On UNSC MAC Guns and their firepower.

[Ghost Rider]

To end what is and what isn't canon

By Sansweet:

The database does indeed have a canon field. Anything in the films and from George Lucas (including unpublished internal notes that we might receive from him or from the film production department) is considered "G" canon. Next we have what we call continuity "C" canon which is pretty much everything else. There is secondary "S" continuity canon which we use for some older published materials and things that may or may not fit just right. But, if it is referenced in something else it becomes "C". Similarly, any "C" canon item that makes it into the films can become "G" canon. Lastly there is non-continuity "N" which we rarely use except in the case of a blatant contradiction or for things that have been cut.

G level = Films and stuff from George Lucas. The highest.
C level = Novels, Radio, and EU.

Note how he says if C level gets inserted into film it becomes G level. Sansweet has noted the TV being not as high as G level but not quite C level either. He notes, it's a bit inbetween.

[Chris OFarrell]

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.

Really? This is good to know

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 when they finish rewriting them and publishing them, then they would by definition be newest canon no? Because the 'rewrites' are almost certinally just going to be fixing some of the more blatent continunity errors thanks to HALO Reach being thrown into the mix...I very much doubt they are going to be editing little technical bits. So we can then throw the encyclopedia out...

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.

Norade has already addressed these 'arguments', I don't see the need to regurgitate it all again. Except I will add one little amusing bit, the idea that they can't fire the MAC guns at 'full power' because the atmosphere would destroy the projectiles, in Ghosts of Onyx a MAC salvo was fired right through a *wave of plasma torpedoes* which were superheated, but remained coherent and impacted the Covenant ships just fine.

Which rather puts paid to any stupid idea that the atmosphere itself would screw with firing said projectiles.

Archer missiles do not inflict massive damage.

Yes they do. They are capable of inflicting substantial hull damage of Covenant ships hulls, the same hulls that can take at least a couple of plasma torpedoes or MAC rounds normally. Granted they are generally used with other weapons to get through the shileds, but the fact that they DO cause damage is a strong suggestion that the idea of Gigaton or Terraton levels of energy are routinley thrown about, is absurd.

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.

Bullshit. They have been used to successfully heavily damage and cripple Covenant ships in multiple engagements *once the shields have been breached*. The hulls of Covenant ships are able to at least resist Gigaton and Terraton range energy levels, Archer missiles shouldn't so much as ANNOY them, let alone heavily damage them.

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.

That is a fucking stupid statement. The USNC uses nukes in highly limited numbers because of how few they have available, and yet they spam out hundreds of ANTIMATTER warheads (which the UNSC doesn't even have as far as I know) in each engagement? Can you TRY to use some logic here? Its clear that they are conventional high explosive spam missiles they are even SAID to be high explosive warheads in TFOR, and SPECIFICALLY contrasted with the single shot nuclear warheads. Saying that they may use antimatter? Try using SOME logic.

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.

And if you read what I said, you'll note it also says that a Machine gun has LESS RANGE THEN MOST PISTOLS. Checking their math is clearly not high on their agenda. And as we don't know WHAT the hell is being rewritten in the earlier books (hint, its almost certinally not going to be little facts and figures in them, its all about the Fall of Reach and the new REACH game) saying that it proves anything is just idiotic.

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.

Which will, by your logic be a HIGHER canon book once its rerelased, lets just wait and see if that scene is changed, shall we?

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.

I have. You refuse to address any of the core issues and dance around with all the grace of a two year old ballerina trying to perform swan lake.

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.

You don't get it. The fact that those weapons were clearly combat effective against a Covenant warship WITHOUT needing to throw around a million times the energy needed to destroy Hiroshima is enormously indicative of the firepower the ships throw around, that you don't need C-Fractional railguns to be a clear threat to Covenant ships and win against them.

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.

And in TFOR its EXPLICIT that the glassing done to Harvest was on what the UNSC considered the high order, completle and total planatery destruction on a scale beyond which the UNSC had ever seen before. And no, 'glassing the planet' has a very specific definition in TFOR and First Strike.

In TFOR when covenant wraiths, banshees, and grunts attacked and destroyed a marine base with their plasma weapons, they called it a glassing.

Don't be a fucking idiot, its clear that I'm talking about starships launching a planatery bombardment.

In the case of harvest and reach, they only glassed enough to kill the humans.

No, they glassed to the best of their ability and that was all they were able to acomplish. Its very importiant because some idiots like to claim 'glassing' as the primary evidence for Covenant ships being able to throw out gigatons or terratons of firepower, except we get to SEE the aftermath of no less then THREE Glassing events which characters in at least two of them confirm as The Real Fucking Deal, and they have NOT 'glassed' the surface of the planet, just bombarded lots of it and destroyed the civilisation. In HALO-3 the Covenant systemtically glass 'half of Africa' (probabley an exageration, but clearly a significant area around the crash site as the flood are eliminated) according to Hood, and they are utterly unapolegetic, in fact saying that they would have done it to the entire world if not for the Arbiters council, to eliminate the flood, and yet we see the environment is nothing LIKE 'glassed' as you would expect from turning the surface of the planet into a molten state.

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.

Bullshit. I'll even point out that Reach was bombarded EXECPT FOR A TINY BIT, and no-one who looked at the sensor readouts saw ANYTHING different about the aftermath in comparision to other Covenant glassing attacks, EXCEPT for the small bit they left alone, and yet the biosphere was still intact. Glassing is hopelessly exagerated. The Master Cheif even upon SEEING Reach when he returned in First Strike clearly doesn't see anything out of the ordinary until he spots the tiny bit left unglassed.

Harvest was said to be compeltly glassed in TFOR. It was Glassed in HALO Wars, its just that Bungie with their 'newer material' have simply retconned the power of Glassing substantially downwards in HALO Wars, HALO 3 and almost certinally going to be in HALO Reach as well.

You never even hear of a STAR DESTROYER completely vaporizing oceans.

...and who the fuck cares about Star Wars in this thread? Please note the title that says 'On UNSC MAC Guns and their firepower. Nice Red Herring though...

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.

Ah, you're 'sure' its of the lowest canon possible, AKA, you don't like it and so you declare that it must be low?

You may now prove this, given that Bungies offical canon policy is that EVERYTHING licenced is canon with the Games on top, offically authorised secondery materials (which would include the Legends anthology) next and then various misc sources like teaser trailers and the like last. Especially as Bungie were HEAVILY involved in Legends at every level. Hell, given that Frank O'Connor WROTE just about all of it, its hard to see how it could GET any more canon...

