Forerunners vs Imperium of Man (41st millenium)

[Boeing 757]

A wormhole appears suddenly linking the Ultima Segmentum of the Imperium of Mankind to the Haloverse galaxy at the height of the Forerunners. After the two parties come into contact with one another, the Imperium of Man has settled on a course of action to wage all-out war against the Forerunners, and vice versa. How do you folks think that the ensuing conflict would unfold?

[Purple]

I don't know much about HALO but if the guys are anything like the horrible unstoppable threats that already exist in 40K nothing much happens. A few crusades later they just settle down to being another looming threat to human kind and everything else in the universe.

[Boeing 757]

I don't know much about HALO but if the guys are anything like the horrible unstoppable threats that already exist in 40K nothing much happens. A few crusades later they just settle down to being another looming threat to human kind and everything else in the universe.

They have an awesome logistics and industrial capacity that rivals or exceeds what the Necrons have. Aside from that I don't know much else about them; thought this might be a fun match-up to gauge where they stand.

[Skywalker_T-65]

While Forerunner tech is fairly vague at the best of times, the more recent novels have expanded on things somewhat...such as this:

Fortress-class vessel. Yes, that is several times larger than an Executor on the high end. I don't know much about 40k, but considering the Forerunner had 'battlegroups' made up of 50-100 kilometer vessels, they could probably just ram their way through opposing fleets. Of course, this also adds problems in the typical 'how the hell did they lose to the Flood' thing.

Again, don't know much about 40k, but unless they are tactical idiots, they may be able to outsmart the Forerunner to a certain extent. How well that works is really dependent on tech/smarts though. Forerunner's can adapt eventually, and if they have a large enough tech advantage...I don't see them losing.

EDIT: It's also notable that in H4, the Didact's ship can take hits from the Super MAC platforms in orbit of Earth with no noticeable damage. Said platforms are capable of shattering kilometer (or more) long ships on kinetic energy alone. The Didact's ship isn't a battleship IIRC, more like a personal ship. Though I could be wrong there. Either way, Forerunner shields are nothing to sneeze at.

[Eternal_Freedom]

There is alos the consideration that Forerunner ships are going to be a lot faster and more precise at FTL than the Imperium. The forerunner also have much faster communications, so it's entirely possible that the Frerunner can win a battle and then be waiting to ambush the retreating Imperium fleet at it's fallback point.

[Ahriman238]

Okay, Forerunners have very advanced forcefield tech, some interesting personal weapons, doomsday weapons to wipe out all life in the galaxy and?

There's the ship the Covenant built their capital around, how much do we actually know about it's capabilities?

[Boeing 757]

While Forerunner tech is fairly vague at the best of times, the more recent novels have expanded on things somewhat...such as this:

Fortress-class vessel. Yes, that is several times larger than an Executor on the high end. I don't know much about 40k, but considering the Forerunner had 'battlegroups' made up of 50-100 kilometer vessels, they could probably just ram their way through opposing fleets. Of course, this also adds problems in the typical 'how the hell did they lose to the Flood' thing.

Again, don't know much about 40k, but unless they are tactical idiots, they may be able to outsmart the Forerunner to a certain extent. How well that works is really dependent on tech/smarts though. Forerunner's can adapt eventually, and if they have a large enough tech advantage...I don't see them losing.

EDIT: It's also notable that in H4, the Didact's ship can take hits from the Super MAC platforms in orbit of Earth with no noticeable damage. Said platforms are capable of shattering kilometer (or more) long ships on kinetic energy alone. The Didact's ship isn't a battleship IIRC, more like a personal ship. Though I could be wrong there. Either way, Forerunner shields are nothing to sneeze at.

Wow, their ships are really that big? These guys aren't fooling around, are they....
Makes me wonder why someone would need a ship to be so big.
How do they stand then in terms of acceleration, firepower and shields against your run of the mill lunar-class cruiser?

[Skywalker_T-65]

I'm not sure how fast Covenant/UNSC ships are, but the Dreadnought (the H2/H3 Forerunner ship) is faster than anything either faction has. Firepower and shields are very high end, since you have ships that can take the Super MAC fire. Said platforms are capable of dishing out 5870 gigatons of firepower per shot. If one then looks at the Didact's ship, which is apparently 142 kilometers long, and take the fact it can just shrug off that much firepower (and its more than one platform shooting at it, plus a UNSC battlegroup), its weapons have to be absurdly powerful.

