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This topic has moved here: Subject: Just what is so criminally wrong about Halo: Reach?
  • Subject: Just what is so criminally wrong about Halo: Reach?
Subject: Just what is so criminally wrong about Halo: Reach?

The game goes against the canon that the books established, which apparently made a lot of people freak out.

  • 05.21.2011 9:21 PM PDT


Posted by: relliK42
The game goes against the canon that the books established, which apparently made a lot of people freak out.


A lot of the issues are either no longer issues because they were fixed in the marketing materials released for Reach, or in Halsey's Journal. And what hasn't directly been fixed is easy to come up with solutions to just using common sense.

  • 05.22.2011 10:01 AM PDT

"Find where the liar hides, so that I may place my boot between his gums!" - Rtas 'Vadum

Posted by: OrderedComa
Well if they got aboard the Bloodied Spirit in a Covenant dropship then things are a little different than the matter with the Ascendant Justice. And I don't think they ever really knew how the Ascendant Justice was capture did they? I thought they just knew that it had been taken over not how or in what way.

They had poor security in their hanger bays with the Ascendant Justice. When the Pelican got through the gap in the shield all that was there to greet them were grunts. Nothing had changed in terms of security for the Bloodied Spirit or the Unyielding Heirophant to make sure that nothing could infiltrate via the hanger again.

The ships surrounding the Ascendant Justice began attacking it, so they knew that the ship was under enemy control. There are very few ways of taking an entire ship in such a short amount of time. (Bear in mind Ascendant Justice is a supercarrier. Perhaps not like described in Reach though. Which means that it carried more than 4000 troops, which is the number for a standard carrier.) Venting the atmosphere of the ship is really the only way I can think of that would gut the ship of all of its crew in such a short space of time, which means that it should have easily occurred to them as being one of the most likely scenarios. (Not to mention that the other warships may have seen it happen) Either way, they should have considered this as one of the possible ways in which the ship could have been taken if they did not know for sure, and edited their security protocols for good measure.

There is also the enemy AI that managed to get a signal out. A briefing of events may have been included.

Posted by: OrderedComa
But could they even pick up the transmissions from older human periods? That was really the main point of my response, were they able to detect them at all?

Yes, they should. Radio waves will travel forever through space, travelling at the speed of light. If you sit for long enough listening to a patch of sky, you should be able to discern a signal. (If one happens to exist in that space) Depending on how far away the source is will determine how long you will need to listen for. It is the whole premise behind NASA's SETI program and the Arecebo Dish.


Posted by: OrderedComa
Well Humanity did inflict, and were inflicting, very heavy losses on the Covenant's military might, and they had no idea how many worlds Humanity had that they would have to take and lose ships attacking. Massive advantage or not, if your opponent constantly inflicts heavy losses on your side then you're going to need to find alternative methods to fight them. Whether that be through clever strategies or through new tech pirated from Forerunner caches/artifacts.

That is true. But should Humanity have been inflicting such loses in the first place? The question is not so much "Should the Covenant have been able to take whatever was thrown at them?", but more "Should they really have had to take whatever was thrown at them?". If they were truly efficient in their own war tactics then I don't think that Humanity would have been able to inflict the damage in the first place.

Imagine if Humanity were the Tier 2 species. Would they have been subjected to the same amount of loses?

Posted by: OrderedComa
Yeah, debating whether they could move about easily or not is not really getting us anywhere. I think they were positioned right around one area, at least that's what I've always thought, that's certainly how it sounded in the book to me. I'm pretty sure they have ODPs all over, but the SMACs were concentrate in one area in geosynchronous orbit above the area around Castle Base.

Aren't ODP's = SMAC's? Anyway that is what I was meaning when I said ODP.

I don't know why the UNSC would cluster all the SMAC's in one location when they have enough to cover the entire planet. They would want an equal spread to ensure that no matter what angle the planet is approached from there will be at least minimal defence there to meet it, rather than nothing, until the rest of the platforms can be manoeuvred.

It is incredibly unlikely that the Fleet of Particular Justice just happen to come out of Slipspace within view of where the SMAC's were clustered in TFoR, given the enormity of space. If they clustered them then that is a poor use of such powerful assets as well.

  • 05.24.2011 10:09 AM PDT

Posted by: anton1792
They had poor security in their hanger bays with the Ascendant Justice. When the Pelican got through the gap in the shield all that was there to greet them were grunts. Nothing had changed in terms of security for the Bloodied Spirit or the Unyielding Heirophant to make sure that nothing could infiltrate via the hanger again.

