On UNSC MAC Guns and their firepower.

[Jake]

A while ago in a rather epic debate, I was engaged in a long, glorious argument as to whether MAC guns had the firepower given to them in the Halo encyclopedia. This arguement kind of ended without any answer so I decided to bring it up again. According to the Halo encyclopedia, a MAC gun can fire a 600 ton projectile at .4c. Using the relativistic kinetic energy formula this gives them an ass kicking 4.92E21J of kinetic energy. However, there were arguments with my assessment. Although the Halo encyclopedia is canon, it is lower than that of the games and if there is a contradiction, the games win out. In the games, there is a scene of MACs firing here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrCk3e9igY8. From this scene various opponents of mine and myself have scaled the speed of the weapon to be around 30-140 km/sec, much slower than the .4c given in the encyclopedia. My argument was that these things are usually fired in space in the books. If you fire it in atmosphere you can't fire at .4c because the round would be destroyed before it even got close to this velocity, so they had to fire it slower. Any thoughts on this? I strongly support the .4c because that makes it a potential star destroyer killer for my dreams of Halo's domination over star wars (only in ship to ship, I know Star Wars outnumbers Halo a crapton).

[Caiaphas]

Actually, I think it's only the orbital platforms that are capable of 0.4c. I wrote a short essay on this once, for another website--I think it was HBO or something like that--and I used the Halo Encyclopedia. It specifically stated the orbital platforms alone were capable of significant fractions of c, and that ship-based MACs had an upper limit of something like 40000 kph. That would account for the slower speed of the projectiles. It's been years since I've done this, though, so take with a grain of salt.

Hope this helps.

[Jake]

The encyclopedia gives starship fired MACs .4c, while orbital platforms fire a 3,000 ton slug at .5c. Its the older book (fall of reach) that gives the lower number, and the Halo canon policy takes new over old when there is a contradiction.

[Sarevok]

Nothing seen in the Halo games themselves suggests the UNSC uses weapons firing hundred ton slugs at half lightspeed. We did not even not see a proper nuclear yield explosion onscreen !

[Norade]

You also forget when I showed sub kiloton weapons fire from the Halo 2 cutscene as well as the mac round firing from the super mac in that same game. As seen here at just after the ten second mark the brighter yellow projectile fires and is not moving at anywhere near the speed of light. It is obviously the round as it looks nothing like the rest of the weapons ejecta.

Other evidence is MC jumping from ship to ship, again at the start of Halo 2, and reaching the exposed core of a Covenant vessel, planting a bomb, and pushing off again. This small bomb is enough to cause the Covenant ship's power plant to explode destroying the ship and this weak spot can be reached by a lone man on a known path let alone a fighter.

[Jake]

Nothing seen in the Halo games themselves suggests the UNSC uses weapons firing hundred ton slugs at half lightspeed. We did not even not see a proper nuclear yield explosion onscreen !

Nothing seen in the Star Wars movies suggests BDZs exist. The canon books do. Same for Halo. There are only two MAC scenes in the game, one I explained in the OP. I will get to the other one.

[Norade]

Nothing seen in the Halo games themselves suggests the UNSC uses weapons firing hundred ton slugs at half lightspeed. We did not even not see a proper nuclear yield explosion onscreen !

Nothing seen in the Star Wars movies suggests BDZs exist. The canon books do. Same for Halo. There are only two MAC scenes in the game, one I explained in the OP. I will get to the other one.

Your a fucking retard, and your analogy fell flat the second we saw Alderaan get blown away showing that via brute force they can indeed destroy a plaet let alone just melt it a bit. We also have the asteroid scene which shows that even a light turbolaser can devastate a large area of the planet. As if that weren't enough we see what a civilian craft can do with a seismic charge and that fits in with known firepower levels.

In halo we see one scene with sub-kiloton rounds being fired, another where the ships fire at in atmosphere at vastly sub c, another where a pod comprised of biological material hulls a Covenant ship, and a shot of a super MAC firing at sub super sonic let alone a high fraction of c.

[Jake]

In halo we see one scene with sub-kiloton rounds being fired,

Those are obviously not MACs as they can be seen being fired from the sides and back of the ship. They are most likely fusion rockets or archer missiles. And before you go off on them not looking like missiles, notice how far away they are. The over 1km long marathon cruisers that are firing those weapons look smaller than toys in the scene. Get far enough away and things will look different than they do up close. Aka a meteorite skipping along the atmosphere looks like a bright streak (shooting star) as opposed to a burning rock.

another where the ships fire at in atmosphere at vastly sub c

I explained this in the OP

another where a pod comprised of biological material hulls a Covenant ship

A very likely unshielded and damaged covenant ship.

and a shot of a super MAC firing at sub super sonic let alone a high fraction of c.

What you saw obviously wasn't the projectile. In the storm scene in Halo 3 we see that a FRIGATE can fire off a round fast enough that it can't be seen. If the super MAC can only fire a subsonic round, what's the point of building super MACs? You might as well use your resources to build a shit ton of frigates instead. The affect you see is obviously something else.

Other evidence is MC jumping from ship to ship, again at the start of Halo 2, and reaching the exposed core of a Covenant vessel, planting a bomb, and pushing off again. This small bomb is enough to cause the Covenant ship's power plant to explode destroying the ship and this weak spot can be reached by a lone man on a known path let alone a fighter.

The shields were down (cortana specifically said she disabled the carriers shields) and a hole was blown open for the master chief by longsword fighters. The Master chief then put a bomb meant to destroy a freaking space station right up against the ship's reactor. I wouldn't call that a weak spot or a small bomb. Do you even play the games because this was pretty damn obvious

Your a fucking retard, and your analogy fell flat the second we saw Alderaan get blown away showing that via brute force they can indeed destroy a plaet let alone just melt it a bit. We also have the asteroid scene which shows that even a light turbolaser can devastate a large area of the planet. As if that weren't enough we see what a civilian craft can do with a seismic charge and that fits in with known firepower levels.

Alderaan was destroyed by the deathstar, not an ISD. The energy of an ISD broadside calculated by mike through said asteroid destruction was 6E19J. The energy needed for a realistic base delta zero as described by mike (from EU sources) was over 1E27J. This would require 1.67E7 broadsides to accomplish. To do this in an hour would require 4,630 broadsides/sec. Considering a TL can fire once/sec means that going by movie evidence only, a BDZ is impossible or would at least take a shitload of time. So, by the movies, BDZ capability is not suggested. Jango Fett's sonic charge fragments the asteroid, which requires even less energy than vaporization. A BDZ is an entirely EU born plot device. Maybe next time you should do a little math before mindlessly throwing out insults.

[Norade]

In halo we see one scene with sub-kiloton rounds being fired,

Those are obviously not MACs as they can be seen being fired from the sides and back of the ship. They are most likely fusion rockets or archer missiles. And before you go off on them not looking like missiles, notice how far away they are. The over 1km long marathon cruisers that are firing those weapons look smaller than toys in the scene. Get far enough away and things will look different than they do up close. Aka a meteorite skipping along the atmosphere looks like a bright streak (shooting star) as opposed to a burning rock.

Except that we would still see them accelerate away from the ships firing them if they were missiles you ignorant piece of shit. I've already explained this to you before though, but you do so love your wall of ignorance and straw mans. Now I want you to prove that the shots we see are missiles and not anything else. Or else you will concede this point.

another where the ships fire at in atmosphere at vastly sub c

I explained this in the OP

As I recall it was never resolved but you kept repeating the same things over and over again as usual and always failed to provide solid proof for your numbers while I clearly showed my math.

another where a pod comprised of biological material hulls a Covenant ship

A very likely unshielded and damaged covenant ship.

