Boeing 757 wrote:So basically their slipspace drive used by their ships will not have much of a speed advantage over hyperdrive. In fact, since the quote provided is rather vague on how long and how far they traveled, it is hard to determine how fast exactly their ship-standard FTL is.
A few tens of thousands of lightyears in a few hours, and that was at a time when Forerunner slipspace traffic was slow. Still very fast.
Who said any thing about destroying the portal itself? They're created by generators, yes? All that the Empire really needs to do is to blow up their gateways and that should end the portals. Or hell, since we know that the accuracy of slipspace travel is affected by gravity, if they wanted them intact while denying them to the Forerunners the Empire could station an Interdictor cruiser with an accompanying fleet nearby said portals, and there would be jack-all that the Forerunners could do to use them.
No, I don't remember anything about generators, unless you can provide a quote. And that would be assuming the Galactic Empire somehow just knows the location of every slipspace portal, in which case I'd be perfectly happy to argue th Forerunners automatically know the location of every secret Galactic Empire base and planet.
ChosenOne54 wrote:
No, I don't remember anything about generators, unless you can provide a quote. And that would be assuming the Galactic Empire somehow just knows the location of every slipspace portal, in which case I'd be perfectly happy to argue th Forerunners automatically know the location of every secret Galactic Empire base and planet.
It's commonly understood in vs. scenario's that races will get basic info on each other.
Please show me where the portal locations are hidden and not used for civilian traffic? Because common knowledge like that is what each race gets.
Also, that pic you linked showing a slipspace portal, it is being generated by that enormous structure that is apparently under Africa or something like that...
"Seriously though, every time I see something like this I think 'Ooo, I'm living in the future'. Unfortunately it increasingly looks like it's going to be a cyberpunkish dystopia, where the poor eat recycled shit and the rich eat the poor." Evilsoup, on the future
barnest2 wrote:It's commonly understood in vs. scenario's that races will get basic info on each other.
Please show me where the portal locations are hidden and not used for civilian traffic? Because common knowledge like that is what each race gets.
Also, that pic you linked showing a slipspace portal, it is being generated by that enormous structure that is apparently under Africa or something like that...
AFAIK, we don't know specifics about any other slipspace portals other than the one leading to the Ark.
ChosenOne54 wrote:
AFAIK, we don't know specifics about any other slipspace portals other than the one leading to the Ark.
Then don't talk shit you don't know about:
1) We don't know about other portals/ if there are any others
2) If there are others, we don't know if they are hidden or in regular use
3) There is no way you can say "Oh, the forerunners can go anywhere in seconds" when this is the only fucking portal we know about. That's simply retarded. We don't know about other portals, so we are limited to the standard FTL. This is fast, but is along the same levels as the GE AFAIK
"Seriously though, every time I see something like this I think 'Ooo, I'm living in the future'. Unfortunately it increasingly looks like it's going to be a cyberpunkish dystopia, where the poor eat recycled shit and the rich eat the poor." Evilsoup, on the future
Ok, just took a look at the book again; near the story's climax, they open a massive slipspace portal near the Forerunner Capital, which they then use in an emergency, to transport seven Halo rings through. I'll also add that three Halo rings are also destroyed in the battle by the Forerunner fleet.
ThePerson5 wrote:Ok, just took a look at the book again; near the story's climax, they open a massive slipspace portal near the Forerunner Capital, which they then use in an emergency, to transport seven Halo rings through. I'll also add that three Halo rings are also destroyed in the battle by the Forerunner fleet.
Do you wanna quote it? Or just tell us about it?
"Seriously though, every time I see something like this I think 'Ooo, I'm living in the future'. Unfortunately it increasingly looks like it's going to be a cyberpunkish dystopia, where the poor eat recycled shit and the rich eat the poor." Evilsoup, on the future
All right, I have some questions for the pro-Halo debators here regarding the portals, because to me it seems that if they had either enough of them or if they could set them up anywhere as we've been told, then they wouldn't have had much need for the ship-standard FTL drive version....
