Bungie Universe
This topic has moved here: Subject: How big is the Covenant Super Carrier?
  • Subject: How big is the Covenant Super Carrier?
Subject: How big is the Covenant Super Carrier?

Conclusion: The Supercarrier is one cluster-blam!- inconsistency.

  • 09.27.2010 10:47 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: FearlessMagnum
Imagine the size of the glassing beam on that thing. 'Looks outside. See's a huge charging circle of light above. Too late to an hero.'
We see it, it gets used on the Grafton at the close of Tip Of The Spear.

To Opog and Anton on its crew numbers:
First off, its volume. We know from various MM levels, and also the Unyielding Heirophant from First Strike, that the Covenant love their wide open spaces, and curving architecture. Whereas the (Star Wars) Empire and the UNSC favour efficiency per unit area. So even if all assets were the same size, the Covenant would fit in less per unit area, since much of that space would be a high ceiling, and you probably wouldn't be able to ram things into the wall, since it would curve into the room.

As for crew, the 'bridge crew' on an Assault carrier numbers possibly between 15 and 30. Since they are monitoring individual stations (slipspace, comms, shields, engine, reactor, weapons, crew etc), I can't imagine there being any more on a Supercarrier. The vast majority of the crew is likely to be Engineers. The Sublime Transcendance (First Strike again) had a 'few thousand' Unggoy labourers, a 'few hundred' Elites and 3000 Engineers.
After all, the Engineers would tend to any actual maintenance or repair work, or anything actually in engineering, and one Elite could probably oversee a few dozen Engineer's progress. Overall crew wouldn't be more than 12,000 I'd say, if the Carrier's 4000 doesn't include Engineers. Engineers aren't counted as crew for some reason, IMO.
Ground forces would likely number in the millions. A Carrier has 13 launch bays which can launch 'hundreds' of fighters. Going by the increase in volume, a Supercarrier has 13x125 hangars - hangar space equalling 1625 standard hangars. This means several dozen thousand Seraphs, a couple hundred thousand banshees, regular and space combat, and perhaps up to 10,000 Spirits and Phantoms.

  • 09.27.2010 11:05 PM PDT
  •  | 
  • Exalted Heroic Member

you're naut cookin'

I'm confused about how it could exit slipspace, or travel through Epsilon Eridani without being spotted.

There is the possibility that they exited slipspace outside the solar system and moved in with the aid of a cloaking device. Considering that the ship would have more energy than any other ship, I can't see any reason that full stealth capabilities, including active camo (that ship is so large, in the vastness of space you would still be able to actually see it) wouldn't have been activated until they were on top of Reach.
The cloaking spires groundside would also make sense, they needed external cloaking so they could move resources away from cloaking, and into destructive capabilities.

What gets me though, if none of this is the case, why send one Supercarrier? Was it simply a scout ship? Did they know what to expect at all?
Originally it was Capt. Keyes and the Iroquois that led the Covenant to Reach, but now the dates don't match up.
How did the Covenant find Reach in the first place?

  • 09.27.2010 11:32 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: kippa
I'm confused about how it could exit slipspace, or travel through Epsilon Eridani without being spotted.

There is the possibility that they exited slipspace outside the solar system and moved in with the aid of a cloaking device. Considering that the ship would have more energy than any other ship, I can't see any reason that full stealth capabilities, including active camo (that ship is so large, in the vastness of space you would still be able to actually see it) wouldn't have been activated until they were on top of Reach.
The cloaking spires groundside would also make sense, they needed external cloaking so they could move resources away from cloaking, and into destructive capabilities.
Midway down page 3, I suggest a couple of ideas, the second being the more plausible of the two.
What gets me though, if none of this is the case, why send one Supercarrier? Was it simply a scout ship? Did they know what to expect at all?
Originally it was Capt. Keyes and the Iroquois that led the Covenant to Reach, but now the dates don't match up.
How did the Covenant find Reach in the first place?
Apparently, wasn't it the artefact on SOIV that led the Covenant to Reach, and the Iroquois told them it was a human world? But yes it was a scout ship.