You keep claiming that but can only offer odds, you can't even find a single screen where it is shown to be hit by weapons fire or a line of dialogue to back up your case.

and a shot of a super MAC firing at sub super sonic let alone a high fraction of c.

What you saw obviously wasn't the projectile. In the storm scene in Halo 3 we see that a FRIGATE can fire off a round fast enough that it can't be seen. If the super MAC can only fire a subsonic round, what's the point of building super MACs? You might as well use your resources to build a shit ton of frigates instead. The affect you see is obviously something else.

That was obviously the shell, it was brighter than the other ejecta, and moving far faster. There is also the issue that the shell leaving the barrel would still be the hottest and brightest object in the area and the brightest thing we see is the object that I pointed out. You need to posit what you think it is and provide proof, but all you do is say. It's not what I want it to be so it can't be as usual. As for the Frigate, that is our highest end observed firepower in the entire in game universe. Perhaps they should have just built more of them after all.

Other evidence is MC jumping from ship to ship, again at the start of Halo 2, and reaching the exposed core of a Covenant vessel, planting a bomb, and pushing off again. This small bomb is enough to cause the Covenant ship's power plant to explode destroying the ship and this weak spot can be reached by a lone man on a known path let alone a fighter.

The shields were down (cortana specifically said she disabled the carriers shields) and a hole was blown open for the master chief by longsword fighters. The Master chief then put a bomb meant to destroy a freaking space station right up against the ship's reactor. I wouldn't call that a weak spot or a small bomb. Do you even play the games because this was pretty damn obvious

Except that the maximum yield of the bomb is heavily constrained by its size given that we know that it's a nuke. There is also the issue that nukes don't explode in space so the Covenant ship must be super vulnerable to radiation and EMP.

Your a fucking retard, and your analogy fell flat the second we saw Alderaan get blown away showing that via brute force they can indeed destroy a plaet let alone just melt it a bit. We also have the asteroid scene which shows that even a light turbolaser can devastate a large area of the planet. As if that weren't enough we see what a civilian craft can do with a seismic charge and that fits in with known firepower levels.

Alderaan was destroyed by the deathstar, not an ISD. The energy of an ISD broadside calculated by mike through said asteroid destruction was 6E19J. The energy needed for a realistic base delta zero as described by mike (from EU sources) was over 1E27J. This would require 1.67E7 broadsides to accomplish. To do this in an hour would require 4,630 broadsides/sec. Considering a TL can fire once/sec means that going by movie evidence only, a BDZ is impossible or would at least take a shitload of time. So, by the movies, BDZ capability is not suggested. Jango Fett's sonic charge fragments the asteroid, which requires even less energy than vaporization. A BDZ is an entirely EU born plot device. Maybe next time you should do a little math before mindlessly throwing out insults.

Alderaan, along with other scenes, gave us something to scale from and proved that the Empire had a weapon capable of destroying a planet. The asteroid destruction page is also a low end estimate where as the higher end numbers are supported by having the Asteroid scene be all light turbolasers, scaling from the DS blast, and now looking at the effects of a civilian weapon against an asteroid. You also fail to realize that the movie novelizations are on the same tier of cannon as the movies and I'm near 100% certain that BDZ's are mentioned in the prequel novelizations. So due to all of the above kindly fuck the hell off, choke on your moms cock, and die.

[Chris OFarrell]

C-Fractional weapons are highly improbable for HALO MAC guns as are resulting firepowers for UNSC ships in the GT/TT range.

There is far more evidence in TFOR, First Strike and GOO for firepower and energy generation capacity in the Megaton range, including *explicite* quotes with yields in the MT range and energy levels in the Megajoule range.

And that is before we even get into the Shadow of Intent being bashed by a flood pod that most CERTAINLY is not moving at anything like those speeds, and the fact that Archer missiles are perfectly capable of inflicting massive damage to Covenant ships hulls, which are at least somewhat resistant to MAC slugs. Hell, the fact that archer missiles are a *viable weapon* system without nuke warheads, and nukes are far more powerful, is a rather clear indicator that Gigaton and Terraton levels of firepower are an absurd overestimtate. The .4C quote was clearly a mistake, by the HALO Encyclopedia took it and run with it. Of course, this is the same book that claims a Machine Gun has an effective range of 30 meters, so what the hell. I'll also point out that said SMAC stations firing a volley at a Covenant ship at only 100,000 klicks away missed, because said ship had the time to see the shots fired and incoming and turn to evade, and let the shots sail right past...which works fine if they are moving at say .04C as the quote should be taken, but is complete fail when you see the reaction time of the Shadow of Intent with far more time, or the Covenant Frigate the SOF rammed in HALO-Wars.

The aformentioned MAC scene in HALO-3 is crystal clear, and frankly you have to do completly absurd and unjustiable mental gymnastics to try and wave it away and STILL try to claim firepower in the Teraton ranges. The simpliest explination is probably the correct one; so its far more logical to assume they were not firing C-Fractional shells.

And to add as I forgot, the Spirt of Fire broadsiding with a Covenant frigate or destroy in HALO Wars surely doesn't help any claims of firepower beyond Megaton range, if that. HALO Wars also puts paid to the real effects of Covenant 'glassing', Harvest being a world the UNSC considered to be Glassed was still entirely habitable to human troops, albeit with extreme shifts in climate. And I have a rather strong feeling the same is going to hold true for Reach shortly in the new game.

And if you want to actually take it as REAL canon, as I don't know what Bungies stance on it is, the HALO Anime 'The Package' has a couple of Spartans on a couple of ROCKET SLEDS able to overwhelm an Assault Carriers shielding with a single small MAC cannon and a conventional missile swarm...

[Jake]

Except that we would still see them accelerate away from the ships firing them if they were missiles you ignorant piece of shit. I've already explained this to you before though, but you do so love your wall of ignorance and straw mans. Now I want you to prove that the shots we see are missiles and not anything else. Or else you will concede this point.

And they are obviously not MACs, but you keep on describing them as such. I think that even you know MACs are fired from the front and center. These are fired from the front, back, and sides. And if you look here: http://halo.wikia.com/wiki/Fusion_Rocket, fusion rockets are described as taking a long time to accelerate and having no guidance system. They are also equipped on marathon class cruisers, which are what we see. Since they are so far off, coupled with the slow acceleration, we may not have been able to discern that they were accelerating.

As I recall it was never resolved but you kept repeating the same things over and over again as usual and always failed to provide solid proof for your numbers while I clearly showed my math.

Fine, I'll do it again. The highest melting point in a real life material is 4488K. The highest melting point demonstrated in the Halo games comes from the scene in the storm scene that we are discussing. Using the drag equation, the fact that power is force*velocity, and the stephan-boltzmann equation, we can see that the round withstands a temperature of 52,517K. This is pretty impressive, considering it is metal and nearly 12X as high as today's highest melting point. Let's see what happens if they decide to fire at .4c in the atmosphere... Using the same equations, we get a temperature of 9,938,504K. Yeah... That's 190X what we see its capable of at the speed they fire it at. If they try to fire at .4c in atmosphere the round will vaporize before it even gets close to .4c, which it is why it can only be done in SPACE. THEY HAD TO FIRE IT SLOWER SO THEY COULD FIRE AT ALL! Do you get it yet?

You keep claiming that but can only offer odds, you can't even find a single screen where it is shown to be hit by weapons fire or a line of dialogue to back up your case.

