The Flood

[Darth Ruinus]

In various places about the internets, I keep hearing about how the Flood can supposedly take over planets in a day. How the Flood can supposedly take over planets with populations numbering in the billions in a day. Now, I have played all the Halo games, and I read I think a few of the books, maybe all of them, I dont remember (I was bored) so I never saw any of this "OMG Flood are the fucking UBER! they can kill 'Nids, SW, EVERYONE"

But then I think about it a bit better. If the Flood are as awesome as these people say, then why isnt Earth completely covered with Flood by the end of Halo 3? Why were the Covenant able to fight them in Halo 1? (They lost in the end, but they werent being curbstomped ass raped like the Flood descriptions suggest they would) Can I chalk this up to just Halo wank?

[Hawkwings]

Because the flood's strength is not their combat ability, it's their ability to not die until the last spore is wiped out. Kind of like Orks in 40k. Eventually they wear down the enemy until they win.

[Pulp Hero]

Exactly. Now all this, "LOL FLOOD INSTAWIN" is of course pure wank. Think the Flood like space AIDS. Giant space AIDS. That you can fight with guns.

[Admiral Valdemar]

A hostile hegemonizing swarm can take on any enemy if it is sufficiently abundant and well supplied with resources. The Greenfly from Reynolds' work spring to mind.

I suppose a swarm of wasps/ants would be an analogy. It's easy to squish one and take them out in some numbers, but without some real heavy hitting stuff, you're going to get stung.

[Stark]

This is actually a pretty hilarious bit of wank. Even here, there was the 'sector level threat in three days' thread, and playing the Halo games with the phrase 'sector level threat in three days' playing in your mind is utterly hilarious. A single flood spore? If we believe the internet, they'll have stolen starships and infected the system in a few hours, just like they did in... Halo... oh wait. I believe we see some vehicles being flown by a pile of Flood gunk, so clearly the Flood will also steal all vehicles in the area and use them to spread... the.... oh wait. And they're mass-from-nowhere like in Halo3 which is why they don't need hosts... hang on... I hear once you let them get ships or guns they're unstoppable, just like in Halo. Wait a second!

I believe this stems from Bungie's laughable fluff, where the utterly incompetent precursors couldn't win a galaxy-spanning war against the Flood.

[Zixinus]

I believe this stems from Bungie's laughable fluff, where the utterly incompetent precursors couldn't win a galaxy-spanning war against the Flood.

Except by killing everything else. Just not the Flood.

[Stark]

Except by killing everything else. Just not the Flood.

Even worse than the Time War!

[Darth Ruinus]

Eventually they wear down the enemy until they win.

Except that this didnt happen on Earth. LIke I said, if I were to truly believe this Flood wank, why is Earth still standing?

[Ford Prefect]

Eventually they wear down the enemy until they win.

Except that this didnt happen on Earth. LIke I said, if I were to truly believe this Flood wank, why is Earth still standing?

Why, because Half Jaw glassed half of Africa (:lol:) of course!

[Darth Ruinus]

Ah, so basically, fast response times do equal Flood death. That's what I thought. Even so, people claim that one spore can take out a planet ( ) so, why didnt the Flood just send some small ships Pelicans or whatever, to someplace nearby and take over Earth?

[Tanasinn]

Flood don't "do" planning except when they have to. They also probably weren't expecting a rogue Covenant fleet to be standing by to stomp on them immediately.

[Swindle1984]

I've heard the Flood in Halo were weak due to most of the infection forms having been in stasis for tens of thousands of years.

That said, the Flood is only a threat if you don't deal with them immediately and wipe out every last one. If you exterminate them before they get a foot-hold, they're easily dealt with.

The Forerunners were dumbasses who disbanded most of their military and just ignored the Flood and avoided contact with them for, what was it, three hundred years? They got soft. By the time they realized the Flood weren't going away and were, by that time, a legitimate threat, their only options were to blow up entire planets or stars to eliminate them from infected systems. Eventually, they built the Halo system, exterminated all life in the galaxy (leaving enough time for the Flood to starve to death and die out), then repopulated the habitable worlds with the species they had saved before activating Halo. After that, they just disappeared.

The Forerunners admitted that the Flood came so close to infecting the entire galaxy only because they were idiots. Heck, even when the Forerunner began to take them seriously and started cranking out war machinery again, they gave most of it to an AI that turned traitor after simply conversing with the enemy and hearing flimsy logic.