So if you can find a source, I'm all for it...otherwise, enjoy your newest canon (Legends) overriding everything else like you say it should...

[Terralthra]

There is also the issue that nukes don't explode in space so the Covenant ship must be super vulnerable to radiation and EMP.

Nukes don't explode in space? What? Perhaps you're confused. EMP from a nuclear event is what does not occur in space (the effects that result in the various parts of an EMP are interactions between gamma rays and atmospheric ions and the planetary magnetic field). A nuke certainly still explodes. I don't know where you learned otherwise.

[Jake]

Norade:

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.

1. It really doesn't matter so fine, I'll concede that they are either autocannons or railguns.
2. You're right, you can't see said acceleration so I guess its simplest to assume that they are railguns or autocannons.
3. From wikipedia:

Jump to: navigation, search

Occam's razor (or Ockham's razor[1]) is the principle that "entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity" (entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem). The popular interpretation of this principle is that the simplest explanation is usually the correct one. However, this is often confused, as the 'simple' "is really referring to the theory with the fewest new assumptions." [2]

The principle is attributed to the 14th-century English logician, theologian and Franciscan friar William of Ockham. Occam's razor may be alternatively phrased as pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate ("plurality should not be posited without necessity").[3] The principle is often expressed in Latin as the lex parsimoniae (translating to the law of parsimony, law of economy or law of succinctness). When competing hypotheses are equal in other respects, the principle recommends selection of the hypothesis that introduces the fewest assumptions and postulates the fewest entities while still sufficiently answering the question. It is in this sense that Occam's razor is usually understood. To quote Isaac Newton, "We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances. Therefore, to the same natural effects we must, so far as possible, assign the same causes."[4]

In science, Occam’s razor is used as a heuristic (rule of thumb) to guide scientists in the development of theoretical models rather than as an arbiter between published models.[5][6] In the scientific method, Occam's razor is not considered an irrefutable principle of logic, and certainly not a scientific result.[7][8][9][10]

In 2005 Marcus Hutter mathematically proved[11] that shorter computable theories have more weight when calculating the expected value of an action across all computable theories which perfectly describe previous observations.

There you go, I've answered everything you wanted. On to the real debate...

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.

I most certainly can prove this. Look here starting at 5:50: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OeYtWaFYv6M. Note that the capital ships hold just outside the 'kill zone'. The fleet moves to engage said covenant ships but Lord Hood orders them to stay near and defend the orbital platforms. They then state that 'Boarding Craft and lots of 'em' are moving toward the stations. There's your proof. The capital ships are staying out of range while the boarding craft are attacking. The UNSC ships were firing the autocannons/rail guns on the boarding craft, so they can not be used as a lower limit for covenant capital ship tolerance.

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.

I'm pretty sure you can't create a vacuum in something that's not completely sealed. And even if they can in Halo, why would they? The only time it would help is in this situation, where your circumstances would be so dire that you not only have to fire your MAC designed for space in atmosphere, but you would also have to bring your ship so close to the enemy ship that the MAC barrel is essentially touching it before firing. The odds if an engineer foreseeing something like that are extremely low, and even if he did it still probably wouldn't be incorporated because it would be seen as an unnecessary expense. As for your other assertion, it depends on the heat conductivity. If it is very conductive to heat (which most metals are) then it will melt rapidly when it hits its melting point whether it is fired from far away or not. Moving closer will have an effect, but a minimal one. If it is highly conductive, a 478 meter distance (absolute point blank) should still be enough to irreparably damage the projectile. In fact, you might as well fire from far away because you might get another chance to fire (they didn't know when the thing was going off after all). Also, I think I discerned their strategy. We know the emp released by Shiva warheads damages covenant shields (kind of like a Star Wars ion cannon effect), so maybe those fighters were all firing Shivas, hoping that forerunner shields would have the same vulnerability as covenant ones (they obviously don't, but the UNSC didn't know that). They probably hoped that the emp released by the nukes would drop the shields and maybe even damage the hull (there were a shit ton of fighters) and that the MACs would either finish it off or at least stop it from activating the portal. This is another reason the frigates would have hung back, to allow the fighters to fire off there nukes.

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

Oh, so you think that the flood pod victim's shields would have recharged, even though they may have lost them. Am I correct?

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

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

Not really, I mean it is pretty obscure.

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.

GOT TRICKED!!?? Oh yeah, because in the middle of a losing war for the very survival of the human race someone is going to trick the military to put up orbital platforms that are so pathetic that a frigate puts them to shame over the F*CKING HUMAN HOME WORLD. That's why I don't like this Razor shit. It makes simpletons believe that an idea makes sense just because it sounds simple.

No you really didn't.

Yes, I did. You just don't seem to get something a five year old would aka build lots of small guns that shoot really fast as opposed to a few big guns that shoot really slow.

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...

Not when you're significantly more technologically advanced than your enemy it isn't. Covenant pulse lasers (their point defense) can melt through a section of a UNSC frigate's armor plating in one salvo.

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

Overloading that reactor took out a ring structure whose diameter was almost as large as the earth's. Not only did it do this, but it also overcame the ring's gravitational energy (the pieces were actually blown apart, they did not simply implode on each other. That reactor overload almost reminds me of another super weapon that's pretty well known.... Anyway, that's far more energy than is needed to fire a teraton level MAC much less 100 megatons.

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

Look at ghost rider's quote. I believe that the novelizations fulfill the 'everything else' roll, unless you're telling me they were written by George Lucas or the film production department.

Yup.

Ok, well I guess some random author is the primary source of Star Wars, not George Lucas and the movies are wrong.

[Jake]

Chris:

And when they finish rewriting them and publishing them, then they would by definition be newest canon no? Because the 'rewrites' are almost certinally just going to be fixing some of the more blatent continunity errors thanks to HALO Reach being thrown into the mix...I very much doubt they are going to be editing little technical bits. So we can then throw the encyclopedia out...

Yes, according to Halo's canon policy, when the re-write comes out, it will be the highest source. If there is a contradiction between it and the encyclopedia, it will win out unless the canon policy is changed. This hasn't happened yet however so for now the encyclopedia is the highest source.

Norade has already addressed these 'arguments', I don't see the need to regurgitate it all again. Except I will add one little amusing bit, the idea that they can't fire the MAC guns at 'full power' because the atmosphere would destroy the projectiles, in Ghosts of Onyx a MAC salvo was fired right through a *wave of plasma torpedoes* which were superheated, but remained coherent and impacted the Covenant ships just fine.