Actually, I'm beginning to also think that the shield affect idea is valid. I don't think the elites in the Halo Wars scene had shields. When the spartans hit the elites with the pikes, they either clank on armor or hit unprotected flesh. In the games shields can survive at least one melee attack before dropping, and we don't see that here. Also, when Sgt. Forge shoots the arbiter, you hear the bullets pinging off the armor. Sgt. Forge also manages to tackle the arbiter without bouncing off shields and at the end of the fight stabs him, which shields would have blocked. It is fairly obvious that none of these elites had shields here, and since every other example of shield damage in the games and books comes with a visible effect, there should have been one on the carrier if its shields were still up when the flood pod hit. Along with my other probability argument, I think this pretty much disproves your assumption that the shields were still up (which you have yet to offer a single piece of evidence for).

That was obviously the shell, it was brighter than the other ejecta, and moving far faster. There is also the issue that the shell leaving the barrel would still be the hottest and brightest object in the area and the brightest thing we see is the object that I pointed out. You need to posit what you think it is and provide proof, but all you do is say. It's not what I want it to be so it can't be as usual. As for the Frigate, that is our highest end observed firepower in the entire in game universe. Perhaps they should have just built more of them after all.

So your affirming my point? You can't even use the argument that the MACs may have been old tech as it stated at the beginning of the game that they were new. Once again, why would you build hundreds of giant orbital space stations that fire projectiles slower than archer missiles when you could use the same resources to make hundreds if not thousands of frigates? As for what it could be: 1. A tracer, although this would not really make sense with an AI firing, but if the AI is damaged somehow, maybe 2. The gun has some sort of ejecta which is temporarily superheated by the round and briefly glows yellow around it 3. The gun has some kind of stage system (like a rocket) where one of the stages falls off upon firing and rapidly burns up 4. The thing is fired in the upper atmosphere where the density is extremely low (low enough that many particles escape into space). However, there are still particles which it may hit and possibly damage the round. Maybe it has some kind of ablative plating which absorbs some of these impacts and rapidly burns off the projectile as it leaves the atmosphere. There you go,4 explanations to mull over.


Except that the maximum yield of the bomb is heavily constrained by its size given that we know that it's a nuke. There is also the issue that nukes don't explode in space so the Covenant ship must be super vulnerable to radiation and EMP.

Covenant shields, as stated in the books, are vulnerable to emp. This is why nukes are a useful low energy way to drop them (except that the covenant's point defense lasers will often pick them off before they reach their target). The shields were already down however, it was the hull that was damaged by the nuke and even then, it may have already been damaged by the MAC rounds cortana was hitting it with.

Alderaan, along with other scenes, gave us something to scale from and proved that the Empire had a weapon capable of destroying a planet.

THE DEATH STAR.

The asteroid destruction page is also a low end estimate where as the higher end numbers are supported by having the Asteroid scene be all light turbolasers, scaling from the DS blast, and now looking at the effects of a civilian weapon against an asteroid.

No, he did account for the heavy turbolasers by scaling them up in size from the light ones. Once again, Jango's weapon only fragmented the asteroid and you can't assume its a common civilian weapon considering its used by the most notorious bounty hunter in the galaxy, who has government employers (Count Dooku, Nute Gunray).

You also fail to realize that the movie novelizations are on the same tier of cannon as the movies and I'm near 100% certain that BDZ's are mentioned in the prequel novelizations.

They most certainly are not, look up the canon policy. The highest form of canon are the films and the films alone. Everything else is 'quasi canon'.

[DrStrangelove]

Using the lower, non-physics raping masses for MAC rounds, and assuming the recent "fraction of c" velocities means .01-.1c, you get megaton range MAC that actually makes some sense and meshes well with the majority of canon.

[Jake]

Responses to Chris OFarrell's arguments:

There is far more evidence in TFOR, First Strike and GOO for firepower and energy generation capacity in the Megaton range, including *explicite* quotes with yields in the MT range and energy levels in the Megajoule range.

The encyclopedia is the newest source, and by Halo canon policy that means it is the highest. Also, they're rewriting Fall of Reach and First Strike to change information given in them, so I wouldn't call them reliable anymore. Also, as I recall, Ghosts of Onyx never gives an MAC energy value.

And that is before we even get into the Shadow of Intent being bashed by a flood pod that most CERTAINLY is not moving at anything like those speeds, and the fact that Archer missiles are perfectly capable of inflicting massive damage to Covenant ships hulls, which are at least somewhat resistant to MAC slugs.

The shadow of intent just got through a battle where it was outnumbered 3 to 1 and there was no visible shield interaction when it was hit, implying that the ship was already damaged and its shields were down. We also don't know the composition of the flood pod. Archer missiles do not inflict massive damage. They are always used in conjunction with MACs and nukes, and are fired in the hundreds at a time, and even then, they usually only inflict surface damage.

Hell, the fact that archer missiles are a *viable weapon* system without nuke warheads, and nukes are far more powerful, is a rather clear indicator that Gigaton and Terraton levels of firepower are an absurd overestimtate.

No they are not. They never cause significant damage when used alone. They are always used with nukes or MACs. We also don't know the yield or the properties of an archer missile. For all we know it could be an antimatter weapon.

The .4C quote was clearly a mistake, by the HALO Encyclopedia took it and run with it. Of course, this is the same book that claims a Machine Gun has an effective range of 30 meters, so what the hell.

Yet it is the earlier books that are being re-written, which suggests that in terms of canon, the encyclopedia is correct.

I'll also point out that said SMAC stations firing a volley at a Covenant ship at only 100,000 klicks away missed, because said ship had the time to see the shots fired and incoming and turn to evade, and let the shots sail right past...which works fine if they are moving at say .04C as the quote should be taken, but is complete fail when you see the reaction time of the Shadow of Intent with far more time, or the Covenant Frigate the SOF rammed in HALO-Wars.

Once again, this is from a lower canon book which is being re-written.

The aformentioned MAC scene in HALO-3 is crystal clear, and frankly you have to do completly absurd and unjustiable mental gymnastics to try and wave it away and STILL try to claim firepower in the Teraton ranges. The simpliest explination is probably the correct one; so its far more logical to assume they were not firing C-Fractional shells.

No, its not. See my previous post to Norade.

And to add as I forgot, the Spirt of Fire broadsiding with a Covenant frigate or destroy in HALO Wars surely doesn't help any claims of firepower beyond Megaton range, if that.

Those were not MAC guns.

HALO Wars also puts paid to the real effects of Covenant 'glassing', Harvest being a world the UNSC considered to be Glassed was still entirely habitable to human troops, albeit with extreme shifts in climate. And I have a rather strong feeling the same is going to hold true for Reach shortly in the new game.

This really has nothing to do with the OP, but what the hell. The word 'glassing' any kind of plasma bombardment. Some are worse then others. In TFOR when covenant wraiths, banshees, and grunts attacked and destroyed a marine base with their plasma weapons, they called it a glassing. In the case of harvest and reach, they only glassed enough to kill the humans. They still had to land and find forerunner artifacts so they obviously couldn't destroy the planet. However, a total glassing (when they're not interested in the planet) involves the vaporization of all bodies of water on a planet within an hour and the boiling away of the atmosphere within a day. You never even hear of a STAR DESTROYER completely vaporizing oceans.

And if you want to actually take it as REAL canon, as I don't know what Bungies stance on it is, the HALO Anime 'The Package' has a couple of Spartans on a couple of ROCKET SLEDS able to overwhelm an Assault Carriers shielding with a single small MAC cannon and a conventional missile swarm...

I'm pretty sure that it is of the lowest canon possible and that the visuals themselves are not canon.

