Forerunners vs Galactic Empire

[Perseid]

Just want to repeat my question. How many ships does the GE have? They don't use more than a couple of hundred at a time right?

Not sure about the rest of the fleet, but the number of Star Destroyers during the civil war is quoted in the Thrawn trilogy as being 25,000

[Ritterin Sophia]

Just want to repeat my question. How many ships does the GE have? They don't use more than a couple of hundred at a time right?

Not sure about the rest of the fleet, but the number of Star Destroyers during the civil war is quoted in the Thrawn trilogy as being 25,000

I thought that was the Imperial Sourcebook and was on the number of Imperator II's?

[Perseid]

Just want to repeat my question. How many ships does the GE have? They don't use more than a couple of hundred at a time right?

Not sure about the rest of the fleet, but the number of Star Destroyers during the civil war is quoted in the Thrawn trilogy as being 25,000

I thought that was the Imperial Sourcebook and was on the number of Imperator II's?

I'm sure it was i the Thrawn trilogy, when Pellaeon is thinking back on the height of the Empire (i.e. during the civil war). Course that doesn't mean it's not in the Sourcebook

[Ford Prefect]

Just want to repeat my question. How many ships does the GE have? They don't use more than a couple of hundred at a time right?

There are stated to be 25,000 Star Destroyers. Conversely, the fleet numbers given from the terminals gives less than five thousand capital ships. There's no indication as to how much of their greater fleet this was, however.

[Xon]

There are stated to be 25,000 Star Destroyers. Conversely, the fleet numbers given from the terminals gives less than five thousand capital ships. There's no indication as to how much of their greater fleet this was, however.

The last stand of the Forerunners before they activated the Halo's and scrubbed the galaxy of life, the Flood attacked with 4.8 million ships. Of those 86436 where warships(1.8% of the total), and 2074 where capital ships(2.4% of the total warships). linky

Mendicant Bias (the rouge AI)'s core fleet was 1000 ships. As it is a distributed AI, who the hell knows how big each individual ship was.

[Ghost Rider]

About 25K is in ISD-II according to the ISB, to which is what Pelleon was yabbering about.

Whether this number is even remotely accurate is little value given the engineering we've seen from them.

Now is someone going to put up Forerunner numbers are? So far we have some vague "Sentinels link to form the supah beam!" means shit if you're not going to demonstrate something.

[Darth Wong]

Questions:

1) If the Flood had millions of ships and quadrillions of drones and Halo "does not kill the Flood; it only kills their food" according to the game, then why doesn't the Flood still have millions of ships?

2) If the Forerunners could build the enormous Ark and keep it safe from Flood infestation long enough to construct a bunch of Halo installations and spread them around the galaxy, why couldn't they evacuate to the Ark and perpetuate themselves? Why would a handful of them end up as ignorant savages on Earth, while the rest disappeared?

3) Why would the Forerunners preserve Flood specimens on the Halo installations?

4) Going back to the stupendous industrial capabilities required to build installations like the Ark and the Halos, why couldn't the Forerunners construct massive superships to combat the Flood, complete with heavy defenses against boarding?

I've said this before and I'll say it again: the Halo backstory just doesn't stand up to scrutiny.

[ArcturusMengsk]

I'm by no means a Haloite, but I'll take a stab at these:

1) If the Flood had millions of ships and quadrillions of drones and Halo "does not kill the Flood; it only kills their food" according to the game, then why doesn't the Flood still have millions of ships?

Simply put, they starved. Those vessels are probably drifting around aimlessly out there.

2) If the Forerunners could build the enormous Ark and keep it safe from Flood infestation long enough to construct a bunch of Halo installations and spread them around the galaxy, why couldn't they
evacuate to the Ark and perpetuate themselves?

I don't own the game, so someone else can (and will) probably correct me, but I believe it's implied that they did evacuate there and then died off. Also,

Why would a handful of them end up as ignorant savages on Earth, while the rest disappeared?

I'm rather certain that humans aren't directly descended from the Forerunners.

3) Why would the Forerunners preserve Flood specimens on the Halo installations?

It's never directly stated in the games, so this is an ad hoc justification, but it's possible they were meant for study.

