Forerunners Vs. the Galactic Empire

[Vendetta]

Edit window expired. The Flood didn't even have a massive doomfleet at the end of the conflict:

In support of 05-032's original 1000 core vessels is a fleet numbering 4,802,019; though only 1.8 percent are warships - and only 2.4 percent of that number are capital ships

The Flood have slightly more than 2000 capital starships, and their principal tactic for space combat is ramming then allowing infection to take the target vessel.

[Vendetta]

Also, because I am shit at this "combining things into one post" business:

I throw away all the rules of acceptable conduct during battle; near the ruptures I throw away all the accepted ideas of how the natural world is supposed to behave. I toss around [37,654 tonne] dreadnoughts like they were fighters; dimly aware of the former crews being crushed to liquescence.

For now all my concentration is focused on inertial control and navigation. Targeting isn't even a consideration - I will be engaging my enemy at arm's length.

See, this shows the level of technological engineering the Forerunners' ships were capable of, fighterlike mobility from a 37000 ton vessel, and an AI capable of controlling two thousand or more of those vessels in tight quarters (Offensive Bias had roughly 2000 vessels at the final battle, after destroying 660 of Mendicant Bias' core fleet (the ships it could control directly, not the Flood seized vessels) Offensive Bias had a 6:1 numerical advantage)

The final battle after the Halo wave hit lasted roughly four minutes.

Now here's the problem. Y'know how that mobility and mass coordination sounds really impressive? It was only possible after the Halo wave had hit and the crews were all dead, because the Forerunners are fucking stupid and have ships which are capable of monstrous level of performance but which can never actually attain that performance because they're crewed by squishy biologicals, and have AIs capable of massive co-ordination which aren't in direct control of the vessels until all the squishies are dead.

But also this gives us a significant figure. The size of the Forerunner's direct military capacity. About three thousand ships all told, built for a war that lasted several centuries.

The Empire built 25,000 Star Destroyers in twenty five years, never mind the two Death Stars and all the other wunderwaffen. Now who's got the massive industrial capacity?

[Ford Prefect]

Also, the terminals in Halo 3 seem to indicate that the Flood is not extragalactic, they evolved within our galaxy.

The Forerunner encounter them on a planet in our galaxy, but I'm almost certain that Halo 2 is explicit that the Flood originated outside of this galaxy.

But also this gives us a significant figure. The size of the Forerunner's direct military capacity. About three thousand ships all told, built for a war that lasted several centuries

What? He has almost eleven thousand ships scrounged up for the holding action.

[Imperial528]

MC gets the benefit of a magic "player character" shield, which automatically makes him better than anything else in the Halo-universe.

The MC represents the player, who is supposed to win, so the plot will invariably do whatever is necessary to make the MC win, and the gamplay will have whatever contrivances necessary to make the game fun. It's the same thing that gives the player character in say, Call of Duty 4, regenerating health and the ability to mow down an army of thousands, despite the gaming being set in a "realistic" world of today.

Invoking character shields violates suspension of disbelief, which is the basis these debates are founded on. You also forget that MC wouldn't have been able to do many of the things he did without the aid of outside forces, such as Cortana and 343 Guilty Spark.

So if you substitued "a generic SPARTAN" for the Master Chief, I'm certain the Flood would have won.

This cannot be proven, and if such an experiment were to be implemented the "generic spartan" would still have support from all things MC did, such as Cortana, Guilty Spark, etc.

[Vendetta]

But also this gives us a significant figure. The size of the Forerunner's direct military capacity. About three thousand ships all told, built for a war that lasted several centuries

What? He has almost eleven thousand ships scrounged up for the holding action.

Ah, true. I was only counting the core ships directly controlled by the two AIs, as those are the numbers given for the final phase of the conflict, the ones that remain active after the Halo wave hits.

Counting all the military vessels in both fleets you arrive at a figure of about 65,000, but that's still only just better than 2:1 odds with only the Star Destroyer component of the Imperial Fleet, with none of their support vessels.

[Jake]

Vendetta wrote:

If they had a massive doomfleet, why was their chosen means of propagation hijacking civilian and commercial light vessels and simply throwing them at planets knowing that some would crashland and release spores? They didn't even start to use any form of identifiable strategy beyond throwing FTL ships in random directions until they formed a Gravemind, and that was three hundred years into the conflict.