[Jake]

Using the lower, non-physics raping masses for MAC rounds, and assuming the recent "fraction of c" velocities means .01-.1c, you get megaton range MAC that actually makes some sense and meshes well with the majority of canon.

You are pulling the numbers out of your ass and you obviously know nothing about halo's canon policy. As for the 'physics raping' if you can't accept Halo's numbers you sure as hell better not accept what Star Wars can do.

[DrStrangelove]

Using the lower, non-physics raping masses for MAC rounds, and assuming the recent "fraction of c" velocities means .01-.1c, you get megaton range MAC that actually makes some sense and meshes well with the majority of canon.

You are pulling the numbers out of your ass and you obviously know nothing about halo's canon policy. As for the 'physics raping' if you can't accept Halo's numbers you sure as hell better not accept what Star Wars can do.

Contact Harvest states MAC rounds as being 10m long and massing 160 tons which corresponds with HBOrgs scaling and the density of tungsten well. Halo:Evolutions, and the Halo Wars booklet give MAC velocity as "a fraction of c," .01-.10c is merely a reasonable interpretation of that. The numbers you get using those figures mesh with canon much better than the silly Encyclopedia figures. My numbers actually work with the Halo3 cutscene without rationalization required by the Encyclopedia numbers. I see you've completely forgotten to mention the Encyclopedia's stated range for the MAC of 10,000km

[Norade]

Except that we would still see them accelerate away from the ships firing them if they were missiles you ignorant piece of shit. I've already explained this to you before though, but you do so love your wall of ignorance and straw mans. Now I want you to prove that the shots we see are missiles and not anything else. Or else you will concede this point.

And they are obviously not MACs, but you keep on describing them as such. I think that even you know MACs are fired from the front and center. These are fired from the front, back, and sides. And if you look here: http://halo.wikia.com/wiki/Fusion_Rocket, fusion rockets are described as taking a long time to accelerate and having no guidance system. They are also equipped on marathon class cruisers, which are what we see. Since they are so far off, coupled with the slow acceleration, we may not have been able to discern that they were accelerating.

First off show where I called them MAC's in this thread. I'd love to see you try shoving words in my mouth here when we can clearly see that I simply called them subkiloton shots. I never called them sub KT MAC shots. Also, we have been over this, I have stated the projectiles we see could could also be railgun or autocannon rounds as and that fits better than your unsubstantiated claims that we might just not see the rockets accelerating. In fact I want you to provide proof for that claim right now.

As I recall it was never resolved but you kept repeating the same things over and over again as usual and always failed to provide solid proof for your numbers while I clearly showed my math.

Fine, I'll do it again. The highest melting point in a real life material is 4488K. The highest melting point demonstrated in the Halo games comes from the scene in the storm scene that we are discussing. Using the drag equation, the fact that power is force*velocity, and the stephan-boltzmann equation, we can see that the round withstands a temperature of 52,517K. This is pretty impressive, considering it is metal and nearly 12X as high as today's highest melting point. Let's see what happens if they decide to fire at .4c in the atmosphere... Using the same equations, we get a temperature of 9,938,504K. Yeah... That's 190X what we see its capable of at the speed they fire it at. If they try to fire at .4c in atmosphere the round will vaporize before it even gets close to .4c, which it is why it can only be done in SPACE. THEY HAD TO FIRE IT SLOWER SO THEY COULD FIRE AT ALL! Do you get it yet?

Halo =/= real life and we already proved that with real life materials the rounds would have melted even at the speeds we saw. Therefore we have nothing that says those rounds couldn't have moved faster and sources that say they should have been moving faster. We also know that losing three ships and Africa to prevent a the rings firing is a good trade for the humans so they should had the ships accelerating harder so they could fire higher powered shots at point blank range.

You keep claiming that but can only offer odds, you can't even find a single screen where it is shown to be hit by weapons fire or a line of dialogue to back up your case.

Actually, I'm beginning to also think that the shield affect idea is valid. I don't think the elites in the Halo Wars scene had shields. When the spartans hit the elites with the pikes, they either clank on armor or hit unprotected flesh. In the games shields can survive at least one melee attack before dropping, and we don't see that here. Also, when Sgt. Forge shoots the arbiter, you hear the bullets pinging off the armor. Sgt. Forge also manages to tackle the arbiter without bouncing off shields and at the end of the fight stabs him, which shields would have blocked. It is fairly obvious that none of these elites had shields here, and since every other example of shield damage in the games and books comes with a visible effect, there should have been one on the carrier if its shields were still up when the flood pod hit. Along with my other probability argument, I think this pretty much disproves your assumption that the shields were still up (which you have yet to offer a single piece of evidence for).

Ignoring the fact that we also see a fight between two ships and again see no shield interactions, or did that Covenant ship have no shields either? Not to mention that in any risky situation the Covenant ship should have had shields up and we see that shields recharge in a matter of seconds from nothing in game and in game on the highest difficulty is considered cannon.

That was obviously the shell, it was brighter than the other ejecta, and moving far faster. There is also the issue that the shell leaving the barrel would still be the hottest and brightest object in the area and the brightest thing we see is the object that I pointed out. You need to posit what you think it is and provide proof, but all you do is say. It's not what I want it to be so it can't be as usual. As for the Frigate, that is our highest end observed firepower in the entire in game universe. Perhaps they should have just built more of them after all.

So your affirming my point? You can't even use the argument that the MACs may have been old tech as it stated at the beginning of the game that they were new. Once again, why would you build hundreds of giant orbital space stations that fire projectiles slower than archer missiles when you could use the same resources to make hundreds if not thousands of frigates? As for what it could be: 1. A tracer, although this would not really make sense with an AI firing, but if the AI is damaged somehow, maybe 2. The gun has some sort of ejecta which is temporarily superheated by the round and briefly glows yellow around it 3. The gun has some kind of stage system (like a rocket) where one of the stages falls off upon firing and rapidly burns up 4. The thing is fired in the upper atmosphere where the density is extremely low (low enough that many particles escape into space). However, there are still particles which it may hit and possibly damage the round. Maybe it has some kind of ablative plating which absorbs some of these impacts and rapidly burns off the projectile as it leaves the atmosphere. There you go,4 explanations to mull over.

Sorry, I'm not buying any of that given that none of them are part of the games cannon and we're debating the game's cannon not what we want to see the game's cannon be. Your explanations are nothing but an attempt to bring in bullshit explanations to show whatever you want to show. What we see in the game is the MAC gun round moving very, very slowly, again in a case where we should expect the gun to be firing at maximum yield. So we're left with the explanation that the UNSC just can't fire that large a round very fast.

Except that the maximum yield of the bomb is heavily constrained by its size given that we know that it's a nuke. There is also the issue that nukes don't explode in space so the Covenant ship must be super vulnerable to radiation and EMP.

Covenant shields, as stated in the books, are vulnerable to emp. This is why nukes are a useful low energy way to drop them (except that the covenant's point defense lasers will often pick them off before they reach their target). The shields were already down however, it was the hull that was damaged by the nuke and even then, it may have already been damaged by the MAC rounds cortana was hitting it with.

You're still saying that a damaged but still space worthy Covenant ship is vulnerable to a single guy jumping holding onto a bomb. Where were the point defense weapons there?

Alderaan, along with other scenes, gave us something to scale from and proved that the Empire had a weapon capable of destroying a planet.

THE DEATH STAR.

YOU'RE A RETARD!

The Death Star is to Star Destroyers as Super MAC's are to capital ships. If we saw a Super MAC fire at the speeds claimed then you would have a basis for the rest, but we never see that capability used even when it would be useful or even life saving to do so.