  • 09.27.2010 11:42 PM PDT
  •  | 
  • Exalted Heroic Member

you're naut cookin'


Posted by: JDYeash937 MkII
As for cloaking its radiation upon slipspace exit - there's no alternative, to having a radiation-absorbing stealth package - or something I just realised, shields could absorb radiation. Shields, in my shield theory are in a 'relaxed' state, then become hyper-dense upon impact, repelling the damage. If a ship made all of its shield portions coalesce into the hyper-dense state, it could be dense enough to stop radiation penetrating from the ships hull through the shields - there it would decay (unlikely) or re-absorb into the ship.


I'm not sure about this as John 117, when on the mission that never happened, to destory the NAV core of a stealth ship that never existed above Reach encountered Covenant ships jumping in very close to his location.
He noted that the ships were completely powered down for a few seconds after exiting slipspace, I mean obviously apart from life support and other essentials (thats an assumption, but I feel a fair one). Also, regardless of these events being 'retconned', I feel that the information gleaned from this non-existant event, would still hold true in other situations. Covenant ships are (mostly) powered down when exiting slipspace.
Now it may be a point to say that this 'new' Supercarrier is so large that there would be Plasma generators large enough to handle the slipspace transition itself, but I would disagree with this point. The larger the ship, the more energy is required to form the rift, the "tear in space". Not to mention energy required to protect the ship in slipspace.

Anyway, for these reason I don't think the shields wouldn't be in operation immediately after a jump.
I feel it is a possibility though, that the ship can act as many different types. A Flagship, a Carrier, an Assult Ship, a Destroyer, and even a Stealth ship.

[Edited on 09.28.2010 12:39 AM PDT]

  • 09.28.2010 12:36 AM PDT

I am a god! I am prescient!
I am religion!
I see the future, I see the past
Follow me, follow the vision.
I have become the ultimate power, I am protection.
I am messiah, I am a tyrant.
i show the path to redemption to man and the universe!

Holy -blam!-, 27KM? It must be a few kilometers wide too. Wow.


Dear God, how long do you think something like that must take to build? Even with the capabilities of the covenant, it must've been many many years, probably decades to build.

  • 09.28.2010 2:11 AM PDT

I don't think that the Supercarrier's size is consistent throughout Halo Reach's campaign. This is just going off of my own perception, but its size seems greatly exaggerated in the Corvette docking scene (25km) compared to when we first see it when it destroys the Grafton (hard to say since there's no way of determining its altitude in that scene, but judging from its posistion to the horizon as it moves, about 7-10km) or how relatively "small" it looks in its final resting place in the side of a mountain.

I think Bungie simply wanted to convey that the Supercarrier was *huge* and thus scale consistancy became unimportant. Like you said, there have been scale issues in the past.

  • 09.28.2010 3:18 AM PDT

Twitter | Nothing

Posted by: opogjijijp
Posted by: dalcaeus
That thing is bigger than a Star Wars Super Star Destroyer! If I remember correctly the S.Star Destroyer housed 1.5 million essential crew. No telling how many extra, not including Stormtroopers and such. So one super carrier would easily be enough to destroy an outter human colony. Having said that, the Super Carrier that was destroyed wasn't even the bulk of the fleet that razed Reach. Food for thought.


Wookiepedia lists ~280,000 crew and 38,000 ground troops, which seems absurdly low when compared to the volume a Imperator class SD. Based on ~300 times bigger than a Imperator I/II I'd expect it to carry up to 3 million ground troops and up to 11 million crew. And 21 thousand fighters. 15,000 walkers.

Given than a Super Carrier has more volume than a SSD...


My Star Wars encyclopedia doesn't list exact numbers for the Executor-class but does list some numbers for the Eclipse-class Super Star Destroyer. These are as follows:

A crew of more than 700,000
150,000 Stormtroopers
500 Heavy Laser Canons
550 Turbolasers
50 Squadrons of TIE Interceptors/600 TIE Interceptors
8 Squadrons or TIE Bombers/96 TIE Bombers
5 Prefabricated Garrisons
100 AT-AT walkers

Considering that the AT-At walkers would take up a large amount of space themselves, it is not unreasonable to expect this ship to be able to carry a much larger compliment of Stormtroopers or TIE's if the AT'AT walkers were removed.

You have to remember as well that SSD were built more as a weapon to demoralize and scare the enemy rather than take part in ground operations.