Which rather puts paid to any stupid idea that the atmosphere itself would screw with firing said projectiles.

1. Fine. It will be easier for me to debate that point with only one other person anyway.
2. Are you referring to this?:

The prows of the UNSC ships flared as their magnetic accelerator cannons fired. Lines of flame and superheated slugs crossed the space between the two forces. (GoO 294)

If so, there is nothing that says they went through each other. Each weapon simply crossed the space between the opposing fleets.

Yes they do. They are capable of inflicting substantial hull damage of Covenant ships hulls, the same hulls that can take at least a couple of plasma torpedoes or MAC rounds normally. Granted they are generally used with other weapons to get through the shileds, but the fact that they DO cause damage is a strong suggestion that the idea of Gigaton or Terraton levels of energy are routinley thrown about, is absurd.

I want quotes that they cause significant damage (not just putting small holes in the hull).

Bullshit. They have been used to successfully heavily damage and cripple Covenant ships in multiple engagements *once the shields have been breached*. The hulls of Covenant ships are able to at least resist Gigaton and Terraton range energy levels, Archer missiles shouldn't so much as ANNOY them, let alone heavily damage them.

Quotes.

That is a fucking stupid statement. The USNC uses nukes in highly limited numbers because of how few they have available, and yet they spam out hundreds of ANTIMATTER warheads (which the UNSC doesn't even have as far as I know) in each engagement? Can you TRY to use some logic here? Its clear that they are conventional high explosive spam missiles they are even SAID to be high explosive warheads in TFOR, and SPECIFICALLY contrasted with the single shot nuclear warheads. Saying that they may use antimatter? Try using SOME logic.

Please give me the page where it describes the missiles so I can analyze it myself.

And if you read what I said, you'll note it also says that a Machine gun has LESS RANGE THEN MOST PISTOLS. Checking their math is clearly not high on their agenda. And as we don't know WHAT the hell is being rewritten in the earlier books (hint, its almost certinally not going to be little facts and figures in them, its all about the Fall of Reach and the new REACH game) saying that it proves anything is just idiotic.

Are you talking about the SMG? From here: http://www.military-today.com/firearms/hk_mp5.htm, an MP5 has a 25-100m range, so 30m isn't out of the question. It may simply be designed as a close range weapon, which in the game it is. And as I said, until the books are rewritten, any contradiction means the encyclopedia has the final say.

Which will, by your logic be a HIGHER canon book once its rerelased, lets just wait and see if that scene is changed, shall we?

OK

I have. You refuse to address any of the core issues and dance around with all the grace of a two year old ballerina trying to perform swan lake.

No, I have addressed all of your issues, most of which deal with a canon policy you don't understand. When you give me the quotes I asked for I will look at the remainder of your issues.

You don't get it. The fact that those weapons were clearly combat effective against a Covenant warship WITHOUT needing to throw around a million times the energy needed to destroy Hiroshima is enormously indicative of the firepower the ships throw around, that you don't need C-Fractional railguns to be a clear threat to Covenant ships and win against them.

They were not effective. We don't even see the covenant ship get damaged in that scene. All of the explosions are coming from the UNSC ship.

And in TFOR its EXPLICIT that the glassing done to Harvest was on what the UNSC considered the high order, completle and total planatery destruction on a scale beyond which the UNSC had ever seen before. And no, 'glassing the planet' has a very specific definition in TFOR and First Strike.

No, it doesn't. Read pages 8 and 9. A covenant glassing operation vaporizes all bodies of water on the planet and will remove the planet's atmosphere within a day. Harvest was beyond a scale which the UNSC has ever seen because it was the FIRST planet glassed. The glassing of Jerico VII occurred long after Harvest and was a much more extensive glassing (pages 8 and 9 TFoR)

Don't be a fucking idiot, its clear that I'm talking about starships launching a planatery bombardment.

And you don't understand my point, which was glassing can refer to a variety of things, from the total vaporization of all water on a planet and the melting of its crust to some banshees and wraiths making attack runs on a marine base. Glassing is a all encompassing term, there is no one specific definition. Don't call me an idiot when you clearly have no idea what you are talking about.

No, they glassed to the best of their ability and that was all they were able to acomplish. Its very importiant because some idiots like to claim 'glassing' as the primary evidence for Covenant ships being able to throw out gigatons or terratons of firepower, except we get to SEE the aftermath of no less then THREE Glassing events which characters in at least two of them confirm as The Real Fucking Deal, and they have NOT 'glassed' the surface of the planet, just bombarded lots of it and destroyed the civilisation.

And we also see glassing events that confirm the teraton level fire power. GLASSING IS AN ALL ENCOMPASSING TERM THAT DEALS WITH ANY TYPE OF PLASMA BOMBARDMENT.

In HALO-3 the Covenant systemtically glass 'half of Africa' (probabley an exageration, but clearly a significant area around the crash site as the flood are eliminated) according to Hood, and they are utterly unapolegetic, in fact saying that they would have done it to the entire world if not for the Arbiters council, to eliminate the flood, and yet we see the environment is nothing LIKE 'glassed' as you would expect from turning the surface of the planet into a molten state.
Yeah, you don't have to melt the crust of Africa to kill a small flood outbreak so why would they? They only did what was necessary, this does not mean that they couldn't do more.

Bullshit. I'll even point out that Reach was bombarded EXECPT FOR A TINY BIT, and no-one who looked at the sensor readouts saw ANYTHING different about the aftermath in comparision to other Covenant glassing attacks, EXCEPT for the small bit they left alone, and yet the biosphere was still intact. Glassing is hopelessly exagerated. The Master Cheif even upon SEEING Reach when he returned in First Strike clearly doesn't see anything out of the ordinary until he spots the tiny bit left unglassed.

Normal for one type of glassing. The covenant needed to land on Reach. They were obviously not going to make the planet uninhabitable.

Harvest was said to be compeltly glassed in TFOR. It was Glassed in HALO Wars, its just that Bungie with their 'newer material' have simply retconned the power of Glassing substantially downwards in HALO Wars, HALO 3 and almost certinally going to be in HALO Reach as well.

A CERTAIN TYPE OF GLASSING.

Ah, you're 'sure' its of the lowest canon possible, AKA, you don't like it and so you declare that it must be low?