The Human Empire in the Forerunner novels was nearly equal in technology, and we can assume that means shields. So Forerunner weaponry is along the lines of SW if we assume they are strong enough to get through shields like the Didact's.

Okay, Forerunners have very advanced forcefield tech, some interesting personal weapons, doomsday weapons to wipe out all life in the galaxy and?

There's the ship the Covenant built their capital around, how much do we actually know about it's capabilities?

Not much known about the Keyship/Dreadnought really. We know its engines, even at just 10%, were able to supply all the energy High Charity (which is 464 Kilometers long and about 350 wide) needed. And that includes the slipspace generators. This from a ship that's only about 12 kilometers itself.

For offensive and defensive, it was able to bring the Elites to the negotiating table on its own really in the pre-Covenant days. So its capable of wiping out fairly advanced fleets alone. Shielding is enough that in H3 it shrugged off fire from several frigates and at least a full squadron of Longsword fighters with no effect on it. Again, this is with only a small fraction of its power actually available. I'd hate to see what a fully functional Keyship can do.


EDIT: Though I would probably take what the Didact's ship can do with a grain of salt. The things almost half again as large as a Fortress class, and really...about the size of the freakin Death Star. So the Keyship is more indicative of regular Forerunner Naval vessels. Still absurdly powerful from what we know though, considering the Covenant one was at so little of its full potential and still did some very impressive things.

[Xess]

The Wiki states the Super MAC is 5870 GT but I keep getting 51 when I do the math using their given numbers. 3x10^6 kg, .04* c = 1.2x10^7 m/s. v^2= 1.44x10^14, Ke = 0.5 x 3x10^6 x 1.44x10^14 = 2.16x10^20 J or 51 gigatons.

[Skywalker_T-65]

I'm mathematically challenged, so I could only use what the wiki gave me. Naturally, if they are using the wrong numbers it drastically lowers things.

[Jub]

The Forerunners lost to the Flood, a force weaker and less well organized than the Orks are. So even if they can beat the Imperium, they still have the Orks, Necrons, Tyranids, and Chaos to deal with. This isn't to mention any trouble the Eldar, Dark Eldar, and Tau might be able to cause.

This scenario also supposes that the Forerunners will actually take part in the hostilities, as shown in their dealings with the Flood they react very slowly to changes in threat and are reluctant to engage in combat even if failure to do so will result in their downfall.

[Skywalker_T-65]

*shrug*

All entirely possible. Like I said, I know nothing of 40k, I was just showing what the Forerunner had tech wise (and I acknowledged the problem these super-ships raise with the whole, losing to the Flood thing). Though to be fair, they lasted several hundred years against the Flood, and if the space-zombies are good at anything its turning your own tech against you.

[InsaneTD]

The Flood also used Precursor artefacts against the Forerunners. For those who don't know much about Haloverse, the Precursors are to the Forerunners what they are to us, only, even more advanced. The artefacts they left behind could only be damaged by the Halo Devices.

The Forerunners also used carefully controlled slipspace travel. They believed that every ship transitioning into slipspace caused some kind of energy debt, that had to be accounted for. This meant only so many ships could travel through slipspace at once. The distance travelled also had an effect on this energy cost. A small ship being sent to another, very close galaxy caused a debt that took years to balance. They don't go into much detail but it mostly seems to be a philosophical thing as we see the covenant and humans jumping about and using slipspace without any problems.

In the Forerunner Saga (the recent trilogy of books) The Diadact's ship starts out the size of a small house before growing itself using hardlight, which is the Forerunner build material. The glowy bridges in the first couple games are temporary hardlight structures. They seem to be able to turn it into actual matter in the books. They don't go into much detail about it or it's properties.



I have no idea who would win. I could see a single Forerunner ship causing a lot of trouble and being very hard to kill but I don't see the Forerunners really bothering with them. I could see the flood being a massive problem though, especially if they manage to infect a Nid Hive Ship and turn it into a massive Gravemind.