The ships surrounding the Ascendant Justice began attacking it, so they knew that the ship was under enemy control. There are very few ways of taking an entire ship in such a short amount of time. (Bear in mind Ascendant Justice is a supercarrier. Perhaps not like described in Reach though. Which means that it carried more than 4000 troops, which is the number for a standard carrier.) Venting the atmosphere of the ship is really the only way I can think of that would gut the ship of all of its crew in such a short space of time, which means that it should have easily occurred to them as being one of the most likely scenarios. (Not to mention that the other warships may have seen it happen) Either way, they should have considered this as one of the possible ways in which the ship could have been taken if they did not know for sure, and edited their security protocols for good measure.

There is also the enemy AI that managed to get a signal out. A briefing of events may have been included.


Wasn't the Ascendant Justice poorly crewed in general? I thought it was mostly a ship full of Engineers with a minimal crew of military personnel >_>

I knew they knew that the Ascendant Justice had been commandeered, I was merely wondering if they knew the how of its capture.
Ah yes, I'd kinda forgotten about that little twerp :P

Yes, they should. Radio waves will travel forever through space, travelling at the speed of light. If you sit for long enough listening to a patch of sky, you should be able to discern a signal. (If one happens to exist in that space) Depending on how far away the source is will determine how long you will need to listen for. It is the whole premise behind NASA's SETI program and the Arecebo Dish.

Ah, that's all if the Covenant were smart enough to figure that out of course :P They don't have the great grasp on universal laws and the like, don't know if they've discovered listening in on signals.

That is true. But should Humanity have been inflicting such loses in the first place? The question is not so much "Should the Covenant have been able to take whatever was thrown at them?", but more "Should they really have had to take whatever was thrown at them?". If they were truly efficient in their own war tactics then I don't think that Humanity would have been able to inflict the damage in the first place.

Imagine if Humanity were the Tier 2 species. Would they have been subjected to the same amount of loses?


Probably not, as we both kind of agreed the Covenant's strategy aspect of their military machine has probably stagnated due to them not having any significant challengers for who knows how long.

Honestly, I think if Humanity's and the Covenant roles were reversed I think the UNSC would be in a similar boat as the Covenant are, if you have no real challenge to your power things begin to stagnate a bit as you grow over confident.

Aren't ODP's = SMAC's? Anyway that is what I was meaning when I said ODP.

I don't know why the UNSC would cluster all the SMAC's in one location when they have enough to cover the entire planet. They would want an equal spread to ensure that no matter what angle the planet is approached from there will be at least minimal defence there to meet it, rather than nothing, until the rest of the platforms can be manoeuvred.

It is incredibly unlikely that the Fleet of Particular Justice just happen to come out of Slipspace within view of where the SMAC's were clustered in TFoR, given the enormity of space. If they clustered them then that is a poor use of such powerful assets as well.


I think this would be a case of "all "x" are "y" but not all "y" are "x". In terms of what we're actually talking about, "all SMACs are ODPs, but not all ODPs are SMACs". Ah ok, but yeah, I think there are other types of ODPs, probably missile batteries and possible normal MAC stations, maybe some other sorts as well.

My line of reasoning was that the SMACs were placed in a group above the more important/most populated area of the planet and the rest of Reach was defended by regular ODPs and not SMACs, who knows, maybe the SMACs were distributed all over the planet and they moved them to geosynchronous orbit above the more populated areas once the Covenant's presence was detected in expectation of more Covenant ships arriving.

I would assume that the LNoS (or some other ship possibly) was sending intel reports back to the Covenant, if you have a strong force at your back, it makes sense to me to head for the center of most resistance to leave them defenseless in order to have free reign to completely destroy everything else later.

  • 05.27.2011 7:56 PM PDT

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Posted by: privet caboose
Posted by: Dustin 6047


People like this dumb ass above me need to find better things to do on this forum rather than say the game was bad for messing with this "canon". None of it matters.


You do know what forum section you're on right?

Canon is the ONLY thing that matters in this section.


oh snap

  • 05.27.2011 8:12 PM PDT

You went from picking holes in the canon to debating the semantics of exactly what this forum is for discussing? Jesus christ people.

  • 05.27.2011 9:04 PM PDT

On Waypoint I'm rocketFox;
http://halo.xbox.com/forums/members/rocketfox/default.aspx

Old GTs; RebelRobot, Flamedude

The lack of scale.

No large scale ground battles, no large scale space battles, no defense fleet, no ODPs, no Spartan-II teams, no multiple Scorpion battles, no Scarab battles and no utterly desperate situations. To me the game Halo Reach feels like a lightly militarised colony world under ambush from a minor Covenant force.

  • 05.27.2011 9:42 PM PDT