You may now prove this, given that Bungies offical canon policy is that EVERYTHING licenced is canon with the Games on top, offically authorised secondery materials (which would include the Legends anthology) next and then various misc sources like teaser trailers and the like last. Especially as Bungie were HEAVILY involved in Legends at every level. Hell, given that Frank O'Connor WROTE just about all of it, its hard to see how it could GET any more canon...

So if you can find a source, I'm all for it...otherwise, enjoy your newest canon (Legends) overriding everything else like you say it should...

Frankie: The name Legends directly applies to the stories and the characters in them - there's this idea that each of the moments is a Legend among those who know of the tale - ODSTs, for example, or Elites remembering a brave act. It also riffs off of a word we all associate with Halo.

The writer specifically says that these are stories. As such, they are prone to be exaggerated, just like the 'Spartans never die thing'. Because of this, we can't really take the space motorcycle can drop a capital ship's shield thing literally. I mean, really? Why would you even use cap ships at all. Just send in a few carriers and spam the motor cycles of death. If 3 of these things can take out a covenant flag ships shields then a fleet of thousands of them would pretty much win humanity the war.

[Norade]

There you go, I've answered everything you wanted. On to the real debate...

Fuck off you show boating prick, don't act all high and might because you finally conceded a simple point.

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.

I most certainly can prove this. Look here starting at 5:50: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OeYtWaFYv6M. Note that the capital ships hold just outside the 'kill zone'. The fleet moves to engage said covenant ships but Lord Hood orders them to stay near and defend the orbital platforms. They then state that 'Boarding Craft and lots of 'em' are moving toward the stations. There's your proof. The capital ships are staying out of range while the boarding craft are attacking. The UNSC ships were firing the autocannons/rail guns on the boarding craft, so they can not be used as a lower limit for covenant capital ship tolerance.

I guess they must have been outside of the 10,000km MAC gun range, or were they just sitting outside of the 30m machine gun range?

Here's a hint if a MAC gun could actually fire at 0.4c then an objects accelerating as slowly as the Covenant ships have been seen to would have to be very, very, far out to be outside of maximum range. In order for a 1km craft to dodge it would need to change speed at around 1,200 G's. We never see any ship do this in the games. The Halo encyclopedia listing a maximum range of 10,000km is one strike against its numbers or proof that Halo simply can't target for shit and thus it doesn't matter how powerful their weapons are.

Also visuals and math > dialogue so it looks like Hood doesn't know his shit.

They could potentially create a vacuum in the railgun, 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.

I'm pretty sure you can't create a vacuum in something that's not completely sealed. And even if they can in Halo, why would they? The only time it would help is in this situation, where your circumstances would be so dire that you not only have to fire your MAC designed for space in atmosphere, but you would also have to bring your ship so close to the enemy ship that the MAC barrel is essentially touching it before firing. The odds if an engineer foreseeing something like that are extremely low, and even if he did it still probably wouldn't be incorporated because it would be seen as an unnecessary expense. As for your other assertion, it depends on the heat conductivity. If it is very conductive to heat (which most metals are) then it will melt rapidly when it hits its melting point whether it is fired from far away or not. Moving closer will have an effect, but a minimal one. If it is highly conductive, a 478 meter distance (absolute point blank) should still be enough to irreparably damage the projectile. In fact, you might as well fire from far away because you might get another chance to fire (they didn't know when the thing was going off after all). Also, I think I discerned their strategy. We know the emp released by Shiva warheads damages covenant shields (kind of like a Star Wars ion cannon effect), so maybe those fighters were all firing Shivas, hoping that forerunner shields would have the same vulnerability as covenant ones (they obviously don't, but the UNSC didn't know that). They probably hoped that the emp released by the nukes would drop the shields and maybe even damage the hull (there were a shit ton of fighters) and that the MACs would either finish it off or at least stop it from activating the portal. This is another reason the frigates would have hung back, to allow the fighters to fire off there nukes.

478m is a pretty large change from 71,000m+ that gives you a lot of room to accelerate the round to higher speeds. AS for the rest, please prove your assumption is correct or kindly fuck off. As usual you're trotting out a pet theory as if it were fact.

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

Oh, so you think that the flood pod victim's shields would have recharged, even though they may have lost them. Am I correct?

Bingo, your single brain cell must have finally fired there.

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

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

Not really, I mean it is pretty obscure.

Not really, I'd argue that most of this boards population knew what it was before coming here. It's not that obscure a term and easy enough to look up as opposed to looking like a retard by asking who Occam is.

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.

GOT TRICKED!!?? Oh yeah, because in the middle of a losing war for the very survival of the human race someone is going to trick the military to put up orbital platforms that are so pathetic that a frigate puts them to shame over the F*CKING HUMAN HOME WORLD. That's why I don't like this Razor shit. It makes simpletons believe that an idea makes sense just because it sounds simple.

So you're going to try and tell me that the UNSC isn't a bunch of retards now when we clearly see that their military equipment is built in an ass retarded fashion. The Warthog is their only light transport, and the Scorpion is their main tank... A competent military would have laughed both of those vehicles off the drawing board and gone for a tank that didn't spend extra weight on having four drive units. They might have also gone for a real military transport over the worthless ass Warthog. Then we have the retarded open cockpit dual rotor helicopters, and people running around on ATV's in the middle of a combat zone.

I think it's pretty reasonable to say that the human forces got tricked into using a lot of fuck worthless designs and Super MAC's could easily be one of them.

No you really didn't.

Yes, I did. You just don't seem to get something a five year old would aka build lots of small guns that shoot really fast as opposed to a few big guns that shoot really slow.

Care to explain the rest of the worthless vehicles and weapons the UNSC uses then? The super MAC's are only one of many major fuck ups.

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...

Not when you're significantly more technologically advanced than your enemy it isn't. Covenant pulse lasers (their point defense) can melt through a section of a UNSC frigate's armor plating in one salvo.

Then the Frigate that MC jumped from should have been fucked, before he jumped not to mention the they should have spared a PD weapon to shoot down an incoming threat if they really had that much firepower to spare.

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

Overloading that reactor took out a ring structure whose diameter was almost as large as the earth's. Not only did it do this, but it also overcame the ring's gravitational energy (the pieces were actually blown apart, they did not simply implode on each other. That reactor overload almost reminds me of another super weapon that's pretty well known.... Anyway, that's far more energy than is needed to fire a teraton level MAC much less 100 megatons.

