Halo With Mass Effect Technology

[Corvus 501]

What would have been different if humans had developed mass effect technology after having developed most of the basic technology used in Halo, and developed element zero technology as a supplement for conventional technology? How much more advanced would it be if human slipspace drives where far faster thanks to the mass effect's ability to change effective mass in slipspace, allowing human ships to plow through "waves" instead of being thrown about, or decrease mass to increase speed? For that matter, to what degree would decreased travel time effect technological development?
Basicly, what I'm asking, is how would the war's outcome change if element zero baised technology was a factor.

[Corvus 501]

NOTE: In this scenario, humans came into contact with element zero on Mars, though the actual Protheniean outpost was destroyed by a commatary impact. However, human scientist where able to study it, and later, (when larger amounts of it where discovered) use it.

[Corvus 501]

NOTE: In Mass Effect, kinetic barriers blocked plasma, or at least Gelth plasma weapons. Energy gets through barriers, but actual fast moving matter is blocked. Covenant plasma bolts would be blocked, though initially with form fitting shields the beat would still cause some nasty surface burns. A simple software patch for the barrier generators to block the plasma further away from the body would be used, probably within hours of first contact.
Ships, on the other hand, would probibly already have that option, and with barriers, plasma torpedoes would be like Archer missiles where to Covenent ships; useless agents shields, but extremely useful for finishing off a ship. Plasma torpedoes wouldn't have the kinetic energy to break through a ship's barriers, and with the barriers generated far enough away to prevent the heat from frying the ship, Covenant ships would have to try to snipe out the barrier generators with pulse lasers to open a hole for the plasma torpedoes. Of course, energy projectors would go straight through the barriers, seeing how in Mass Effect particle beam weapons ignore barriers like lasers.

[biostem]

One huge difference would be that the military would field Biotics along with the likes of Spartans and regular infantry. This would make a big difference when compared to basically sending a handful of Spartans with virtually no support, (the regular soldiers didn't appear all that effective vs the Covenants more diverse forces).

[Sidewinder]

The big questions are, what will happen when the Citadel Council has its first contact with the Covenant, and what will happen when the Covenant has its first contact with the Reapers? I can easily picture the Covenant trying to convert (read: CONQUER) the Citadel Council members, and to mistake Reaper technology as an inheritance from the Forerunners.

One huge difference would be that the military would field Biotics along with the likes of Spartans and regular infantry.

Or field Spartans who have biotic abilities themselves.

This would make a big difference when compared to basically sending a handful of Spartans with virtually no support, (the regular soldiers didn't appear all that effective vs the Covenants more diverse forces).

In-universe, the Spartans always beat the Covenant ground forces, but their accomplishments achieved little better than raising human morale, as the Covenant could always use its space superiority to destroy the very planet both sides were fighting over. If Mass Effect technology is to help the humans weather the Covenant onslaught, it must be applied in ways that allow them to neutralize Covenant space superiority.

[biostem]

With element zero's ability to manipulate the mass of an object, did they ever address what would happen if you were to lighten the mass of an object, accelerate it to a very high speed, then suddenly shut off whatever is generating that effect, or switch the equipment to now increase said object's mass? Like, imagine launching a kinetic impactor at a target, getting it to some percent of C, then just before impact, ramp up it's mass to extreme levels. Would it suddenly screech to a halt as inertia kicked in?

Also, you could launch weapons that mess with an enemy vessel's mass in order to disable it...

[Vendetta]

With element zero's ability to manipulate the mass of an object, did they ever address what would happen if you were to lighten the mass of an object, accelerate it to a very high speed, then suddenly shut off whatever is generating that effect, or switch the equipment to now increase said object's mass?

I'm p. sure that Mass Effect weapons already do this, reduce the inertial mass of the object to accelerate it more effectively and then let it return to normal whilst the laws of physics look the other way.

Increasing the mass of the impactor would mean it needing to generate its own mass effect field, so it would need an element zero core and a generator, probably a bit too expensive to use with every shot

Also, you could launch weapons that mess with an enemy vessel's mass in order to disable it...

They do have disruptor torpedoes, which use rapidly changing mass effect fields to mess with the structural integrity of enemy hulls by changing parts of their inertial mass.

[Battlegrinder]

IIRC, ME shipboard weapons have a much higher fire rate than pre-Pillar of Autumn MACs, on the order of one every couple seconds. That alone could even the playing field between the UNSC and Covenant, the UNSC having shields that can withstand plasma fire would just be icing on the cake. Though that assumes that the barriers won't have issues with thermal energy bleeding through, which I think was an issue with mass effect.

