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This topic has moved here: Subject: Unexplainable errors in the Halo canon. (Spoilers)
  • Subject: Unexplainable errors in the Halo canon. (Spoilers)
Subject: Unexplainable errors in the Halo canon. (Spoilers)

Posted by: MLG Armor King
no offense 'stosh', but I don't think you're funny
Posted by: stosh
No offense, but I don't think you're the armor 'king'.
Map Spotlight - Hydra XXIII
Best. Thread. Ever.
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Posted by: manwith

Posted by: Telec
Posted by: Hysterical Joker
A Supercarrier is not something you can keep quiet.
I didn't notice it until it decloaked.


I believe the Covenant fleet was there the whole time, but just being cloaked - preparing to attack in a single decisive strike on August 30.
Well that doesn't make sense when Auntie Dot was repeating "Slipspace Rupture detected" 50 million times every time a ship broke slipspace.

  • 09.30.2010 3:35 PM PDT


Posted by: Dj Liamo
I don't buy into the arguement of "games overriding books canon" at all, especially as Bungie (with their mysterious 'bible' that has the key elements of the Halo universe) and 343 both claim that they have gone to painstaking lenghts to flesh out the Halo universe. It's dissapointing for me because as a fan of both the games and books, Reach, although highly enjoyable and a good stand alone story, really ruined the whole universe for me.

I really don't think I'll bother buying the books that continue the GoO storyline, might have a look at the Forerunner books though.

Many said that Reach would effectively break the Haloverse....and it looks like it has!

Can anyone suggest a practical way to fix this (if there is one)?

P.S = Posts like # turokman2000's above are the reason i still come here. Brilliant post :D !
True but heres the thing a book came out before the game, so wouldnt that mean books over games, then again i believe every bit of books and games fit.

  • 09.30.2010 6:43 PM PDT
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Thanks for Team Snipers Bungie.
Mythic Member, Legendary Member and back and forth. i just can't make up my mind!
Campaign - Halo C.E.>Halo 2>Halo 3
Multiplayer - Halo 2>Halo 3>Halo C.E.
Just about every thing I post is my opinion and nothing more. Be subjective. Respect other's opinions. Try to understand other's point of view.


Posted by: Stardriver 1

Posted by: privet caboose

Posted by: The One Blarg
The universe elite? So god damn laughable. Get the -blam!- down off that pedestal.



The simple fact of the matter is, there's a handful of members in the universe section who have complete knowledge of pretty much everything Halo related. They've analyzed books, comics, and games. And they've made theories that took tons of time and effort.

Then, there are those who just have a gist of what's going on. That's why I mentioned, "Universe Elite," because they're the most well known members from the universe community. If you were around this forum more often, you might've taken less offense to that statement.


Dang, I really thought this pointless thread was going to die.

What you choose to do with your own time is your business, but reading all the published material does not make you God. If there are any Gods in the Halo Universe they now live in 343 studios. All those "tons of time and effort" mean nothing because it's not your job to create the Universe.

Yes, there are, have been, and always will be inconsistencies, and only 343 will live or die by how well they deal with them. I'm sure your opinions have been noted by the True Gods. Their Will be Done.

(Cue Halo Monk chant)

Out of curiosity do you really think that because you can be condescending that makes you right, or even intelligent. Any moron can talk down to another person, especially when they don't know what they are talking about. they just probably don't know they look like a fool.

I hate to break it to you but there are people that have done a lot more than read the books. They've studied, made time lines, made star charts, etc... Just because you, or I, don't have the inclination to do those things that doesn't make them stupid. Every person has a right to enjoy things in their own way.

If this thread is such a waste to you then why on Earth do you keep coming back. If a thread is stupid then the best thing you could do is ignore it.

Long story short. Quit acting like an ass hat and if you don't like that other people disagree fine, don't promote them and stay out of a well thought out thread.

  • 09.30.2010 8:40 PM PDT

There is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never care for anything else thereafter.

This ranking system people seem to be pulling from the Star Wars canon isnt really a viable way at looking at the canon in Halo when you consider this panel and really take it into consideration. It is implicitely made clear by pretty much all of the authors of the various novels (including the upcoming Forerunner trilogy Greg Bear) that one of the great things about the Halo Universe is the fact that the books actually count canonically in respect to the entire overarching fictional storyline. This means they count just as much as the games. To illustrate this point I am going to quote Kevin Grace who, speaking on the Halo Universe in this panel says:

"Thats my favourite thing and probably the most terrifying thing about my job and what we do at the studio is because everything does count..."