1. How many portals are known to exist?
2. Are they designed mainly to transport Halos or also capital ships and transport craft?
3. Do these portals need one gateway-device to form an opening or two like in Stargate?
4. If the answer to #3 is one, then how long does it take to form a portal, and what determines where a portal may be located?
Omnia praesumuntur legitime facta donec probetur in contrarium.
http://www.halopedian.com/Slipspace_portal
That's everything we know about the portals, which is basically fuck all.
There are apparently numerous portals, which are fixed, and very few can link to more than one target, which implies they need something at the other end they have to link too.
They can do capital ships or halo's.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkhGXMZpORU
About 1:51 in that video shows it opening. It takes 10 seconds to create the 'ball', but that does not include the armatures opening up, so I would say 20 seconds.
Note this is based entirely on visuals. There may be a charging time involved that we are not seeing, after all the covenant have been there for a while.
"Seriously though, every time I see something like this I think 'Ooo, I'm living in the future'. Unfortunately it increasingly looks like it's going to be a cyberpunkish dystopia, where the poor eat recycled shit and the rich eat the poor." Evilsoup, on the future
aieeegrunt wrote:There is Truth's line from Halo 3 about how his dreadnaught is now powering the portal machinery, so a charge up time is likely.
Do we know how long Truth has been around the portal machinery? We could have a guess from that...
"Seriously though, every time I see something like this I think 'Ooo, I'm living in the future'. Unfortunately it increasingly looks like it's going to be a cyberpunkish dystopia, where the poor eat recycled shit and the rich eat the poor." Evilsoup, on the future
A Forerunner ground-combat unit charges up a beam and fires, the resulting explosion being maybe a tenth of the continent it is on. If you watch the video it zooms out to provide a better view.
ChosenOne54 wrote:A Forerunner ground-combat unit charges up a beam and fires, the resulting explosion being maybe a tenth of the continent it is on. If you watch the video it zooms out to provide a better view.
Can you show me the later screens? I have no access to the video, and you appear too. I am doubtful that the explosion covers that much space. All I see there is smoke.
"Seriously though, every time I see something like this I think 'Ooo, I'm living in the future'. Unfortunately it increasingly looks like it's going to be a cyberpunkish dystopia, where the poor eat recycled shit and the rich eat the poor." Evilsoup, on the future
That's the actual blast. That is not a tenth of the continent:
And that's something showing the edge of the continent. It is circular. It also shows how the smoke is spreading much larger than the actual blast. I think you're over emphasising how powerful it is, though it does look somewhat nuclear in terms of power i.e. its a damn big blast.
"Seriously though, every time I see something like this I think 'Ooo, I'm living in the future'. Unfortunately it increasingly looks like it's going to be a cyberpunkish dystopia, where the poor eat recycled shit and the rich eat the poor." Evilsoup, on the future
ChosenOne54 wrote:Not a tenth, my mistake, but still a damn large blast, especially coming from a ground vehicle.
Can you scale the ground vehicle? It looks pretty big to me...
"Seriously though, every time I see something like this I think 'Ooo, I'm living in the future'. Unfortunately it increasingly looks like it's going to be a cyberpunkish dystopia, where the poor eat recycled shit and the rich eat the poor." Evilsoup, on the future
Given the nature of Halo Legends, especially that particular short, it's probably not best to use it for any sort of quantification. Especially as that particular feature had...less than stellar ground tactics from the Forerunners. However, Cryptum I believe paints a much better picture in their favor in that regard.
"No, no, no, no! Light speed's too slow! Yes, we're gonna have to go right to... Ludicrous speed!"
barnest2 wrote:http://www.halopedian.com/Slipspace_portal
That's everything we know about the portals, which is basically fuck all.
There are apparently numerous portals, which are fixed, and very few can link to more than one target, which implies they need something at the other end they have to link too.
They can do capital ships or halo's.
I don't know about them needing something on the other end. From the scene in Halo Legends where they show the Halos being placed there does not appear to be a portal on the other end, the rings just appear. Now I know that Legends should not be taken as canon, in fact I believe Bungie said the visuals aren't canon or something like that, but still. I interpreted the part about connecting to multiple worlds in that generally, a portal simply links two points in space, and only those two. Some more advanced portals can instead connect between itself and any other point in the portal network, like those on the capital or the one used by the Ark.
