- anton1792
- |
- Noble Legendary Member
"Find where the liar hides, so that I may place my boot between his gums!" - Rtas 'Vadum
It looks like we have a Covenant dichotomy, like the Picard dichotomy.
In the Star Trek episodes Picard is a calm, level headed distinguished diplomat with a highly enlightened moral and ethical sense.
In the films he is a hot headed, trigger happy renegade that succumbs easily to vengeance.
So here we have on one hand an imitative Covenant who's tactics have always boiled down to some pretty basic things. Sacrificial tactics, overpowering and outnumbering opponents. As Captain Keyes put it as well: Distraction, diversion and deceit. It rarely changes, like their security protocols! They are impatient and overconfident, which often leads to their demise and changing this would admit to Humanity being better than them in the thinking department, something that their arrogance won't allow for. This is how the UNSC won, the only reason they "won".
In Reach we have a sly, precise, patient and efficient Covenant who have changed their tactics completely. They have displayed uncharacteristic innovation. In doing this they have essentially admitted to displaying inferior tactics before the UNSC in prior engagements, also uncharacteristic of them. The UNSCs reliance on predicting the Covenant's very predictable tactics is, as I said, the only reason they won.
Even within Reach there is an apparent dichotomy. The Covenant have successfully rendered a 27km long ship invisible to the most thorough, relentless and advance detection grid in Human space, as we now learn from the Guide book. Anyone who can do this must be pretty smart.
However the Covenant appear to have neglected to do this to, from what we can see, almost every other vessel in their fleet that they used against Humanity despite the overwhelming tactical advantage that it gives. I should be easy to do with other vessels. (Considering that they have much less volume to deal with) The fact that this tactic has not been used on any other Human world as far as we can tell is evidence for this. Whoever cannot see this must be pretty stupid.
So what are the Covenant even within Reach? Reach on its own works, but as soon as you apply it to the rest of the story things break.
Why the Covenant went to Reach and how they knew it needed to be scouted in the first place still doesn't add up.