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Do not waste your tears, I was not born to watch the world grow dim. Life is not measured in years, but by the deeds of men.
Posted by: goldhawk
We should know better, because we are better.
Recently I have been told that the Covie ships are capable of traveling at speeds of over 912 lightyears per day. This makes me mad for several reasons and I will just list them off below in my rant. (This also builds off of some comebacks to this I've heard as well) So let's begin.
1: Makes the Covenant highly improbable.
Firstly, let us look at the galaxy, it is about 100000 light years in diameter with 200-400 billion stars, 50 billion planets, and 500 million planets that could potentially support life (numbers are approximate). With a FTL speed of 912 light years a day, the Covenant could traverse the diameter of the galaxy in 109.65 days. The chances of the Prophets encountering the Elites where slim too begin with. With these speeds, it's a miracle the Prophets found anyone at all. With a slower FTL speed, the discovery would have been more probable because the Prophets would have been forced to searched more planets due to their slower speed. The fact that they found 5 other species is a miracle in itself, the fact that they are stuck in the Orion Arm; ludicrous.
But wait, you say, the Covenant was plagued by internal conflicts and power struggles! This stopped them from spreading throughout the Milky Way! Okay, but the fact that in a week they could travel over 6000 light years still stands. As a matter of fact, I will come back to this point later.
2:Makes finding Humanity next to impossible.
Second of all, they found humanity. The chances of this is impossibly minuscule as I said. The whole war was the product of a chance encounter between a unmanned human freighter and a Jackal ship. Finding inhabited planets is slim enough, finding something that is barely the size of a cargo ship in the black is so unlikely that one could call it impossible. But the Covenant found it.
This next bit is important as I will come back to it later. Contact Harvest tells us that a human can travel the expanse of the human colonies in just over a year. I assumed that it would take 400 days because it is a nice, round number and helps keep the math a bit simpler. Human FTL is , I'm told, 2.8 light years a day. 400 days * 2.8 light years per day= 1120 light years. Humanity's plot of land is so small that the Covies could have accidentally jumped over it in a day-and-a-half.
The Covies don't know our speeds or the location of our worlds. The have no way of knowing if our next planet is 10 or a 1000 light years away. Once more, massive improbability rears it's ugly head.
3:Unyielding Hierophant
We all know Unyielding Hierophant but just incase, here's a quick reminder: Unyielding Hierophant was the staging area for a massive fleet that would travel to the Sol system after making several other pit stops. Covenant ships where regrouping from all over to participate in this gathering. This is the second problem: we don't know how long they were there, just that it was a while, quite possibly several days. This raises the question: where was everyone else? The fleets were regrouping and yet they where still waiting for other fleets to arrive. What gives? They can go over 900 light years a day but the still can't make a simple rendez-vous?
The entire fleet should have been there before MC and the gang arrived. I remember Cortana saying that they where even jumping to a nearby system to meet another large fleet. Once more, they can travel 912 light years in a day but they can't be bothered to jump a few systems over? The Covenant is prevented from expanding due to internal struggles remember? The whole lot of them should have been within a few hours worth of travel to the Hierophant.
4:Regret...Regret...Regret...
A major point in H2 was that Regret's fleet jumped the gun and attacked before everyone else could catch up. The "Regret...Regret..." was a cry for help. We know that the Covenant Battlenet is capable of FTL communications (Covenant version of the Domain?). The other fleets should have received that message and come to Regret's aid within hours. The other fleet that the Hierophant was to meet was untouched and within operational range of Earth. They should have arrived just after Regret called for help.
You could argue that Truth wanted Regret and Mercy dead and he refused to aid Regret in hopes that he would be killed. Truth is adept at backstabing. He of all people should know that a big battle is a dangerous place and anyone could be killed. He should have jumped in to "aid" Regret then have Regret's ship destroyed when it "accidentally flew in front of an Energy Projector" and then execute those "responsible for killing one of the Hierachs."
5:Alpha Halo's discovery.
Halos are big in the Covenant's religion too say the least. We know that the ships tracking the Autumn arrived early. Unless they were all holding idiot balls the sive of planets, they should have messaged everyone they knew that they just found the most important artifact in their religion.
The whole Covenant should have arrived there in the time it takes the Autumn to arrive because, remember, internal power struggles kept the Covenant enclosed in a small area. By the time the Chief gets to the Truth and Reconciliation, High Charity should have arrived with the whole fleet just behind it. John should have been attacked by the single largest gathering of Covenant forces before he even got to the control room (Though that means we wouldn't have to trek through the Library which would have been a plus).
6:Halo Reach.
*Long Night of Solace arrives and disables Visegrad*
*LNoS is told there are a bunch of demons here by the Zealot*
*LNoS sends message to the Prophets*
"Dear holy Hierachs, we have found an important human world. It is heavily fortified and there are several Demons as well as potential Forerunner relics. Unfortunately, we are outnumbered and could use some help taking out the massive human fleet."
*Fleet arrives before Tip of the Spear thanks to their massive FTL speeds*
*Thanks to the knowledge of Reach gathered by LNoS, they attack with a suitably large fleet*
*Reach falls, Six, Chief, Keyes, and everyone else dies*
*The End*
*Credits roll*
See how 912 light years per day is a problem?
7: Doesn't fit with everything else.
This is less fact and more personal opinion here, do bear with me as this is the end.
As far as sci-fi goes, Halo is a bit harder. They don't explain everything, sure, but they are still harder than most. If Halo gives you a number you can expect them to take it seriously. As such, most of Halo is rooted in reality, at least partially. Nothing is absolutely absurd. Except Covenant Slipspace technology. The Covenant is going 332880 times the speed of light, and that is so far beyond everything, non-forerunner, we have seen that it completely kills the mood for me.
I was fine when Cryptum was released. The things the Forerunners did never seemed too absurd because they are the sufficiently advanced alien! They are like Gods! The Covenant are not. They can't destroy planets, they can't makes stars go supernova! They are barely able to defeat humans! Despite this, they can still travel across the entire galaxy in 110 days.
Thank you for paying attention this long and indulging in my anger here. I just felt that this must be brought up.
/rant