The Death Star didn't have anywhere near the amount of crew or ground troops you were expecting for the SSD. Total numbers for the Death Star were (from the Encyclopedia):

Crew of 1,000,000+ including 265,000 soldiers
7,000 TIE Fighters
20,000 Military/Transport Vehicles
4 Strike Cruisers
11,000 Combat Vehicles.

Crews of millions are simply impractical even for the largest ships. Numbers similar to the Eclipse-class Star Destroyer seem reasonable for a ship that size, although I imagine that the Super Carrier could house a much larger compliment of ground troops due to it's increased size and volume.

  • 09.28.2010 3:20 AM PDT

i dont really know but i know its bigger than 2 miles...you can check halopedia if you really want to know.

  • 09.28.2010 5:35 AM PDT

Twitter | Nothing

Posted by: FoldingBag
i dont really know but i know its bigger than 2 miles...you can check halopedia if you really want to know.


Halopedia isn't always entirely accurate.

Oh, and did you not read anything in this thread? The OP knows about what Halopedia says.

  • 09.28.2010 6:03 AM PDT

>>/INFO_ONISEC1SER3
/CLASSIFICATION>> CLASS ?
/MISSION_CONTROL>> BASE ALAMO
/CODENAME>> FACOTA FI
/MISSON_LOCATION>> CLASSIFIED
/MISSION_STATUS >> 7H+IN_PROGRESS
>>END //INFO_ONISEC1SER3 >>CLEAR


Posted by: JDYeash937 MkII

Posted by: FinFihlman
I believe that the SMAC would destroy the supercarrier.

Why?

Because even though the kinetic energy is massive, there's also the thermonuclear energy...

From Halopedia, it is theorized that if the ships shields or hull would withstand the hit, the thermonuclear energy release would destroy it anyway.
What thermonuclear release? You're firing a metallic slug at the target, not launching Tsar Bomba.

Heat energy from friction and general impact yes, thermonuclear? No.


Oh, pardon me. I was supposed to say Thermodynamic energy.

[Edited on 09.28.2010 6:13 AM PDT]

  • 09.28.2010 6:10 AM PDT
  •  | 
  • Exalted Heroic Member

you're naut cookin'

Aren't the cores of the SMAC rounds made of depleted uranium? Or am I just making this up.

  • 09.28.2010 6:40 AM PDT

What a waste....


Posted by: HundredJono
Damn thats huge.

But how big is High Charity?
300+ km, if I remember correctly.

  • 09.28.2010 7:07 AM PDT

<3 Auntie Dot


Posted by: kippa
I'm confused about how it could exit slipspace, or travel through Epsilon Eridani without being spotted.

There is the possibility that they exited slipspace outside the solar system and moved in with the aid of a cloaking device. Considering that the ship would have more energy than any other ship, I can't see any reason that full stealth capabilities, including active camo (that ship is so large, in the vastness of space you would still be able to actually see it) wouldn't have been activated until they were on top of Reach.


Or, they DID spotted it but did nothing, as I wrote before, UNSC Navy can barely destroy 1 single 1km+ ship while losing like 10 ships; the thing is 27km long ftw, they needed a plan to destroy it.

And sure as hell they won´t risk losing the ODPs in orbit around the planet fighting that damn thing.

  • 09.28.2010 9:31 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: kippa
Posted by: JDYeash937 MkII
As for cloaking its radiation upon slipspace exit - there's no alternative, to having a radiation-absorbing stealth package - or something I just realised, shields could absorb radiation. Shields, in my shield theory are in a 'relaxed' state, then become hyper-dense upon impact, repelling the damage. If a ship made all of its shield portions coalesce into the hyper-dense state, it could be dense enough to stop radiation penetrating from the ships hull through the shields - there it would decay (unlikely) or re-absorb into the ship.


I'm not sure about this as John 117, when on the mission that never happened, to destory the NAV core of a stealth ship that never existed above Reach encountered Covenant ships jumping in very close to his location.
He noted that the ships were completely powered down for a few seconds after exiting slipspace, I mean obviously apart from life support and other essentials (thats an assumption, but I feel a fair one). Also, regardless of these events being 'retconned', I feel that the information gleaned from this non-existant event, would still hold true in other situations. Covenant ships are (mostly) powered down when exiting slipspace.
Now it may be a point to say that this 'new' Supercarrier is so large that there would be Plasma generators large enough to handle the slipspace transition itself, but I would disagree with this point. The larger the ship, the more energy is required to form the rift, the "tear in space". Not to mention energy required to protect the ship in slipspace.