The asteroid destruction page is also a low end estimate where as the higher end numbers are supported by having the Asteroid scene be all light turbolasers, scaling from the DS blast, and now looking at the effects of a civilian weapon against an asteroid.

No, he did account for the heavy turbolasers by scaling them up in size from the light ones. Once again, Jango's weapon only fragmented the asteroid and you can't assume its a common civilian weapon considering its used by the most notorious bounty hunter in the galaxy, who has government employers (Count Dooku, Nute Gunray).

Except that he admits that was rough scaling the last of which was done many years ago and all listed as an extreme lower end estimate. Mike's site isn't cannon, but it does give useful numbers to work from and proves that those numbers fit with what the ICS claims are real.

You also fail to realize that the movie novelizations are on the same tier of cannon as the movies and I'm near 100% certain that BDZ's are mentioned in the prequel novelizations.

They most certainly are not, look up the canon policy. The highest form of canon are the films and the films alone. Everything else is 'quasi canon'.

Gospel, or canon as we refer to it, includes the screenplays, the films, the radio dramas and the novelizations. These works spin out of George Lucas' original stories, the rest are written by other writers. However, between us, we've read everything, and much of it is taken into account in the overall continuity. The entire catalog of published works comprises a vast history — with many off-shoots, variations and tangents — like any other well-developed mythology.

Suck a fucking dick and die you worthless lying grandpa raping motherfucker.

[Jake]

Reply to Norade

First off show where I called them MAC's in this thread. I'd love to see you try shoving words in my mouth here when we can clearly see that I simply called them subkiloton shots. I never called them sub KT MAC shots. Also, we have been over this, I have stated the projectiles we see could could also be railgun or autocannon rounds as and that fits better than your unsubstantiated claims that we might just not see the rockets accelerating. In fact I want you to provide proof for that claim right now.

This thread is about MAC firepower so if you truly believed they were railguns or autocannons (which is a possibility) you would not have brought them up. I already did prove it. The link said fusion rockets accelerate very slowly. Frankly, whether they are autocannons, rockets, or rail guns doesn't even matter considering the discussion is about MACs.

Halo =/= real life and we already proved that with real life materials the rounds would have melted even at the speeds we saw. Therefore we have nothing that says those rounds couldn't have moved faster and sources that say they should have been moving faster. We also know that losing three ships and Africa to prevent a the rings firing is a good trade for the humans so they should had the ships accelerating harder so they could fire higher powered shots at point blank range.

I know halo is not real life. I just put that factoid in for emphasis on my point. What matters is that the scene demonstrates a maximum halo round heat tolerance of 52,517K (or they would have fired it faster). If they fired at .4c, the round would have been heated to 9,938,504K. Even at point blank range the superheated round would have vaporized before leaving the barrel of the gun, as well as most likely melting the gun barrel itself. At best, you would have an exploding ship right next to the dreadnought, which would only impart only a fraction of that explosive energy to the target. At worst, the speeds required to actually get to point blank range would have torn the frigates apart before even getting the chance to fire.

Ignoring the fact that we also see a fight between two ships and again see no shield interactions, or did that Covenant ship have no shields either? Not to mention that in any risky situation the Covenant ship should have had shields up and we see that shields recharge in a matter of seconds from nothing in game and in game on the highest difficulty is considered cannon.

During that scene the places where the impacts are taking place are blocked by the UNSC ship. If there were shield interactions, we would not see them. And we see personal shields recharge in seconds in the game. We never see ship shields recharge that fast, if at all in the books. And normal is the canon difficulty for enemy and shield damage resistance, while heroic is the cannon difficulty for enemy intelligence and the rate at which they fire their weapons. Legendary is not canon at all.

Sorry, I'm not buying any of that given that none of them are part of the games cannon and we're debating the game's cannon not what we want to see the game's cannon be. Your explanations are nothing but an attempt to bring in bullshit explanations to show whatever you want to show.

Mike's comments about turbolaser nature are not demonstrated in canon either. What he and I are doing is looking at the scene in question and making observations about the nature of the weapon. The effect we see being the projectile is also a possible interpretation, but makes no sense in the context of other, more recent, canon evidence that shows frigates firing far faster so it is an unlikely explanation. None of my interpretations (except possibly the tracer one) are contradicted by canon so they are fair game.

What we see in the game is the MAC gun round moving very, very slowly, again in a case where we should expect the gun to be firing at maximum yield. So we're left with the explanation that the UNSC just can't fire that large a round very fast.

Your interpretation which contradicts another, more recent, canon scene.

You're still saying that a damaged but still space worthy Covenant ship is vulnerable to a single guy jumping holding onto a bomb. Where were the point defense weapons there?

The ones in line of sight to the master chief were obviously damaged/destroyed by the nuke.

The Death Star is to Star Destroyers as Super MAC's are to capital ships. If we saw a Super MAC fire at the speeds claimed then you would have a basis for the rest, but we never see that capability used even when it would be useful or even life saving to do so.

Uh, not really. Golan defense platforms are to star destroyers as super macs are to capital ships. The UNSC has no death star equivalent. I don't even know what point you are trying to get across with this anymore.

Except that he admits that was rough scaling the last of which was done many years ago and all listed as an extreme lower end estimate. Mike's site isn't cannon, but it does give useful numbers to work from and proves that those numbers fit with what the ICS claims are real.

I'm not trying to say they are high end. I'm trying to say that's what you get out of the movies and the high end stuff comes from the EU. It is still canon and it works the exact same for Halo.

Gospel, or canon as we refer to it, includes the screenplays, the films, the radio dramas and the novelizations. These works spin out of George Lucas' original stories, the rest are written by other writers. However, between us, we've read everything, and much of it is taken into account in the overall continuity. The entire catalog of published works comprises a vast history — with many off-shoots, variations and tangents — like any other well-developed mythology.

What happens when the movie and novel contradict, as is the case with Revenge of the Sith? One of the two has to be higher, and I doubt its the novel.

Suck a fucking dick and die you worthless lying grandpa raping motherfucker

You may not be able to debate well or understand the value of basic math but at least you're.... creative?

[Norade]

First off show where I called them MAC's in this thread. I'd love to see you try shoving words in my mouth here when we can clearly see that I simply called them subkiloton shots. I never called them sub KT MAC shots. Also, we have been over this, I have stated the projectiles we see could could also be railgun or autocannon rounds as and that fits better than your unsubstantiated claims that we might just not see the rockets accelerating. In fact I want you to provide proof for that claim right now.

This thread is about MAC firepower so if you truly believed they were railguns or autocannons (which is a possibility) you would not have brought them up. I already did prove it. The link said fusion rockets accelerate very slowly. Frankly, whether they are autocannons, rockets, or rail guns doesn't even matter considering the discussion is about MACs.

Wow, way to miss the point as usual. They matter as they set a lower bound for what is needed to down Covenant vessels. You also juts keep repeating 'very slowly' as if that means anything, how many meters per second is very slowly? Why do we see zero velocity change in the Halo 2 cutscene as even a little acceleration adds up over the length of the ships we're seeing. We also don't see any engine plume.

Halo =/= real life and we already proved that with real life materials the rounds would have melted even at the speeds we saw. Therefore we have nothing that says those rounds couldn't have moved faster and sources that say they should have been moving faster. We also know that losing three ships and Africa to prevent a the rings firing is a good trade for the humans so they should had the ships accelerating harder so they could fire higher powered shots at point blank range.

