Another versus Thread: Who would have guessed. (Covenant vs. Federation edition)

An Enemy Spy · 11-04-2009, 09:27 PM

I have been a fan of Halo since I was a wee lad, barely out of diapers (not really. Halo didn't exist when I was 7.) and I have recently started getting into ST:TNG.

A federation colony is destroyed by a strange force of aliens. Before the attack commences, a message is sent in perfect English. Your destruction is the will of the gods, and we are their instrument. War breaks out.

Which side would win?

warty goblin · 11-04-2009, 09:47 PM

Much as I like the Covenent, they can't fire their weapons while moving at superluminal speeds, which is a major disadvantage. On the other hand, they're probably bigger industrially, and instantanious FTL is always nice. On the third hand, they're dumb as a brick, but so is most of the Federation.

Lupy · 11-04-2009, 09:56 PM

The Federation can beat the Borg in controlled amounts, and the Covenant are like Gerber's level 1 babyfood Borg.

Texas_Ben · 11-04-2009, 10:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by warty goblin

On the other hand, they're probably bigger industrially

All I really feel needs to be said on that subject, is Industrial Replicators.

I give this to the Covenant on the ground; Personal shields, Heavy weapons, actual tactics, and armored vehicles. Though to be fair to trek, we mostly hear about rather than see ground engagements in trek media, so it's hard to get an accurate picture of their full capabilities. I do remember one episode of DS9 in which Quark was selling weapons, and he demonstrated some hard-hitting anti-armour weapons so obviously such things exist in the Trekverse, but we don't (or at least I don't) know if the Federation uses them or how they would stack up against those used by the Covenant. Anyways, Covenant win on the ground.

However, Federation probably wins in space. Covenant ships use plasma weapons, and plasma weapons that are poorly-adapted clones of forerunner technology at that. While they are very effective against the unshielded ships of the UNSC, they would probably fare very poorly against the shields used by the Federation... Plasma cannons, which are probably the best analogue for covenant weapons in the Trekverse, are super-weak... used by freighters and civillian craft for self-defense. Granted, the plasma weapons used by covenant ships are probably several orders of magnitude more powerful, but federation ships are equipped with shields which are capable of shrugging off blasts from photon torpedoes... I can't remember their exact yield off the top of my head, but I believe it to be measured in megatons, which is not wimpy.

So yeah, covies win the ground war, Trek wins the space war.

An Enemy Spy · 11-05-2009, 12:01 AM

I would give the space war to the Covies based on the sheer numbers of their fleets. They're capable of sending fleets of hundreds of ships at the enemy. What constitutes a massive Federation fleet?

Seriously, I haven't seen enough episodes to know yet.

Tavar · 11-05-2009, 12:14 AM

It's a tricky question. Some of the Deep Space Nine Fleets are huge, but on the other hand the big Fleet that was destroyed by the Borg with Picard as Locutus was something like 40 ships.

Drakyn · 11-05-2009, 12:18 AM

I've got to say that the covenant are doomed to lose. They're designed to lose. They're the wet dream of every armoured military spaceperson who's ever wanted to have a really big fight against an enemy that has numbers AND tech yet is still so incredibly stupid that you have a fighting chance. And yet they're intimidating enough that if you give them enough early-on (preferably offscreen) victories, they seem like a credible threat, so you get extra cool points when you win.
Also, remember that any tech advantage the covenant have will be both (a) much slimmer than it was in Halo and (b) probably very easily copied and made to work properly/better/both.

Tavar · 11-05-2009, 12:36 AM

There's really only one tech advantage, and that's more strategic in nature than anything else: slipstream seems to be much faster than warp.

Well, actually, I take that back. There's also the fact that Star Fleet really doesn't have any decent Ground combat force, which would give the Covenant some victories, but I'm not sure if it's enough.

chiasaur11 · 11-05-2009, 12:37 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tavar

There's really only one tech advantage, and that's more strategic in nature than anything else: slipstream seems to be much faster than warp.

Well, actually, I take that back. There's also the fact that Star Fleet really doesn't have any decent Ground combat force, which would give the Covenant some victories, but I'm not sure if it's enough.