Anyway, for these reason I don't think the shields wouldn't be in operation immediately after a jump.
I feel it is a possibility though, that the ship can act as many different types. A Flagship, a Carrier, an Assult Ship, a Destroyer, and even a Stealth ship.
The reason those Covenant ships are inactive after the jump to the Orbital Dock is because they make a precise-intra-system jump.

This requires the ship to enter slipspace using large amounts of power to power the SS drive, then almost immediately open slipspace-normal space again, using a similar amount of power. Since this power requirement is near unfathomable, it means that in order to retain power, shields must be powered off. I believe this phenomena does not apply to long-distance slipspace jumps.

117 actually notes that it is these intra-system jumps that he thinks drains the ship energy to 0. As such, a regular jump would require to open slipspace, and remaining energy goes to overcharging the shields and stealth packages to cloak radiation/other signals - drive is not required, until the reactor has recouped the energy from using the SS drive, and can provide engine power.

There's my mini-theory.

[Edited on 09.28.2010 11:17 PM PDT]

  • 09.28.2010 10:24 AM PDT

We'll bury our burdens in blood...


Posted by: dibbs089
Posted by: opogjijijp
Posted by: anton1792
Posted by: opogjijijp
Posted by: dalcaeus
That thing is bigger than a Star Wars Super Star Destroyer! If I remember correctly the S.Star Destroyer housed 1.5 million essential crew. No telling how many extra, not including Stormtroopers and such. So one super carrier would easily be enough to destroy an outter human colony. Having said that, the Super Carrier that was destroyed wasn't even the bulk of the fleet that razed Reach. Food for thought.


Wookiepedia lists ~280,000 crew and 38,000 ground troops, which seems absurdly low when compared to the volume a Imperator class SD. Based on ~300 times bigger than a Imperator I/II I'd expect it to carry up to 3 million ground troops and up to 11 million crew. And 21 thousand fighters. 15,000 walkers.

Given than a Super Carrier has more volume than a SSD...

I think we could work out the Supercarriers crew compliment. I am not sure if this Math is correct, it is 3am over here; tired.

Anyway, a standard carrier is listed as being able to carry up to 4000 crewmen. It is 1'455m long.

The Supercarrier is 27'000m long, or 18.6x longer than a Carrier. That gives it a volume 6434.9x larger than a Carrier. One Carrier Volume is 4000 crew, so the Supercarrier Volume should allow for roughly 25'739'424 crew members, nearly 26 million. (I rounded, so it will be +/- a few million depending on whether you have done the same)

Encyclopaedia page 265 is where the 4000 and 1455m come from. ;)

Does this sound alright?


It's less accurate than using numbers form an assualt carrier because they could be different shapes, but it's a decent upper level estimate. I wonder if that 4,000 is just the crew of the ship alone, the crew of the ship plus the air wing, or the crew of the ship, the flight crew, and the ground troop compliment. I'd think one of the first two.

It's interesting to compare it to a modern aircraft carrier, which(according to wiki) despite being a much much smaller vessel, has slightly larger crew.

Oh, it would also carry 1.9 million seraphs, 1.3 million banshees, and 220,000 dropships. Which means if they launched them all at full capacity, they'd be carrying 6.5 million troops.

Of course in reality things don't always scale nice and linearly, so these are only estimates, and quite likely on the high end.
Given those numbers, how in the hell are we supposed to seriously consider this being only a "scouting party"?


Totally agree. I think it's a gross failure of intelligence on the part of the UNSC to assume anything short of invasion and "glassing" once they showed up. Prehaps this is due to the intervention of the constructs mentioned in the Data Pads?

  • 09.28.2010 7:11 PM PDT

i own a personal ARMY OF INVISIBLE FLAMING NINJA ZOMBIE JEDI ROBOT ASSASSINS FROM MARS

I like how the Supercarrier is effing massive compared to a UNSC Frigate yet the frigates MAC can take this thing out with a few shots.