I know halo is not real life. I just put that factoid in for emphasis on my point. What matters is that the scene demonstrates a maximum halo round heat tolerance of 52,517K (or they would have fired it faster). If they fired at .4c, the round would have been heated to 9,938,504K. Even at point blank range the superheated round would have vaporized before leaving the barrel of the gun, as well as most likely melting the gun barrel itself. At best, you would have an exploding ship right next to the dreadnought, which would only impart only a fraction of that explosive energy to the target. At worst, the speeds required to actually get to point blank range would have torn the frigates apart before even getting the chance to fire.

You do know that the closer you get the higher the velocity you can fire your rounds as your distance through air is shorter. Also, given that the frigates could not move any faster in the air, that places hard limits on how hard the MAC gun can fire as the only reason they would be forced to move slower is stress due to friction because we know that UNSC material science will allow the frigates hull to reach temperatures of around 50,000K with melting, even if we set that at a much lower 25,000K for a ship due to the need to radiate heat that ship could have moved a lot faster as they would have power to spare if they could actually fire a MAC round at a high fraction of c.

Ignoring the fact that we also see a fight between two ships and again see no shield interactions, or did that Covenant ship have no shields either? Not to mention that in any risky situation the Covenant ship should have had shields up and we see that shields recharge in a matter of seconds from nothing in game and in game on the highest difficulty is considered cannon.

During that scene the places where the impacts are taking place are blocked by the UNSC ship. If there were shield interactions, we would not see them. And we see personal shields recharge in seconds in the game. We never see ship shields recharge that fast, if at all in the books. And normal is the canon difficulty for enemy and shield damage resistance, while heroic is the cannon difficulty for enemy intelligence and the rate at which they fire their weapons. Legendary is not canon at all.

The only rate we ever see shields recharge at is in seconds the moment bullets stop, we know that ship and personal shields work on the same principles so there is no reason for that not to be the case. Burden of proof is on you to prove the shields don't work the way shields are shown to work.

Sorry, I'm not buying any of that given that none of them are part of the games cannon and we're debating the game's cannon not what we want to see the game's cannon be. Your explanations are nothing but an attempt to bring in bullshit explanations to show whatever you want to show.

Mike's comments about turbolaser nature are not demonstrated in canon either. What he and I are doing is looking at the scene in question and making observations about the nature of the weapon. The effect we see being the projectile is also a possible interpretation, but makes no sense in the context of other, more recent, canon evidence that shows frigates firing far faster so it is an unlikely explanation. None of my interpretations (except possibly the tracer one) are contradicted by canon so they are fair game.

Except that Occam's Razor says that we use the simplest solution which is that the bright yellow spot is the projectile and that the UNSC simply can't accelerate such a large mass to high speeds using electromagnetic propulsion.

What we see in the game is the MAC gun round moving very, very slowly, again in a case where we should expect the gun to be firing at maximum yield. So we're left with the explanation that the UNSC just can't fire that large a round very fast.

Your interpretation which contradicts another, more recent, canon scene.

How does a super MAC firing contradict a frigate firing in anyway?

You're still saying that a damaged but still space worthy Covenant ship is vulnerable to a single guy jumping holding onto a bomb. Where were the point defense weapons there?

The ones in line of sight to the master chief were obviously damaged/destroyed by the nuke.

I was more speaking of them shooting him on the way in...

The Death Star is to Star Destroyers as Super MAC's are to capital ships. If we saw a Super MAC fire at the speeds claimed then you would have a basis for the rest, but we never see that capability used even when it would be useful or even life saving to do so.

Uh, not really. Golan defense platforms are to star destroyers as super macs are to capital ships. The UNSC has no death star equivalent. I don't even know what point you are trying to get across with this anymore.

The point is that Star Wars has shown that they are capable of destroying worlds so simply melting the crust is well within their energy generation capacity. Halo has never shown us anything calcable that is over a few hundred megatons at best.

Except that he admits that was rough scaling the last of which was done many years ago and all listed as an extreme lower end estimate. Mike's site isn't cannon, but it does give useful numbers to work from and proves that those numbers fit with what the ICS claims are real.

I'm not trying to say they are high end. I'm trying to say that's what you get out of the movies and the high end stuff comes from the EU. It is still canon and it works the exact same for Halo.

Except that the single highest end event from the EU, the destruction of Alderaan is shown clearly in the movies.

Gospel, or canon as we refer to it, includes the screenplays, the films, the radio dramas and the novelizations. These works spin out of George Lucas' original stories, the rest are written by other writers. However, between us, we've read everything, and much of it is taken into account in the overall continuity. The entire catalog of published works comprises a vast history — with many off-shoots, variations and tangents — like any other well-developed mythology.

What happens when the movie and novel contradict, as is the case with Revenge of the Sith? One of the two has to be higher, and I doubt its the novel.

I would actually guess the novel as they often include scenes cut from the script due to time and editing constraints.

Suck a fucking dick and die you worthless lying grandpa raping motherfucker

You may not be able to debate well or understand the value of basic math but at least you're.... creative?

And you're still a lying sack of shit who dodges my points.

[kouchpotato]

Why is the visual, animated by an artist, worth more than the word of a writer? The animator could have been told to make a ship shoot at the dreadnought, and not "animate a MAC gun firing a 600 ton shell at .4 c".

[Stark]

Who's fault is that? Why should anyone believe anything that isn't actually in the game? When you make a cutscene and there are literally no limits to what you can show, and someone shows a petrol bomb, why should you massively inflate it?

This is seriously like saying that if the novels say Master Chief is blue, then he's blue.

[Sarevok]

Who's fault is that? Why should anyone believe anything that isn't actually in the game? When you make a cutscene and there are literally no limits to what you can show, and someone shows a petrol bomb, why should you massively inflate it?

This is seriously like saying that if the novels say Master Chief is blue, then he's blue.

They are hypocrites. They want to wank their favorite universes for nerd credibility. At same time they want to enjoy visuals representing WW 2 in space. Because you see real consequences of astronomical levels of energy generation involve a series very different from what we think of Halo. It is hard to enjoy Somali technicals in space stories when average starship wields that much firepower.

[Connor MacLeod]

I tend to take the Halo encyclopedia with a grain of salt for much the same reasons Chris OFarrell described (30 m MG's) but also because the idea of "most recent canon is right" is no fucking way to go about doing analysis. not only is it incredibly simpleminded but it means your canon and conclusions will change with every source. I'm going to bet that means once Halo Reach comes out, you can kiss those multi-TT MACs goodbye again. But from my POV, you'd never get anything concluded meaningfully, since the rules are going to change constantly.

More to the point, there are other corrobrating evidence. MAC rounds are noted to be similar to the Mass Drivers in Contact harvest, which IIRC fire 160 ton rounds at 6-7 km/s (based on the time stated it taking the mass driver rounds MAC fires ito that orbital station to reach geostationary orbit.. clal it thousands of km/s just to be safe and cover possible abiguities in orbit) That would be around high MT/low gigaton for an MAC round. Which for a large, fixed axis weapon would be reasonable (and I think the engines and powerplant could reasoanbly handle such yields, even if it stretches things/)

Now that aside, I tend not to always buy the so called "MAC" calcs from the visuals, and that goes for alot of reasons. But the basic one is: I don't think they're firing MACs in most of the visuals. What we often see are big, glowy fireball like thingies which have more in common with the subsonic gravity defying blaster bolts in SW than they do with anything we'd see in real life. I don't know WHAT the fuck those weapons are, or what they might be capable of (they make my head hurt frankly.) but they aren't MACs and it doesnt matter WHAT mass or velocity you try to argue, you're going to run into problems with going on visuals alone (again, referencing the magic gravity defying yet subsonic blasters from Star Wars which also happen to eject casings as a sci fi weapon...)