You're failing to understand that a reactor which produces energy at a rate of say 6.276e+16W (15 megatons per second) would - assuming it had enough fuel left to power it at that rate for 2.5 years and only 20% of that actually exploded - explode with a force of 236 teratons. That same ship in combat could only fire off a 1 gigaton MAC cannon shot every 67 seconds without any capacitors and only if the rest of the ship were left without power. You're also failing to understand that a Halo ring isn't an inert object and needs to have extensive power sources and fuel reserves in order to fire its weapon and that surely contributed to the explosion we saw.

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

Look at ghost rider's quote. I believe that the novelizations fulfill the 'everything else' roll, unless you're telling me they were written by George Lucas or the film production department.

Look at the direct quote from Lucas that I provided which says the the movies, novelizations, screen plays, and radio dramas are all on the same level of cannon with all else below them. Or are you going to argue that Lucas' word isn't law when it comes to his IP.

Yup.

Ok, well I guess some random author is the primary source of Star Wars, not George Lucas and the movies are wrong.

I guess you're ignoring that GL didn't actually write the movies in their entirety as well as ignoring his quote on the matter.

[lordofchange13]

The Halo Encyclopedia shouldn't be counted as undeniable canon. in the covenant fleet section it calls the ship: Truth and Reconciliation a assualt carrier (the big silver ones incase you don't know) when it is oviesly shown as CCS-class Battlecruiser, when you board it in the halo: combat evolved level where you have to save captian keys.

[Ritterin Sophia]

And if you read what I said, you'll note it also says that a Machine gun has LESS RANGE THEN MOST PISTOLS. Checking their math is clearly not high on their agenda. And as we don't know WHAT the hell is being rewritten in the earlier books (hint, its almost certinally not going to be little facts and figures in them, its all about the Fall of Reach and the new REACH game) saying that it proves anything is just idiotic.

To add to this the weapon Chris is talking about is a .308 caliber LMG, given the UNSC also uses the 7.62x51mm it's safe to assume it is also the .308 Winchester. Most machineguns of the 7.62mm caliber are good out to ~800-1200m. And as Chris said most handguns beat the 30m range, both the FN Five-seveN and Beretta 92 (M9) are good to 50m and the M1911 is good to 100m.

[Ritterin Sophia]

Are you talking about the SMG? From here: http://www.military-today.com/firearms/hk_mp5.htm, an MP5 has a 25-100m range, so 30m isn't out of the question. It may simply be designed as a close range weapon, which in the game it is. And as I said, until the books are rewritten, any contradiction means the encyclopedia has the final say.

No he's talking about the .308 Machinegun. And the 25m range is for the extremely short MP5K (the 'K' standing for 'Kurz' or 'Short' in German), which is not an SMG proper but a PDW. A weapon in the pistol caliber that is a step up from a handgun as a defensive weapon by virtue of being automatic.

Feel free to notice the very big differences.

[Connor MacLeod]

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

A canon policy you have not actually provided I should add, so all we have on this is your word and interpretation. Maybe you can actually provide it rather than expecting us to take you at face value? Burden of proof is a rather high standard here.

1. That's a civilian device, and similar does not mean the same.

Uh, Mack (the AI from Contact Harvest) explicitly said that the MAss Driver on Harvest was the same as the Navy's MACs, just "a little less kick".

The wright brothers plane is similar to an F22 in the fact that they are both aircraft.

False analogy. What evidence do you have that the two are massively different in technology? That's certainly not what is indicated in Contact Harvest. Moreover, "more advanced" does not automatically mean "more destructive yield."

2. I'm pretty sure the encyclopedia came out after Contact Harvest, so the encyclopedia is still the highest canon source.

Not unless you come up with a quote on the canon policy. I'm calling bullshit.

Besides which, even if thats what the canon policy states, it has no fuckign consistency whatsoever to it. That makes Halo IMPOSSIBLE to properly or consistently analyze, as what is "true" will change constantly with every new source coming out. Halo can be massively super powerful one moment and then become massively weaker the next. You therefore have no right to outright dismiss "sub gigaton" or even sub megaton MACs as they can have just as equal standing as your precious TT-level calcs.

So basically this debate is yet again meaningless, even aside from your refusal to acknowlege anything but what you perceive "canon" to be.

More to the point, your attempted analogies to STar Wars, Mike or anything else are red herrings because the supposed canon policy of Halo si dramatically different from Star Wars. You can't even remotely begin to compare the two or use it to support yourself.

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.

no it doesnt support your point since all you seem to be interetsed in accepting is your precious Teraton MACs, and thus means oyu'll only accept the Encyclopedia as authoritarian. I can't wait to see what happens once the new material comes out and how that tune will change.

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

No, since the two weapons aren't even remotely the same.

I think its the emp that makes nukes so effective on covenant shields, not the blast itself.

Disregarding for a moment that EMP is an atmospheric phenomenon (since Halo nukes can magically simulate blast anyhow) EMP is radiation, and thus behaves like radiation. Its not magic particles like you seem to think it is, so what you are basically saying is that Covenant shields totally usless against certain forms of EM radiation (besides visible light that is.) And frankly, given that shields have detonated INSIDE covvie shields, that is unlikely.

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.

Fine you make the calcs.

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.

No it doesn't. Provide the calcs.

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

since you're so mindlessly obsessed on your precious Teraton MACs, no we're not on the same wavelength. Stop trying to coopt my argument to bolster your fantasies.

[Chris OFarrell]

Chris:

And when they finish rewriting them and publishing them, then they would by definition be newest canon no? Because the 'rewrites' are almost certinally just going to be fixing some of the more blatent continunity errors thanks to HALO Reach being thrown into the mix...I very much doubt they are going to be editing little technical bits. So we can then throw the encyclopedia out...

Yes, according to Halo's canon policy, when the re-write comes out, it will be the highest source. If there is a contradiction between it and the encyclopedia, it will win out unless the canon policy is changed. This hasn't happened yet however so for now the encyclopedia is the highest source.

Actually, it just came out a week or so ago.
And they changed almost nothing as it so happens according to a friend who has read it, certianlly none of the little technical bits. But I'll get my hands on it shortly.

Still, the absurdity of this position is nuts, that instead of reconciling sources, we're going to just throw out everything that comes before no matter HOW overwhelming the evidence, just because a source is newer?
I would seriously like you to post the specifics of Bungies canon policy here. Hell, I think I'm going to email the good people at Bungie to ask these questions and get a clarification on all of this, because its just too absurd, especially when a new source can be so horribly wrong, aka 30 Meter Machine Guns...