So, the combat would be the Bizarro version of combat evolved?

Texas_Ben · 11-05-2009, 12:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by An Enemy Spy

I would give the space war to the Covies based on the sheer numbers of their fleets. They're capable of sending fleets of hundreds of ships at the enemy. What constitutes a massive Federation fleet?

I remember in DS9 hearing about several fleets numbering over 100 ships... I was poking around on Memory Alpha, looking to confirm that, and the only direct reference to fleet numbers was 7th fleet, which had 112 ships. Watching DS9 I got the impression that Starfleet was losing 20-100 ships every month or so, and while it was definitely taking it's toll on them, remember they still managed to pull it together and win the Dominion war, so they still maintained enough ships to go on the offensive and win.

Anyways, as to fleet sizes, I guess a fair method of comparison is to look at how many ships they throw at a major operation-- Operation return, in which the Federation moved to retake the wormhole, consisted of a task force of some 627 ships, according to Memory Alpha. The Covenant fleet at the Battle of Reach, the largest engagement in the war, numbered 314 ships.

So the Federation has the Covenant outmanned.

I can't find any hard numbers on the power-level of covenant weapons, but I did read that the range of the Covenant energy projector is approx. 100,000km. The range of Federation torpedoes is stated to be 300,000km, so really, weapon power doesn't matter all that much since the federation can just sit back and shoot at them from outside their range.

Edit:
So here are some hard numbers on weapon power:
Photon torpedo is about 64 megatons at full yield, or 2.678E17 J
Still don't know about the Energy projector, but we can assume that it is more powerful than a ship-mounted MAC cannon. Halopedia tells me that a ship-mounted MAC gun fires a 600,000kg slug at .4c. That gives us (If my math is right) an energy of 4.32x10^21 J, which is siginificantly higher. Since covenant weapons have proved to be significantly more powerful than UNSC weapons, we can assume that their weapons are at least that powerful, probably more.

So Covenant ships pack a mean punch, but Federation ships have triple the range, and probably much better speed and maneuverability... impulse drive can take you to .8c, and with inertial dampers you're going to get some slick manuverability.

tl,dr:
Federation still wins in space, Covenant still win on the ground.

Renegade Paladin · 11-05-2009, 02:58 PM

The Federation loses on every single possible grounds; the Covenant's tech base is simply much higher than the Federation's, despite their stupidity.

Quote:

Originally Posted by warty goblin

Much as I like the Covenent, they can't fire their weapons while moving at superluminal speeds, which is a major disadvantage.

If the Federation could do this reliably, they would do it more. You'll notice they... don't.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lupy

The Federation can beat the Borg in controlled amounts, and the Covenant are like Gerber's level 1 babyfood Borg.

The Borg send one ship at a time. The Covenant suffers no such limitations, and unlike any Alpha Quadrant power, their ships have sufficient firepower to turn a world's surface into glass in a matter of hours. This is no mean feat; the Federation can't hold a candle to that level of firepower. Reference, TNG S1E26, "The Neutral Zone," when the Romulans realize that it could not have been the Federation destroying their colonies in the proximity of the Neutral Zone because the level of destruction was greater than what Starfleet could achieve, and "greater than what Starfleet could achieve" was nowhere near glassing the planet. It was the destruction of a few towns.

Texas_Ben · 11-05-2009, 03:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Renegade Paladin

The Federation loses on every single possible grounds; the Covenant's tech base is simply much higher than the Federation's, despite their stupidity.

[Citation Needed]. The Federation has teleporters, Inertial dampeners, Replicators, Time Travel (when demanded by the plot they can do it on a whim), all of which they actually understand. The covenant has cheap knock-offs of forerunner tech.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Renegade Paladin

If the Federation could do this reliably, they would do it more. You'll notice they... don't.

Photon torpedos are warp-capable. And they do fire them at warp fairly often, usually when pursuing another vessel.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Renegade Paladin

The Covenant suffers no such limitations, and unlike any Alpha Quadrant power, their ships have sufficient firepower to turn a world's surface into glass in a matter of hours. This is no mean feat; the Federation can't hold a candle to that level of firepower. Reference, TNG S1E26, "The Neutral Zone," when the Romulans realize that it could not have been the Federation destroying their colonies in the proximity of the Neutral Zone because the level of destruction was greater than what Starfleet could achieve, and "greater than what Starfleet could achieve" was nowhere near glassing the planet. It was the destruction of a few towns.