It may not have been a fleet of warships per say. I'm just saying that since they are extra galactic in origin, they had to get to our galaxy somehow. The ships they came in on may have been cargo haulers or civilian transports for all we know, but if they arrived in large numbers in an undefended area (maybe the forerunner 'outer rim') and launched a surprise attack spreading their forces among as many forerunner planets as possible, they may have scored a critical blow in the first attack alone. Also, we know nothing about the pre-war state of the forerunners. For all we know they could have had very little military after gaining galactic supremacy, which would make a massive flood surprise attack even more devastating. The forerunners could very well have been spending the next 300 years trying to build up their military while trying to hold back something that they never could have foreseen. What I'm trying to say is that we know very little about the resources and capabilities of either side at the beginning of the war, so we can't really call the forerunners stupid for their actions in the war.

[Arachnidus]

Vendetta wrote:

If they had a massive doomfleet, why was their chosen means of propagation hijacking civilian and commercial light vessels and simply throwing them at planets knowing that some would crashland and release spores? They didn't even start to use any form of identifiable strategy beyond throwing FTL ships in random directions until they formed a Gravemind, and that was three hundred years into the conflict.

It may not have been a fleet of warships per say. I'm just saying that since they are extra galactic in origin, they had to get to our galaxy somehow. The ships they came in on may have been cargo haulers or civilian transports for all we know, but if they arrived in large numbers in an undefended area (maybe the forerunner 'outer rim') and launched a surprise attack spreading their forces among as many forerunner planets as possible, they may have scored a critical blow in the first attack alone. Also, we know nothing about the pre-war state of the forerunners. For all we know they could have had very little military after gaining galactic supremacy, which would make a massive flood surprise attack even more devastating. The forerunners could very well have been spending the next 300 years trying to build up their military while trying to hold back something that they never could have foreseen. What I'm trying to say is that we know very little about the resources and capabilities of either side at the beginning of the war, so we can't really call the forerunners stupid for their actions in the war.

Basically, the Forerunners were zerg rushed, in this case kinda literally. The Flood made it to the Orion Belt, and waited in dormancy for the Forerunners to discover them, then spread like a disease from there on, until they reached the Gravemind level of organization where the Quarantine/Containment conflict became a true war, naval battles and all.

[JointStrikeFighter]

Double Post.

[JointStrikeFighter]

Even in Halo1 the Cov were poorly led and the humans were scattered and refugees - but they still won. Counting all the infected humans is stupid because humans were killed by covenant and crashes as well.

Do you ever see a big map of Halo showing infection? Is there any reason to believe they weren't all in the area around the autumn and library?

Yes you do; in the level "The Two Betrayals" you can observe the holographic map of the Halo inside the control room; shitloads of the landmass is flashing red.

[Stark]

Is there a key that says 'flood'? How the fuck can they concievably travel that fast? Are they supersonic?

Man it's a pretty funny zerg rush that takes hundreds of years.

[Imperial528]

If we assume that the red is indeed flood, how do we know what kinds of flood? When they broke out of one are it seems like they were able to then break out of all of them unopposed, otherwise there shouldn't be swarms and swarms of infection forms.

[JointStrikeFighter]

Given the level design of halo there are probably supersonic air travel tubes around the halo

or something

That said at that stage the flood have been out of containment at least 12 hours.

[Stark]

I guess they flew Pelicans or something. Halo1 is 36 hours, right?

[aaaaa0]

Invoking character shields violates suspension of disbelief, which is the basis these debates are founded on. You also forget that MC wouldn't have been able to do many of the things he did without the aid of outside forces, such as Cortana and 343 Guilty Spark.

The point is I'm arguing for is the MC's exclusion from evidence.

Like it or not the MC has a character shield, being the player character in a video game. An FPS at that, for which the typical convention is for the player character to be absurdly powerful and lucky despite his allies and enemies ostensibly having similar or even vastly superior in-universe combat performance. (After all, what is a boss-fight supposed to be other than a classic David-vs-Goliath feel-good victory for the player?)

Versus are supposed to be objective, evidence-based, numbers-and-logic centric, in-universe debates? Right?