Norade has already addressed these 'arguments', I don't see the need to regurgitate it all again. Except I will add one little amusing bit, the idea that they can't fire the MAC guns at 'full power' because the atmosphere would destroy the projectiles, in Ghosts of Onyx a MAC salvo was fired right through a *wave of plasma torpedoes* which were superheated, but remained coherent and impacted the Covenant ships just fine.

Which rather puts paid to any stupid idea that the atmosphere itself would screw with firing said projectiles.

1. Fine. It will be easier for me to debate that point with only one other person anyway.
2. Are you referring to this?:

The prows of the UNSC ships flared as their magnetic accelerator cannons fired. Lines of flame and superheated slugs crossed the space between the two forces. (GoO 294)

If so, there is nothing that says they went through each other. Each weapon simply crossed the space between the opposing fleets.

No. I'm talking about this;

"Four MAC slugs rocketed through the energy projector cones, fireballs of liquedfied metal. Three missed. One hit, spattering uselessly on Covenant shields". (GOO, PP 333).

This was a panicked point blank volley with no real time to set up the shots so its not surprising that most of them missed, but the MAC slugs remained coherent, albeit melted, even through a salvo of *energy projector* fire to impact the enemy, which makes the idea of them having a problem with Earths atmosphere at sea level rather improbable.

Yes they do. They are capable of inflicting substantial hull damage of Covenant ships hulls, the same hulls that can take at least a couple of plasma torpedoes or MAC rounds normally. Granted they are generally used with other weapons to get through the shileds, but the fact that they DO cause damage is a strong suggestion that the idea of Gigaton or Terraton levels of energy are routinley thrown about, is absurd.

I want quotes that they cause significant damage (not just putting small holes in the hull).

Putting holes in a hull that is supposed to take Gigaton/Terraton level firepower is in of ITSELF a huge damn thing you know, if the hull can be breached by high explosive missile impacts (and the fact that Archers are still a perfectly viable weapon after 20 years of war kinda proves that they CAN do lethal damage) then it kinda puts paid to that.

If you want me to post all the examples of Archer missiles being fired and doing damage to Covenant ships, I'll do so, but if you're actually going to argue that they are not potent enough weapons...

Bullshit. They have been used to successfully heavily damage and cripple Covenant ships in multiple engagements *once the shields have been breached*. The hulls of Covenant ships are able to at least resist Gigaton and Terraton range energy levels, Archer missiles shouldn't so much as ANNOY them, let alone heavily damage them.

Quotes.

That is a fucking stupid statement. The USNC uses nukes in highly limited numbers because of how few they have available, and yet they spam out hundreds of ANTIMATTER warheads (which the UNSC doesn't even have as far as I know) in each engagement? Can you TRY to use some logic here? Its clear that they are conventional high explosive spam missiles they are even SAID to be high explosive warheads in TFOR, and SPECIFICALLY contrasted with the single shot nuclear warheads. Saying that they may use antimatter? Try using SOME logic.

Please give me the page where it describes the missiles so I can analyze it myself.

"The Commonwealth had twenty-six pods, each loaded with thirty Archer high-explosive missiles". TFOR, PP 106

"Archer missiles and magnetic accelerator cannons fired in a desperate coutnerstrike. The missiles detonated a fraction of a second along their flight parths, high explosives heated to the flashpoint". GOO, PP333

And if you read what I said, you'll note it also says that a Machine gun has LESS RANGE THEN MOST PISTOLS. Checking their math is clearly not high on their agenda. And as we don't know WHAT the hell is being rewritten in the earlier books (hint, its almost certinally not going to be little facts and figures in them, its all about the Fall of Reach and the new REACH game) saying that it proves anything is just idiotic.

Are you talking about the SMG? From here: http://www.military-today.com/firearms/hk_mp5.htm, an MP5 has a 25-100m range, so 30m isn't out of the question. It may simply be designed as a close range weapon, which in the game it is. And as I said, until the books are rewritten, any contradiction means the encyclopedia has the final say.

No, I (and it) are talking about a Machine gun. Not a Submachine gun, I am perfectly aware of the difference between the two.

Which will, by your logic be a HIGHER canon book once its rerelased, lets just wait and see if that scene is changed, shall we?

OK

I have. You refuse to address any of the core issues and dance around with all the grace of a two year old ballerina trying to perform swan lake.

No, I have addressed all of your issues, most of which deal with a canon policy you don't understand. When you give me the quotes I asked for I will look at the remainder of your issues.

[/quote]

A canon policy you have not actually provided any evidence of, I would add. But irrespective of that, if you want me to post every quote about Archer missiles doing damage to Covenant ships, where as by YOUR logic they should be about as useful as spitballs if the ships are throwing around Gigaton and Terraton level firepower at each other...

You don't get it. The fact that those weapons were clearly combat effective against a Covenant warship WITHOUT needing to throw around a million times the energy needed to destroy Hiroshima is enormously indicative of the firepower the ships throw around, that you don't need C-Fractional railguns to be a clear threat to Covenant ships and win against them.

They were not effective. We don't even see the covenant ship get damaged in that scene. All of the explosions are coming from the UNSC ship.

*smacks head*

Oh right, so the Captian ordered the SOF to open fire with weapons that would do nothing to the enemy ship, and Covenant would fire torpedoes back to knock them out because they are clearly such a huge threat? The Covenant Destroyer was clearly either disabled or destroyed by said guns -which continued to engage the Covenant Destroyer all through the rest of the level you do realize- else the Covenant ship would have torn the SOF to pieces rather quickly. It was broadside to the enemy so its MAC guns were out of play (if it even had the power as the entire level is about repairing the main reactor which is offline) and clearly no nukes were used, so...

And in TFOR its EXPLICIT that the glassing done to Harvest was on what the UNSC considered the high order, completle and total planatery destruction on a scale beyond which the UNSC had ever seen before. And no, 'glassing the planet' has a very specific definition in TFOR and First Strike.

No, it doesn't. Read pages 8 and 9. A covenant glassing operation vaporizes all bodies of water on the planet and will remove the planet's atmosphere within a day.

Or, the Cheif is wrong. Hell, he even says that he had never seen the actual event before, its far from improbable that he simply overestimates the damage.

Harvest was beyond a scale which the UNSC has ever seen because it was the FIRST planet glassed.