Starfleet weapons are shown as being on par with Romulan and Cardassian weapons, and a combined fleet of the Romulan Tal Shiar and Cardassian Obsidian order rendered a planet uninhabitable within the space of a few volleys of torpedoes.

*Edit* I was in a rush before, couldn't say everything I wanted to.
As already established, Federation ships, while not packing the same amount of raw firepower that covenant ships do (See my previous post in which I ran the numbers on that), they are certainly not slouches in the damage-dealing, and with 3x the range of the longest-reaching covenant weapon (Covenant energy projectors have a range of 100,000km), they're going to get cut to pieces long before they are even in range.

Renegade Paladin · 11-05-2009, 04:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Texas_Ben

[Citation Needed]. The Federation has teleporters, Inertial dampeners, Replicators, Time Travel (when demanded by the plot they can do it on a whim), all of which they actually understand. The covenant has cheap knock-offs of forerunner tech.

Even cheap knock-offs of Forerunner tech are far and away beyond anything the Federation can bring to bear; the Forerunners were a galaxy-spanning civilization, as the Covenant are after them. Compared to either, the Federation is in its infancy.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Texas_Ben

Starfleet weapons are shown as being on par with Romulan and Cardassian weapons, and a combined fleet of the Romulan Tal Shiar and Cardassian Obsidian order rendered a planet uninhabitable within the space of a few volleys of torpedoes.

No, they thought they did. In point of fact, they did no such thing and their sensors were being fooled by a spy in the fleet. Furthermore, the visuals are not consistent with the destruction being reported by their tactical officers.

hamishspence · 11-05-2009, 04:37 PM

I could be wrong- but wasn't the Original Series Enterprise quite capable of glassing the surface of a planet on its own?

Renegade Paladin · 11-05-2009, 04:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by hamishspence

I could be wrong- but wasn't the Original Series Enterprise quite capable of glassing the surface of a planet on its own?

If it was, why was the Genesis Device such a big deal?

hamishspence · 11-05-2009, 04:49 PM

Because it was one, single, tiny missile? Rather than all the energy of the phasers and photon torpedoes firing for days on end?

And because it created an explosion that could destroy ships (and life) within a whole system- hence the need to flee at warp speed to avoid it.

That said- power in the Trek-verse can vary somewhat. In the Mirror Universe it speaks of Kirk destroying a planet in order to suppress a rebellion, and the Enterprises phasers are supposed to be able to level cities easily.

Texas_Ben · 11-05-2009, 04:58 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Renegade Paladin

No, they thought they did. In point of fact, they did no such thing and their sensors were being fooled by a spy in the fleet. Furthermore, the visuals are not consistent with the destruction being reported by their tactical officers.

Their sensors were being fooled into thinking that the planet was chock-full of founders when it was in fact abandoned. I'm pretty sure that they would know the destructive capabilities of their weapons ahead of time. It's not like they just up and one day said "Oh we're gunna DO THIS THANG, you in, romulans?". No, they were perfectly capable of rendering a planet uninhabitable within the space of a few minutes, it's just that... well, the planet was already uninhabited so they didn't really accomplish much.

And as to visuals not being consistent with what is happening, that's just sort of how trek rolls. I can't count the number of times in which they say that another ship is "Arbitrary number of kilometers away" when they are sitting nose-to-nose.

*Edit* Oh yeah, and that time they caught Garak trying to launch the Defiant's quantum torpedoes and wipe out the founders. So you know that one ship by itself is capable of doing heavy damage via orbital bombardment.

But this entire tangent about orbital-to-ground firepower is irrelevant; The Federation doesn't glass planets, because that's not how they do things[/i].

Renegade Paladin · 11-05-2009, 05:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Texas_Ben

Photon torpedos are warp-capable. And they do fire them at warp fairly often, usually when pursuing another vessel.

