Forerunners Vs. the Galactic Empire

[Jake]

It deals with thrust, sublight speed, power generation, and possibly shield strength.

If you can determine anything about the forerunners through UNSC ships in atmosphere, I'm all ears.

Oh, so they suck even worse than we thought then, that's comforting... All that shows is that the Halo universe looses badly to Star Wars in all ways, and not just most.

The UNSC and possibly the Covenant lose badly to Star Wars. This debate, however, is about the Forerunners.

Except that as shown the encyclopedia is wrong on so many counts that it might as well deal with another universe. I would need to get a copy of the book, but if I can find major contradictions with the games then we'd be forced to not use that sources numbers. As it stands the primary source show's us a pathetic power level.

If one part of the encyclopedia contradicts the game, only that part is ignored, not the whole thing. Read the cannon policy. As it stands, the primary source has not yet proved that .4c is incorrect, as it is impossible to fire at .4c in atmosphere and keep the round intact. I also just proved that ramming will also be underpowered compared to a weakly fired MAC round, so that argument is wrong to. As it stands, the scene from the Storm does not contradict the encyclopedia, the highest non-game source.

No, you claim 85% based on math that has little bearing on how an actually battle would go.

If you would like to propose a superior model, go ahead.

In either case, the hull being penetrated like that shows a weak as shit hull strength for Covenent ships and a UNSC Cruisers hull only being able to take a few thousand degrees of heat is weak as well.

Once again, we don't know the condition of the covenant hull and UNSC hulls are weak, the covenant can generally one hit kill a UNSC frigate with torpedoes, but this doesn't matter because the debate is FORERUNNERS vs. Galactic empire.

[aaaaa0]

There is no question that the Forerunners would flatten the GE. They were at the very least a Culture level civilization with all the wankery that implies.

Consider this:

The Halo 04 Installation in the first Halo game is a ring-type megastructure approximately 10,000 km in diameter. But it's function is not to provide living space. Neither is its primary function even to be a battlestation.

A Halo is a research lab equipped with a quarantine system, that with a single firing is capable of wiping out all sentient life in a sphere with a diameter of 50,000 light-years, no matter if it is on a planet, on a warship, protected by armor or shields, or even hidden deep underground.

This alone makes the Death Star looks like a wet match.

But oh, that's not wankery enough.

There are *seven* of these installations distributed throughout the galaxy in order to completely sterilize it should the need arise (and it did, but just once in the entire history of the galaxy).

But we're not done yet.

Because having seven of these galaxy purging installations just wasn't enough, the Forerunners built an eighth installation 262,144 light years from the center of the galaxy (or about 200,000 light years into deep intergalactic space), outside the range of the Halo rings.

During the Halo 3 game, this installation was reached through a hyperspace gateway installed on the planet Earth, which was able to instantly transport an entire fleet of ships over two-hundred-thousand light years.

This installation, called the "Ark", is an "Alderson Disk" type megastructure, which is 127,000 km in diameter, which (among other things) functions as a completely automated factory capable of building an entire Halo ring in 3 months. Alone. With no external supply line or staff of any kind.

All of these installations had the endurance and self-supply and repair capabilities to withstand a hundred-thousand years of neglect and abandonment and yet still be fully operational.

But we're STILL not done.

In order to protect *themselves* from the effects of their own quarantine protocol, the Forerunners built many safe refuges.

Just *one* of these was a Dyson sphere two AU in diameter (300 million km!!). In order to protect *that* from Halo's quarantine system, they placed the entire thing (including its contained G2-class star) in a hyperspace bubble, and then buried *that* in the center of an artificial planet who's mantle was entirely composed of trillions of defense drones (Onyx).

O_o

Seriously.

o_O

The GE doesn't stand a chance against a civilization capable of engineering feats like *that*.

[Dalton]

Approved necro

[Stark]

Since the 'quarrantine' was laughably poor and nobody has ever proven a Halo's effectiveness... what's so great about them? Hilariously, nobody ever considers the ark burnt all its materials to build a single Halo.

I'm eager to see if any more examples of the forerunner's massive stupidity can be revealed, however.

[IvanTih]

Since the 'quarrantine' was laughably poor and nobody has ever proven a Halo's effectiveness... what's so great about them? Hilariously, nobody ever considers the ark burnt all its materials to build a single Halo.

I'm eager to see if any more examples of the forerunner's massive stupidity can be revealed, however.

The fact that they couldn't handle the Flood.

[aaaaa0]

The problem is like most people, the Forerunners underestimated the Flood. The Flood are not just a pack of dumb space zombies. Once a Flood infestation gathers a certain amount of biomass, it becomes a hive mind. It gains reasoning and intelligence. It becomes capable of mining the knowlege of the hosts it infests. (See Gravemind).

Besides, in the end the Forerunners did handle the Flood -- they simply wiped it and every other living thing from the face of the galaxy.

They themselves hid in their refuges (the "Shield Worlds"), then reseeded the galaxy with life (it IS called the "Ark" for a reason).

Then they left. No one really knows why. Some think they ascended or sublimed or whatever it is that hyper-advanced civilizations tend to do.