4) Going back to the stupendous industrial capabilities required to build installations like the Ark and the Halos, why couldn't the Forerunners construct massive superships to combat the Flood, complete with heavy defenses against boarding?

This is what grinds my gears in regards to the story. It's simply absurd to believe that what amounts to little more than space zombies could ever threaten as technologically advanced a society as the Forerunners.

[SylasGaunt]

This is what grinds my gears in regards to the story. It's simply absurd to believe that what amounts to little more than space zombies could ever threaten as technologically advanced a society as the Forerunners.

Thing is once they get graveminds up and going they move beyond mere space zombiehood.

In addition there's the fact that like they're a bit like the replicator's from Stargate.. the tech they come after you with is your own. So the Flood were coming after the Forerunner with Forerunner tech.

[Darth Wong]

Flood don't starve to death. If they did, they would all be extinct after millions of years. That's no explanation for their enormous numbers before the Halo firing and their paltry numbers afterwards, unless the Halo effect actually kills them (in which case one would have to ask again why the Forerunner could not simply make robot warships with Halo-effect generators to wipe out Flood fleets).

[Lagmonster]

...one would have to ask again why the Forerunner could not simply make robot warships with Halo-effect generators to wipe out Flood fleets.

Because in fiction, even unfathomably powerful ancient alien races know that you have to wait for the gruff white American cowboys in order to win a war. American cowboys are mankind's fucking doomsday weapon.

[Beowulf]

It's possible that the Flood containment units actually put the Flood into some sort of stasis field, thus allowing the Flood on the Halos to survive while the rest died of starvation. Assuming such technology is feasible, you might want to do so to make it harder for the Flood to escape from their containment.

Flood not being able to starve to death violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics.

Just doing some rationalization here.

[Peptuck]

Questions:

1) If the Flood had millions of ships and quadrillions of drones and Halo "does not kill the Flood; it only kills their food" according to the game, then why doesn't the Flood still have millions of ships?

It actually does kill the Flood. The sixth terminal in Halo 3, when played on Legendary, has a report from Offensive Bias that describes a first-hand observation of the Halo effect, and both Flood-controlled and Forerunner-controlled ships are disabled by the blast.

2) If the Forerunners could build the enormous Ark and keep it safe from Flood infestation long enough to construct a bunch of Halo installations and spread them around the galaxy, why couldn't they evacuate to the Ark and perpetuate themselves?

Implications from the terminals are that they were spending all their resources fighting the Flood, and evacuating the rest of the galactic population to the Ark in preperation to firing the Halos. Theyd escribed a "Magniot" line, which I asusme is some sort of defensive perimeter that was used to keep the Flood at bay fromt he Forerunner worlds.

Why would a handful of them end up as ignorant savages on Earth, while the rest disappeared?

Well, the ignorant savages were already there - and consequently, were evacuated by the Forerunners. What happened afterwards is completely in the air, as there aren't any Forerunner records from after the firings in any of the terminals.

3) Why would the Forerunners preserve Flood specimens on the Halo installations?

I suspect stupidity. Spark himself said that it was a bad idea to do that in the first Halo game. Apparently, the Forerunner just couldn't leave the shit well enough alone.

4) Going back to the stupendous industrial capabilities required to build installations like the Ark and the Halos, why couldn't the Forerunners construct massive superships to combat the Flood, complete with heavy defenses against boarding?

For all we know, they were. The terminal information is extremely vague about the capabilities of Forerunner vessels, which is incredibly annoying when it comes to quantifying their capabilities.

Then again, the Forerunners are idiots, so they might not have constructed such ships.

Flood don't starve to death. If they did, they would all be extinct after millions of years. That's no explanation for their enormous numbers before the Halo firing and their paltry numbers afterwards, unless the Halo effect actually kills them (in which case one would have to ask again why the Forerunner could not simply make robot warships with Halo-effect generators to wipe out Flood fleets).

That was apparently well within their capability - at least, regarding the robotic ships, as a lot of both Mendicant Bias' and Offensive Bias' war fleets were AI-controlled vessels. Hell, Offensive Bias calls his biological-controlled ships his "auxilliaries."

