- Fin5434p
- |
- Exalted Heroic Member
- gamertag: Fin
- user homepage:
"but you already knew that, I mean, how couldn't you?
Only when no Human brick is left atop another, shall we be satisfied with your destruction.
Posted by: Cowgoesmoo
The forerunner's smallest ship was a "PLANET BREAKER"
Does anyone understand how the forerunners are supposed to lose?
Numbers.
Quite simply it was a numbers game and the Forerunner millitary could not keep up.
The main problem the Forerunners faced initially was that they had ubiquitous fast civilian FTL ships, the Flood could get hold of these easily and each individual vessel could spread the infestation to yet another world, with more ships on it.
The Forerunner Fleet was rarely beaten in space combat, but they could only be so many places at once.
If we assume that the flood can escape with 100 civilian ships (a ridiculously small estimate) from an infected world before the Fleet smites them all, then they can potentially carry the Flood to 100 other worlds.... If we assume the Forerunner react quickly enough to send ships to all those worlds in time that the flood can only nick say, 20 ships from each subsequent world (again, very low estimate given Flood spread rate) then the Flood now has 2000 ships that it can take anywhere it pleases......
Alright, perhaps the flood COULD use the forerunner's own ships against them, even though in Halo: Legends I never saw that happen...
They most assuredly could, it's explicitly stated to be the case in the Halo 3 terminals.
http://www.halo3archives.com/terminals/
From terminal 2:
"Enemy naval tactics:
When engaged, the enemy commits every non-supraluminal craft with no appreciable pattern or strategy beyond making physical contact. Conversely, all supraluminal craft leave on seemingly random trajectories"
Flood-infested planets-first of all, are no threat to "planet breakers"
The threat lies in the technology and spacecraft the Flood gains from the world, the Flood stuck planetside are contained.
(Untill such a time as they can use that planet's infrastructure to build more ships, at least.)
Also, against all common sense, unless the forerunners were mentally insane, I find it incredibly amusing that they waited until the flood took over say... 51% of the forerunner tech and planets?
They weren't insane, they just didn't become aware of the scale of the problem untill it was beyond their ability to contain, the Flood only needed to take a very small number of worlds to gain enough ships to spread like wildfire.
After that point, the spread rate is at least exponential, they would be all but impossible to contain.
The fact that the Forerunners also thought it their duty to try and protect the lesser races from the Flood speaks very highly of their people, but it was an added burden their millitary could not really afford.
They succeeded in the end of course, they managed to save a great many sentient species and their biospheres, preserving biodiversity in the galaxy. It cost the Forerunner their civilisation and their lives, but they managed to save a great deal.
Even so, they had a hell lot of time to build the rings and the Ark, so I really cannot understand how this is supposed to work.
Our galaxy is a *very very very* big thing, it contains 400 billion stars, Even if the Flood was consuming a million systems a day it would still take them nearly three thousand years to consume the galaxy.
The scale is vast.
First of all:
Forerunners aren't exactly peaceful, or they wouldn't of had had super-ships that could probably remove black holes or who-knows-what from existence. Having these ships, they would of had blown the flood up the moment they decided their medicine pills were a failed project.
Space is big, the Flood fleet is big, and the Forerunners ships, no matter how awesome, can only be in so many places.
Secondly: This flood takeover must be really damn slow, because they had a huge amount of time to build Halo, and I'm certain building Halo takes longer than engineering a cure for the flood, which the humans had.
Building megastructures was easy for the Forerunner, the Halo that replaces 04 was built by a completely automated factory in months.
The Humans did not have a cure per se, I won't go into detail as you haven't read Cryptum, but it was a pyrrhic victory for the Human-SanShyuum alliance. There are other factors too, but spoilers for Cryptum, suffice to say there are other reasons the Forerunner were at a disadvantage as well.