[Sea Skimmer]

I do believe the Flood was not only able to takeover Forerunner ships and fully use them in action, but also infect Forerunner AI programs controlling various systems, and so turn everything the Forerunners had against themselves. Meanwhile for political reasons the Forerunners ignored and tried to contain the threat in its earlier stages, rather then mobilizing to wipe it out, because like the Covenant people might be more familiar with, they had a retarded caste system that made them socially unstable.

Considering that 40K is based on utter incompetence at every level of warfare and a die hard desire to never change that, and the Forerunners have vastly superior mobility, while 40K has to wait years just to send messages, even if 40K were significantly better armed it would still be deeply fucked.

[Purple]

Ah, but than comes chaos. 40K is full of places where the warp just decides to spill into reality at random. And as they have no knowledge of the warp the forerunners won't be prepared to deal with what comes out. Something as simple as taking a sanctioned psycher prisoner and not takin proper precautions could lead to disaster. So it all really hinges on how long before they can't dodge chaos any more.

[Boeing 757]

The Forerunners lost to the Flood, a force weaker and less well organized than the Orks are. So even if they can beat the Imperium, they still have the Orks, Necrons, Tyranids, and Chaos to deal with. This isn't to mention any trouble the Eldar, Dark Eldar, and Tau might be able to cause.

This scenario also supposes that the Forerunners will actually take part in the hostilities, as shown in their dealings with the Flood they react very slowly to changes in threat and are reluctant to engage in combat even if failure to do so will result in their downfall.

The Imperium would most likely steamroll the Flood, correct? With all their amazing tech, the Forerunners couldn't beat the Flood.... What gives then? If the Forerunners lost owing to their innate inflexibility, could the Imperium somehow exploit this weakness while the Forerunners gear up to do something about it? How fearsome are the Tyranids and Chaos compared with the Flood? Sorry, I haven't played any of the Halo games which is why I'm asking so many questions.

[Vendetta]

The Forerunner lost to the Flood because they were incredibly stupid.

Basically they dithered about not quarantining and glassing infected worlds until the Flood were too widespread to be effectively stopped short of using the Halo network.

(The Flood's strategy was basically "infect planetary population, use all vessels capable of interstellar flight to swarm nearby planets, if at least one lands then infect and repeat. A brutal fascist dictatorship would have better chances of dealing with them than the Forerunners, who were basically disinterested until the problem became too large to solve. The Flood have no technology of their own, but are capable of using the technology of anything they've infected.)

[Wing Commander MAD]

Eh, the flood tend to be somewhere between Ork and Tyranids as far as threats go. How well they would perform in 40k would depend on the scenario.

I've played all the games, though I haven't read much of the Halo equivalent of EU, but IIRC as Sea Skimmer said the Forerunner's problem with the flood was primarily a social/political one not technological. On tech level terms the Forerunner are more akin to pre-fall Eldar or Necrons. The sheer fact that they could construct the Ark from Halo 3 puts them leagues above the IoM. According to my albeit somewhat limited 40k knowledge the IoM can only dream about building an extragalactic facility for controlling/replacing a galaxy wide system of superweapons comprised of mega structures, to say nothing of the artificial planets. The fact that this automated system can replace a lost weapon/facility, albeit incomplete, but functional (think Death Star II), in under a year also places them above IoM in production capability.

[Connor MacLeod]

Apparently there's those Bear forerunner novels that offer a deeper insight into the capabilities of what the Forerunner/Flood War was like (couched in a term 'Culture Lite' I believe.) If there is any merit to that actually, then competence doesn't matter nor do any Flood comparisons, as there is very little 40K coudl do (short of drastically reinterpreting a bunch of evidence favorably) that could give them a chance.

[gigabytelord]

According to the updated timeline from the latest game (The games are considered official cannon) several hundred thousand years ago we humans had built a large and fairly advanced empire along the fringe of the galaxy (no way to figure out just how advanced). At some point during this period we encountered the flood. I'm not sure if we created them or were invaded by them (it wasn't completely clear), but we fought one hell of a brutal war with them over the span of I believe several thousand years.

At some point we said fuck it and started leaving that part of space to the bug eye'd bastards and ran head long into the forerunners and promptly started a war with them too.

The catch here is that forerunners apparently hadn't fought a war in god knows how long and started off the war in a bad way, however because they were way more advanced and had significant advantages in industrial capacities the forerunners started to turn the tide..., after at least one thousand years of slaughtering each other, they started to win, but only just barely...

