- OrderedComa
- |
- Noble Member
Posted by: UL7IM4 G33K
Posted by: OrderedComa
On topic:
I liked that the battle was extended, two hours to fall does not make a lick of sense for Humanities Stronghold World and the hub of their whole military. Especially since they had almost every single ship in service at Reach and the SMACs. lasting two weeks makes a whole helluva lot more sense.
Battles don't rage for weeks. Battles are hours. WARS are weeks, months, years. Even on a planetary scale.
Think of it this way. A battle is not won/lost when the fighting stops. It is won/lost when the major military strength in the area is subdued by the opposing side. So Reach falls in a couple hours because of these reasons:
1) The Covenant invade from orbit.
2) Mac Defense grid + UNSC fleet at great expense defend Reach fairly successfuly (keep in mind the only thing hurting ANY of the covenant ships are MAC cannons and a majority of their guns are the grid itself).
3) Covenant ships deploy ground troops on MAC defense grid generators (unfortunately these were relatively close to each other, which means you only need an opening to get in).
4) The generators fall, the fleet falls.
5) Planet glassed save for Castle Base, which is excavated by the Covenant for Forerunner tech.
It doesn't take days to get to step 4. Step 4 is when Reach fell.
Actually no, battles can last days, it really depends on the terrain and the positions, take the Battle of Thermopylae for instance, that lasted for much longer than a few hours because the of position the Greeks were in and how the Persians had to come at them. Sieges will almost always last longer than a straight up pitched battle, and attacking the generators is much more in line with a siege than a straight out battle.
We don't know all that much about the defense around the generators, but it definitely falls into a siege category, and in order to come near the generators the Covenant first have to take out defenses to pave the way for their troops. And with Spartans doing the defending, breaking through is going to take a great deal longer than it would if the Covies were just up against a standard army grunt. And actually we don't know when the Covies had firm control over Reach in the new timeline, it could be anywhere from a whole day to a full two weeks. It is clear though that they are in control at the time the Autumn flees Reach.