Regarding the Halo effect weapons, the Forerunner were trying to contain and kill the Flood via conventional means and were hesitant to use their WMDs, due to the danger to other species, until Didact finally commissioned Mendicant Bias - and by that time, it was too late, as Mendicant Bias' first contact with the Gravemind had him betray the Forerunners, and then they had no choice but to fire the Halos.

This is what grinds my gears in regards to the story. It's simply absurd to believe that what amounts to little more than space zombies could ever threaten as technologically advanced a society as the Forerunners.

All we've encountered in the games so far are small, local infestations of Flood. The Forerunner were deliberately hobbling themselves for idiotic reasons when it came to fighting a galactic Flood infestation.

[Noble Ire]

It's possible that the Flood containment units actually put the Flood into some sort of stasis field, thus allowing the Flood on the Halos to survive while the rest died of starvation. Assuming such technology is feasible, you might want to do so to make it harder for the Flood to escape from their containment.

Flood not being able to starve to death violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics.

Just doing some rationalization here.

This was always how I rationalized the Flood's continued existence, too. I believe that Cortana states outright, after analyzing the first Halo structure, that "it doesn't kill the Flood, it kills their food." If the Flood can't starve to death, that kind of effect would be useless.

I suspect that Flood infection forms were kept in stasis as part of a Forerunner attempt to analyse their biology during their war with them, perhaps in order to develop some kind of chemical/biological weapon to combat them. Presumably, the attempt failed, and the Forerunner's either didn't bother to terminate their test samples, or didn't have enough time to do so before they were forced to evacuate.

[Tanasinn]

343 specifically states that the Halos "will wipe out all life in the galaxy, or at least all life with sufficient biomass to sustain the Flood." I always assumed this included their bigger forms (Graveminds, combat forms, incubators, purestrains), but that the little pod buggers were below that threshhold. I don't think there's any magic "doesn't work on Flood" effect with the rings, just a case of Cortana speaking off the cuff at the main purpose of the rings.

As for preserving the Flood in stasis? Assuredly quite foolish. Especially since Guilty Spark has quite obviously gone mad in his time as the custodian of Installation 04.

[Ford Prefect]

The last stand of the Forerunners before they activated the Halo's and scrubbed the galaxy of life, the Flood attacked with 4.8 million ships. Of those 86436 where warships(1.8% of the total), and 2074 where capital ships(2.4% of the total warships). linky

Mendicant Bias (the rouge AI)'s core fleet was 1000 ships. As it is a distributed AI, who the hell knows how big each individual ship was.

Looks like I screwed up my maths. Thanks.

[Aenigma]

Questions:

1) If the Flood had millions of ships and quadrillions of drones and Halo "does not kill the Flood; it only kills their food" according to the game, then why doesn't the Flood still have millions of ships?

2) If the Forerunners could build the enormous Ark and keep it safe from Flood infestation long enough to construct a bunch of Halo installations and spread them around the galaxy, why couldn't they evacuate to the Ark and perpetuate themselves? Why would a handful of them end up as ignorant savages on Earth, while the rest disappeared?

3) Why would the Forerunners preserve Flood specimens on the Halo installations?

4) Going back to the stupendous industrial capabilities required to build installations like the Ark and the Halos, why couldn't the Forerunners construct massive superships to combat the Flood, complete with heavy defenses against boarding?

I've said this before and I'll say it again: the Halo backstory just doesn't stand up to scrutiny.

2. I haven't seen any evidence that point to the Forerunner being extinct; rather they simply left (similar to the First Ones in B5) after the flood was disposed of. Also humans are not the Forerunner.

3. The Flood was extra-galatic in origin; they simply appeared one day and starting infesting the Forerunner civilization. Their appearence took the Forerunner completely by suprise. In light of this, it does make some sense that they kept specimens to study and expirement on; there was no telling if/when the flood would reappear.

4. Presumably they did; the dreadnaught that appears in Halo 2 and 3 is over 14 km in length (almost twice the length of a SSD). However, we don't know whether the Flood actually utilizes Industries they sieze after infestation; the scope we've seen of them has been quite limited so far.