I don't think biotics or whatnot would have a similar impact, as the UNSC was already able to hold its own on the ground, so being better at ground combat wouldn't do much.

[Simon_Jester]

From the shell weight and velocity parameters I can find, Halo has an interesting disconnect. Its heaviest weapons hit a lot harder than typical Mass Effect capital ship weaponry. The relevant statistics are, for Mass Effect:

"This, recruits, is a 20-kilo ferrous slug! Feel the weight! Every five seconds, the main gun of an Everest-class dreadnought accelerates one to 1.3 percent of light speed!"

And, for Halo...

"[fixed fortifications]... fire a 3,000-ton slug at... around 12,000 kilometers per second. "

On the other hand, in Halo's wiki:

"A standard ship-based MAC fires... slugs of [dense metal] approximately 9.1 meters long at around 30,000 meters per second... 600-ton slug..."

Individual rounds from the shipboard MAC weapon and the (vastly higher-velocity) Mass Effect weapon have comparable impact energy around 30-60 kilotons; any question of rate of fire is not addressed here.

The superheavy MAC variant for use in fixed defenses, if those numbers are to be believed, on the other hand, can be expected to hit far, far harder than either.

Which is so extreme that in my book it casts the figures for the fixed orbital MAC weapon into doubt. If your targets can reasonably be damaged by the sixty-kiloton impactors from your shipboard guns, there is no good reason to design a fixed gun that fires ten-gigaton impactors. They will grossly overpenetrate their targets and waste resources that could more profitably be used firing more, individually less energetic, rounds.

[Battlegrinder]

Which is so extreme that in my book it casts the figures for the fixed orbital MAC weapon into doubt. If your targets can reasonably be damaged by the sixty-kiloton impactors from your shipboard guns, there is no good reason to design a fixed gun that fires ten-gigaton impactors. They will grossly overpenetrate their targets and waste resources that could more profitably be used firing more, individually less energetic, rounds.

IIRC, the ODP super-MACs were designed to kill heavy covenant capital ships, and it can take that much firepower to knock one down. And they actually are used to over-pentrate lighter ships and keep going, taking out other ships behind the first target. It might be overkill in that case, but they need the heavy firepower to take out the big ships, and their may be some kind scale issue going on as well.

[Skywalker_T-65]

Fall of Reach makes a point about the grossly overpowered Orbital stations. A shell can go through one Covenant ship, out it, out a second one, and then still have the energy to cripple a third. The first ship is generally outright shattered, IIRC. This is useful, because Covenant ships tend to take close formations. Interestingly, it isn't just the firepower- the S-MAC can repeat fire about as fast as Mass Effect mass drivers.

That's probably why they can afford to overclock the damage; the relevant wiki page:

'By receiving power from ground-based power plants, orbital platforms could achieve a recharge and reload rate as short as five seconds.'

Emphasis mine. So these platforms can fire every bit as often as ME weapons, while being hilariously overpowered in comparison. That being said, they are pretty limited in the fact they need the ground based power plants. Again from Fall of Reach, most of the Spartans are killed because the Covenant realize that hitting the powerplants makes the Platforms so much scrap metal.

[Corvus 501]

The big questions are, what will happen when the Citadel Council has its first contact with the Covenant, and what will happen when the Covenant has its first contact with the Reapers? I can easily picture the Covenant trying to convert (read: CONQUER) the Citadel Council members, and to mistake Reaper technology as an inheritance from the Forerunners.

Simple. Citadel Councle gets it's collective ass kicked, first with humans, if they are stupid enough to pick a fight with them, than Councle planets start to get glassed. If they survive long eanough, they make nice with humans, upgrade their overall technological base, build more drednoughts, buy and reverse engineer human built MACs, Supper MACs, Shiva, Havoc, Fury, and assorted other nuclar ordanence, and generally get out of the rut they've been in for the last 2000 odd years.

[Simon_Jester]

Corvus, do you know how to spell "Council," "dreadnoughts," "super," and "nuclear?" Because I seem to recall a mod telling you you need to learn how to spell properly.

Personally I'm not so sure. It sounds like Halo-human shipboard technology is not superior to that of Mass Effect, at least not so you'd notice. I doubt that the Council races of Mass Effect are ignorant of nuclear weapons either, although they may be choosing not to use them for various reasons.

The "Super MAC" coilgun technology is certainly very impressive, and represents a clear increase in mass driver technology over anything else in either setting. On the other hand, it is also indicated that the "Super MAC" weapon is too bulky to fit on mobile platforms (which are about the same size in both settings). And that its power requirements are too great to be operated from a mobile base. In which case its applications are limited and such weapons have a number of possible counters.

