Halo With Mass Effect Technology

[Corvus 501]

The reason that I grabbed them from that fix is because augmented helitical railguns seem to be more in tune with what the UNSC would use as a main weapon. In real life railguns are inefficient and suffer from horrendous "barrel weare", something which holds back real life deployment of railguns. Augmented hellitical railguns, on the other hand, fold coilgun and railgun technology together in one package. With one you get the speed (high acceleration) of a railgun with the efficiency of a coilgun, all made practicable by using plasma conduction to avoid the rail weare issue. All of this, however, would be further improved by the inclusion of mass effect technology, allowing vastly increased effective range, even if it wouldn't increase the projectile's yield. (I'm just going with the theory that mass lightened projectile strikes with the yield of the unmodified weight and velocity, all mass lightining does is increase the effective range by effectivly lightning the projectile to allow it to go faster)

[Esquire]

Also, of course, cannon =/= canon.

Also, in cannon,

Okay, look, at this point it's got to be deliberate. If you want people to take you seriously in anything ever, learn to spell properly.

The reason that I grabbed them from that fix is because augmented helitical railguns seem to be more in tune with what the UNSC would use as a main weapon.

Helical, you just spelled it correctly two posts ago. And what are you basing this claim on? It can't be the barrel durability thing from below, because we see lots of MACs firing and not once is barrel life mentioned as a problem. (I think; again, it's been several years since I read the books in question.)

In real life railguns are inefficient and suffer from horrendous "barrel weare", something which holds back real life deployment of railguns. Augmented hellitical railguns, on the other hand, fold coilgun and railgun technology together in one package. With one you get the speed (high acceleration) of a railgun with the efficiency of a coilgun, all made practicable by using plasma conduction to avoid the rail weare issue.

Please explain what plasma conduction is, and why it would help with barrel wear (spelled 'wear,' incidentally) instead of simply replacing friction from the projectile with friction from the superheated charged plasma. Also, per the Halo wiki, MACs already are coilguns. In fact:

The Magnetic Accelerator Cannon should not be confused with the railgun, despite their superficial similarities.

Anyways, moving on.

All of this, however, would be further improved by the inclusion of mass effect technology, allowing vastly increased effective range, even if it wouldn't increase the projectile's yield. (I'm just going with the theory that mass lightened projectile strikes with the yield of the unmodified weight and velocity, all mass lightining does is increase the effective range by effectivly lightning the projectile to allow it to go faster)

Is accuracy a serious problem for existing MACs? If not, I'd suggest taking this new MAC design and using it with existing shells instead of reducing potential killing power in exchange for even more range that the UNSC will be unable to use due to never getting to pick their battles.

[Corvus 501]

Plasma conduction is exactly what it sounds like, using plasma to conduct electricity instead of a solid, liquid, or gas conductor. Plasma would be used because it can be controlled by a magnatic field, so even if friction rips off all the plasma, it can almost instantly be brought back to the rails or replaced.
If you remove the friction issue, than ordinary railguns stand as clear superiors to coilguns, except that they are massively inefficient when compared to coilguns. Mass effect enhanced augmented helitical railguns fold all these advantages into one package, giving the effective range , and most of the rate of fire of a mass accelerator with the stoping power of a MAC.
Augmented helitical railguns accelerate large (multi ton) projectiles to far higher speeds than a MAC can achieve, allowing say a 50 or 100 ton projectile to strike with the yield of a 600 ton MAC shell, and have a far higher effective range.
That's the whole point of this thread: to ask how Mass Effect technology would effect Halo human technology.

[Simon_Jester]

Again, though, the problem is that this is literally something a random fanfic author made up as an "OH MY GOD SUPER DUPER MACs" idea. It's essentially technobabble, but you're treating it as an established part of the setting.

[Corvus 501]

Railguns are superior to coilguns, except in terms of efficiency and barrel wear. Augmented helical railguns bridge that gap. They are simply a new type of MAC. We have already established that technology is generally more advanced thanks to faster travel times, signal FTL comm. Augmented helical railguns are simply a logical next step in terms of MAC development. I credited the fanfic author simply because he had a well developed example of the weapon, and his story provided some very good examples of how it would function. (though admittedly, kinetic fusion shells are an awesome idea, and not something that I have run into before then, not that I think they would fit all that well in this scenario)

[Simon_Jester]

Railguns are superior to coilguns, except in terms of efficiency and barrel wear. Augmented helical railguns bridge that gap. They are simply a new type of MAC. We have already established that technology is generally more advanced thanks to faster travel times, signal FTL comm. Augmented helical railguns are simply a logical next step in terms of MAC development. I credited the fanfic author simply because he had a well developed example of the weapon, and his story provided some very good examples of how it would function. (though admittedly, kinetic fusion shells are an awesome idea, and not something that I have run into before then, not that I think they would fit all that well in this scenario)

Well, if I were you I would stop being so specific and fixating on "AUGMENTED HELICAL RAILGUN," which is technobabble, in favor of just saying "better mass drivers" of some kind.

[Corvus 501]

Sure. I'll just call them MACs, in the fanfic I pulled them from, they called them MACs anyways, but the point still stands.

[Balrog]

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?

Not to bring up a dead topic, but this exact tactic is used in Halo: Ghosts of Onyx when the Covenant Civil War first starts. A couple of Brute-controlled ships are in a running engagement with a Elite-controlled ship. Although the Brute ships individually would lose against their larger foe, they take it in turns to act as shields for each other, one ship falling back to recharge its shields while the other protects it with its fresh defenses. In this way the Brutes were winning the fight until the Elite commander was able to overcome the strategy.