[Ghost Rider]

14 KM is twice the length of the 17 KM SSD/Star Dreadnaught?

As to the other, no it doesn't make sense that they develop a weapon to starve the the enemy. It would be us developing a weapon to destroy all food to defeat the Russians.

[Xon]

One amusing aspect of the Forerunner vs Flood war is the Forerunners where described as winning the space battle, but where losing planets to the Flood to fast to keep fighting at the level required to kill the Flood off.

And the Flood is attributed some insane ground combat ability. 36 hours to take a planet of 220 billion over with only 1.3 million civilans & military escaping.

[hongi]

1) If the Flood had millions of ships and quadrillions of drones and Halo "does not kill the Flood; it only kills their food" according to the game, then why doesn't the Flood still have millions of ships?

Those ships have all been destroyed. Mendicant Bias attacks Earth, Offensive Bias continues to defend until the Halos fire:

[00:H 00:M 00:S] The [Halo effect] strikes our combined fleets. All ships piloted by biologicals are now [adrift].

And then Offensive Bias annihilates MB's remaining ships by using slipspace ruptures, kamikaze style:

[00:H 00:M 01:S] Of my ships that had been captured, 11.3 percent of them are close enough to Mendicants core fleet that they can be used offensively – either by initiating their self-destruct sequences, or by opening unrestricted ruptures into [slipstream space].


[00:H 00:M 02:S] I throw away all the rules of acceptable conduct during battle; near the ruptures I throw away all the accepted ideas of how the natural world is supposed to behave. I toss around [37,654 tonne] dreadnoughts like they were fighters; dimly aware of the former crews being crushed to liquescence.

For now all my concentration is focused on inertial control and navigation. Targeting isn’t even a consideration – I will be engaging my enemy at arm’s length.


[00:H 01:M 14:S] 05-032 abandoned the tactic of using derelict ships as cover after [72:S] – It seems that 52 core vessels lost to the ruptured fuel cells of derelict ships was lesson enough. Add another 608 lost to collision, point fire, structural failure due to inertial manipulation, and [slipstream space] induced dis- coherence and I now outnumber Mendicant [6:1].

Battle of the AIs, more of an afterthought really.

[Covenant]

One amusing aspect of the Forerunner vs Flood war is the Forerunners where described as winning the space battle, but where losing planets to the Flood to fast to keep fighting at the level required to kill the Flood off.

And the Flood is attributed some insane ground combat ability. 36 hours to take a planet of 220 billion over with only 1.3 million civilans & military escaping.

I have no idea how this can be at all substantiated though. An infection form can't take over a dude with an intact shield from what we saw in Halo, are we to assume the forerunners used nothing but unshielded biological troops? That these deadly combatants were drafted and armed from... what, civilians? None of it makes much sense.

If a top soldier from Earth using pretty mundane Earth tech that wouldn't seem all that terribly remarkable in the posession of a Star Wars bounty hunter or commando can basically crush both the Covenant and the Flood, how well equipped can we really assume the Forerunners were? I'm not saying that just because Saint Master Chief can decimate an Empire that any Republic ARC trooper could, but there are simply hardware counters to a variety of flood. You don't need to be a super-athlete to reap the benefits of shielding and quality armor design that allows you to take several strikes from Flood forms.

I think it really makes the Forerunner ground troops of questionable competance. I see them, frankly, more like Jaffa. I could easily see billions of stone-age Jaffa being massacred by Flood. But Forerunners with massive technological power shouldn't be so incompetant and stupid as to design a galaxy-destroying superweapon in place of a few shielded guys with flamethrowers. Or hell, a few shielded robots.

[Stark]

I believe it's assumed that once they reached some kind of critical mass of technology and Flood, they became extremely technically competent. The Flood the Forerunners fought would have been far more dangerous than the largely worthless zombies you fight in Halo if this is the case.

[hongi]

I have no idea how this can be at all substantiated though. An infection form can't take over a dude with an intact shield from what we saw in Halo, are we to assume the forerunners used nothing but unshielded biological troops? That these deadly combatants were drafted and armed from... what, civilians? None of it makes much sense.