On the ground warfare bit, this fight does give the Haloids kiloton-level damage resistance for their ground infantry.
This evidence makes me concede the Star Wars side. The Galactic Empire's forces have no chance against such awesome firepower.
Those unarmored children too, are pretty strong. They'd totally kick Force users' asses.
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The UNSC and Covenant are basically non-factors in this engagement, but the Forerunners? Come on guys, must we perpetuate the notion of being unreasonable Warsie fanatics when discussing even the Forerunners, the civilization who throw around the concepts of space-time dickery and mega-engineering like chips at a poker game? And as Vympel can attest to, I'm as big a Warsie fan-whore as anyone here, so I don't just "throw in" for the opposing team (yes, I feel like a dick for even saying that) without some consideration first.
Either way I'm not going to delve any further into the details pertaining to all Forerunner technologies given the late stage of the discussion (I don't feel like reading the entire thread due to sheer laziness - and I could be here all day discussing everything from small military Drones capable of melt-blasting capital ships to slipspace time dilation and the what-not) although Nattuo and myself discussed the subject of Forerunner engineering some time ago when some Trekkie bastard decided to lay down the claim that Borg astro-engineering was superior to or at least equivocal to that of the Forerunners. It was determined that each of the second generation Halo installations (which were smaller - possibly due to the material constraints of the war) were 322 km wide, 50 km thick and had a diameter of ten thousand kilometers, in total they possessed a volume of some half a billion cubic kilometers which came out to roughly eighteen million Borg Cubes built within the space of two months, in which case you're looking at nearly 200 cubic kilometers of material being expended each second, after one hundred thousand years of nonoperational production no less on a single facility that isn't particularly large.
Furthermore I pointed out the Onyx shield world (one of many), if the artificial section of the planet was only one kilometer in thickness, you're looking at a total volume of around 50 billion km^3, or over one billion Borg Cubes, or twenty three thousand Death Stars. Then you have the Dyson Sphere that spanned 2 AU's, yet again you're looking at a staggering volume (assuming a three meter thick egg shell wall) of 200 billion km, or eight billion Borg Cubes, or a whopping one hundred thousand Death Stars? How about Installation-00 which easily had an Earth like volume given the thickness of the arm and the core? We're talking in the half a trillion Borg cube range? The 100,000km wide capital city? Just to rub it in (this guy was adamant that the Unicomplex was an equal engineering feat to the Ark) I then pointed out how a single Fortress-class vessel roughly 1,500 Cubes in of itself.
Vympel wrote:
There's some sources that indicate days to make various trips, but those are easily accounted for re: differences in the regions being travelled (since it is relevant to hyperdrive) - and to characterize it as "most sources" is IMO inaccurate. There's plenty of trips that indicate speeds well in excess of days even in the lower order evidence.
...
Obi-Wan's Eta-2 Actis went from Utapau to Coruscant in a matter of mere hours to call the fleet to Utapau (remember, Obi-Wan took his fighter from the fleet in orbit of Coruscant, the fleet stayed behind), another multi-ten-thousand (in excess of 41,000LY) light-year trip, and Palpatine's shuttle didn't go the whole way to Mustafar by itself, it lacks the range. It would've taken a Star Destroyer, same way Vader and the Emperor got to the Death Star 2.
In essence, there's no reason at all to believe any of the best trips are exceptional or particular to somehow fantastically unique craft.
It's not an either/or. We know the slower speeds (like the BTM or WEG Hyperspace charts) are largely based on largely nonmilitary, non-governmental craft - cost, technological advacement, or resource/fuel usage or maintenance issues are all known and likely reasons that hyperdrive speed is not going to be on the high end of the scale for everyone - the only sorts of craft that even come close to the military/government performance levels are smuggler ships like the Falcon, which has reliability issues.
More to the point, there's no real NEED for the whole galaxy to have such insanely fast hyperdrive speeds for every conceivable person to reach every conceivable point in the galaxy. That's silly. But if they need it they can certainly employ it (Galaxy gun missiles come to mind)