- Fatal Factor
- |
- Senior Heroic Member
Posted by: ROBERTO jh
Posted by: Fatal Factor
Posted by: ROBERTO jh
Posted by: Fatal Factor
Condemned appears to show entire continents of the planet reduced to molten slag and glowing, which seems to contradict the statements made by the committee of minds in the data pads which says that the covies only razed from orbit human population centres, not entire landmasses. And reach was quite sparsely populated too.
Oh dear!
I noticed this too, but remember, the Assembly, at the time, was only exposed to 1 years of knowledge and virtually no experiance with the Covenant's weapons. They were bound to make mistakes.
Plus they were talking about literal glassing (literally turning a planet to glass) not just incineration.
Dont think it was anything to do with any special knowledge of covie weapons apart from 1 acre/15 seconds, the rest is some basic calculations on the amount of energy it would take to literally turn the entire surface of a planet to slag, turns out it would be astronomical, akin to the energy imparted if the moon came down and crashed into the earth. Spaceships cannot contain and dispense energies like that, and even 10 years ago when i first read TFOR when i was like 12 i thought "they cant literally mean turning then planet into a ball of glass" which they dont because its a ridiculous concept.
Everyone clinging to the ball of glass thing is deluded. As dot would say, the mathematics are determinate.
Its likely that 'glassing' came about as a colloquialism from the UNSC personnel who witnessed a covenant orbital razing of a colony planet and the civilians who survived such an event. It makes the even sound really horrific, which indeed it was for those people, but not on a planetary scale. I dont think it is ever stated anywhere that the entire planet is turned to glass in a literal sense.
I like the theory about atmospheric glowing, light reflection aswell. You can see in the intro cutscene to the game that the atmosphere is boiling hot over a very wide area after what the covenant did, and also in the return to sword base where you see that icemelt from atmospheric heat has risen the sealevel about 2 meters at farragaut station despite the nearest glassing going on at the airstrip and no where near sword base.
Right, the glass ball thing was never the case. I always saw it as it turned out to be.
The Covenant can incinerate the surface of an entire planet, but they can't literally glass it. There's a major difference between the two. One, the surface is blackened and blasted with indesrcibible heat brought about by heating the atmosphere, intense wild fires and plasma barrages. The other, the entire surface is glass because of rediculous power that makes no sense.
Frankly, I'm surprised anyone ever really beleived the glass ball concept. I was nine and it still made no sense to me.
So the Covies are back to being planet killers, just not glassers.
Well i suppose merely scorching the entire surface of a planet (or just certain continents, excluding ocean) is perhaps within the realm of possibility for an entire covie fleet of 700~ ships. But not in one day though.
Mabye.