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Subject: How UNSC could have put up good defence against plasma attacks
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  • Exalted Legendary Member

If you can read this, you are looking at my signature

So i thought quite randomly the other day.
In Halo, the plasma weapons use a electromagnetic field to contain the plasma and move it.

So I thought, maybe if the UNSC made a device that emits a strong electromagnetic field that diffuse the fields containing the plasma. Thus effectively blocking the plasma and vaporize it as it has nothing to keep it stable.

This could be used in firefights as a protective shield that doesn't wear or weaken, and on ships with internal protection of the electronics against the defense system.

What do you think ppl?

  • 12.02.2011 5:03 AM PDT

-blam!- Was that actually blammed out? Or did I just type it? You'll never know.

It's been noted already that the UNSC is not the most inventive when it comes to weapons tech. They could have done that, but then that would require them actually advancing past 21st century weapons tech.

  • 12.02.2011 5:06 AM PDT

I'm an Anarchist. I don't need a government to be a good person, but I'm glad it's here because some of you clearly do.

I think it sounds like an effective should-have.

I can't blame the UNSC for not being prepared to fight the covenant, though. I don't think anybody can. If your only enemy (Rebels) don't have superior weapons, then why spend the money upgrading?

  • 12.02.2011 5:15 AM PDT
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If you can read this, you are looking at my signature

the Human-Covenant war lasted for 20 years. plenty of time for innovation.

But I see the balancing issue with gameplay. the shields humans used in Halo Reach was quite far from what they had in Halo CE. so it's gameplay mechanics that dictated those features.

  • 12.02.2011 5:22 AM PDT

"Find where the liar hides, so that I may place my boot between his gums!" - Rtas 'Vadum

Bungie played a get out of physics free card a few years ago when they realized that that what they did was retarded. They said that it is not plasma and that this is just a misnomer used by the armed forces to refer to the stuff that the Covenant fire. It is supposedly something more mysterious and dangerous. (aka magic) It was probably because the UNSC looked so pathetically primitive in comparison to what the world should reasonably be like in 500 years time if they just left it down to physical concepts that we already have a very good understanding of today.

Quote

[Edited on 12.02.2011 7:34 AM PST]

  • 12.02.2011 7:32 AM PDT


Posted by: dahuterschuter
It's been noted already that the UNSC is not the most inventive when it comes to weapons tech. They could have done that, but then that would require them actually advancing past 21st century weapons tech.


Sigh, 500 years of pure peace does that to weapons tech.

Besides, they did advance past modern weapons.

  • 12.02.2011 7:42 AM PDT
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Deva Path


Posted by: DecepticonCobra

We are all going to get banned aren't we?

They were more focused on colonizing than fighting, that has been told several times.

  • 12.02.2011 8:58 AM PDT


Posted by: grey101
They were more focused on colonizing than fighting, that has been told several times.


This x10000.

It's kinda annoying how much I see of people -blam!-ing about the UNSC not using energy weapons or such while ignoring the at least 300 years of COLONIZATION. No war, just colonizing.

Tell me, if the earth had no wars from... American revolution to the present, would we be having the same guns/aircraft/etc? The answer is very simple. No. Even if we had tech advances, it'd be peace-related, not weapons.

  • 12.02.2011 9:05 AM PDT
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Deva Path


Posted by: DecepticonCobra

We are all going to get banned aren't we?

They have some Advance tech when it comes to colonizing. Terraforming isn't a joke no matter how much or little they can do, not to mention slipspace in itself.

  • 12.02.2011 9:09 AM PDT
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  • Exalted Legendary Member

If you can read this, you are looking at my signature

I think some people didn't get what I tried to explain. it's not about using energy weapons, it's about dealing with technology humans got a close look at for years already in the game. To contain plasma (which everything I've read about Halo says it is.), you need a electromagnetic field. We use such technology today

Plasma is a gas in which the atoms are ionized, meaning there are free negatively charged electrons and positively charged ions. This collection of charged particles can be controlled by electromagnetic fields and this allows plasmas to be used as a controllable reactive gas.

So my idea is based on dealing with The Covenants plasma, which is contained in a magnetic field guided by the weapon. what I want to do is to break that magnetic field with a stronger field that does not contain the plasma. the result is the Plasma dissolving.