This is a straight forward and frank statement from the writing and managing editor of 343 industries which means that this statement is taken to be straight up and undisputable fact in terms of its sourcing and validity.

This means without a doubt we cannot rank the canon system in the Halo Universe- obviousley toys and other such more base forms of endorsed merchandise can be considered non-canonical (The limited edition Noble7 fore example, or the comic short in Halo Legends staring S-1337), but in terms of the lore surrouding the Universe we are not at liberty to disregard one story in order to validate another unless we are presented with some sort of statement from 343 expressing we do so.

To quote Frank, earlier on, in the same conversation:

"(Canonically) ...we do make stumbles here and there and we try to adress those as quickly and sensibly as possible, and we do take every single aspect of that canon very seriously"

This strongly suggests that we as the consumers and avid fans of this Universe are due an explanation soon enough! We just gotta' wait it out.


The Stretch of the imagination until we are given an explanation:

For now guys I would just shift the times and dates round a little in yor head; -it isnt full proof but all of the major events can happen if we use common sense. Keyes could easily have turned his tub around after MC and Linda returned and where put on ice in order to save the Universe by reclaiming the Foreruner data/ fragment of Cortana from his (former?) love Dr. Halsey. He could just as easily docked the PoA at some point during the battles. As for the SMAC guns not being about during the space battles above Reach we could just make a massive stretch of the imagination and say it was a coincedental flaw in the SMAC's coverage of the planet- wouldnt the covenant exploit that hole with the stealth fleets invasion?

This boxed of section clearly can not be considered canon, but it serves to illustrate a point. We can simply bridge the gaps with simple and probable explanations until they are either proven incorrect by its eventual rectitude or maybe even proven correct!

  • 10.01.2010 4:14 PM PDT

Just to address one tiny bullet point in your post.

If the SMACs coverage was insignificant, why would they commit such large amounts of troops to destroy the generators(at least 2 armor divisions for one or two generators), including sending down 3 carriers in order to make sure the generators were stopped?

Obviously the SMACs were a major threat, but we see not a single one.

  • 10.01.2010 4:59 PM PDT

Whoa, whoa...how dare you ask a legitimate question? You're supposed to be another bumbling illiterate who can't add.

How dare you prove that Bungie's new canon sucks.

As for your question, TFoR is retconned. Everything that concerns the battle, SMACs, and defense generators are totally null and void because all those things depend very heavily on the timeline of the battle.

  • 10.01.2010 6:56 PM PDT

Clearly there are some major problems in the canon now and many things that don't make sense. But this is my best understanding of the Fall of Reach that I put together after reading the book and playing the game. There are still many discrepancies between the game and the book, but there is no way around those.

20 orbital defense platforms armed with super-MACs were very powerful assets but their coverage of Reach was limited. Consider that it took 300 orbital defense platforms to provide full coverage and overlapping fields of fire to defend all of Earth. More super-MAC platforms were likely in construction, but not finished before the Covenant attack. The Covenant battle group that preceded their main fleet evaded the UNSC ships defending Reach and landed on the planet via stealth corvettes. They covertly knocked out a few relays and com stations while constructing those cloaking field generators that would hide the supercarrier that would deploy a full army.

By the time Operation Uppercut was successful and the supercarrier was destroyed, over 100 additional UNSC ships had arrived and were ready to defend Reach. However shortly after this, the real Covenant fleet arrived. In game they are shown as jumping in right over the planet, but I am going to consider this an error.

For a few days the Covenant fleet skirmished with the UNSC fleet but did not launch a full assault. A few light capital ships broke through to the planet in order to provide support for Covenant ground forces. Then on August 30th the Covenant fleet launched what was to be the final assault.