I assume that if the UNSC knew how to miniaturize this technology, they would have already done so, given that they could easily use it to build shipboard guns that would punch through the shields and armor scheme of Covenant ships "below the wall" like a red-hot awl through cotton candy.

IIRC, the ODP super-MACs were designed to kill heavy covenant capital ships, and it can take that much firepower to knock one down. And they actually are used to over-pentrate lighter ships and keep going, taking out other ships behind the first target. It might be overkill in that case, but they need the heavy firepower to take out the big ships, and their may be some kind scale issue going on as well.

Well, superheavy mass drivers to take out superheavy enemy capital ships make sense- although note that the disparity between the superheavy weapons and the normal shipboard weapons is like the disparity between a rifle and a battleship gun. Which suggests that conventional shipboard weapons are about as effective against the heavier Covenant ships as rifles would be against a battleship, which explains a lot.

Also, one point is that the rate of fire I can look up for Halo mass drivers isn't really much different than the "one round per five seconds" performance of the Everest-class main gun. So I'm not sure Mass Effect has anything to offer there, at least not directly.

Fall of Reach makes a point about the grossly overpowered Orbital stations. A shell can go through one Covenant ship, out it, out a second one, and then still have the energy to cripple a third. The first ship is generally outright shattered, IIRC. This is useful, because Covenant ships tend to take close formations.

...WHYYYYY!?

[cries]

Interestingly, it isn't just the firepower- the S-MAC can repeat fire about as fast as Mass Effect mass drivers.

That's probably why they can afford to overclock the damage; the relevant wiki page:

'By receiving power from ground-based power plants, orbital platforms could achieve a recharge and reload rate as short as five seconds.'

Emphasis mine. So these platforms can fire every bit as often as ME weapons, while being hilariously overpowered in comparison. That being said, they are pretty limited in the fact they need the ground based power plants. Again from Fall of Reach, most of the Spartans are killed because the Covenant realize that hitting the powerplants makes the Platforms so much scrap metal.

Well, if this massive array of power plants can power a gun that overpenetrates and kills one to three enemy starships every five seconds... could it not be used to power ten guns that kill only one enemy starship, each firing at the same rate?

That's my core argument. That capacity for overpenetration is almost useless unless you are very very sure the enemy will ALWAYS conveniently line up multiple ships for you to take out with one shot. Whereas a single hit from a weapon even a tenth as forceful would probably render any one enemy ship hors de combat... and you could shoot ten times as often for the same energy budget. Plus, your defensive platforms would be less vulnerable to a single lucky enemy strike.

[Skywalker_T-65]

Very true. I wasn't trying to say the platforms are totally logical, just pointing out what the canon says on them.

That being said, the largest Covenant ships (the six-kilometer Assault Carrier and 28 kilometer Super Carrier) are so much bigger than anything the UNSC has- the largest human ship before Infinity was the Valiant super-heavy cruiser at 1,500 meters -that they may go for the overkill department to ensure they take the big boys down. Going through multiple smaller ships is probably a bonus.

That being said, making a larger number of weaker platforms could potentially work.

The Covenant taking close formations is something I may misremember, as it's been awhile since I've read the relevant books. I would assume it's the case, at least in the larger assaults due to the whole 'wreck three ships in a row' thing.

EDIT: Correction, the UNSC supercarriers apparently reached 3 kilometers. Still only half the size of the Covenant Assault variety, and nothing on the Supercarrier.

[Corvus 501]

In Mass Effect, no one seemed to know how to use anti shipping nukes for anything but bombs. In Halo, nukes where used all the time as anti ship ordanence. Humans actually bothered to develope nuclear ordanence as something becides a last ditch weapon.
MACs may have been slow firing when compared to mass accelerators, but they seemed to be overpowered to a stupid degree. However, bu augmenting MACs with mass effect systems, and using mass effect enhanced railguns, AKA gravity assisted railguns, AKA mass accelerators as secondary weapons, human ships would have the fire rate of mass Effect ships (even if the guns would be kind of underpowered) and the power of the UNSC's main guns, depending on what they decided to fire at.
Got a corvette? Hit it with mass accelerators. Got a Covenent battlecruiser? Hit it with the MAC, and after stripping the shields off, hit it with the accelerators, they wod basically just be Onigar mass drivers with a greater effective range, after all.

[Simon_Jester]

Corvus, do you know how to spell "ordnance," "develop," "besides," "Covenant," or for that matter the words "by" and "would?"