And then a hundred thousand years later, the Flood come back because not only were the Forerunners stupid enough to leave a bunch in stasis (supposedly for study) and not get rid of them, but they stored them ON THE VERY WEAPONS USED TO RID THE GALAXY OF THEM. That would be like the Empire fighting a war against the Borg by blowing up every planet they own with the Death Star, then leaving a few Borg unsupervised in the Death Star detention center and everybody leaving.

Even after the Covenant and UNSC dealt with the immediate Flood threat, there's still more Flood on the six surviving Halos.

Over a hundred thousand years after they basically committed suicide and exterminated all life in the galaxy so they could repopulate with the survivors, the Forerunner's main legacy to the universe is overwhelming stupidity.

[Connor MacLeod]

The really annoying bit abou tthe Forerunners isnt so much they disbanded their military, its that they were too idiotic to utliize their canonical capabilities to figh tthe flood.

I mean, face it. in Ghost sof onyx you have an entire planet COMPOSED of powerful Sentinels that can destroy starships. We know that their combat droids/constructs can eaisly fend off/defeat the flood.. and they literally had trillions if not quadrillions of them.

We also know they could do robotic warships (Offensive Bias IIRC did after the Halo struck, and Mendicant Bias could as well) and they have SW level construction capabilities given the feat of building a Halo in a matter of months.

And they had a stable base to strike from that the Flood couldn't get past UNTIL Mendicant Bias turned traitor. And by then IIRC they'd been fighting the flood for CENTURIES beofr ethey even went with the Halo plan.

And yet... the Forerunners were fucking morons who had to fight the Flood using organics troopers, and with starships piloted by organic crews (something that, we note, lead to the defection of Mendicant Bias.. sacrificing huge numbers of organics to the flood.) THere was whinging about needing "battle suits" or something to protect agianst The Flood... even when they had sophisicated combat robots of their own and powerful galaxy-spanning AIS.

And yet.. they still CANNOT FUCKING DEFEAT ORGANIC VERSONS OF SPACE ZOMBIE BORG IN LESS THAN A FEW CENTURIES! trillions if not quadrillions of sentinels, nevermind hordes of starships they OUGHT to be capable of building.. all robotic.. could have eaisly defeated the Flood. They ain't THAT powerful (esp if you can build sentinels that can shoot down Covenant warships..) You could scour them off the ground easily or sterilize a planet if they were lost. and you wouldn't be risking your troops turning into more Flood fodder either.

Sorry, as much as the Flood gets wanked out, competency played a huge role in allowing them to win.

[Darth Ruinus]

Flood don't "do" planning except when they have to. They also probably weren't expecting a rogue Covenant fleet to be standing by to stomp on them immediately.

True, but then again, if they were as smart as some people claim they were, you'd think they would have hid somewhere, or at least not attracted as much attention as they could. I admit, I didnt really pay much attention the the Halo 3 story, so how close was this Covenant fleet? COuld they see it if they had just looked up, or was it nearby as in nearby in the Solar System?

[Peptuck]

I keep reading this nonsense about the Forerunner disbanding their military, but there's no real evidence of this anywhere in Halo canon. There is an entry in the terminals that says that the Forerunner's Mantle doctrine bred weakness and complacency in those they were intending to protect, but this seems more like the Forerunners' client species relying too heavily on the Forerunner promise for military aid. This resulted in them being unable to defend themselves when the Flood arrived and unable to hold them back until the Forerunner arrived with military force to counter the invasions....and when the Forerunner fleets do arrive, they invariably decide that they don't have the manpower to defeat the Flood and just burnt the planets from orbit.

Which doesn't change the fact that the Forerunner are morons. But at least a few of them admit that they did epically mismanage the war with the Flood.

Really, its all just Flood wank. The Flood have only a few real advantages, mostly in the form of relative toughness, but their only real victories have been when they have surprise and numbers on their side. They did manage to take High Charity and Voi, but in the former's case, they crash-landed an assload of Infection Forms into a city that was already in the middle of a bloody, brutal civil war with countless easily infected bodies, and Voi is a warzone where another bloody battle has just been waged and there's lots of corpses.

Their combat ability is almost exactly dependent on their opponent's tech and how much of it they can capture. Halo 3 does indicate that the Flood may have more advanced bioforms they can take on, but there's nothing terribly impressive about the ones encountered beyond raw durability, and they all die quickly when confronted by missiles or grenades. The Flood are little more than above-average toughness zombies that move fast, and are smart enough to use weapons, vehicles, and ships.