And its made VERY clear that as far as the UNSC was concerned, the entire planet was glassed. As would later be shown, it was NOT entirely glassed, but they NEVER have stopped and said 'oh gee, we were orders of magnitude off at THAT wern't we?' Not ONCE in Halo-Wars or any other source did ANY character say that the damage to Harvest was inconsistent with what they had expected! Hence, its simply more logical to say that the process of glassing is good enough to destroy a planets surface, but the cheifs statements in TFOR can be taken with a huge grain of salt as exageration from someone who is far from an expert on Covenant naval power, especially when we take his lack of reaction to Reach being ANY DIFFERENT form any other world the Covenant glassed, both at the end of TFOR and middle of FIrst Strike.

The glassing of Jerico VII occurred long after Harvest and was a much more extensive glassing (pages 8 and 9 TFoR)

Except we don't SEE the glassing, all we have is the Master Cheifs thoughts about what would happen, WHICH ARE INCONSISTENT WITH EVERY OTHER SOURCE ABOUT GLASSING, including Halo-3 and Halo-2 for that matter.

So on one hand we have a hypethetical claim about what would happen to the planet, and on the other we have examples at Harvest, Reach and Earth about glassing and the actual effects therein, with no claims about any differences in expectation vs reality in Harvest, and EXPLCIITE quotes in First Strike in the report to HIGHCOM that with the expection of the area the Covenant were not touching, the rest of the planet was being glassed preceisly to the same SOP as any other planet.

Don't be a fucking idiot, its clear that I'm talking about starships launching a planatery bombardment.

And you don't understand my point, which was glassing can refer to a variety of things, from the total vaporization of all water on a planet and the melting of its crust to some banshees and wraiths making attack runs on a marine base.

No its clearly DOESN'T when I AM BEING PRECEISE about the context I am talking about. Talking about 'glassing' in straffing runs by banshees and Wraiths is just a giant Red Herring that has nothing to do with the subject at hand.

Glassing is a all encompassing term, there is no one specific definition. Don't call me an idiot when you clearly have no idea what you are talking about.

Yes, because bringing up a small ground engagement and saying that this proves that there must be different levels of glassing in orbital bombardments is SO proving you have the first clue...oh wait...

No, they glassed to the best of their ability and that was all they were able to acomplish. Its very importiant because some idiots like to claim 'glassing' as the primary evidence for Covenant ships being able to throw out gigatons or terratons of firepower, except we get to SEE the aftermath of no less then THREE Glassing events which characters in at least two of them confirm as The Real Fucking Deal, and they have NOT 'glassed' the surface of the planet, just bombarded lots of it and destroyed the civilisation.

And we also see glassing events that confirm the teraton level fire power. GLASSING IS AN ALL ENCOMPASSING TERM THAT DEALS WITH ANY TYPE OF PLASMA BOMBARDMENT.

No, We don't see any events that confirm teraton level firepower. ALL we have is the Chiefs unsupported claims about what is going to happen from 20 million kilomters away, at the range of which he can only see stars. And on the other hand, we have several examples of 'glassing' including the highest game sources, which are very consistent in showing far less.

Guess which one gets thrown out?

In HALO-3 the Covenant systemtically glass 'half of Africa' (probabley an exageration, but clearly a significant area around the crash site as the flood are eliminated) according to Hood, and they are utterly unapolegetic, in fact saying that they would have done it to the entire world if not for the Arbiters council, to eliminate the flood, and yet we see the environment is nothing LIKE 'glassed' as you would expect from turning the surface of the planet into a molten state.

Yeah, you don't have to melt the crust of Africa to kill a small flood outbreak so why would they? They only did what was necessary, this does not mean that they couldn't do more.

[/quote]

The POINT is that we later see the area around the Arc, both in the hours after and days later and in both cases, we aint seeing any fucking lakes of molten rock that we SHOULD be seeing, and no, the Elites were not holding back their attacks. They constented to limit the AREA they glassed, but its bloody clear from Half Jaw that they were not taking a chance of even ONE flood spore getting away.

If they did dump even ONE gigaton of energy into the area, the whole damn area for a hundred klicks around the arc portal would have been utterly uninhabitable to humans, let alone a place to hold a nice memorial service...

Bullshit. I'll even point out that Reach was bombarded EXECPT FOR A TINY BIT, and no-one who looked at the sensor readouts saw ANYTHING different about the aftermath in comparision to other Covenant glassing attacks, EXCEPT for the small bit they left alone, and yet the biosphere was still intact. Glassing is hopelessly exagerated. The Master Cheif even upon SEEING Reach when he returned in First Strike clearly doesn't see anything out of the ordinary until he spots the tiny bit left unglassed.

Normal for one type of glassing. The covenant needed to land on Reach. They were obviously not going to make the planet uninhabitable.

Except they DID do 'the usual' to 90% of the planet, and left a small bit untouched to do their work. And if they were really burning the planet to the point of making 90% of it molten, that last 10 would have been utterly uninhabitable. It wasn't.

Harvest was said to be compeltly glassed in TFOR. It was Glassed in HALO Wars, its just that Bungie with their 'newer material' have simply retconned the power of Glassing substantially downwards in HALO Wars, HALO 3 and almost certinally going to be in HALO Reach as well.

A CERTAIN TYPE OF GLASSING.

A distinction that simply has no support in canon.

Ah, you're 'sure' its of the lowest canon possible, AKA, you don't like it and so you declare that it must be low?

You may now prove this, given that Bungies offical canon policy is that EVERYTHING licenced is canon with the Games on top, offically authorised secondery materials (which would include the Legends anthology) next and then various misc sources like teaser trailers and the like last. Especially as Bungie were HEAVILY involved in Legends at every level. Hell, given that Frank O'Connor WROTE just about all of it, its hard to see how it could GET any more canon...

So if you can find a source, I'm all for it...otherwise, enjoy your newest canon (Legends) overriding everything else like you say it should...

Frankie: The name Legends directly applies to the stories and the characters in them - there's this idea that each of the moments is a Legend among those who know of the tale - ODSTs, for example, or Elites remembering a brave act. It also riffs off of a word we all associate with Halo.

The writer specifically says that these are stories.

And....what do you think HALO is? Or the novels? These are all stories, just different mediums, your quote in no way says 'but you can ignore the visuals because they are clearly wrong'...

As such, they are prone to be exaggerated, just like the 'Spartans never die thing'.

That statement is such a complete Non sequitor I honestly don't know where to start with it...

Because of this, we can't really take the space motorcycle can drop a capital ship's shield thing literally. I mean, really? Why would you even use cap ships at all. Just send in a few carriers and spam the motor cycles of death. If 3 of these things can take out a covenant flag ships shields then a fleet of thousands of them would pretty much win humanity the war.

