UNSC versus Nazi Germany (not what you think)

[MJ12 Commando]

The Nazis were (in)famous for making extremely impractical wonder weapons that were, to put it mildly, quite crazy. Awesome, yes, but crazy.

Now, the Halo UNSC is also (in)famous for the SPARTAN-II project, which created a bunch of supersoldiers in armor that cost about as much as small starships.

Which one of these two has the worse procurement officials?

[Invictus ChiKen]

I'd say Germany. Those Spartans are able to turn the tides of War with just one trooper.

[CaptHawkeye]

The UNSC designed an assault rifle that wasn't accurate beyond 3 meters and had the hitting power of a pillow. Problem folks?

[Vendetta]

The UNSC designed an assault rifle that wasn't accurate beyond 3 meters and had the hitting power of a pillow. Problem folks?

Designed it to fight Grunts, clearly.

[JointStrikeFighter]

What is game mechanics?

[Mr Bean]

What is game mechanics?

Halo Cannon says Legendary mode in the game=RL, or at least a close model of what Master Chief had to go through.

And Legendary AR is a pillow shooter.

[CaptHawkeye]

What is game mechanics?

Yes, in fact it was such a game mechanic they made a gun to replace it with. I'll be fair, at least the battle rifle made sense. Let's even play it your way and ignore the game mechanics for a pure first impressions approach. Where did all the iron sights go? Why is the gun's ammo counter display lit? So enemies can see it in the dark?

Too bad the Warthog, Scorpion, and ATV aren't terribly smart even if we ignore gameplay?

[JointStrikeFighter]

What is game mechanics?

Halo Cannon says Legendary mode in the game=RL, or at least a close model of what Master Chief had to go through.

And Legendary AR is a pillow shooter.

In the books the AR has normal rifle accuracy and is quite powerful. Bungie canon policy is that the books override game mechanics which are not canon.

Yes, in fact it was such a game mechanic they made a gun to replace it with. I'll be fair, at least the battle rifle made sense. Let's even play it your way and ignore the game mechanics for a pure first impressions approach. Where did all the iron sights go? Why is the gun's ammo counter display lit? So enemies can see it in the dark?

Because a large calibre DMR is a 1 for 1 replacement with an Assault Rifle.

[JointStrikeFighter]

Grr, can a mod please fix my quote tags.

[Mr Bean]

In the books the AR has normal rifle accuracy and is quite powerful. Bungie canon policy is that the books override game mechanics which are not canon.

And that's true but unlike SW games or ST games, or many other Sci-Fi universes, the Halo-verse has a standard, Legendary Mode=Cannon difficulty, if a game(With higher cannon) over-rides that, then so be it, but if something in Legendary mode is not contracted by anything=cannon.

So saying "game mechanics " is simply not true in Halo-verse. High cannon of course contradicts it, but unlike every other game out there Game Mechancis are considered low-grade cannon, unlike say TIE Fighter.

[CaptHawkeye]

Because a large calibre DMR is a 1 for 1 replacement with an Assault Rifle.

A replacement that everyone was still using and had become standardized.

They even decided to bring a better model of the AR back into service. Except it still had all of the old model's non gameplay issues like no manual sights, and brightly lit displays? Wait, Master Chief's ARMOR has little lights on it. WONDERFUL.

[Stark]

Yeah, Halo3 had an AR that was better in every respect to the HALO one. It was clearly a failed design.

[avatarxprime]

Part of the Legendary=Cannon also means that if a weapon is ineffective against a Covie or Flood it's because the enemy is just that tough, not that a weapon is that weak.

[Stark]

Which is why the Halo3 one is more accurate and actually a relatively flexible weapon.

[Venator]

To the original topic - Germany definitely had worse policies. The SPARTAN-IIs were extremely capable (okay, the Chief was at any rate), whereas a lot of the German "secret weapons" were next to useless (The Me-163, Bachem Natter, and this thing.

The difference probably lay in how the projects started. The SPARTAN-II program was originally designed as a casualty-minimizing solution to colonial unrest.

A good chunk of the off-the-wall programs in Nazi Germany, by contrast, were kneejerk reactions to the late-in-coming realization by the high command that "oh shit! We're actually loosing. We need doomsday weponz!!!11!"

[Cycloneman]

And that's true but unlike SW games or ST games, or many other Sci-Fi universes, the Halo-verse has a standard, Legendary Mode=Cannon difficulty, if a game(With higher cannon) over-rides that, then so be it, but if something in Legendary mode is not contracted by anything=cannon.

So saying "game mechanics " is simply not true in Halo-verse. High cannon of course contradicts it, but unlike every other game out there Game Mechancis are considered low-grade cannon, unlike say TIE Fighter.

