Moderator: NecronLord
No, the Forerunners set it off on purpose because the Flood was out of control.Lone_Prodigy wrote:Would that explain how the Halo activation killed off the Forerunners? Rampant AI set it off?
The Legendary ending apparently answers that one.The Vortex Empire wrote:The way that they ended it, I thought he was dead until the second video. Hmm. With cryo, he could last until he is found(or the ship runs out of power).
God Damnit, it's the fucking prequals all over again. The first two are stand alones, but to fully understand the third you have to go through the EU.avatarxprime wrote:For the question about not explaining what happened to the Master Chief aboard the Forerunner dreadnaught, it will be in the new Halo comic, Halo: Uprising. That is supposed to fill in the gap between the end of Halo 2 and the beginning of Halo 3.
Well, how is that any different from Halo 2, where the only way you knew how the hell Master Chief got back to earth or why Johnson was still alive and kicking was by reading First Strike?General Schatten wrote:God Damnit, it's the fucking prequals all over again. The first two are stand alones, but to fully understand the third you have to go through the EU.avatarxprime wrote:For the question about not explaining what happened to the Master Chief aboard the Forerunner dreadnaught, it will be in the new Halo comic, Halo: Uprising. That is supposed to fill in the gap between the end of Halo 2 and the beginning of Halo 3.
The Flood are the only race in the galaxy with this tech level natively, though they have a Tier 2 adopted tech level. This would seem to suggest that they make nothing of their own, just hijack what they can from their hosts.Tier 7: Preindustrial
Tier 7 is one of the most common and stable states, with limited weaponry and environmental threats. Societies tend to be small and scattered, driven by subsistence farming, foraging, or hunter-gathering needs. Technology is limited to simple tools, weapons, or agrarian implements and methods, but a basic understanding of planetary or solar mechanics is not uncommon.
The native tech level of the grunts before being introduced into the Covenant.Tier 6: Industrial Age
Tier 6 is often the pinnacle for a civilization. Agrarian societies can remain stable in the preindustrial stage, but Tier 6 population strain and mechanized food production invariably create political and economic pressures few can balance. Moving past this usually promises advancement. Some societies improve environmental and medical understanding concurrently with mechanical and transport advancement; those that do not are frequently doomed.
None of the known Halo species are on this level.Tier 5: Atomic Age
Tier 5 species usually become space-farers, focusing on clean energy production. The occasional belligerent species will use atomic energy for weapons, often resulting in extinction. In-atmosphere craft are a hallmark, often leading to spaceflight.
This is the tech level most of the covenant races achieved before they became members. Brutes (Jiralhanae), Drones (Yanme'e), and Jackals (Kig-Yar) are all Native Tier 4.Tier 4: Space Age
Tier 4 is often the final resting place for species intelligent enough to break free from their cradle's surface only to fill the gulf surrounding it with war. Their comfort-focused technology can include medical advances.
Note: Jiralhanae are the only species on record who achieved space, reduced themselves through internecine war to a preindustrial condition, clawed their way back to their former state, and learned nothing from the experience.
The native tech level of Humans and Hunters.Tier 3: Space-Faring
Humans have efficient slipspace navigation, mass drivers, asynchronus linear-induction weapons, holocrystal storage, and semi-sentient AI, but their creation requires blood sacrifice, memory transfer, and flash cloning. They have had little or no outside influence- until recent events. Since Covenant contact, they have been on the verge of huge artificial advancement.
The Elites and Prophets are both at this level.Tier 2: Interstellar
The Covenant's accurate slipspace navigation, near instantaneous interstellar communication, and man-portable application of energy manipulation owe everything to Forerunner technology.
Note: The two primary extant interstellar civilizations were space-faring prior to discovering Forerunner artifacts- or each other- but they have not successfully reverse-engineered those artifacts.
Forerunner tech level.Tier 1: World Builders
Forerunner ability to manipulate gravitational forces, create AI with full sentience, fabricate super-dense materials, and perform ultra-accurate slipspace navigation is unequaled by any extant civilization.
It also has an entry regarding the Covenant Engineers which I've seen get some flak here. According to the bestiary book (which seems to be written from the perspective of some manner of outside observer, possibly forerunner). They're forerunner constructs who's nanomechnical structures are indistinguishable from their biological analogues to those races without Tier 1 biomedical tech built as maintenance crews.Tier 0: Transsentient
As the Forerunners had no examples of civilizations with technological accomplishment greater than themselves- with the exception of the Precursors- this is a theoretical ceiling. They can travel intergalactically and accelerate evolution of intelligent life. These may be creatures of legend.