Here's the second catch. They never found out about our war with the flood until the flood was tearing down their walls with captured weapons and ships from both parties.
So either unable or simply unwilling to fight a second war major war with an enemy equal to or better than humanity. Another war that they may not be able to win. They decided to end it all and take the flood with them using the Rings (or so they hoped).

Am I wrong or is that the short story on the whole Forerunner Vs. Flood deal? If so personally I see the Flood being a far larger threat.

[InsaneTD]

The Humans and Prophets (used to be allies according to the Forerunner books) managed to defeat the flood near the end. I'd say that the human empire of the time was far more advanced then the Forerunners as they were fighting two wars at the time and beating the Forerunners. It was then hundreds of years later that the flood reappeared. The books also suggest that the Precursors are the creators of the flood as a spite weapon against the Forerunners, if we can't have the galaxy, then neither can you. When the humans first found the flood, it appeared as a fairly harmless powder. It did show mutagenic effects, but they were positive, creating cuter pets (that eventually mutated into those little pod shits) making people better looking and healthier. The how is never explained but the humans found out the true nature of the flood (and actually named it). It's not clear how they beat it but it is suggested it was done by genetically engineering themselves in some way.

The Forerunner political landscape changed between both wars with the Warrior caste and the Builder caste swapping places, with the builders eventually destroying the warriors for the most part. It was the builders who built the first halo rings, massive things, much larger then the current ones with spikes and a central hub. These weren't omnidirectional like the latter rings, they could only fire in one direction, that said, they could fire at other galaxies and do it near instantaneously.

The Imperium would be proactive enough and "kill it with fire" enough to destroy the flood, assuming they could detect the flood and quarantine infected systems before it escaped. If it was found by a hive fleet first, then everyone would have problems.

[Skywalker_T-65]

Presuming I remember my Halo EU right...


The Forerunner-Human war did start as a result of the Flood pushing Humanity into Forerunner space. Or more accurately, from Humans bombarding Flood infected Forerunner worlds, and the Forerunner going 'hey, the Humans are attacking us!' because, obviously, there were no survivors from said bombardments. That being said, the humans developed some sort of cure to the Flood (and promptly sacrificed something like a third (or was it two-thirds?)) of their population to kill it off. It worked, and ended the war with the Flood. But by that point, the Forerunner had overrun the Human Empire and forcibly devolved them. This is why none of the modern Halo races (Covenant or UNSC-human) have ever found any ruins of the Human Empire.

The Forerunner themselves wouldn't encounter the Flood for some time after that. When they did, it went mostly like others have said...didn't see it as the threat it was until it was too late. They fought a fierce war, but were steadily pushed back until the Halo's seemed like the only option. Namely because the Humans destroyed the cure as a last act of defiance to the Forerunner.


EDIT: Also what TD said.

[InsaneTD]

The Humans buried it so well, the Forerunners couldn't even dig it out after digitizing the minds of all the humans they captured.

[gigabytelord]

Ok thanks for clearing everything up on that.

I've checked the halo wiki but it seems that it is rarely updated properly and I don't like the games enough the play them and I've yet to get through the Halo novel I have.

Really wish we knew more details about the pre-flood war human empire and their allies or hell, even the Precursors.

And seriously? "If we can't have the galaxy then neither can you!" Fuck you Precursors. At least Forerunners were decent enough to create 'backups' of all the sapient species before they exterminated them so that we could repopulate the galaxy.

Seriously, fuck those guys :/

[Skywalker_T-65]

Actually, its not so much the 'Precursors created the Flood' as the Flood are Precursors. Or, rather, the 'dust' that the Humans/Prophets used that turned into the first Flood forms was literally Precursor dust (don't ask me how this works, I don't know ).

This is because the Ancient Forerunners (as in, Ancient even by their standards) wiped out the Precursors because the latter favored Humanity. Thus, the Flood/Precursors were 'created' as a last revenge against the Forerunner. Rather mean-spirited either way, considering the Forerunner of the time were no more at fault than modern humanity is for our ancestors driving Neanderthals to extinction.


EDIT: On the topic of the thread though, that is actually somewhat interesting in regards to Forerunner firepower. They were able to drive a race that even they acknowledge as superior to extinction, and that was in ancient (to them) times. Sure, it also means they didn't advance much in that case, but still.