Just found the citation I was looking for. Nonsense. TNG S2E47, "Peak Performance." While running a battle simulation (which Riker dismissed as irrelevant early in the episode, saying that tactical skill is minor for a starship captain, when such skill is what keeps him and his ship from becoming a rapidly expanding debris field, an attitude I find telling with respect to the Federation's military competence), a simulated Romulan warbird warped up to the Enterprise but then dropped out of warp to fire torpedoes. A decidedly non-simulated Ferengi vessel did the exact same thing later in the episode. If warp strafing was such a gigantic advantage that they have access to, why don't they do it? Has there been any instance of a ship at warp attacking a ship not at warp, as opposed to firing at another ship going at relatively the same (warp) speed?

An Enemy Spy · 11-05-2009, 05:32 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Texas_Ben

Anyways, as to fleet sizes, I guess a fair method of comparison is to look at how many ships they throw at a major operation-- Operation return, in which the Federation moved to retake the wormhole, consisted of a task force of some 627 ships, according to Memory Alpha. The Covenant fleet at the Battle of Reach, the largest engagement in the war, numbered 314 ships.

Actually, the biggest fleet was the one that went with the Unyielding Heirophant. And it was implied that there are many many more ships.

Texas_Ben · 11-05-2009, 08:25 PM

I didn't include the fleet around the Unyielding Heirophant because I wasn't sure if all 500 ships were all planned to be committed to a single operation or if they were just hanging around the big refitting and staging area space station thing. It's been awhile since I read the books.

golentan · 11-05-2009, 09:52 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Renegade Paladin

Just found the citation I was looking for. Nonsense. TNG S2E47, "Peak Performance." While running a battle simulation (which Riker dismissed as irrelevant early in the episode, saying that tactical skill is minor for a starship captain, when such skill is what keeps him and his ship from becoming a rapidly expanding debris field, an attitude I find telling with respect to the Federation's military competence), a simulated Romulan warbird warped up to the Enterprise but then dropped out of warp to fire torpedoes. A decidedly non-simulated Ferengi vessel did the exact same thing later in the episode. If warp strafing was such a gigantic advantage that they have access to, why don't they do it? Has there been any instance of a ship at warp attacking a ship not at warp, as opposed to firing at another ship going at relatively the same (warp) speed?

I was under the impression that they don't conventionally fire at warp because they can't actually target between the two. It's not impossible, it's just much more difficult. The main advantage to FTL weapons systems is that you can go to warp and use them on an approaching enemy, preventing someone from doing something like, say, accelerating a vessel to some ridiculous value of C, de-warping, and smashing planets like eggshells because you can kill such lunatics while they're in warp.

Or, say, smash a covenant fleet before they realize that they need to turn on their shields (assuming warp takes you to or near slipspace).

I only actually know halo. I'm a fail geek, I've seen a total of 2 hours of star trek programs in my life. But having done a grand total of 5 minutes of research on this subject, I'm siding with the feds. The covenant, for all their big talk, have a woeful number of actual confirmed planets, a miniscule number of ships per engagement, and field inefficient versions of their own weapons. They have to GUESS were they're going. Seriously, humans inhabited a sphere. The covenant couldn't stick a pin in the center to save their life, finding the core by accident. And then from there, it takes them how many months to find Earth from *ALPHA FRICKIN CENTAURI?!* (okay, Epsilon Eridani. 10 light years, that's less than a couple hours with the covenant drives, and they couldn't manage a survey crew doing this.) Meanwhile the federation can use intelligent navigation techniques, a few idiots on a wandering starship excepted. The covenant can't possibly field FTL weapons, while the federation maybe can. The federation has longer range in real space, and fields antimatter warheads. I want to emphasize this. Anti. Matter. Warheads. As standard armament. I work the yield to be several orders of magnitude greater than the specifications for UNSC MAC guns.

Texas_Ben · 11-05-2009, 10:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by golentan

federation has longer range in real space, and fields antimatter warheads. I want to emphasize this. Anti. Matter. Warheads. As standard armament. I work the yield to be several orders of magnitude greater than the specifications for UNSC MAC guns.