[Stark]

Yeah, that's what laughably poor quarrantine means. What ELSE were they quarrantining?

[aaaaa0]

Since the 'quarrantine' was laughably poor and nobody has ever proven a Halo's effectiveness... what's so great about them?

They built a Dyson sphere 300 million km in diameter. And then they put that entire thing, including it's star, into hyperspace -- which essentially makes it invulnerable to direct attack.

And then, just to protect the gateway to this thing, they built an entire artificial planet made from trillions of defense drones!

If that's not Culture level of wankery, I don't know what is.

[Imperial528]

Not to mention that the rings were capable of killing everything BUT flood.

[Manthor]

While I'm sure the GE would have a better time dealing with the Flood than the Forerunners, it is interesting how the installations managed to contain within them a highly infectious life form for at least 100 000 years without intervention by external Forerunner agents and only overseen and maintained by the local supervisor AI in at least one known case, with another breach in quarantine in a separate ringworld being contained by Forerunner drones that were fighting to contain the infection for an indeterminate amount of time, given the presence of a Gravemind.

In mitigation, consider that the Tyrannids are presented as a force that attacks entire populations and has no logistics train to speak of,using the biomass of target worlds they attack to propagate and evolve, as well as their massive numbers. The Flood are similar in that they attack population rather than just the military. The question we should be asking is why and how the Flood infection progressed so far as to present a threat to a race such as the Forerunners with transgalactic travel and megascale engineering capabilities.

My personal view is that the Forerunners in a military engagement with the GE,at full capacity,would give them a serious fight,but not without considerable losses on the Forerunners side and a military defeat for GE.

The Flood posed such a problem as they managed to target and assimilate not only a presumable civilian base but only the military,gaining increasing knowledge in the process. The Forerunners were stupid in not preparing to deal with such a virulent and far-reaching species and not taking adequate protection in order to manage it. The stupidity of the Forerunners lies in understanding how the hell they could have allowed a minor threat at the time with a potential to progress to being a major threat loose and given it time to build up.

If the GE had to deal with the Flood, they would do it with far more efficiency and effectiveness. They are a militaristic polity with an effective military and a somewhat competent officer corps,from what we know. They would have maintained a single isolated facility in the Maw and should the Flood have escaped, would probably have armed it with sufficient measures to both self-destruct and send it spiraling into a singularity.

With GE vs the Flood the result is known - GE wins.
With GE vs the Forerunners - Considerable Forerunner losses with GE defeat

[adam_grif]

stuff

The forerunner definitely have the potential to posses a very impressive industrial capacity, but we only really know about one tiny fraction of their worlds. If the Ark and the halo rings were the only facilities of this type, with the rest of their population dicking around playing golf all day or something, then the GE is going to crush them. There might be a lot of them, general purpose ones that could construct fleets of warships in minutes, but we'd never know about it because we don't have any info about their civilization.

The whole "halo arrays make the death star look weak" argument isn't a very strong one. The DS systems are (as best we can tell) DET weapons, implying that all the energy it takes to blow apart a planet was supplied by the power plant on the station. This tells us something about the order of magnitude of energy output it must have. But for a halo ring, there's nothing quantifiable to draw inferences from. We don't know what kind of power draw it has to get that range, and there isn't a direct energy transfer going on, so we can't really compare "firepower" because they aren't comparable.

Generally speaking, we get some guestimates for the approximate "Firepower" (it's not going to be awfully accurate since all we're comparing is energy yields) of the offensive system and the shield it's firing on, then try to work out if it's likely that it will break through. The "pulse" or whatever the halo fires might not penetrate SW shields. Maybe it will, but we have no way of working that information out.

[IvanTih]

With GE vs the Forerunners - Considerable Forerunner losses with GE defeat

No,think that Empire would defeat Forerunners because of the industrial capacity,numbers,superweapons and I doubt that Halo pulse would affect ships in Hyperspace.

[Stark]

They built a Dyson sphere 300 million km in diameter. And then they put that entire thing, including it's star, into hyperspace -- which essentially makes it invulnerable to direct attack.

So? Are they going to use this to attack anyone? 'Running away' is certainly the Forerunner racial bonus.

And then, just to protect the gateway to this thing, they built an entire artificial planet made from trillions of defense drones!

You mean those TOTALLY USELESS defence drones? If the Empire made a planet out of quadrillions of battle droids, who would give a shit?

If that's not Culture level of wankery, I don't know what is.

Culture-level wankery is 'we control all electronics' and 'we have limitless energy and resources' and such.

A bit higher than 'we are totally unable to stop the flood due to stupidity'.

Manthor, it's NOT SURPRISING that constantly-maintained facilities contained the stupidly retained flood, because ANYONE WITH A BRAIN could do it. What's mindblowing is that they were able to escape AT ALL.

[Darksider]

Manthor, it's NOT SURPRISING that constantly-maintained facilities contained the stupidly retained flood, because ANYONE WITH A BRAIN could do it. What's mindblowing is that they were able to escape AT ALL.