As per the book, at first the orbital defense platforms and UNSC fleet was able to hold off the Covenant and inflict heavy losses. Yet a few hours later the generators powering those MAC guns were destroyed and the UNSC fleet was routed by the Covenant's second attack. This put an end to any chance of UNSC ground forces defeating the Covenant already on the surface. By this time Noble team was en-route with the package to the Pillar of Autumn. As Covenant forces glassed large areas of the planet and hunted down remaining UNSC ships still fighting over Reach, the package was delivered. Noble Six destroyed one battlecruiser that stumbled across the Pillar of Autumn, which proceeded to launch and barely evade the Covenant fleet.

Like I said there are still plenty of errors, but this is the series of events that I am sticking to.

[Edited on 10.01.2010 7:43 PM PDT]

  • 10.01.2010 7:36 PM PDT

Pegalesharro Adarsh 9.18.2530 id 397. SIII
V[(0.0)]D
Id...UsEr 397> DeNieD EnTRy
67%warning...,sPace mAy BrEaK
_Th-ey foUnd_
-RuN...-

To add to this, in multiplayer (idr which one) their was a transmission from these two guys snooping around in the background of the oni building talking about halsey.

Also for the others there are more radio broadcast and they even cover red teams actions on the ground and (i think) other events in TFOR

  • 10.01.2010 8:36 PM PDT
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Posted by: Gurder
This ranking system people seem to be pulling from the Star Wars canon isnt really a viable way at looking at the canon in Halo when you consider this panel and really take it into consideration. It is implicitely made clear by pretty much all of the authors of the various novels (including the upcoming Forerunner trilogy Greg Bear) that one of the great things about the Halo Universe is the fact that the books actually count canonically in respect to the entire overarching fictional storyline. This means they count just as much as the games. To illustrate this point I am going to quote Kevin Grace who, speaking on the Halo Universe in this panel says:

"Thats my favourite thing and probably the most terrifying thing about my job and what we do at the studio is because everything does count..."

This is a straight forward and frank statement from the writing and managing editor of 343 industries which means that this statement is taken to be straight up and undisputable fact in terms of its sourcing and validity.

This means without a doubt we cannot rank the canon system in the Halo Universe- obviousley toys and other such more base forms of endorsed merchandise can be considered non-canonical (The limited edition Noble7 fore example, or the comic short in Halo Legends staring S-1337), but in terms of the lore surrouding the Universe we are not at liberty to disregard one story in order to validate another unless we are presented with some sort of statement from 343 expressing we do so.

To quote Frank, earlier on, in the same conversation:

"(Canonically) ...we do make stumbles here and there and we try to adress those as quickly and sensibly as possible, and we do take every single aspect of that canon very seriously"

This strongly suggests that we as the consumers and avid fans of this Universe are due an explanation soon enough! We just gotta' wait it out.


The Stretch of the imagination until we are given an explanation:

For now guys I would just shift the times and dates round a little in yor head; -it isnt full proof but all of the major events can happen if we use common sense. Keyes could easily have turned his tub around after MC and Linda returned and where put on ice in order to save the Universe by reclaiming the Foreruner data/ fragment of Cortana from his (former?) love Dr. Halsey. He could just as easily docked the PoA at some point during the battles. As for the SMAC guns not being about during the space battles above Reach we could just make a massive stretch of the imagination and say it was a coincedental flaw in the SMAC's coverage of the planet- wouldnt the covenant exploit that hole with the stealth fleets invasion?

This boxed of section clearly can not be considered canon, but it serves to illustrate a point. We can simply bridge the gaps with simple and probable explanations until they are either proven incorrect by its eventual rectitude or maybe even proven correct!



Until the new novels come out with the new arrangement of things Halo canon has been turned into Star Wars type canon since two sources tremendously contradict each other.

  • 10.01.2010 10:17 PM PDT
  • gamertag: An0nz
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CoD is a good game, even if the Halo series are better in some aspects. Anyone who insults either is just bad in that game. Grow up.


Posted by: Sighphi


Until the new novels come out with the new arrangement of things Halo canon has been turned into Star Wars type canon since two sources tremendously contradict each other.

Or, you know, we can just consider Halo: Reach to be mostly non-canon, since it is the odd one out that contradicts everything that came before. Story didn't wow me anyways.

  • 10.01.2010 10:22 PM PDT

Concerning the orbital guns, remember that the super carrier in Long Night of of Solace was in "Covenant controlled space".