How do you know that it was 220 billion Forerunners and not 220 billion other aliens? After all, the Forerunners were trying to keep other sentient species alive.

[Covenant]

I have no idea how this can be at all substantiated though. An infection form can't take over a dude with an intact shield from what we saw in Halo, are we to assume the forerunners used nothing but unshielded biological troops? That these deadly combatants were drafted and armed from... what, civilians? None of it makes much sense.

How do you know that it was 220 billion Forerunners and not 220 billion other aliens? After all, the Forerunners were trying to keep other sentient species alive.

If it was 220 billion other aliens, such as large farm animals, cave-dwelling primitives, and industrial-age musketmen then my criticism still stands and then some.

There is at least some believability that when the Forerunners were themselves being overrun with their own technology, but it completely goes out the window when it's a bunch of Flood-ized cows and cavemen against Ringworld-building heavy infantry.

The arguement that the Flood were dangerous merely because there were a lot of of them is utterly ridiculous. They need an adequate amount of firepower to do damage here, as even Somali tribesmen with AK-47's are more dangerous than a zombie with claws, especially when we're putting them against a civilization we should believe to be roughly as advanced as the Galactic Empire. The Republic has certainly handled more than 220 billion enemy forces, and they weren't weakass biowank zombies either.

[Peptuck]

One amusing aspect of the Forerunner vs Flood war is the Forerunners where described as winning the space battle, but where losing planets to the Flood to fast to keep fighting at the level required to kill the Flood off.

And the Flood is attributed some insane ground combat ability. 36 hours to take a planet of 220 billion over with only 1.3 million civilans & military escaping.

I have no idea how this can be at all substantiated though. An infection form can't take over a dude with an intact shield from what we saw in Halo, are we to assume the forerunners used nothing but unshielded biological troops? That these deadly combatants were drafted and armed from... what, civilians? None of it makes much sense.

Local defenders, not actual Forerunner soldiers. However, actual Forerunner troops are not deployed against the Flood on the ground, as it is deemed wasteful and useless; A Forerunner commander says that even with everyone armed with Class 12 combat skins, there's no guarantee that they will be able to survive, much less win, against Flood forces on the ground.

If a top soldier from Earth using pretty mundane Earth tech that wouldn't seem all that terribly remarkable in the posession of a Star Wars bounty hunter or commando can basically crush both the Covenant and the Flood, how well equipped can we really assume the Forerunners were?

Much better. Spark says that the MJOLNIR Mark V is equivilant to a Class 2 combat skin; according to the terminals, I believe its Class 8 or higher is the minimum that all Forerunner troops need to wear, outside of core areas, where up to Class 14 suits are authorized.

You also have to keep in mind that the Master Chief was not fighting billions of Flood on a single planet, as part of an infestation that had consumed, according to the Libararian, a million worlds; what he's fighting is a small infestation that isn't anywhere near as powerful as what the Forerunners dealt with.

I'm not saying that just because Saint Master Chief can decimate an Empire that any Republic ARC trooper could, but there are simply hardware counters to a variety of flood. You don't need to be a super-athlete to reap the benefits of shielding and quality armor design that allows you to take several strikes from Flood forms.

That's not the problem here; the problem is that they're dealing with immense numbers of Flood. The Flood rapidly consume entire planetary populations, including all biomass, which is then used to make fresh warrior forms, which they use to literally bury their enemies under their sheer numbers.

I think it really makes the Forerunner ground troops of questionable competance. I see them, frankly, more like Jaffa. I could easily see billions of stone-age Jaffa being massacred by Flood. But Forerunners with massive technological power shouldn't be so incompetant and stupid as to design a galaxy-destroying superweapon in place of a few shielded guys with flamethrowers. Or hell, a few shielded robots.

Again, you're letting your experiences in the games define your analysis of the Flood's capabilities. The Flood encountered in the games is small, local, and doesn't have enourmous amounts of warriors to throw at you. The Forerunner had to deal with what were essentially armies of hundreds of billions of warriors on every planet that was infested; so many, that, even with Class 12 combat skin, they simply couldn't win. And, being relatively intelligent, they avoided these conflicts and simply burned infested planets from orbit.