Therefore, if you want to use a specific thing that a main protagonist character did as evidence (for example, MC defeating the Flood in Halo 1, Luke Skywalker blowing up the Death Star), you need to demonstrate that a non-protagonist in-universe character of similar class and capability (for example, a generic SPARTAN or a generic Jedi trainee) is reasonably likely to be able to duplicate the feat in order for character shield not to apply to the evidence. As an example, a strategy might be to provide numerous examples of minor characters performing similar feats.

In other words, in general, evidence provided by the feats of main protagonist and antagonist characters must be presumed tainted by character shield and should be excluded from versus debates, unless allowances in the scenario are explicitly made to permit them, or reasonable evidence can be provided that demonstrates the feat was not made possible by a character shield.

[aaaaa0]

And the reason I include main antagonist characters too is that in many cases, the villians also get character shields until the "final climatic battle".

So similar evidence rules must apply to their feats as well.

[Vendetta]

Here's the thing though, the canon policy is that those things happened. You can't unilaterally declare certain events discontinuity because a main character did it. The Death Star was blown up by a couple of torpedoes down a vent shaft, doesn't matter who fired them, anyone would have done, even having a force user to fire the shot wasn't strictly necessary, just useful.

[Stark]

Where did these magical rules come from? Frankly, Cortana is far, far more relevant to the character cheese of Halo1 than MC. MC hits guys with guns (is he stronger than other SPARTANs) drives cars (is he a better driver) and pew pews with the least accurate guns ever past 100000 useless chumps (is he a better shot than others). It's not like SW at all, where there literally was nobody else with those capabilities - frankly I think Obi Wan or Mace Window would have been even more successful than Luke.

[Imperial528]

I just remembered something from the novel about Reach and the Spartan II program. According to it, MC is essentially a generic Spartan II (it hints about him being "lucky" though, but other than that, generic), the only thing special he had is that the AI chose him.

[aaaaa0]

Where did these magical rules come from?

It seems to me that most people grasp this intuitively.

When someone suggests that "Rodney McKay would invent a planetary system destroying weapon like in episode X of Stargate", or that "Beverly Crusher would create a nanoprobe virus that would defeat the enemy because she did something similar in episode Y of TNG", or that "the Master Chief would be able to win because he beat 1,000 enemies during the Library level", they just get ignored or written off as fanboys.

The point is there exists evidence that when introduced makes it difficult or impossible to logically reason about a versus scenario. Character shields do this because they are the equivalent of "god says so". So most people intuitively know that they need to be filtered out. I'm just formally stating that intuition.

[aaaaa0]

pew pews with the least accurate guns ever past 100000 useless chumps (is he a better shot than others).

The point is "are the guns the least accurate ever", because that is consistent with what we know of ballistics, weapons, and physics, or are they that way because "god said so, because the game needs to be balanced".

Or are the "100000 useless chumps useless" because that is consistent with the combat specifications, weapons, and physics of that universe, or are they that way simply because "god said so, because the game needs to be fun."

In the Halo games, the Master Chief can flip over a 66 metric ton Scorpion battle tank, without even touching it. Do we now ascribe telekinetic powers to him? Is he really a Jedi? Or is it just a limitation of the game engine?

When attempting to introduce evidence into a versus debate, most people intuitively grasp that some sorts of evidence can be admitted, and some just can't.

[Stark]

No, the point is are the events of the game canon, which they are, and are they reflective of SPARTANs in general, which there's no reason to assume they aren't.

Amusingly, SPARTANs should be far more powerful than shown in the games.

That you can't see the difference between repeatable and non-repeatable shit is just asinine. Hilariously ODST and Reach demonstrate that MC in Halo1 was pretty crap in Haloverse terms. Like I said, the closest thing to an irreplaceable character is Cortana, because without her the flood would have escaped (although arguably without her the Halo would never have been found, but whatever).

I'm glad you took two posts to say 'wah because I said so'.

[Imperial528]

In the Halo games, the Master Chief can flip over a 66 metric ton Scorpion battle tank, without even touching it. Do we now ascribe telekinetic powers to him? Is he really a Jedi? Or is it just a limitation of the game engine?

That is a gameplay mechanic. Gameplay itself is not canon. The events it represents (battles and such) are.