Space doesn't have areas, an orbit is always shifting unless you're at GEO. Either way, if the carrier could have boarded and disabled 1 gun, it could sit in that hole and send down an army to do the rest. We still don't know a ton about the first covenant teams to arrive and why. Their presence was most likely kept secret.

  • 10.01.2010 10:29 PM PDT
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Posted by: Beowolfe

Posted by: Sighphi


Until the new novels come out with the new arrangement of things Halo canon has been turned into Star Wars type canon since two sources tremendously contradict each other.

Or, you know, we can just consider Halo: Reach to be mostly non-canon, since it is the odd one out that contradicts everything that came before. Story didn't wow me anyways.


Sure, but the games seem to carry more weight since they come from Bungie. And they fact that they are rearranging the world to match the game..... sort of throws out the idea of simply ignoring the game.

  • 10.01.2010 10:36 PM PDT

In Japan, there's this old show called Macross. It was on tv (called Robotech in the states). Two years after it came out, they made a movie version called Do You Remember Love?

You know how movies made off of books change the plot so it'll fit into 2 hours. They did that with this movie. They also redesigned the look of certain things because they had another budget.

Nowadays, new series Macross keep the redesigned look. Why not, it's better. But they kept the hanged plot too. As if the original show never happened.

So Bungie might not follow the Star Wars rules, but they might follow the Macross rules. The look of things has been retconned, why not the plot.

  • 10.01.2010 10:52 PM PDT
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Posted by: turokman2000
In Japan, there's this old show called Macross. It was on tv (called Robotech in the states). Two years after it came out, they made a movie version called Do You Remember Love?

You know how movies made off of books change the plot so it'll fit into 2 hours. They did that with this movie. They also redesigned the look of certain things because they had another budget.

Nowadays, new series Macross keep the redesigned look. Why not, it's better. But they kept the hanged plot too. As if the original show never happened.

So Bungie might not follow the Star Wars rules, but they might follow the Macross rules. The look of things has been retconned, why not the plot.


No the continuity of the movie with the rest of the story is still goofy. And in fact it was considered an alternate story until it was semi-acknowledge freaking 10 years later.

  • 10.01.2010 11:17 PM PDT

The Ultimate OmniMech

It doesn't make sense, Reach does indeed put a few holes in Halo canon, and does ask us to suspend disbelief several times, which is what I did and ended up enjoying the game.

In reality, no amount of stealth technology would avoid that Covenant force to be undetected. Specially a 4 km long spaceship. You can be invisible and radar cloaked and etc nice and neat, but there's always environmental issues (electromagnetic disruption, thermal shifts, wind currents, etc). Even if someone didn't know what happened, they knew something was there.

If an alien strike force, including a 4 km long space ship arrived on earth right now, they would be instantly detected, you have military surveillance, civilian surveillance, satellites, research stations monitoring every possible environmental variable on the planet, people everywhere, etc etc. Now add to that a more advanced civilization like Earth's in Halo, with fleet ships and MAC guns in orbit, etc. Impossible, a lot of people have tried lots of justifications on this thread, like the Covenant technology being miraculously awesome at stealthing, it just cannot be done. Just suspend disbelief.

[Edited on 10.01.2010 11:50 PM PDT]

  • 10.01.2010 11:49 PM PDT

On hiding dead bodies:
Posted by: Psuedo
Posted by: teh Chaz
Inside another dead body. It's the last place they'll look
A corpse within a corpse.
CORPSEPTION.
Win.


Posted by: Sighphi

Posted by: turokman2000
In Japan, there's this old show called Macross. It was on tv (called Robotech in the states). Two years after it came out, they made a movie version called Do You Remember Love?

You know how movies made off of books change the plot so it'll fit into 2 hours. They did that with this movie. They also redesigned the look of certain things because they had another budget.

Nowadays, new series Macross keep the redesigned look. Why not, it's better. But they kept the hanged plot too. As if the original show never happened.

So Bungie might not follow the Star Wars rules, but they might follow the Macross rules. The look of things has been retconned, why not the plot.


No the continuity of the movie with the rest of the story is still goofy. And in fact it was considered an alternate story until it was semi-acknowledge freaking 10 years later.
Which is how Halo Reach should go. It's not canon for me, until someone at 343 or even Bungie explains to me how it fits into established canon. Screw the alleged hierarchy.