Can you give a source for this legendary mode = canon thing? Because it seems quite unlikely to me, as that would mean Master Chief was less powerful than random grunts and other stupid shit like that.

[Mr Bean]

]Can you give a source for this legendary mode = canon thing? Because it seems quite unlikely to me, as that would mean Master Chief was less powerful than random grunts and other stupid shit like that.

The old quote was from a Halo 2 thread on Bungie's own forum when one of the lead designers stated that Legendary difficultly was as close as possible to what Halo was "really" like.


All the fun things Chief does in the books(IE use cover and conceliment) is just not possible in run and gun Halo. If you played Halo like you would play (OLD) Rainbow Six then yes, it is much closer to novel Chief depictions.

[Gerald Tarrant]

I'm going to say the UNSC has the stupider design bureau. I'll see if I can find my copy of Fall of Reach, until then I hope you'll accept a paraphrase.

One offending section:
[paraphrase]
The Spartans are being shown vids of the MJOLNIR armor, including testing scenes. A random un-enhanced human volunteer gets in the armor and then tries to move. Unfortunately the armor amplifies the speed and strength of his movements. So he ends up killing himself as the suit moves faster than he can, and his over-correction does VERY BAD THINGS to him. Doctor Halsey explains that normal humans can't manage the suit, so they had to design super soldiers to use it.[/paraphrase]

WTF??? Controls Theory or Mechantronics is a fairly old field in electrical engineering, Mechanical Engineers also often get a dose of this. In any case here's an example of something very strong doing something very delicate Link
Another one Link
The Abstract:

Based on the framework of general constrained robots, a delicate experiment with control of two heavy-duty industrial robots rigidly holding a raw egg is reported. The system possesses smooth transition behavior from free motion to constrained motion when working with unilateral constraints, since a unified no-switching control law is used. This experiment indicates that the robots have the capability to perform very delicate operations with the aid of advanced control algorithms and force feedback. It also reveals potential applications to human-centered robotics

I'm offended by the notion that somehow engineers are no longer capable of doing delicate things with very powerful actuators. So instead of applying the copious knowledge of controls theory(probably about 550 years worth, since one of the earlier bits of controls theory-radar controlled guns- starts around WWII, and Halo is set in ~2500) to make the machine fit the requirements, the SPARTAN project decides to apply experimental, poorly working biological theory to make the requirements fit the machine. What kind of idiocy is that?

Moreover, even if you accept that controls theory would degrade the capabilities of the armor, a cheaper version of the spartan armor could have vastly improved the capabilities of the average soldier. Sometimes an imperfect solution is the only one that you get. And disseminating a degraded version of the MJOLNIR to the marines would be vastly superior to the OTL Halo-verse, where you have less than 100 Super-Soldiers, and then cannon-fodder. IIRC Spartan Armor carries an onboard fusion generator, you could effect major savings by sticking batteries on board a degraded general issue version.

I think the thing that bothers me the most about the HALO-verse is the Covenant's Plasma weaponry, and humanity's helplessness against it. I'm going to leave aside the arguments against Plasma, Darth Wong's critique of same is more than sufficient. What bothers me is that Humans in HALO have fusion reactors which should give them plenty of experience containing Plasma. Apparently they're too moronic to apply this or their copious knowledge of Maxwell's E-M Laws (published in 1861 or 1884 depending on who you ask) to channeling charged particles away from their ships. Cortanna was in First Strike, able to use the Rail Gun of a UNSC ship to steer plasma.

Another more minor complaint, I haven't read very much else from the HALO-verse, but what I have read suggests that the UNSC likes to always carry rather large marine complements. Given that ground side victories are irrelevant if you lose the space battle, I think it's a stupid decision. I think a better option would have been specialist pure warship designs, and turn the berthing spaces into support areas for parasite warships (i.e. pure weapons platforms without FTL and only minor life support.) This seems to be a fairly significant design failure on the UNSC's part.

[Noble Ire]

One has to remember the situation that the UNSC was in by the time of the Battle of Reach and Halo: Combat Evolved. Humanity had been fighting the Covenant for more than a quarter-century, and had quite definitively learned that they couldn't combat the superior numbers and technology of the invaders, on the ground or in space, through conventional military developments. Thus, R&D oriented itself in the direction of initiatives like the SPARTAN-II and SPARTAN-III programs and the creation of "smart" AIs like Cortana. The Covenant couldn't be defeated on the field of battle, so the UNSC's best bets were in the realm of spec ops: commando missions, infiltration and sabotage, assassination, etc. Although these efforts were tremendously costly and yielded minimal overt military benefit, the SPARTANs spearheaded some of the only successful campaigns and operations of the entire war.