Because the UNSC are a bunch of morons who can't design weapons systems to save themselves if the Mongoose, 30 meter machine gun, Scorpion Tank, Warthog and Hornet are anything to go by.

[Jake]

Well, it turns out the Fall of Reach re-write is already out, and it still supports the slow MAC. I guess that means my argument is no longer valid since the newest source supports a slow MAC gun. Because of this new evidence, I will concede the point for now. If any one is still interested about the canon policy, here it is:

Hey Folks,

Bry has hit the nail on the head:

: Halo 'canon' can quite easily be viewed in a similar way as the kind of canon
: system in place with Star Wars.
: A certain hierarchy of priority.
: In other words, different levels of canon where the higher levels will
: override the lower ones whenever there is a contradiction.

Everything that Bungie has ever approved is canonical. But even then, certain things trump others. In order of canonical influence:

- The games rank first
- Published materials (books, comics, soundtrack liner notes etc.) rank second
- Marketing and PR materials third

And there's one codicil: the more recent items trump the older ones. So, for example, if some aspect of Halo 3's fiction contradicted Halo 2's, Halo 3's would be the gold standard.

Bungie doesn't like to retcon (i.e., deliberately change previously established facts), but sometimes it's necessary. Take for example the issue of the number of human worlds. The truth about the "800+" number? That was made up by a non-Bungie employee and never approved by us before the Halo: CE promotional website went live.

As for some of the other issues raised, chiefly Jenkins' age and UNSC foot-dragging on fielding the BR55? I will only say that some marines have spent a very long time in cryo-sleep and that putting an entirely new weapon into service during a war -- especially a war that spans multiple star systems -- is no small order.

That being said, I'm constantly impressed by how close attention you all pay to the details. Don't ever stop keeping us honest! And we'll do our best to keep you reliably entertained

- Joseph

The whole thing is on the website if you want to read it here:http://www.bungie.net/Forums/posts.aspx?postID=33630397.

[Norade]

Well, it turns out the Fall of Reach re-write is already out, and it still supports the slow MAC. I guess that means my argument is no longer valid since the newest source supports a slow MAC gun. Because of this new evidence, I will concede the point for now. If any one is still interested about the canon policy, here it is:

Your argument was never valid because physics dictates that any MG will have an effective range of more than 30m and that any projectile moving at 0.4c will have a range of more than 10,000km.

[Connor MacLeod]

I'm also going to point out that the "interpretation" of canon is not nearly so absurd as what Jake claimed.

Basically there are three broad criteria:

1.) The type of materials. EG much in the way movies trump published materials, the Games (which I take to mean cut scenes, but that is open to interpretation) trump the published materials.

2.) The age of material. This does NOT mean that "new material automatically trumps older", this means that age is considered one of the factors in deciding which material takes precedence. In this context, it makes perfect sense: newer material will reflect the current perspective of the overall canon enviroment, and allows for certain inconsistencies that are irreconcilable to be fixed.

3.) This one is not flat out stated but implied: "Retcons are a last resort." This is analogous to the "harmonization of existing materials before dismissal". This is, to my analytical perspective, the most important factor, since it indicates that "contradictions" are not handled in a blanket manner, but a case by case basis. More to the point, it also points out that efforts at analysis would be skewed towards keeping both sources as much as possible, and explanations would be skewed in that way (harmonization rather than contradiction.)

The basic intent Bungee puts out is thta they intend to make their universe as internally consistent as possible (whether they manage to or not I won't get into.) and they do not favour automatically tossing out older material simply with a new source (which would be the oppposite of consistency.)

This also means one cannot simply just argue "newer materials override older" and that the Encylopedia automatically trumps older. For one thing, despite being newer, the Encylopedia is merely published material, while the games are still games and thus higher canon even if they are older. So one could make an argument for the games overriding the encylopedia (which is the chief counter-argument to the MAC yields as this thread has indicated). Either way, however, fails to take account of the "retcons only if neccessary" and this will be the problem because a person will define "necccessary" in different ways.

Additionally, it must be reiterated that a newer published source (Eg the redone novels) will NOT automatically invalidate the Encylopedia (not entirely), and the answer is not neccesarily an automatic retcon. These are precisely the sorts of things I tried taking into account with Halo already when I made my initial post.

On top of that, for analysis purposes, a certain amount of science and logic has to take precedence for numbers to have any validity, which carries certain implications beyond canon (if one disliesk that they are free to ignore this restriction, but they'd better not try using science to derive calcs since that would be extremely hypocritical.) Since analysis is also complicated, the "consistency" approach is important to keep in mind, since it is quite possible (as the MAC discussion shows) that variable numbers can crop up. Higher numbers or lower numbers are not inherently any more "reliable", nor are "middle" numbers.. its all "case by case" and how it fits in with other capabilities (numbers derived from power genreation, for example, durability, etc.) and explanations are skewed towards keeping that level of consistency/connectivity.

Edit: The UNSC assault rifles firing 7.62x51mm NATO on full automatic has certain recoil limitations that have to be adhered to (you can't ignore recoil), or the 30m range on the machine gun (beliving that bullets magically disappear after 30 m is absurd, so logically the range MUST be greater despite the "canonical" 30m number)

[Chris OFarrell]

I know this thread is somewhat over, but as I half suspected it would...



Check out about the 20 second mark...

[Jake]

Check out about the 20 second mark...

What am I looking for here?

[kouchpotato]

A projectile (presumebly a MAC round) comes down from the sky and hits a Covenant ship/installation.

[Norade]

That round also wasn't moving at 0.4c. xD

[Connor MacLeod]

So we're assuming MACs have no variable settings because we want them to be low yield purposely? I guess low yields are only acceptable for certain sci fi

If you want a better example, I'd say the best counter-example was Contact Harvest itself, when a starship was in the atmosphere and got knocked down by MAC fire - it wasn't moving at an appreciable fraction of c, it didn't send the ship flying (or require that it fire engines, or anything like that) etc.

It's clearly an example that a.) MACs are variable output (since towards the end of the book they can be ramped up to thousands of km/s in order to hit something in orbit in a few seconds) b.) MACs aren't likely to be teraton as a rule (one can justify low GT shots with the CT incident by noting that the vessel was run by Brutes, rather diplidated and low quality, and postulating both that covvie defenses optimize against energy attacks vs kinetic and that they may rely on forcefield tech for structural strength like alot of high end sci fi seems to require. Also, the novels make it clear that not all Covvie ships are made equally. Elite vessels tend to be the high end, but Jackal and Brute vessels are not neccesarily so.)