You're persistently misspelling the same words twice on the same page. Use a spell checker. You need help.

To answer your actual point- there are reasons nuclear weapons weren't used much in Mass Effect- enemy point defense, and shielding that appears to be very effective at deflecting physical projectiles of all kinds, and which I suspect would badly damage a nuclear warhead trying to pass through it. Nuclear bombs don't work very well if you smack them forcefully before they get a chance to detonate.

Meanwhile, Halo shipboard MAC-type weapons don't seem to be especially slow-firing. Nonetheless, as they are currently designed, they are grossly inferior weapons to their Mass Effect counterparts, because they rely on bulkier, slower-moving projectiles that are easier to evade at long range, despite similar impact energy. If the Covenant is too stupid to duck, that's their problem.

Fixed defensive MACs in Halo are very impressive, by contrast.

Halo mass driver technology is probably superior to whatever basic mass driver technology is used in Mass Effect, and could no doubt be improved with mass effect technology. On the other hand, it's not clear that it could be improved as much as you might think. The huge shells fired by Halo shipboard MACs might well have more recoil than the firing platform could withstand if launched at the much higher speeds associated with Mass Effect weapons in the same class.

It does little good to build a gun ten times more powerful than anything else in the universe, if the recoil blows that gun out through the back of your ship after the first shot!

Very true. I wasn't trying to say the platforms are totally logical, just pointing out what the canon says on them.

That being said, the largest Covenant ships (the six-kilometer Assault Carrier and 28 kilometer Super Carrier) are so much bigger than anything the UNSC has- the largest human ship before Infinity was the Valiant super-heavy cruiser at 1,500 meters -that they may go for the overkill department to ensure they take the big boys down. Going through multiple smaller ships is probably a bonus.

If it was me, I'd build a platform with about eight or ten shorter-barreled super-MACs and blow said Carriers into Swiss cheese rather than punching only one hole through something that size.

Eh. It's video game tactics.

That being said, making a larger number of weaker platforms could potentially work.

The Covenant taking close formations is something I may misremember, as it's been awhile since I've read the relevant books. I would assume it's the case, at least in the larger assaults due to the whole 'wreck three ships in a row' thing.

I'm not saying it's not canon, I'm saying it's the most idiotic thing I can remember hearing at the moment. And I teach high school...

[Corvus 501]

Good point, in space warfare, close formation means a few miles away, not a few feet away. But, that might just be cannon.

[Corvus 501]

Also, sorry about the spelling, between myself and the spell checker, I can apparently really mess up a post

[Simon_Jester]

Many of your misspellings are NOT from the spell checker. Like all the ones in the last posts where I corrected you on so many words. Those are not words spelled that way normally in English, so if your spell checker claims you should spell the words that way, someone's doing something wrong.

Also, no, NOT a few miles away. Try hundreds of miles. There is so much room to spread out, no one would ever need to get closer than that, especially not with ships that are themselves miles upon miles long.

I mean, why would you ever want to be close enough to another spaceship to risk colliding with it if you don't have to? It's not like airplanes normally fly a few hundred feet apart, even though they can. The sky is big enough for miles of separation between planes, and having miles of separation is safer, so they do it that way.

[Corvus 501]

Point defense screens. You want your detection and point defense systems to have overlapping lanes of fire, especially when your opponent likes to launch thousands of missiles at a time.

[Corvus 501]

Also, the Prophets didn't care much about losses among the soldier classes, and would prefer to use other ships as meat shields if they where present, and in normal battles, Covanent forces preferred to get in close to human ships, where omnidirectional pulse lasers and plasma tordedos could be used more freely than spinal MAC systems, where you had to turn the whole ship. To do this, you need to survive getting close to the human ships, without loosing too much of your shield strength getting there.
Also, the Propbets seemed to be the sort to demand that Fleet and Shipmasters would adapt stupid tactics in order to cut more of them down, and encourage a tactical doctorin that consisted soly of frontal assaults, minimizing the need for competent leaders, and maximizing the number of incompetent fanatics. After all, who else would consider Brutes a good alternant for Elites, except for power hungry idiots?

[Vendetta]

To be fair, quite a lot of things in Halo can be explained with "The Covenant are a bit stupid, really".

Their ground tactics are basically "send Grunts in, wait for them to lose, use Elites. If they also lose then glass planet and move on".

[Jub]

Point defense screens. You want your detection and point defense systems to have overlapping lanes of fire, especially when your opponent likes to launch thousands of missiles at a time.