[Peptuck]

Flood don't "do" planning except when they have to. They also probably weren't expecting a rogue Covenant fleet to be standing by to stomp on them immediately.

True, but then again, if they were as smart as some people claim they were, you'd think they would have hid somewhere, or at least not attracted as much attention as they could. I admit, I didnt really pay much attention the the Halo 3 story, so how close was this Covenant fleet? COuld they see it if they had just looked up, or was it nearby as in nearby in the Solar System?

The Covenant fleet was chasing the Flood-controlled Covenant cruiser to Earth. It was pretty much right behind the Flood ship; arrives within twenty to thirty minutes of the Flood ship's arrival on Earth.

[hongi]

I believe this stems from Bungie's laughable fluff, where the utterly incompetent precursors couldn't win a galaxy-spanning war against the Flood.

Except by killing everything else. Just not the Flood.

They did kill the Flood. A few got left behind as research samples on the Halos though.

[The Grim Squeaker]

I believe this stems from Bungie's laughable fluff, where the utterly incompetent precursors couldn't win a galaxy-spanning war against the Flood.

Except by killing everything else. Just not the Flood.

They did kill the Flood. A few got left behind as research samples on the Halos though.

The original plan would have involved sterilizing the Galaxy with the Halos, while the Forerunners hid in the shieldworlds and made things dandy again. In that context, the research samples make sense, especially since they would have needed to create the Halo effect in the first place.
Unfortunately, presumably due to "Pod bay doors" Mendicant, The forerunners got fucked up very badly in qualitive as well as numeric terms, and for some reason didn't have time to reach the shield worlds.

Think of it this way, it's the equilevent of the SW Empire keeping a few Borg in a cage on the prototype Death star, then the rebels and Borg blow up the Death star 1, 2, and Empire. The remaining Borg are a trivial threat that should be studied, since they rely on quantity and a hive mind, but that doesn't mean that they can't start shit if the jailers die and someone unlocks their cages and promptly get assimilated.
It's not that bad an example, is it?

[hongi]

In various places about the internets, I keep hearing about how the Flood can supposedly take over planets in a day. How the Flood can supposedly take over planets with populations numbering in the billions in a day. Now, I have played all the Halo games, and I read I think a few of the books, maybe all of them, I dont remember (I was bored) so I never saw any of this "OMG Flood are the fucking UBER! they can kill 'Nids, SW, EVERYONE"

But then I think about it a bit better. If the Flood are as awesome as these people say, then why isnt Earth completely covered with Flood by the end of Halo 3? Why were the Covenant able to fight them in Halo 1? (They lost in the end, but they werent being curbstomped ass raped like the Flood descriptions suggest they would) Can I chalk this up to just Halo wank?

I thought we established in another thread that a galaxy-wide infestation of Flood is different to an outbreak that happens on a planet or two, due to the better technology it can get, the increase in intelligence, the massive resources it can draw upon, the increase in capabilities (compare the infestation rate for Halo 1 and Halo 3).

[Sarevok]

Flood suck.

Why the fuck do Halo players wank to then when they are the single biggest thing that ruined Halo games ?

[Noble Ire]

Flood suck.

Why the fuck do Halo players wank to then when they are the single biggest thing that ruined Halo games ?

For the same reason that Star Trek fanatics claim that the Borg can "remodulate" their shielding to ward off kinetic impacts and that every 40k versus scenario almost immediately devolves into shouting matches regarding the all but unstoppable corrupting influence of Chaos. People who debate versus subjects generally have a favorite universe, and they tend to make excuses for it; since the primary antagonizing force in a universe in generally one of its most powerful factions, partisans tend to latch onto and exaggerate them beyond all reason.

Personally, I don't have a problem with the Flood as they are portrayed in the canon; my only issues with the subject deal with the Halo installation, particularly the ambiguous nature of their weapon system. It is clear that the Forerunners designed it to kill all advanced organisms in the galaxy (presumably intending to shelter themselves in the Shield installations like the one at Onyx), but there seem to be contradictions regarding the Halo pulse's effect on the Flood itself. In Halo:CE, Cortana states that it only "kills their food", implying that the weapon can't actually kill Flood, or at least, not reliably eliminate them everywhere, while in Halo 3, Guilty Spark posits that a "tactical pulse" at the Ark will kill directly kill all of the Flood in the immediate area. It is my assumption that the weapon is lethal to everything at a "close" range, but may not be powerful enough to reliably destroy every last Flood spore at the edges of the effect perimeter; however, this hypothesis has never been directly corroborated.