  • 10.01.2010 11:53 PM PDT
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Posted by: Beowolfe

Posted by: Sighphi


Until the new novels come out with the new arrangement of things Halo canon has been turned into Star Wars type canon since two sources tremendously contradict each other.

Or, you know, we can just consider Halo: Reach to be mostly non-canon, since it is the odd one out that contradicts everything that came before. Story didn't wow me anyways.
Story didn't wow me either.

Sometimes you have to make sacrifices for the greater good. :P

  • 10.02.2010 12:14 AM PDT


Posted by: Darth Lampshade
Clearly there are some major problems in the canon now and many things that don't make sense. But this is my best understanding of the Fall of Reach that I put together after reading the book and playing the game. There are still many discrepancies between the game and the book, but there is no way around those.

20 orbital defense platforms armed with super-MACs were very powerful assets but their coverage of Reach was limited. Consider that it took 300 orbital defense platforms to provide full coverage and overlapping fields of fire to defend all of Earth. More super-MAC platforms were likely in construction, but not finished before the Covenant attack. The Covenant battle group that preceded their main fleet evaded the UNSC ships defending Reach and landed on the planet via stealth corvettes. They covertly knocked out a few relays and com stations while constructing those cloaking field generators that would hide the supercarrier that would deploy a full army.

By the time Operation Uppercut was successful and the supercarrier was destroyed, over 100 additional UNSC ships had arrived and were ready to defend Reach. However shortly after this, the real Covenant fleet arrived. In game they are shown as jumping in right over the planet, but I am going to consider this an error.

For a few days the Covenant fleet skirmished with the UNSC fleet but did not launch a full assault. A few light capital ships broke through to the planet in order to provide support for Covenant ground forces. Then on August 30th the Covenant fleet launched what was to be the final assault.

As per the book, at first the orbital defense platforms and UNSC fleet was able to hold off the Covenant and inflict heavy losses. Yet a few hours later the generators powering those MAC guns were destroyed and the UNSC fleet was routed by the Covenant's second attack. This put an end to any chance of UNSC ground forces defeating the Covenant already on the surface. By this time Noble team was en-route with the package to the Pillar of Autumn. As Covenant forces glassed large areas of the planet and hunted down remaining UNSC ships still fighting over Reach, the package was delivered. Noble Six destroyed one battlecruiser that stumbled across the Pillar of Autumn, which proceeded to launch and barely evade the Covenant fleet.

Like I said there are still plenty of errors, but this is the series of events that I am sticking to.
i am going with this two also oni probably lied alot about it saying it was a new weapon in testing or something, new technology to turn the war to reachs citizens,

  • 10.02.2010 12:59 AM PDT

We're never what we invent or intend.


Posted by: Wolverfrog
I was just a little baffled when he seemed to kill a Zealot with a light shoulder barge.

These guys can flip tanks.

There's really no such thing as a "light" physical force for them unless they want it to be.

  • 10.02.2010 5:52 AM PDT

We're never what we invent or intend.


Posted by: JDYeash937 MkII

Posted by: dangerman1337

Posted by: privet caboose
Doesn't Long night of Solace take place early in August? To my understanding, that supercarrier was the only one around Reach, so why weren't ANY of the SMAC's around to take it out? Sure, I know they were spread out, but obviously most of the fighting was in that area, and it'd be able to turn and face the carrier.


IIRC Depending on the calculations SMACs have gone up to 9.97 TERATONS OF TNT equivlant which is easily two orders of magnitue of say a single digit megaton nuclear weapon so taking the Assault Carrier (it wasn't a Supercarrier IMO)would of been WAY to risky without massive Environmental damage (Reach isn't some random small colony)even the lower end of 49 gigatons is almost an order magnitude compared to the Tsar Bomba which was 50 megatons which could of still done a lot of damage.
What people never understand is that just because it has a force equivalent to a nuke going off in terms of MACs and several hundred/thousand nukes going off in terms of SMACs, they don't have a nuclear explosion. The force of an SMAC round is so great, that is simply overpenetrates the target, and hits something else behind it. It also creates massive hull strains on ships, due to the momentum at which it is pushed back, from the fraction of a second the shield will hold the round - this tears them apart, or even makes their hulls shatter.

Just because its force is 50 gigatons of TNT does not mean it will have an impact that looks like 50 gigatons of TNT going off. The force is transferred in a different way entirely.

