. Click here to change this.

Simple. He slipped. *rimshot*

  • 04.29.2007 6:59 PM PDT
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A Elite hit the sign Reach down and it fell

  • 04.29.2007 9:52 PM PDT

Elites, Spartans, Flood... They're all the same.

They all end up falling to me!

K15

They wiped it.

They thought the Ark was on there...

stupid fools.

  • 04.30.2007 10:26 AM PDT

Halo CE......(sigh) the good ol' days......

“Go, stranger, and to Lacedaemon tell that here, obeying her behests, we fell.”

not all of the mac shots hit their targets. think about it, its a hit or miss weapon you fire it once along a ships trajectory with the proper lead, but if that ship is far enough away where it has ample time to change course, then the round misses completely

  • 04.30.2007 3:56 PM PDT
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yeah but with the nuclear mines and the fleet? I dont think so. Oh and for the other guy, they didnt even know about the ark till Halo 2 and reach fell before Halo 1 so I don't think you know what you're talking about

  • 04.30.2007 4:29 PM PDT

Think about what you said. Have you read the other books? The Covenant ships have SHIELDS. If you read another book, a fraking NUCLEAR MISSILE wouldn't break the shields. And most of the UNSC ships were using smaller MAC cannons, while the ships couldn't send troops to the ground cuzza teh fighting and projectiles. And how would you know where the precision points would end up? They could jump anywhere.

I believe that about sums it up.

  • 04.30.2007 4:52 PM PDT
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I haven't read the books, but didn't the Covenant land on Reach and take the MAC Guns offline? If so, that would be why they were victorious.

  • 04.30.2007 7:14 PM PDT

ya, but they had to go through 100- 150 human ships and spartans. BUT like many have said, they have had sheilds, but like it says in pg 296 in the sentence below the number of covie ships, it says

"Captain Keyes couldn't tear his gaze away from the Ships. The UNSC only wont battles with the Covenant forces when they outnumbered the enemy three to one . . .not the othe way around"

EDIT: sry, misread something.

[Edited on 04.30.2007 7:39 PM PDT]

  • 04.30.2007 7:39 PM PDT

An individual MAC round doesnt always kill the ship, sometimes it just damages it. Not to mention a few round probably missed. Also the covenant ships could have used their presicion slipspace jumps to dodge rounds.
Covenant Ships > Human Ships

  • 05.01.2007 4:07 PM PDT

Posted by: the art of halo2
An individual MAC round doesnt always kill the ship, sometimes it just damages it. Not to mention a few round probably missed. Also the covenant ships could have used their presicion slipspace jumps to dodge rounds.
Covenant Ships > Human Ships


Except precision jumps were only used to take out the first few MAC guns, first 5 I believe. If you read a bit further, it shows that the ships were powered down for about 10 seconds after they jumped. And for the rest, they just sent hundreds of ships to the surface. Can't do much against that, can you.

  • 05.01.2007 7:03 PM PDT

Wow, that's an easy question to answer:
It tripped.

  • 05.01.2007 7:05 PM PDT
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Posted by: theSpazzySpartan
Wow, that's an easy question to answer:
It tripped.


hahaha

  • 05.01.2007 7:34 PM PDT

Not a problem.

  • 05.01.2007 7:49 PM PDT
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The covenant went to surface in ground Op that wiped out countless marines, and I believe they shut down some critical component of the MAC - and if you think Master Chief stopped that, he destroyed the navigational database so the Covenant wouldn't find Earth (which ended up being futile).

As everyone else has been repeatedly saying, the ships are faster, have powerful shields (a whole longsword and a nuke from the Gettysburg couldn't take it down). And the rounds could just damage, not disable the ship, but I admit - that's not very valid:
"That round could cut clean through a Covenant Capital Ship," - Johnson, The Armory.
The slipspace technology argument I disagree with, because the Covenant can't make exact measurements, and definitely can't use it so fast they can avoid MAC gun targets.
And yes, Covenant Ships>Human Ships - in one of the books, one ship could hold off three or more human ships.

I'm sure there's more reasons, but that was just off the top of my head. Prove the first one wrong and you've got yourself some good observation.

  • 05.01.2007 8:48 PM PDT
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Also, the MAC Cannons are all in a geosynchronous orbit (They are named after where they are positioned, e.g. Cairo.) So not all the cannons are going to get a shot.

  • 05.02.2007 10:17 AM PDT
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Posted by: DuDisNow
A Elite hit the sign Reach down and it fell

  • 05.02.2007 3:50 PM PDT
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Posted by: Liu Xuande
Also, the MAC Cannons are all in a geosynchronous orbit (They are named after where they are positioned, e.g. Cairo.) So not all the cannons are going to get a shot.


that would be in Halo 2 on Earth not on REACH, at least not in the book, i assumed they were above in orbit so they could get a shot off from anywhere

  • 05.06.2007 6:12 PM PDT
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I seriously needed to update my signature. I'll never forget it, though.

For everyone saying the Covenant could survive a MAC round, they couldn't survive one from the Super MAC cannons, and could only take about 3 of the smaller ones, but could take less if they were hit by missiles. The Covenant also didn't know how to do precision slip space jumps, as Cortana said in First Strike. So in the first minute the Covenant should have lost(if all shots hit) 290 ships(this isn't including the fact one Super MAC round killed multiple ships due to explosives). If we were to include the splash damage in that, it would be more like their whole fleet.

[Edited on 05.07.2007 1:42 PM PDT]

  • 05.07.2007 1:39 PM PDT
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Posted by: SpartanElite117
For everyone saying the Covenant could survive a MAC round, they couldn't survive one from the Super MAC cannons, and could only take about 3 of the smaller ones, but could take less if they were hit by missiles. The Covenant also didn't know how to do precision slip space jumps, as Cortana said in First Strike. So in the first minute the Covenant should have lost(if all shots hit) 290 ships(this isn't including the fact one Super MAC round killed multiple ships due to explosives). If we were to include the splash damage in that, it would be more like their whole fleet.

and to the ground conflict, there was an entire army of spartans plus legions of the best troops the UNSC had to offer. and if i remember right didnt the humans have the upper hand in ground battles? also the most advanced bunkers, forts and defences in the entire human empire. how could we of lost?

  • 05.07.2007 6:35 PM PDT
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Posted by: pwngwafflepwng
the covenant glassed the planet.


*Buzzers goes off* I'm sorry that the wrong anwers, maybe if you read the books you would know they only glassed half of Reach.
Covies manged to get close enought to Reach, to deploy Dropships full of ground troops to disable the MAC guns. Once down Capital ships
would drop off more ground forces. which lead to the destruction of Reach!

Edit: just so the post above mine!

Elites>Marines, Spartan-II = Elites

The Sparatns split up to try to save Reach saldy that was the nail in the coffin!

NOTE: All your bases blong to me!

[Edited on 05.10.2007 8:15 PM PDT]

  • 05.10.2007 8:13 PM PDT
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Posted by: Whgresiak
Posted by: Liu Xuande
Also, the MAC Cannons are all in a geosynchronous orbit (They are named after where they are positioned, e.g. Cairo.) So not all the cannons are going to get a shot.


that would be in Halo 2 on Earth not on REACH, at least not in the book, i assumed they were above in orbit so they could get a shot off from anywhere


Not trying to be condecending, but actually if you read it closer, The super MACs are in Geosynch, and Liu Xuande used Cairo as an example to how they were named. And the reason the MACs are in Geosynch is that they need to be hard wired to the reactor complex in order to work. Although it seems we would have gotten compact nuclear fusion reactors to power these things in 500 years time from now.

  • 05.10.2007 8:32 PM PDT

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