[Edited on 12.02.2011 9:26 AM PST]

  • 12.02.2011 9:25 AM PDT

"Find where the liar hides, so that I may place my boot between his gums!" - Rtas 'Vadum

Posted by: Cmdr DaeFaron
Posted by: grey101
They were more focused on colonizing than fighting, that has been told several times.


This x10000.

It's kinda annoying how much I see of people -blam!-ing about the UNSC not using energy weapons or such while ignoring the at least 300 years of COLONIZATION. No war, just colonizing.

Tell me, if the earth had no wars from... American revolution to the present, would we be having the same guns/aircraft/etc? The answer is very simple. No. Even if we had tech advances, it'd be peace-related, not weapons.

It still does not explain why advances in genetics, computing, materials and physics have been stunted so much.

3 examples: They apparently still use silicon based hardware for computing. Ignoring the obvious fact that silicon will no longer give us an increase in computing power by the middle of this century, where are all the advanced concepts like quantum computing or graphene based computers?

People still age in the Haloverse as if it was today. Parangosky has one foot in the grave at 90... A team of scientists managed to reverse ageing in mice, the only issue is that it could raise the chances of cancer. But hey, the Haloverse treats cancer like a simple ailment. They can beat it very easily it appears. With 500 years worth of research into genetics I would expect people to be living indefinitely from these discoveries. It is not like resources or space is an issue either.

This is probably attached to the previous point, but how are they only making breakthroughs with bio-engineering in 2500? 500 years of genetics, and the best they could do was 33 out of 75 augmented Humans.

And none of these are strictly military research either. They are all tied to either improving living standards or to improving the chances of an industry making profit when its products become obsolete.

For being a futuristic society 500 years in the future, the UNSC appears to be quite stunted. With the increased understanding of the universe and the laws of physics that they should have I honestly fail to see how they find Covenant technology a mystery. 100 years ago the physics community did not know about relativistic effects nor quantum effects, which are major pillars of physics. In 500 years in Halo, it looks like they have barely moved an inch since today despite how many revolutionary breakthroughs we have made in the past 100 years. The only thing they really have demonstrated to have over us in terms of understanding the universe is slipspace, but they cannot even understand that properly. They have had 300 years to study it, and are just completely stumped at everything the Covenant can do with slipspace.

The UNSC's technological and scientific growth has been severly retarded for some reason.

  • 12.02.2011 10:37 AM PDT
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Posted by: DecepticonCobra

We are all going to get banned aren't we?

In which a major overhaul of the haloverse might be needed. Hopefully if it ever happens the covenant ground vehicles get shields.

  • 12.02.2011 10:40 AM PDT

It's the prestige that makes the illusion.


Posted by: dahuterschuter
It's been noted already that the UNSC is not the most inventive when it comes to weapons tech. They could have done that, but then that would require them actually advancing past 21st century weapons tech.


they passed it, they lived in the 26th during H-C war ^^
troll, troll /D


But i get what you mean :D
In Halo the Fall of Reach you discover how uncreative the humans are, Spartans are ordered pick up covenant weapons to bring them to HQ's for further research and to record covenant technology.

Strange how a race know for it's aggression and lust for war doesn't know how to improve weapons.

  • 12.02.2011 11:23 AM PDT

Huh? Or simply put they wanted some Covenant tech to do firsthand tests on/with.

Easiest way to figure out how to defend yourself from a weapon is to get hold of one and run tests with it.

  • 12.02.2011 11:57 AM PDT
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Posted by: Acres 057
I think it sounds like an effective should-have.

I can't blame the UNSC for not being prepared to fight the covenant, though. I don't think anybody can. If your only enemy (Rebels) don't have superior weapons, then why spend the money upgrading?
This. Also until Cortana took over Ascendant Justice, it was not known how The Covenant controlled the plasma. Afterwards, Cortana was able to make the cannons more effective and more like Plasma Lances instead of Plasma Cannon Shells.

  • 12.02.2011 12:21 PM PDT
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Posted by: chotato
smart, interesting, seems out of place.


Official fan of Assassin's Creed, Call of Duty, (Problem with that?) Halo, and Bungie, also a total gaming junkie.

But they didn't.