It's not quite like that.

Any mass traveling at a certain velocity [25,000 kps I believe] will yield it's own weight in TNT when it impacts.

This kinetic energy transfer will be explosive.

  • 10.02.2010 6:05 AM PDT
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CoD is a good game, even if the Halo series are better in some aspects. Anyone who insults either is just bad in that game. Grow up.


Posted by: Sighphi

Posted by: Beowolfe

Posted by: Sighphi


Until the new novels come out with the new arrangement of things Halo canon has been turned into Star Wars type canon since two sources tremendously contradict each other.

Or, you know, we can just consider Halo: Reach to be mostly non-canon, since it is the odd one out that contradicts everything that came before. Story didn't wow me anyways.


Sure, but the games seem to carry more weight since they come from Bungie. And they fact that they are rearranging the world to match the game..... sort of throws out the idea of simply ignoring the game.

Honestly? I say screw them. Eric Nyland had an amazing, mostly seamless story that all connected and made sense, but Bungie decided to break that. I say it's because they're not writers, because (most) writers would not deliberately destroy the canon of their own creations. IMO if they actually try to keep changing everything to fit Reach, then that's just sad. Altering the entire story line for the sake of a sub-par campaign...why?

  • 10.02.2010 7:59 AM PDT

Guys, I hope your minds are ready to be blown.

You know how Reach and the Spartans is based off of Thermopylae (300)?

Well, in that history, there's this guy named Ephialtes who basically leads in the Persians behind the Spartans - who otherwise were kicking a&&.

In Tip of the Spear, the massive Super Carrier that is cloaked

This explains how a Super Carrier got into atmosphere with no one knowing: a traitor who opened a back door (shut down sensors for an orbital entry window or something)

After the ground battle with this Carrier is lost, before it can be fully destroyed, the entire Covenant fleet warps in: IMPLYING THAT THE ORBITAL DEFENSES HAVE BEEN TAKEN DOWN.

This means that the cloaked Super Carrier probably deployed the forces behind enemy lines to take out the ground generators for the orbital defenses, making it possible for a full scale invasion.

In New Alexandria, Kat is confused about why Spartans are doing evac. She says: "I'm asking if we've already lost." This implies that there are a million things Spartans could be doing,and that their orders (which she isn't supposed to look at) imply that command has basically given up.

In Lone Wolf, we see tons of dead Spartans, implying that their vain defense of Reach led to their deaths.

Put it all together, compare it to Thermopylae, and there HAS to be a traitor. I have a thread about a theory about this.

  • 10.02.2010 8:55 AM PDT

The Ultimate OmniMech

Isn't that the datapad AIs? If they control and manipulate ONI, and actually brought the Covenant to Reach, it makes sense for them to withhold crucial detection data and/or sabotage defensive efforts.

  • 10.02.2010 9:21 AM PDT

On hiding dead bodies:
Posted by: Psuedo
Posted by: teh Chaz
Inside another dead body. It's the last place they'll look
A corpse within a corpse.
CORPSEPTION.
Win.


Posted by: Adragalus

Posted by: JDYeash937 MkII

Posted by: dangerman1337

Posted by: privet caboose
Doesn't Long night of Solace take place early in August? To my understanding, that supercarrier was the only one around Reach, so why weren't ANY of the SMAC's around to take it out? Sure, I know they were spread out, but obviously most of the fighting was in that area, and it'd be able to turn and face the carrier.


IIRC Depending on the calculations SMACs have gone up to 9.97 TERATONS OF TNT equivlant which is easily two orders of magnitue of say a single digit megaton nuclear weapon so taking the Assault Carrier (it wasn't a Supercarrier IMO)would of been WAY to risky without massive Environmental damage (Reach isn't some random small colony)even the lower end of 49 gigatons is almost an order magnitude compared to the Tsar Bomba which was 50 megatons which could of still done a lot of damage.
What people never understand is that just because it has a force equivalent to a nuke going off in terms of MACs and several hundred/thousand nukes going off in terms of SMACs, they don't have a nuclear explosion. The force of an SMAC round is so great, that is simply overpenetrates the target, and hits something else behind it. It also creates massive hull strains on ships, due to the momentum at which it is pushed back, from the fraction of a second the shield will hold the round - this tears them apart, or even makes their hulls shatter.