No, what's mind blowing is that the Forerunners didn't just push a goddamn button and incinerate all the Flood in stasis on the rings after going to all the trouble of annihilating all life in the galaxy to stop them. The fact that they left the flood in storage is completely retarded.

[Stark]

Even assuming they stupidly wanted to keep some around for ... some reason ... it'd be pretty easy to create both a safe method to hold them and an inescapable facility.

Unlike the 'ooops you opened hte door they got out' thing in the game.

[Darksider]

Even assuming they stupidly wanted to keep some around for ... some reason ... it'd be pretty easy to create both a safe method to hold them and an inescapable facility.

Unlike the 'ooops you opened hte door they got out' thing in the game.

IIRC The few Forerunners that survived the Halo firing knew they would eventually die out as a race and leave all their relics behind for their "children." Why they let the Flood remain in stasis for any reason whatsoever utterly baffles me. These things nearly consumed the entire galaxy when the Forerunner were at their height. I just don't understand why they would keep specimens around after going to such lengths to destroy them.

[Stark]

What's really stupid is that they could have just left the AI on the rings set to 'burn when finished' mode. They MUST have learned everything that required a specimen in the bagillions of years they've had.

[Darksider]

What's really stupid is that they could have just left the AI on the rings set to 'burn when finished' mode. They MUST have learned everything that required a specimen in the bagillions of years they've had.

I think it's pretty much one of the biblical tenants of Science Fiction that all-powerful precursor civilizations must be complete retards.

Are there any ancient-style civilizations that are actually competent?

[Srelex]

Do the Protheans count?

[Imperial528]

If I remember the Halo Combat Evolved plot correctly, the Forerunners kept the flood around to see how they work.

Why they put them on giant rings in big, thin-walled glass tanks, instead of in maximum-security complexes where each infestation form is held down by machines and sealed in several force fields and guarded by sentinels at all times and said complex is on a planet which even if the flood did break out of the complex the planet's terrain would kill them, is beyond me.

And I think that the Xel-Naga from StarCraft were pretty competent, especially since every time shit went wrong beyond their control they up and left to someplace safe to learn from their mistakes, while keeping tabs on what was happening with their former place of residence.

[Darksider]

Do the Protheans count?

"Hey look. A massive alien artifact of unknown origin at the center of the mass relay network! Let's make it the heart of our civilization and place all of out governmental and military leaders there. Nothing bad could ever come of that."


no.

[Stark]

The Precursors in Star Control just left; they weren't killed by stupidity.

[aaaaa0]

They MUST have learned everything that required a specimen in the bagillions of years they've had.

The entire Forerunner-Flood war lasted just 300 years.

The Flood infect and gain strength exponentially, not linearly. And like any exponential growth, the first part of the curve is deceptively flat.

This is why the Flood are so deadly.

Fleets and armies grow linearly. You have x factories, capable of building y ships per unit time.

But one Flood becomes two, two become four, four become eight... in just 32 generations you will have 4 billion flood.

Unless you apply overwhelming force the instant you discover the Flood, they will inevitably overrun any conventional defense.

[aaaaa0]

I think people do not comprehend just how ridiculously big a Dyson Sphere is.

The most generous estimate of the size of the Galactic Empire I could find indicates that it extends across maybe fifty million inhabited worlds -- 1 million "member" worlds, and the rest in "colonies, protectorates and governorships".

http://www.theforce.net/swtc/astro.html#galaxy

At a diameter of 2 AU, a Dyson Sphere has an interior surface area 550 million times that of Earth.

*550 million* times that of Earth.

Think about that.

You could probably take every single one of the Galactic Empire's fifty million inhabited worlds, apply its surface to the inside of the Dyson Sphere, and still have roughly 90% of the thing left over unused.

Let me put it another way:

It is very likely that the entire population of the Galactic Empire could live comfortably in roughly 10% of the interior surface area of a single Forerunner Dyson Sphere.

And that’s *one*. The Forerunners built *many*.

On top of that, the Forerunners had the technology to take a megastructure that colossally huge, and move the entire thing into a pocket of hyperspace, which just happened to make it essentially invulnerable to attack.

They had the technology to sustain this hyperspace pocket for at least a hundred-thousand years, with no downtime, staffing, refueling, or external supply and assistance of any kind.

We have no real idea what the Forerunner primary habitats or their actual warships were capable of, but given the technology level demonstrated by their mere bomb shelters, it is *impossible* to conclude that the overall power and engineering prowess of their civilization is anything other than mind-boggling, and almost certainly similar in magnitude to the capabilities of civilizations like the Culture.

[adam_grif]

The Flood infect and gain strength exponentially, not linearly.

No, like anything else they follow a logistic growth curve, because resources aren't infinite.

Unless you apply overwhelming force the instant you discover the Flood, they will inevitably overrun any conventional defense.

Only if the flood magically build their own starship factories as they grow, because otherwise they're limited to whatever they can capture, which should be "nothing" assuming any competence on the part of the defenders, which should scuttle ships before they get captured.

It's not entirely clear how they could have got a foothold such that an entire (inter?)galactic empire couldn't just stomp on them instantly. The same propulsion and teleportation tech that means the flood can spread quickly also means that the response can come fast and overwhelm them.