Compare that to some of the projects that the Nazis poured Reichsmark into, many of which didn't even seen combat tests, and the UNSC has a markedly superior record.

[Gerald Tarrant]

One has to remember the situation that the UNSC was in by the time of the Battle of Reach and Halo: Combat Evolved. Humanity had been fighting the Covenant for more than a quarter-century, and had quite definitively learned that they couldn't combat the superior numbers and technology of the invaders, on the ground or in space, through conventional military developments. Thus, R&D oriented itself in the direction of initiatives like the SPARTAN-II and SPARTAN-III programs and the creation of "smart" AIs like Cortana.

I thought the Spartan-II's were designed as a counter-insurgency force, unless things have been ret-conned.

The Covenant couldn't be defeated on the field of battle, so the UNSC's best bets were in the realm of spec ops: commando missions, infiltration and sabotage, assassination, etc. Although these efforts were tremendously costly and yielded minimal overt military benefit, the SPARTANs spearheaded some of the only successful campaigns and operations of the entire war.

I'd argue that the failures of the UNSC were due to poor design, and idiocy. I'll grant that the UNSC's early losses to Covie plasma weapons can be chocked up to unfamiliarity. But Cortana was able to steer plasma weapons with a UNSC rail-gun, had no military thinkers in the UNSC considered how moving charged particles interact with a magnetic field? Had none of them considered the inverse square law (and the implication that the amount of control the Covenant could exert on it's plasma would fall off proportionally). UNSC deficiencies in space led to their losing position in the war. For all the deficiencies of the NAZIs, they didn't make such a fundamental error about the physics of their war-fighting.

[PeZook]

For all the deficiencies of the NAZIs, they didn't make such a fundamental error about the physics of their war-fighting.

I don't know ; Attempting to build a 1000-ton supertank which would barely be able to move at all, or a suborbital bomber that would kill its pilot of take-off seemed like botching physics to me

[bz249]

I don't know ; Attempting to build a 1000-ton supertank which would barely be able to move at all, or a suborbital bomber that would kill its pilot of take-off seemed like botching physics to me :D

Well those things never intended to be built... the one and only purpose of designing the Rat or the Fuhrer-class battleship or whatever nonsense is to avoid armed service (and I can easily understand this, because for example a patched trench in the Eastern Front is not the most comfortable and safest thing). For this, the engineers have to prove they are more useful in their design bureau in Mannheim, than as a grunt. So they designed things at least remotely militaristic and designing a 1000-ton tank is quite cheap all you need is paper , charcoal and helluva lot of time.

[Sarevok]

It is very unfair to blame the UNSC. They had brilliant weapons designers constrained by limited resources. The UNSC ran out of money while designing the SPARTAN-II battearmor. So the final version was held togather with superglue. And they could not afford nightvision so they put in a flashlight. Except they could not buy a flashlight from a supermarket either so they put a bicycle lamp that had to be recharged 20 seconds instead.

[Peptuck]

The whole problem with the "plasma weapons" situation is.....the Covenant don't use plasma weapons, according to Word of God from Bungie's own Frankie.

http://forums.bungie.org/halo/archive25.pl?read=743326

The good news is that the use of the word "Plasma" is a semantic employed by 26th century troops to describe the appearance of the weapons rather than their true scientific attribution. The actual technology is not plasma as we know it, but something far more dangerous, arcane and destructive.

lol retcons. Apparently Bungie realized Nylund was probably talking out of his ass in First Strike.

Regarding the control systems for the MJOLNIR armor, it doesn't use mechanical actuators as far as I'm aware, but some "liquid crystal matrix" technobabble as the primary means to amplify physical strength and reaction times. Though I still don't understand why it can't be controlled or scaled back; Nylund just handwaves that away, too.

[Ghost Rider]

Not only a couple retcons and what not...but an immense disconnect at times between the books and game.

If Legendary is to be taken as close as it really is(according the Bungie itself), the MC is a skilled soldier, not the inhuman super god that he is in the novels.

As for the armor problem, it is another stupidity rearing it's head. When supposedly the SECOND Spartan program was being done, they had the armor for at least a little while. And claims of running out of money are even more absurd given they were still maintain a rather large navy and even making improvements in that department. While a thousand or a million super armors will not win the war, the inane backward methodlogy of needing troops to work the armor instead of working the kinks out is absurd.

Especially given the mortality rates in the SPARTAN program and the cost of doing such.

So while Germany had it's share, they did not invest into a multi decade plan...just to work a piece of stupidly made hardware.