- Irongam3r
- |
- Exalted Heroic Member
Oops. I think I just lost your mind.
It would have been impossible.
To all the people that think Noble's mission to destroy the Long Night could be turned into a boarding operation, I ask what chance exactly two Spartans, cut off from UNSC support, have in boarding and holding a kilometres-long supercarrier.
It takes only those two men to light a fuse. But to capture the whole damn ship? The UNSC would need 10 times the firepower in Marathon-class cruisers to neuter the Long Night and its support contingent for long enough to capture it. Which they decidedly did not have.
That is all.
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EDIT:
OP here. What I am saying is that at the time that UPPERCUT was carried out, the UNSC on Reach did not have the sufficient personnel or equipment to capture the Long Night of Solace.
In several threads I have seen it suggested that ONI could simply repurpose Noble's mission to a capture. The case that I'm trying to make is that Reach at the time did not have the resources to capture the carrier. That's why uppercut was carried out. They had no nukes, only a few frigates, and no ODPs. That's why Kat had to get creative with UPPERCUT; the plan was patched together from what was available at the time: Sabres and a slipspace drive. If a more conventional option was available, it likely would have been used. If that more conventional option was available, it could likely be used to capture the Long Night. But it wasn't. Capture of the carrier at that time was simply not an option due to evident lack of resources.
And for those saying it could be captured with the addition of even a platoon of ODSTs, remember this.
There are likely still thousands to tens of thousands of Covies on the craft. They have no artillery or air support, but they have the advantage of numbers and supplies. The humans would have to bring everything with them, the Covenant have a resupply station that's outfitted for a month-long, planet-wide campaign. It would become an unwinnable attrition war on the Covenant's home turf.
The carrier would absolutely HAVE to be captured by highly unconventional means, like the capture of the Ascendant Justice. The difference is the Ascendant Justice was outfitted with about 5% of the personnel who were far less effective in combat, and it took Cortana to hack the covenant networks. I believe this had never been done before (hacking Covie ship), and there are few if any besides Cortana who could do it. Reach did not have Cortana available at this point; arguably she could have been pulled from Halsey and put on this mission, but I doubt her importance would warrant her repurposing for this, especially considering the chance of failure. She could only pull it off on the Ascendant Justice because the ship was near-empty in the first place, and a pitched battle inside the ship was unnecessary. Add that element and I doubt even Cortana could do it, which is why the logical solution was a dependable method of blowing the thing sky-high rather than risking everything on a gamble.
[Edited on 10.16.2011 8:41 AM PDT]