PS I was 7he 117th comment

[Edited on 09.28.2010 7:46 PM PDT]

  • 09.28.2010 7:44 PM PDT

"Halo! Its divine wind will rush through the stars, propelling all who are worthy along the path to salvation."

Is the SuperCarrier much bigger than the Assault Carrier?

  • 09.28.2010 8:02 PM PDT

@JosephBiwald
View my Art

Per Audacia Ad Astra

Well Spoken!
Posted by: Hysterical Joker
Conclusion: The Supercarrier is one cluster-blam!- inconsistency.

  • 09.28.2010 8:30 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: soul splazerer
I like how the Supercarrier is effing massive compared to a UNSC Frigate yet the frigates MAC can take this thing out with a few shots.

PS I was 7he 117th comment
It won't take it down in a few shots, have you seen the size of it? It's 27km long, over 60-70 times bigger than a UNSC Frigate.

It's got 25 times the surface area to cover with shields, so logically shields are at least 25 times stronger. They'll be far stronger than that by order of magnitude, since the shield emitters will likely be bigger as well.

I bet the Frigate wouldn't be able to fire fast enough to actually bring down the shield. With that much power being routed to the shields, and the tiny impact area of the MAC slug, it'll shrug off the damage like a Rhino shrugs off mosquitoes. A single SMAC might not be able to destroy a ship that great, maybe not even take off all its shields.

  • 09.28.2010 11:36 PM PDT

Twitter | Nothing

Posted by: soul splazerer
I like how the Supercarrier is effing massive compared to a UNSC Frigate yet the frigates MAC can take this thing out with a few shots.

PS I was 7he 117th comment


We've only ever seen MAC rounds taking down much smaller ships. This Super Carrier is around 25 times bigger than anything we've seen in any Halo material before. We've no idea how thick it's hull is or how strong it's shields are. Therefore it's foolish to assume that it can be taken down as easily as a Assault Carrier without any direct evidence.

  • 09.29.2010 3:29 AM PDT

>>/INFO_ONISEC1SER3
/CLASSIFICATION>> CLASS ?
/MISSION_CONTROL>> BASE ALAMO
/CODENAME>> FACOTA FI
/MISSON_LOCATION>> CLASSIFIED
/MISSION_STATUS >> 7H+IN_PROGRESS
>>END //INFO_ONISEC1SER3 >>CLEAR

It doesn't mean (Correct me if I'm wrong.) that the shields are 25 times stronger only because the ship's 25 times bigger.

It only means that there's a greater surface are to be covered by shields, so yes, they must be stronger (in a way), but if attacked on by all directions, the shields would easily be taken down, and the ship destroyed. In theory.

[Edited on 09.29.2010 5:26 AM PDT]

  • 09.29.2010 5:18 AM PDT

Don't worry, you're still your mom's favorite Bnet member.

Well I've always had my own scaling system: (I use this to 1:Make it simple and 2: Show off the sheer size of the Covenant technological capabilities)

Covenant Planetoid (High Charity): 800 km [Roughly 1/4 the size of our moon]

Covenant Capital Ship (Super Carrier, Regrets Ship): 15 km

Covenant Assault Carrier(Truth and Reconciliation): 5 km

Halcyon Class Cruiser (Pillar of Autumn): 3 km

Colony Battleship (Spirit of Fire): 1/2-2 km

Covenant Corvette (Cruiser, escort [Like a tugboat]): 1 km

UNSC Frigate (Forward Unto Dawn): 800 m

I understand most of these numbers are grossly inaccurate, but that's how I roll.

[Edited on 09.29.2010 6:27 AM PDT]

  • 09.29.2010 6:02 AM PDT

Twitter | Nothing

Posted by: FinFihlman
It doesn't mean (Correct me if I'm wrong.) that the shields are 25 times stronger only because the ship's 25 times bigger.

It only means that there's a greater surface are to be covered by shields, so yes, they must be stronger (in a way), but if attacked on by all directions, the shields would easily be taken down, and the ship destroyed. In theory.


I'm not saying the shields are 25 times stronger, just that we've never encountered a ship this large before in the fiction and have no idea how strong it is and how much damage it can take. Some people are assuming that what kills an Assault Carrier would also kill this, which we can't know as we have no evidence of this ship in battle.

[Edited on 09.29.2010 7:15 AM PDT]

  • 09.29.2010 7:14 AM PDT