- last post: 01.01.0001 12:00 AM PDT
I'm still fond of the find the artifact before the Covenant and run around with it till they decide to talk....although they might just not bother wanting to talk and just obliterate the area your in...but due to the artifacts religious significance they probably wouldnt just nuke the area to try and get it. Big problem I see with this idea is as soon as the Covenant have what they want, theres still nothing stopping them obliterating Earth anyhow.
On the ground we're always pretty good, our big problem to date has been the fact our ships are being utterly owned in space. The only victorys we've had have also come with massive losses, or if we've massively outnumbered the Covenant. The going rate is something like us needing 10 cruisers to take down 1 of theres. As someone said above yes nukes work against Cove ships...but only once the shields have been dropped (like with the Keyes manover...gotta love how he did that). As also said above I like the idea of using the knowledge Cortana learned off the designs of the Covenant plasma weapons, but I don't think we'll have enough time to really implement something like that sadly.
People have mentioned evacutating Earth...urmm, HOW? theres how many billions of people (thought I read 25 billion by this time, probably wrong though) and thats going to also mean huge resource movement to feed them and house them at some destination. It will also mean useage of lots of ships...more than is left in the UNSC fleet thats for sure. Realistically they are really screwed, we can't move them, and its not like we have anywhere to move them too anyhow. We've been pushing in our corner now, and Earth is our last stand.
I was thinking alot about those floating shipwards as was used around Reach as a shield to protect the fleet. That could work again to help keep our ships firing and in one bit. I can see the Covenant will again go headlong for the stations powering the Super Macs, so they will really need to be protected this time, but they are really gonna be hit hard just like they were on Reach. Orbitally the Super Macs are our best line of defence we have. Some people mentioned the idea of using our ships to ram into the Covenant ships, it works yes...but then again we're also loosing a good ship ourselves, and yes the Covenant are sending a large fleet after us, but its not all there fleet. If we loose all our ships in kamikazi attacks then we wont have any ships, or the staff to man them when the next line of Covenant attack.
Attacking via AIs hmm....thats a great idea actually. Although could prove costly for us also. When Cortana was on the Unyeilding Elephant fighting that odd AI it was the first real Covenant AI to pose a threat. It was damn devious to say the least. And if they've fitted those out all over the fleet now, that's going to be a real problem to combat. Not impossible, but will be a hard fight for our AIs. And if we lost what about the data of that AI...don't want the engine shut down commands for our fleet getting out.
We really need to draw a line in the sand and stop them good this time, give them a damn good kicking and make sure they know not to come back. But no matter how I look at things, it seems like we've really lost already :( We'll find a way, its just a question of how the hell will we pull this one off.