  • 12.02.2011 12:23 PM PDT

The UNSC's focus wasn't upon developing weapons, especially to combat an unimaginable threat. Admiral Cole said that had it not been for the insurrection in the late 2400s, humanity would have been completely screwed when the Covenant attacked; more than 200 years after the creation of the Shaw-Fujikawa drive, humanity still hadn't properly learnt how to wage war in space.

That's proof if nothing else that their priority was colonisation and expansion, not warfare.

Aside from that, we're dealing with alien technology here. For all we know the Covenant could shield their plasma against external EMP. Or for some reason it might change state once shaped.

Effectively what I'm saying is that a wizard did it. Also, it's already been said in this thread that the 'plasma' isn't really plasma. I agree that's a cheap get-out-of-jail-free trick, but that's how it is.

[Edited on 12.02.2011 1:20 PM PST]

  • 12.02.2011 1:19 PM PDT
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Posted by: Ktan Dantaktee
But they didn't.


And do you know why? Because that happened within a year or 2 of the Covenant collapsing, the UNSC was down to its last breath, they did not have the resources available, and it would take FAR longer than 2 years to outfit an entire fleet with completely new forms of weaponry. You act as though just by knowing how to do something it is instantly done if you so choose.

  • 12.02.2011 1:27 PM PDT
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Posted by: anton1792
Posted by: Cmdr DaeFaron
Posted by: grey101
They were more focused on colonizing than fighting, that has been told several times.


This x10000.

It's kinda annoying how much I see of people -blam!-ing about the UNSC not using energy weapons or such while ignoring the at least 300 years of COLONIZATION. No war, just colonizing.

Tell me, if the earth had no wars from... American revolution to the present, would we be having the same guns/aircraft/etc? The answer is very simple. No. Even if we had tech advances, it'd be peace-related, not weapons.

It still does not explain why advances in genetics, computing, materials and physics have been stunted so much.

3 examples: They apparently still use silicon based hardware for computing. Ignoring the obvious fact that silicon will no longer give us an increase in computing power by the middle of this century, where are all the advanced concepts like quantum computing or graphene based computers?

People still age in the Haloverse as if it was today. Parangosky has one foot in the grave at 90... A team of scientists managed to reverse ageing in mice, the only issue is that it could raise the chances of cancer. But hey, the Haloverse treats cancer like a simple ailment. They can beat it very easily it appears. With 500 years worth of research into genetics I would expect people to be living indefinitely from these discoveries. It is not like resources or space is an issue either.

This is probably attached to the previous point, but how are they only making breakthroughs with bio-engineering in 2500? 500 years of genetics, and the best they could do was 33 out of 75 augmented Humans.

And none of these are strictly military research either. They are all tied to either improving living standards or to improving the chances of an industry making profit when its products become obsolete.

For being a futuristic society 500 years in the future, the UNSC appears to be quite stunted. With the increased understanding of the universe and the laws of physics that they should have I honestly fail to see how they find Covenant technology a mystery. 100 years ago the physics community did not know about relativistic effects nor quantum effects, which are major pillars of physics. In 500 years in Halo, it looks like they have barely moved an inch since today despite how many revolutionary breakthroughs we have made in the past 100 years. The only thing they really have demonstrated to have over us in terms of understanding the universe is slipspace, but they cannot even understand that properly. They have had 300 years to study it, and are just completely stumped at everything the Covenant can do with slipspace.

The UNSC's technological and scientific growth has been severly retarded for some reason.


So making an easy cure for cancer, heavily augmenting(Including covering bones with metal), pocket-sized/small devices that can flash clone organs, making flash clones of human biengs that retain memory of their orignial, cryosleep, and neural interfaces don't count as progress in genetics/biomedical fields?
So "dumb" AIs that can single-handedly run cities and "smart" AIs that can run planets as well as out think our best minds, as well as making armor that can house them doesn't, doesn't qualify as significant progress in computing?
So discovering slipspace, creating ships/space-craft that can effectively manuever in space, utalizing fusion reactors and having the ability to implement them in armor, reverse engineering alien energy shielding technology, creating a man-portable laser weapon, utalizing railguns in things ranging from sniper rifles to space ships, and having the ability to terraform entire planets doesn't qualify as progress in physics?

Sorry, i didn't know we could/can almost do that today at the same level the UNSC can.

