- 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: OrderedComa
It simply does not apply to their military strategy at all.
The fact that Humanity is still existent by the end of Halo 3 speaks against that. If the Covenant were as competent as the UNSC in military strategy and tactics then the war would have been over far quicker than it took, with Earth being glassed as a result.
"Distraction, Diversion, Deceit". As stated by Captain Keyes, it is predictable. The Covenant's arrogance, pride and imitative nature is the only reason the UNSC was able to get a foot in the door and survive. I see Halo as a Happy ending service otherwise, because I see that in reality the Covenant with their level of technology, resources and population would win if they were anything else other than what they have been described as.
Technological developments are heavily integrated into military thinking. Often new technologies are a product of innovation in war tactics and strategies; technology being developed solely for those ideas. The Covenant advance at a snails pace technologically so it again speaks, at least to me, that there is practically no innovation in their war methods.
The tech that they do have has mostly not been specifically designed for any purpose and not from war. They find Forerunner technology, turn it into something and then through trial and error determine whether or not it will remain in use. There is no think tank like approach to warfare. Examples:
The Focus rifle is a reverse engineered sentinel beam, and as a sniper weapon it is laughable. It practically blinds you when firing it, requires you to hold the trigger for a "long" duration, makes an awful noise and lights you up like a Christmas tree. A marksmen would have a better chance of remaining hidden and taking out a target by throwing rocks instead. The Beam rifle suffers from similar problems but is slightly better as it is quieter, instant kill and doesn't blind you, but it still leaves a highly visible trail. Here, these were not specifically designed by someone thinking "lets make a better sniper weapon" they came into being as "Oh hey look at this! Lets try to copy this and use it as a sniper weapon".
The Needler is as dangerous to its firer as it is to its target if those projectiles rebound off of something. The projectiles are relatively speaking slow and visible. Clearly there was no real thought put into this. The Energy Sword is a joke. There is no real attempt at proper tactics there for the simple reason of "Never bring a knife to a gun fight". The Scarab is actually a mining platform for excavating Forerunner artefacts. They don their commanders in elaborate armour (Golds, Whites, Silvers etc) which makes it easier for an opponent to cut off the head of your chain of command. Overall, there has appeared no intuitive thought into war tactics overall from the design of their weapons and their design process. And we can argue that 343i is trying to change that, but everything that they do is on the table with Reach as well. They are just a part of the problem if they bend over backwards.
tl;dr They don't design weapons for a specific role to improve their tactics, they find and reverse engineer something and then apply it. If it works it works, if it doesn't it doesn't. No thought relation between development and tactic seems apparent.
Can you describe to me the way in which the Midnight at the Heart of Midlothian was a trap? All we know is that the Covenant were waiting there for a ship that they could not possibly have even known existed, let alone know that it was on route to that particular location. There is speculation that information was leaked to the Covenant, like the AI assembly revealing colony locations. I don't see any other way that the Covenant could have been there other than from pure chance.