- the n00b pwner
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Posted by: Adragalus
It occurs to me that there seem to be two types of plasma bombardment: glassing/excavation beams (as seen at Voi/New Alexandria/New Mombasa) and torpedo bombardment. (from the prologue to First Strike, and hitting around Sword Base) The glassing beam is slow, through, and is almost definitely the type of attack that the data pads speak of.
However, if you read First Strike, watch the cutscene from Long Night of Solace where Sword Base is glassed, or even look back at the Reach announcement trailer, you see huge blossoming explosions, certainly larger than the tiny patch that a glassing beam would create.
Hence, the Covenant are capable of glassing planets. They use glassing beams where they need to be precise or just provide overkill, while torpedo bombardment is reserved for the rest of the world, truly reducing it to molten slag.
Posted by:the n00b pwner
Depends, are they using plasma torpedoes or energy projectors? Plasma torpedoes can glass 1 acre every 10 seconds, energy projectors can glass 15 acres per second, 150 times faster. So I would estimate about a year given 2000 ships with plasma torpedoes were estimated to be able to glass earth in 30 years.I think that you've got it backwards... think about it: energy projector is a thin beam, you see it used in New Alexandria and Voi. Think back to the part of New Alexandria where you're flying around, and you see a Covenant ship let loose with the beam... it certainly doesn't glass 15 acres. If it took an energy projector 1 second to glass 15 acres, with five ships above, New Alexandria certainly wouldn't have taken 2+ days to glass, as the time/date stamp at the end of the mission suggests.
I may have it backwards, however I assumed the committee was talking about plasma torpedoes because they had not encountered energy projectors yet (the calculation was done early in the war).
Also, I think the cruisers were taking their time at New Alexandria, compare them to the cruisers in the cutscene at the end of the mission floodgate. Those cruisers were moving and constantly glassing in order to be sure no flood would survive.
As for the torpedoes, the books described them as melting through things, not exploding. Perhaps what was seen in the LNoS cutscene were antimatter charges or some form of covenant bomb.