Just because its force is 50 gigatons of TNT does not mean it will have an impact that looks like 50 gigatons of TNT going off. The force is transferred in a different way entirely.

It's not quite like that.

Any mass traveling at a certain velocity [25,000 kps I believe] will yield it's own weight in TNT when it impacts.

This kinetic energy transfer will be explosive.
Laws of momentum and kinetic energy appear to say otherwise. In KE, velocity is the dominating factor of the equation, and mass plays a diminutive role.
In Momentum, (basic equation of momentum), the two parts have equal effect. Half the mass, half the momentum. Double the velocity, double the momentum.

I'm sure I've read somewhere in the Halo lore about hyperkinetic impacts, in which the impactor is travelling at such great velocity that it disintegrates on impact, and generates a lateral blast wave with minimal/no penetration.
Logic would also imply that at the forces involved, the round would shear itself, furthering this idea of hyperkinetic impact.

It's something I keep forgetting to discuss with my Physics tutor. We're doing advanced mechanics, and also in maths, but they're still using the basic laws of motion, and are nowhere near the forces required for an understanding, obviously.

  • 10.02.2010 9:37 AM PDT

There is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never care for anything else thereafter.

Clearly there are some major problems in the canon now and many things that don't make sense. But this is my best understanding of the Fall of Reach that I put together after reading the book and playing the game. There are still many discrepancies between the game and the book, but there is no way around those.

20 orbital defense platforms armed with super-MACs were very powerful assets but their coverage of Reach was limited. Consider that it took 300 orbital defense platforms to provide full coverage and overlapping fields of fire to defend all of Earth. More super-MAC platforms were likely in construction, but not finished before the Covenant attack. The Covenant battle group that preceded their main fleet evaded the UNSC ships defending Reach and landed on the planet via stealth corvettes. They covertly knocked out a few relays and com stations while constructing those cloaking field generators that would hide the supercarrier that would deploy a full army.

By the time Operation Uppercut was successful and the supercarrier was destroyed, over 100 additional UNSC ships had arrived and were ready to defend Reach. However shortly after this, the real Covenant fleet arrived. In game they are shown as jumping in right over the planet, but I am going to consider this an error.

For a few days the Covenant fleet skirmished with the UNSC fleet but did not launch a full assault. A few light capital ships broke through to the planet in order to provide support for Covenant ground forces. Then on August 30th the Covenant fleet launched what was to be the final assault.

As per the book, at first the orbital defense platforms and UNSC fleet was able to hold off the Covenant and inflict heavy losses. Yet a few hours later the generators powering those MAC guns were destroyed and the UNSC fleet was routed by the Covenant's second attack. This put an end to any chance of UNSC ground forces defeating the Covenant already on the surface. By this time Noble team was en-route with the package to the Pillar of Autumn. As Covenant forces glassed large areas of the planet and hunted down remaining UNSC ships still fighting over Reach, the package was delivered. Noble Six destroyed one battlecruiser that stumbled across the Pillar of Autumn, which proceeded to launch and barely evade the Covenant fleet.

Like I said there are still plenty of errors, but this is the series of events that I am sticking to.



Essentially we are both arguing the same thing in our responses to this post and I agree completely with what you are saying. Canonically though we would have to have PoA deploying the Spartan teams in space/ picking up Linda and John and putting them into Cryo sleep (as per the book) but then begin dry-docking on Reach to effect repairs and pick up the fragment of Cortana Noble6 was entrusted with (as per the game).

As I'v posted earlier this is completely possible considering the new revelations involving Keys and Halsey in her journal and the fact that they had more than a personal relationship. Cpt. Keyes would definately take a chance when it comes to her, her work and saving the Universe! Despite the fact these events (essentially the dry docking of the PoA) where not mentioned in the book it does not do the canon any massive amount of harm nor take any massive stretch of the imagination to see Keyes performing one of his patent loops- docking along the way and then breaking atmosphere with the Cortana fragment (and co-ordinates for Halo) as his prize.

Ofcourse I can also understand what you have posted and it is tempting for me to take this exact PoV as well rather than fill bridge gaps with ideas that could simply amount to bs!

  • 10.02.2010 2:17 PM PDT