I also have issues regarding the survival of the early ancestors of the species of the Covenant, but such a point digresses from the subject at hand.

[Sarevok]

The biggest problem with Flood, imo, was that they were a return to the dumbest form of AI imaginable - running towards the enemy while shooting. After 5 levels of battling the Covenant who remain the most lifelife AIs I ever encountered it felt like a huge downgrade. Plus the Flood had the extreme irritating case of infinite spawning and materlizing out of boxes, vents etc. Without the invisible hand of level scripter they would lose every single fight against the Covenant much less the player. Infact I think the only redeeming value of Flood was watching Covenant Hunters and Spec Ops strike teams massacre them. I almost cry each time one those super cool hunters or badass spec ops elites went down to the cheating infinite spawning flood.

[Peptuck]

Personally, I don't have a problem with the Flood as they are portrayed in the canon; my only issues with the subject deal with the Halo installation, particularly the ambiguous nature of their weapon system. It is clear that the Forerunners designed it to kill all advanced organisms in the galaxy (presumably intending to shelter themselves in the Shield installations like the one at Onyx), but there seem to be contradictions regarding the Halo pulse's effect on the Flood itself. In Halo:CE, Cortana states that it only "kills their food", implying that the weapon can't actually kill Flood, or at least, not reliably eliminate them everywhere, while in Halo 3, Guilty Spark posits that a "tactical pulse" at the Ark will kill directly kill all of the Flood in the immediate area. It is my assumption that the weapon is lethal to everything at a "close" range, but may not be powerful enough to reliably destroy every last Flood spore at the edges of the effect perimeter; however, this hypothesis has never been directly corroborated.

The terminals specify that just about all Flood are killed by the Halo effect; this is how Offensive Bias' fleet was able to defeat Mendicant Bias once he turned on them. I simply interpret Cortana's statement that Halo doesn't kill Flood as either hyperbole (it doesn't matter if it kills Flood, right now it matters if it kills humans) or an error, which Cortana has made before; she isn't omniscient.

I also have issues regarding the survival of the early ancestors of the species of the Covenant, but such a point digresses from the subject at hand.

This could actually be wankable. We know some of the Forerunner survived; Didact at the very least lived through the Halo activation on the Ark, and we know that the Forerunner were gathering sentient species on the Ark to shelter them from Halo's activation (this is how humans survived, judging by the Librarian's reports). Its very easily possible the Covenant's ancestors were among those protected by the Forerunners.

[Vanas]

One thing that does spring to mind: Where, exactly, in Halo does it mention the Flood Spore thing? I was of the impression that the Infection Squiddly was the basic starter, grabbing whoever it finds to either zombify them or zombify them and turn them into convenient goop to build the Nightmares Made Flesh. More to the point, why *would* individual Flood spores be a threat? It'll take one cell a while to get anything done, and the Flood in the Drooling Engineer Player stage isn't exactly subtle or stunningly bright.

As a side note, considering that Medicant Bias went rampant and they have coined that term for it, maybe it's happened before, meaning the Forerunners wouldn't trust keeping a lot of AI's running at the same time talking to each other. It's a stupid explanation, yes, but no worse than their own monumental failures. Clearly they retired along with the Ancients and Progenitors to build Deus Ex Machinae for the lesser races to atone for their cock-ups.

Hm. I wonder if we'll ever see a competent Ancient Race With WTFPWN Tech That Got Wiped Out For A Seemingly Trivial Reason™?

[Peptuck]

One thing that does spring to mind: Where, exactly, in Halo does it mention the Flood Spore thing? I was of the impression that the Infection Squiddly was the basic starter, grabbing whoever it finds to either zombify them or zombify them and turn them into convenient goop to build the Nightmares Made Flesh.

In the Library in Halo: CE, Spark explains that the Infection Forms (the "smaller creatures" in his own words) carry spores that pass the infection on to others. However, we've never, ever seen any instance of anyone being infected by anything except direct contact with an Infection Form.

More to the point, why *would* individual Flood spores be a threat? It'll take one cell a while to get anything done, and the Flood in the Drooling Engineer Player stage isn't exactly subtle or stunningly bright.

They're not. In Halo 2, during the Scared Icon level, the Arbiter walks through clouds of airborne Flood spores without any NBC gear on him and is completely uninfected. Ditto for other Elites, Brutes, Jackals, Hunters, human Marines.... Its pretty obvious that the Flood need Infection Forms to spread the infection around.