That doesn't really work. Using realistic technology a dispersed fleet with good fire lanes can still pick each others fleas with lasers from truly mind boggling distances. Even with something slower like missiles, getting a lock on something as nimble as a fighter or a missile can be easier at range where it's harder to dodge out of of the radar cone. Plus if your missiles have anything like parity with their missiles and the battle is being fought at realistic ranges you'll know about their missile attack in time to maneuver, get coordinated counter measures launched, and hopefully come out in a position to counter attack.

Looking at the battles the Covenant fought against the UNSC, reach for example, the Covenant should have stayed at extreme range and fanned out nice and wide. This would give them more time to dodge MAC cannon fire while also forcing the MAC cannons to move to point at their new targets. Then they can sit and lob attacks at the planet side generators and move in to mop up the UNSC fleet after their stationary defenses are knocked out. This takes the UNSC's best weapons mostly out of the fight and forces their weaker mobile assets to try and bring the fight to the Covenant fleet. If the UNSC fleet then sorties to break the siege the Covenant should have plenty of time to form up into a closer battle formation, maybe high hundreds or low thousands of kilometers apart versus tens of thousands, and use their numbers against the smaller UNSC fleet. If the UNSC wants to call in help, the Covenant's superior FTL speeds and greater overall fleet strength should allow them to either leave and attack a now undefended target, or force an engagement where they can crush the UNSC fleet and win the war out right.

Just like really world battles the navies in this universe are likely to be expensive so for most of the war you'll probably see the stronger power keeping their strength together and looking for a war winning fight, while using their smaller ships to pick on places the lesser power can't afford to defend. The lesser power meanwhile will then be forced to come to battle against the larger main enemy fleet so they can freely move to defend against multi-pronged attacks the greater power will surely be using against trade and the lightly defended targets of opportunity, or they stay in port where they're fixed defenses have an advantage and hope that gives them enough of an advantage to take a fight if the enemy comes in for an attack. It'll basically be a game of cat and mouse until the larger fleet can pin the smaller into a port and from that point on it works more like a siege where the larger fleet keeps the smaller pinned. Far more maneuver and counter maneuver than exchanges of fire because nobody should want to go in unless they think they can win, and win big.

[Skywalker_T-65]

It's interesting to note that every time the Covenant start getting their behinds handed to them (discovery of the Hunters, the Grunt Rebellions) they have to drag an Arbiter up to deal with it. Said Arbiters are always disgraced Elites...but these 'disgraced' Elites are (almost) always their best leaders. The Halo 2 Anniversary terminals go deeper into the Arbiter lore in that regard. The current one, for instance, was considered by the UNSC the single most dangerous fighter on the Covenant side- so dangerous, that (IIRC) the one reviewing Thel's records flat out said 'if he survives, we will lose this war' -because he used tactics that took advantage of the Covenant's abilities.

It's entirely possible that Corvus is right in one sense...the Prophets don't want great leaders who can think of things like 'engage beyond enemies range' or 'use flanking maneuvers instead of banging your head against the enemy'. It's even understandable, since the Prophets would quickly lose a rebellion if the Elites joined in. Cull their great leaders by making them suicidal soldiers, and you've handled that problem. Handled it stupidly if one wants an effective military, but the Prophet's probably don't care how many lesser Covenant die.

[Esquire]

Just as a thought exercise, could we explain the non-optimal tactics both the UNSC and the Covenant display in space by looking at their respective recent combat experiences?

The UNSC has no history of major space battles, as far as I know - they're fighting a persistent colonial rebellion as of series start, but the rebels, as far as I know, rarely/never manage to get control of warships. There wouldn't necessarily be any great body of experience in the UNSC high command telling them to maintain large separation distances or keep clear fire lanes, especially not in fleet battles. If most human fleet commanders don't survive their first engagements with Covenant forces, that body of experience might very well take a long time to build up, even in a war; for comparison, consider how long it took Earth militaries to learn that frontal assaults on machine-gun positions are a bad idea.

The Covenant, meanwhile, has an entirely different technological base than the humans do. The way shields work in Halo means that if you can take cover for a short period of time after being shot, you might be able to take the next hit on fresh shields, avoiding damage entirely where the two shots would destroy the entire ship if they'd hit close together. In that circumstance, close formations, or at least groups of ships close together, regardless of the separation between groups, might make sense; a ship under fire could hide behind one with fresh shields, popping back out when its shields were regenerated. This kind of casualty-averse approach seems like it would make sense in internal Covenant power struggles, where the winner would like to preserve as much materiel as he can because that materiel is, in a sense, what the entire struggle is about. Besides, their plasma weapons don't seem to move very fast; perhaps long-range engagements aren't practical for accuracy reasons?