Now, if we HAD to reconcile the multi-TT MACs then they exist but they aren't common weapons. THey are more likely in fact to be giant WMD type weapons used to threaten the enemy into submission or something along the lines of a NOVA bomb. Its not like the UNSC has been shown to be all that moral (SPartan 2 program, spartan III program, etc.) so I could see them pulling a Tarkin Doctrine (Do what we say or we'll fire this huge ass gun and fuck up your world. and it won't be a quick death.)

Nukes range from megaton to gigaton range and they can do some weird shit to make them better (in the sense that they don't rely purely on thermal damage, they apparently can magically get them to generate blast effects in a void despite no atmosphere in space.) There will be limits to this since even a Shiva nuke is man portable to a certain degree (and fairly compact), but given what NOVA bombs reputedly are able to do I wouldn't think they can suddenly leap forward in yield by many orders of magnitude (similar to the DS and how it's abilities set broad limits on SW firepower.) When you consider the miniaturization for nukes that they have also been mentioned to have (those football-sized nukes for example) that also makes sense. But again, I don't see them being super-teraton range here as a rule (and that would contradict far too many examples as well.)

Other weapons like Archer missiles are probably kiloton range or so (despite being high explosive.. while I'm inclined to take some things literaly there are other things I won't take literally becuase it is flat out stupid. A missile that can move at 10% c and blow up a mesa like in GoO is not going to be HE no matter how you argue it.)

So, high MT/Low GT range seems reasonable for the UNSC (I'd put the Covenant at around GT range myself) with some TT range ewapons as superweapons/uncommon high yield weapons, but that's it. Halo fanboys are just going to have to accept that.

[Jake]

Norade:

Wow, way to miss the point as usual. They matter as they set a lower bound for what is needed to down Covenant vessels. You also juts keep repeating 'very slowly' as if that means anything, how many meters per second is very slowly? Why do we see zero velocity change in the Halo 2 cutscene as even a little acceleration adds up over the length of the ships we're seeing. We also don't see any engine plume.

Not really. They may very well have been using them on the covenant boarding craft and fighters that the carrier released. And whether they are fusion rockets, railguns, or autocannons doesn't really matter as they are all weak end UNSC weapons, so arguing about it is relatively pointless.

You do know that the closer you get the higher the velocity you can fire your rounds as your distance through air is shorter. Also, given that the frigates could not move any faster in the air, that places hard limits on how hard the MAC gun can fire as the only reason they would be forced to move slower is stress due to friction because we know that UNSC material science will allow the frigates hull to reach temperatures of around 50,000K with melting, even if we set that at a much lower 25,000K for a ship due to the need to radiate heat that ship could have moved a lot faster as they would have power to spare if they could actually fire a MAC round at a high fraction of c.

Even if the frigate got so close to the dreadnought that it was all but touching it before it fired, the round would still have to travel the length of the frigate (478 meters) in open air. At any appreciable fraction of c, the round is still screwed.

The only rate we ever see shields recharge at is in seconds the moment bullets stop, we know that ship and personal shields work on the same principles so there is no reason for that not to be the case. Burden of proof is on you to prove the shields don't work the way shields are shown to work.

Do you know that? I don't recall off hand any canonical evidence that says starship and personal shields work on the same principals. Come back when you find some. Also, what does the recharge rate have to do with the debate anyway?

Except that Occam's Razor says that we use the simplest solution which is that the bright yellow spot is the projectile and that the UNSC simply can't accelerate such a large mass to high speeds using electromagnetic propulsion.

Who's Razor? Anyhow, it is not a simple solution. You would have to explain the wavering effect. You would also have to explain how you even see it in the first place (unless you think the UNSC paints their MAC rounds bright yellow). Most importantly, which I have repeated multiple times but you don't seem to get, why would they build them in the first place if they fire so slowly. Let me walk you through this. Say you have a set of materials. You can either build:
A. 300 orbital super MACs that fire a subsonic round
B. 838 frigates that can fire a round at least 131km/sec
Honestly, even a five year old could answer this. If that thing was really a projectile, there would be no point for a super mac to even exist, when a smaller frigate can outperform it by a factor of 382.

How does a super MAC firing contradict a frigate firing in anyway?

Just answered that.

I was more speaking of them shooting him on the way in...

Uh, they were kind of distracted by the UNSC cruiser next to the chief...

The point is that Star Wars has shown that they are capable of destroying worlds so simply melting the crust is well within their energy generation capacity. Halo has never shown us anything calcable that is over a few hundred megatons at best.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mDt3XZ0Cjk
I beg to differ.

Except that the single highest end event from the EU, the destruction of Alderaan is shown clearly in the movies.

But it is done by a specialized planet destroying battle station, not a standard warship. There is nothing in the movies that shows an ISD having the capability to perform a BDZ as described by the EU.

I would actually guess the novel as they often include scenes cut from the script due to time and editing constraints.

Really? So Palpatine was really beating Mace Windu to the point that he asked Anakin to help him because "He is too strong for me" as opposed to the movie where Mace Windu is owning to the point that he waves Anakin off when he enters? Or that the Palpatine Yoda battle ended with Palpatine knocking Yoda out of the air with force lightning, as opposed to both of them flying off a senate pod because neither could control the lightning anymore, which happened in the movie?

And you're still a lying sack of shit who dodges my points.

I'm pretty sure I've addressed each one of your points (in order even) but if you think you wrote something that I skipped over, feel free to direct me to it, and I will respond with my next post.

[Jake]

Connor:

I tend to take the Halo encyclopedia with a grain of salt for much the same reasons Chris OFarrell described (30 m MG's) but also because the idea of "most recent canon is right" is no fucking way to go about doing analysis. not only is it incredibly simpleminded but it means your canon and conclusions will change with every source. I'm going to bet that means once Halo Reach comes out, you can kiss those multi-TT MACs goodbye again. But from my POV, you'd never get anything concluded meaningfully, since the rules are going to change constantly.

That's Halo's canon policy, not mine.

More to the point, there are other corrobrating evidence. MAC rounds are noted to be similar to the Mass Drivers in Contact harvest, which IIRC fire 160 ton rounds at 6-7 km/s (based on the time stated it taking the mass driver rounds MAC fires ito that orbital station to reach geostationary orbit.. clal it thousands of km/s just to be safe and cover possible abiguities in orbit) That would be around high MT/low gigaton for an MAC round. Which for a large, fixed axis weapon would be reasonable (and I think the engines and powerplant could reasoanbly handle such yields, even if it stretches things/)

1. That's a civilian device, and similar does not mean the same. The wright brothers plane is similar to an F22 in the fact that they are both aircraft.
2. I'm pretty sure the encyclopedia came out after Contact Harvest, so the encyclopedia is still the highest canon source.

Now that aside, I tend not to always buy the so called "MAC" calcs from the visuals, and that goes for alot of reasons. But the basic one is: I don't think they're firing MACs in most of the visuals. What we often see are big, glowy fireball like thingies which have more in common with the subsonic gravity defying blaster bolts in SW than they do with anything we'd see in real life. I don't know WHAT the fuck those weapons are, or what they might be capable of (they make my head hurt frankly.) but they aren't MACs and it doesnt matter WHAT mass or velocity you try to argue, you're going to run into problems with going on visuals alone (again, referencing the magic gravity defying yet subsonic blasters from Star Wars which also happen to eject casings as a sci fi weapon...)