  • 12.02.2011 1:44 PM PDT
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"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: Olole
So i thought quite randomly the other day.
In Halo, the plasma weapons use a electromagnetic field to contain the plasma and move it.

So I thought, maybe if the UNSC made a device that emits a strong electromagnetic field that diffuse the fields containing the plasma. Thus effectively blocking the plasma and vaporize it as it has nothing to keep it stable.

This could be used in firefights as a protective shield that doesn't wear or weaken, and on ships with internal protection of the electronics against the defense system.

What do you think ppl?


The only issues really are:

A: The Covenant 'plasma' does not behave like real plasma (real plasma would make a poor weapon).

B: the fields that the Covenant ships use to control their plasm are effective at extreme range (light seconds in some cases) this should not be possible with any plausible mag-field containment.

C: The UNSC ship would have to deal with the massive magnetic field, electronics do not mix well with uncontained high powered magnetic fields, spacecraft need a huge amount of electronics to function.

D: Even if all the above were possible, the field could not protect the ship fully, only direct where the plasma hits, much like earth's magnetic field directs ions in the solar wind to the poles.


While a good thought, this technology would not be possible or practical to build.



-----------------------------------------------------------

Posted by: anish panchalin
Another thing the UNSC could've done by now is create bombs by combining matter and anti-matter. Let it be known (from some BBC science video) that if a person made of matter met another person of the same shape but made up of anti-matter, the resulting energy given off would be 23x Hiroshima's epxlosive force (from my memory).


Erm, it's going to be much much more than that, thats at least 160kg of pure mass-energy conversion, E=mc^2, and that c^2 term is pretty big...

Seeing as humans in the present are supposedly experimenting with positrons (anti-matter electrons), I don't see why they couldn't've implemented this in the unsc-covie war, in all seriousness.

You are underestimating how incredibly hard it is to make antimatter. We can only make it in tiny tiny amounts, individual sub atomic particles.
Making positrons is hard enough, making and getting hold of something like an antimatter H nuclei is almost impossible, it's exceptionally hard to do.

There are more atoms in a pinhead than grains of sand on earth, at the rate we can make antimatter we would struggle to make an antimatter pinhead by 2552.




Edit: +1 to everything superiorarsenal said.

[Edited on 12.02.2011 1:51 PM PST]

  • 12.02.2011 1:49 PM PDT

Posted by:ScubaToaster
Posted by: HipiO7
This man, this man right here put it so eloquently that I actually cancelled my own 2000+ word long post.
/slow clap for respect


:)
The person who said participating is important, not winning, obviously never won anything.

Posted by: grey101
They were more focused on colonizing than fighting, that has been told several times.


This.

Thank god they were in a civil war, which prepared them in some way for the war with the Covenant. Had it not been for that civil war, the UNSC could have probably been moped up in less than a decade.

And in the middle of the war, almost all their efforts went into understanding the Covenant (class structures, religion etc), finding where they were based, and building a fleet that would continually get decimated in naval battles.

The machine you talk about was probably invented, but it was probably only in prototype state, and only spec op operators got them for very specific missions, especially Spartan's. Think of it as a sort of Power Drain. It did not reach the frontline troops, and when Reach, or any other R&D colony was destroyed, the blueprints for such project were lost, since I'm sure it would be classified as top secret.

  • 12.02.2011 3:03 PM PDT
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In the time frame of 50 years or so, they went from no military power to creating:
MJOLNIR
SPARTAN
SPI
M99 Stanchion
Guass Turrets
Cobra
NOVA
SPARTAN Laser
The Prototype
SMAC
ect...

So saying they are not advancing considerably is B.S. Will we have combat suits with full flight capabilities, rockets, energy shielding, and a chain gun in 50 years from now? I don't think so. I mean look at their focus for the last 300-400 years, colonization. They colonized 800 planets in 300-400 years, impressive, no?

  • 12.02.2011 5:52 PM PDT

The mariens just had a skirmish and there was a plasma rifle on the ground and guess what.. they dont pick it up cause there retarded. If i was a solider back then i would carry like 5 plasma rifles but no they keep there -blam!- assualt rifle with half a clip in it.

In conclusion people in the future are really stupid.

  • 12.02.2011 11:30 PM PDT

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