- anton1792
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- Noble Legendary Member
"Find where the liar hides, so that I may place my boot between his gums!" - Rtas 'Vadum
Posted by: Slaskia
Maybe they felt the didn't need to with the other worlds, considering most of those worlds were just simple colony worlds I believe. Thing is, we know little about the Covenant's intelligance gathering abilities: we cannot assume they use all the same methods as the UNSC/ONI.
It would have come in very handy on Harvest, where the Covenant and UNSC played a game of tug O' war over control of the planet. That should have taught them that the UNSC would not be an easy foe to defeat and that they should take every precaution. They cut off Reach from the rest of the colonies I believe when they took down Visigrad. If they did this with other colonies, then they could devastate those worlds and disappear before the UNSC would know what was going on.
Sure they would catch eventually to the whole "colony falling silent" thing, but there is a definite advantage to cutting off communications of these colonies like they did with Reach. For one, Human colonies would ever be able to tell the UNSC what they would be facing when their fleets arrived, robbing the UNSC of the advantage of preparing properly. I'm sure there are other reasons for doing this as well, such as fishing for NAV data or following shipping routes to find other Human worlds. I do not see why the Covenant would deliberately make things more difficult for themselves.
Posted by: Slaskia
You're certain about this? Again, we know little about how the Covenant operates. We do know there is some element of 'choice' in what position a Sangheili takes: Usze 'Taham for instance turned down Honor Guard not once, but twice (granted he had assassination attempts on his life because of it). What if Rtas didn't want to be Shipmaster at that time? Maybe he had a choice between Shipmaster and leading the SpecOps and is only one know due to the need of competent Sangheili leading them due to the Schism? In comparison: Thel wanted to be Shipmaster and beyond.
But we know it can happen, for there are always exceptions to the rule. Yes, we do know Sangheili usually just allow the weak to die via the Bloodlines comic, but in the very same comic we also know that sometimes Sangheili that are exceptional in other areas besides strength/fitness are allowed to live (e.g. Reff). You also forget that Sanghelios has a population of over 9 billion Sangheili, which most of will never leave the planet: I highly doubt all them are fit, 'perfect', Sangheili warriors.
All of these exceptions do not mean anything because the Covenant do not select the relevant characteristics for competent and intelligent naval commanders. If they do not bother searching them out before the war games (Reff only survived becuase his brother protected him. Reff was doomed like every other who could not compete), and have their ranking structure based entirely on scalps so that naval commanders get there by slaughtering everything and not through good tactical and strategic abilities, why would they suddenly start showing interest in doing so for Reach?
This is another spontaneous ad hoc plot point that Reach introduces.
Posted by: Slaskia
So what is wrong with speculating that the shipmaster of the LNoS may decide to imploy a different/new stratergy?
It has not been explained or set in motion in other works. I don't moan that Rtas breaks the Covenant mindset in Halo 3 because his character was largely established as having out the box thinking in HGN, Halo 2 and later in the Encyclopaedia. The intention was to show Rtas as being unique. With Reach it is just sprung on us. We don't know if this shipmaster here is like Rtas or not. There is no explanation. The Covenant has been built with an image with almost every single canon source. Any exceptions to that, such as Truth, Rtas or Zhar were carefully outlined and explained by the authors, and in cases were made to contrast the rest of the Covenant heavily. Zhar and Reff's "uniqueness" lead to their deaths (Or in Reff's nearly. He wasn't killed by Covenant but almost was. The AI got him instead.), their ideals where so against the Covenant mindset.
Posted by: Slaskia
Not only did it show that the Covenant was not a 'one trick pony',
Well that is entirely the problem. There is an essential theme built into this whole Imitative Covenant thing: That is is better to remain independent and a free thinker than to rely on handouts and follow other people like a sheep. Because it just so happens that the imitative organisation is destroyed and its member races plagued by the problems that imitativeness creates whilst the innovative one survives to rebuild and go onto greater things.
[Edited on 07.04.2011 10:10 PM PDT]