If the visuals are not depicting MAC rounds that only supports my point, since the books would then be our only source of information on MACs and we wouldn't have to reconcile the two. Despite this, I'm pretty sure the scene in the Storm was an MAC.

Now, if we HAD to reconcile the multi-TT MACs then they exist but they aren't common weapons. THey are more likely in fact to be giant WMD type weapons used to threaten the enemy into submission or something along the lines of a NOVA bomb. Its not like the UNSC has been shown to be all that moral (SPartan 2 program, spartan III program, etc.) so I could see them pulling a Tarkin Doctrine (Do what we say or we'll fire this huge ass gun and fuck up your world. and it won't be a quick death.)

MACs are powerful, but if they really wanted to use terror wouldn't a N.O.V.A bomb be better?

Nukes range from megaton to gigaton range and they can do some weird shit to make them better (in the sense that they don't rely purely on thermal damage, they apparently can magically get them to generate blast effects in a void despite no atmosphere in space.) There will be limits to this since even a Shiva nuke is man portable to a certain degree (and fairly compact), but given what NOVA bombs reputedly are able to do I wouldn't think they can suddenly leap forward in yield by many orders of magnitude (similar to the DS and how it's abilities set broad limits on SW firepower.) When you consider the miniaturization for nukes that they have also been mentioned to have (those football-sized nukes for example) that also makes sense. But again, I don't see them being super-teraton range here as a rule (and that would contradict far too many examples as well.)

I think its the emp that makes nukes so effective on covenant shields, not the blast itself. As for the N.O.V.A bomb, it had the power to vaporize a covenant fleet, superheat a planet's atmosphere, and shatter a moon. If they can make a bomb that does this, I would think a 1.something teraton level weapon would be quite possible.

Other weapons like Archer missiles are probably kiloton range or so (despite being high explosive.. while I'm inclined to take some things literaly there are other things I won't take literally becuase it is flat out stupid. A missile that can move at 10% c and blow up a mesa like in GoO is not going to be HE no matter how you argue it.)

We have no idea how these missiles work, they could be antimatter for all we know. If one missile can blow up a f*cking mesa, I think this gives even more evidence that a ship's main gun could fire in the teraton range.

So, high MT/Low GT range seems reasonable for the UNSC (I'd put the Covenant at around GT range myself) with some TT range ewapons as superweapons/uncommon high yield weapons, but that's it. Halo fanboys are just going to have to accept that.

I think you just helped my cause for these things existing, if not being common.

[Norade]

Norade:

Wow, way to miss the point as usual. They matter as they set a lower bound for what is needed to down Covenant vessels. You also juts keep repeating 'very slowly' as if that means anything, how many meters per second is very slowly? Why do we see zero velocity change in the Halo 2 cutscene as even a little acceleration adds up over the length of the ships we're seeing. We also don't see any engine plume.

Not really. They may very well have been using them on the covenant boarding craft and fighters that the carrier released. And whether they are fusion rockets, railguns, or autocannons doesn't really matter as they are all weak end UNSC weapons, so arguing about it is relatively pointless.

Except seeing as you can't prove the aren't being fired at larger Covenant craft and claim that even the larger craft could dodge them anyway, keep back peddling on the issue of just how you think they're fusion rockets and what 'very slow' acceleration means, and generally have no proof for your assertions I say go fuck yourself.

You do know that the closer you get the higher the velocity you can fire your rounds as your distance through air is shorter. Also, given that the frigates could not move any faster in the air, that places hard limits on how hard the MAC gun can fire as the only reason they would be forced to move slower is stress due to friction because we know that UNSC material science will allow the frigates hull to reach temperatures of around 50,000K with melting, even if we set that at a much lower 25,000K for a ship due to the need to radiate heat that ship could have moved a lot faster as they would have power to spare if they could actually fire a MAC round at a high fraction of c.

Even if the frigate got so close to the dreadnought that it was all but touching it before it fired, the round would still have to travel the length of the frigate (478 meters) in open air. At any appreciable fraction of c, the round is still screwed.

They could potentially create a vacuum in the railgu, and even if not, they can still get a higher velocity round the closer they get to the keyship, that they didn't just shows that they can't fire at any higher velocity and don't have the armor or power generation to move faster than a beached whale in atmosphere.

The only rate we ever see shields recharge at is in seconds the moment bullets stop, we know that ship and personal shields work on the same principles so there is no reason for that not to be the case. Burden of proof is on you to prove the shields don't work the way shields are shown to work.

Do you know that? I don't recall off hand any canonical evidence that says starship and personal shields work on the same principals. Come back when you find some. Also, what does the recharge rate have to do with the debate anyway?

Recharge rate has to do with your ridiculous idea that every Covenant ship we see taking damage must always be unshielded.

Except that Occam's Razor says that we use the simplest solution which is that the bright yellow spot is the projectile and that the UNSC simply can't accelerate such a large mass to high speeds using electromagnetic propulsion.

Who's Razor? Anyhow, it is not a simple solution. You would have to explain the wavering effect. You would also have to explain how you even see it in the first place (unless you think the UNSC paints their MAC rounds bright yellow). Most importantly, which I have repeated multiple times but you don't seem to get, why would they build them in the first place if they fire so slowly. Let me walk you through this. Say you have a set of materials. You can either build:
A. 300 orbital super MACs that fire a subsonic round
B. 838 frigates that can fire a round at least 131km/sec
Honestly, even a five year old could answer this. If that thing was really a projectile, there would be no point for a super mac to even exist, when a smaller frigate can outperform it by a factor of 382.

You don't know what Occam's Razor is...

You're too fucking ignorant to be allowed to debate on this site...

Anyway the simplest solution is that the super MAC just sucks and the military got tricked into building a worthless space defense platform. It's not like they've shown themselves to be any smarter at purchasing other vehicles such as that fuck worthless overly complex tank they insist on using.

How does a super MAC firing contradict a frigate firing in anyway?

Just answered that.

No you really didn't.

I was more speaking of them shooting him on the way in...

Uh, they were kind of distracted by the UNSC cruiser next to the chief...

Given that PD is worthless against a large ship that really doesn't hold up, unless you're claiming that the Covenant don't use PD...

The point is that Star Wars has shown that they are capable of destroying worlds so simply melting the crust is well within their energy generation capacity. Halo has never shown us anything calcable that is over a few hundred megatons at best.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mDt3XZ0Cjk
I beg to differ.

So blowing all of the fuel in one giant fireball in a last ditch effort proves that they have weapons above 100 megatons how?

Except that the single highest end event from the EU, the destruction of Alderaan is shown clearly in the movies.

But it is done by a specialized planet destroying battle station, not a standard warship. There is nothing in the movies that shows an ISD having the capability to perform a BDZ as described by the EU.

Except that novelizations aren't the EU you stupid sack of shit.

I would actually guess the novel as they often include scenes cut from the script due to time and editing constraints.

Really? So Palpatine was really beating Mace Windu to the point that he asked Anakin to help him because "He is too strong for me" as opposed to the movie where Mace Windu is owning to the point that he waves Anakin off when he enters? Or that the Palpatine Yoda battle ended with Palpatine knocking Yoda out of the air with force lightning, as opposed to both of them flying off a senate pod because neither could control the lightning anymore, which happened in the movie?

Yup.

And you're still a lying sack of shit who dodges my points.

I'm pretty sure I've addressed each one of your points (in order even) but if you think you wrote something that I skipped over, feel free to direct me to it, and I will respond with my next post.

Okay if you feel you've answered my points than show me where those so called fusion rockets or Archer missiles ever accelerated, answer how many meters per second squared 'very slow' acceleration is, and go learn who Occam was.