Okay, just completed my three man legendary run, the number was, in fact, 2^18, so we're looking at over a quarter million light years from the Milky Way. Not bad.Hotfoot wrote:The location of the Ark is something to the 18th lightyears from rim of the Milky Way. Assuming we're dealing with 2^18, that's 262,144 lightyears, bare minimum. I'll try to make a note of the actual number, but that's a good bare minimum to start with.
Partially. Again, spoilers in quotes.Lone_Prodigy wrote:Would that explain how the Halo activation killed off the Forerunners? Rampant AI set it off?
I'm assuming this is proof that the Halos can also kill Flood; presumably, it kills the host creatures like the Combat Forms, while the Infection Forms survive.A Forerunner AI named Offensive Bias fought Medicant Bias after he betrayed the Forerunner. Apparently, he led the entire Flood fleet through the Forerunners' defenses, and while the two AIs were fighting, the Forerunner activated the Halo array. It killed everything biologically-piloted, including the Flood-controlled ships, allowing Offensive Bias to use his computer-controlled ships to destroy what was left of Medicant Bias' AI ships.
As I said on another board, the leadership of the Covenant is gone and destroyed, but the Brutes aren't just going to surrender peacefully. Other than the Hunters (the numbers of which are so high I'm sure because each "individual" hunter is actually made up of hundreds of small worm-like creatures) the Brutes are the largest population of any species in the Covenant by over 50 billion. It's going to take years, if not decades, of fighting before the Covenant is completely broken.CaptHawkeye wrote:I wonder what is going to befall the post Prophet galaxy? The Covenant itself may be dissolved, but its member races and many numerous worlds still exist. Will they fall in behind the Elites? And what will the Elites do now that they understand the Great Journey was all a farce?
Indeed, what is left of the Brute war machine is likely to break up into smaller bands, asuming they cannot unite under another leader such as Tarturas or Truth. But, on another note, what was with the populations of some of the species in the Beastiary? Some of them seemed way off; the Grunts, for example, had a population of just 300 million or so (I don't have the extra's on me right at this moment), where as the Elites had a population well into the billions. Also, what was with the human population? 200 million is incredibly low, assuming there are other colonies and inhabited worlds besides Earth; and even if there are none, then the only way the population could be so low is if Earth took a serious bombarbment from Truth's fleet, even though most of his forces were said to be located around east Africa.DPDarkPrimus wrote:As I said on another board, the leadership of the Covenant is gone and destroyed, but the Brutes aren't just going to surrender peacefully. Other than the Hunters (the numbers of which are so high I'm sure because each "individual" hunter is actually made up of hundreds of small worm-like creatures) the Brutes are the largest population of any species in the Covenant by over 50 billion. It's going to take years, if not decades, of fighting before the Covenant is completely broken.
Intro to Crow's Nest. Miranda Keyes states that the damage from the orbital bombardment after Truth's fleet arrived was "extreme".Levy Leah wrote: Also, what was with the human population? 200 million is incredibly low, assuming there are other colonies and inhabited worlds besides Earth; and even if there are none, then the only way the population could be so low is if Earth took a serious bombarbment from Truth's fleet, even though most of his forces were said to be located around east Africa.
It's hard to believe that the population would be reduced to just 200 million when we now have ~6.6 billion. That would mean that the bombardment killed 32 out of 33 people and all other human colonies were glassed beforehand. I haven't read the books in a while but weren't there at least a handfull of populated human areas other than Earth.Intro to Crow's Nest. Miranda Keyes states that the damage from the orbital bombardment after Truth's fleet arrived was "extreme".
I hadn't considered this possibility, but goind back over the Bestiary this is likely the case. The entry for the Grunts openly states that they bred in large litters and possesed large numbers (as their status within the Covenant as cannon fodder would indicate, as well), but does not mention any significant drop in numbers during the Human-Covenant War, so far as I have seen.Dominus wrote:It's entirely possible the (presumably) Forerunner computer program or AI that compiled this report may have been incorrect or drew the wrong conclusions based upon available data; the "Caveat" that precedes the Bestiary even admits as much.
I would probably say that their manufacturing ability is at least on par with the GE. Instalation 04 (Alpha Halo) was destroyed Sept. 22 2552, and at the end of Halo 3, the Ark was able to build a replacement ring by early 2553. It wasn't fully complete, but it was able to fire and 343 said that with a couple of more days he could make it fully operational. A single Halo ring has a diameter of 10,000 km with a thickness of ~22 Km.I haven't got Halo 3, but from what I'm hearing, the Forerunners had some fairly impressive building abilities...I wonder if they'll be good for a GE versus match up?