While (As you may have guessed) I am definitely with you on the fact that the Federation steamrolls the covenant in space, I also ran the numbers on Photon Torpedos vs. MAC rounds just for some comparison (on the assumption that UNSC and Covenant weapons are similar in power levels)

Photon Torpedos are stated to have a yield of 64 Megatons, which according to Wolfram Alpha is 2.678x10^17 J (joules).

A MAC cannons fire a 600,000 kg projectile at .4c. Again according to Wolfram Alpha (and in agreement with my earlier calculations I did by hand) the MAC round has 4.32x10^21 J (joules) of energy. Since we can reasonably assume that the covenant weapons are as powerful as UNSC weapons, the Covenant firmly win in the area of firepower.

However, there is still the issue of attack range. The LONGEST-RANGE weapon in the Covenant arsenal is the Energy projector, and, insofar as I know, most ships aren't even equipped with those, instead having pulse lasers and plasma torpedoes. Photon torpedoes have three times the range of the Covenant Energy Projector, and pretty much every ship carries them.

Renegade Paladin · 11-05-2009, 10:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by golentan

I was under the impression that they don't conventionally fire at warp because they can't actually target between the two. It's not impossible, it's just much more difficult. The main advantage to FTL weapons systems is that you can go to warp and use them on an approaching enemy, preventing someone from doing something like, say, accelerating a vessel to some ridiculous value of C, de-warping, and smashing planets like eggshells because you can kill such lunatics while they're in warp.

Which is far less valuable than theoretical warp strafing.

Quote:

Originally Posted by golentan

Or, say, smash a covenant fleet before they realize that they need to turn on their shields (assuming warp takes you to or near slipspace).

That's a very large assumption, and one we know to be false; the two propulsion systems work on entirely different stated principles. Warp drive essentially bends space/time to achieve its effect, while slipspace is another dimension where superluminal travel is possible; there's no reason to presume they would interact.

Quote:

Originally Posted by golentan

I only actually know halo. I'm a fail geek, I've seen a total of 2 hours of star trek programs in my life. But having done a grand total of 5 minutes of research on this subject, I'm siding with the feds. The covenant, for all their big talk, have a woeful number of actual confirmed planets, a miniscule number of ships per engagement, and field inefficient versions of their own weapons.

The Federation tends to field a miniscule number of ships per engagement; during a full scale emergency on the Klingon-Romulan frontier (TNG S5E101, Redemption Part 2) the Federation could not muster more than twenty or so ships. Considering that the Romulan border during that era was the source of the Federation's greatest conventional military threat, you'd think they'd have a significant part of their fleet in the vicinity, and if that's a significant part of their fleet, it doesn't say much to their fleet strength. And that's even without the infamous 40 ship task force sent to engage the existential threat posed by the Borg cube in Best of Both Worlds; if that's the best they can do to respond to the imminent invasion and assimilation of Earth then they obviously do not have a very numerous starfleet.

Quote:

Originally Posted by golentan

They have to GUESS were they're going. Seriously, humans inhabited a sphere. The covenant couldn't stick a pin in the center to save their life, finding the core by accident. And then from there, it takes them how many months to find Earth from *ALPHA FRICKIN CENTAURI?!* (okay, Epsilon Eridani. 10 light years, that's less than a couple hours with the covenant drives, and they couldn't manage a survey crew doing this.) Meanwhile the federation can use intelligent navigation techniques, a few idiots on a wandering starship excepted.

In their defense, 10 light years is a huge distance. Surveying deep space isn't nearly as easy as you seem to think it is.

Quote:

Originally Posted by golentan

The covenant can't possibly field FTL weapons, while the federation maybe can. The federation has longer range in real space, and fields antimatter warheads. I want to emphasize this. Anti. Matter. Warheads. As standard armament. I work the yield to be several orders of magnitude greater than the specifications for UNSC MAC guns.

In order: I don't see any reason so far to believe that the Federation can engage non-warping targets from warp. If the Federation has longer range in real space, why do they engage their enemies at point blank range all the time? And finally, saying "It's antimatter!!1!" doesn't mean anything. Matter/antimatter annihilation is a powerful force, yes, but it's not a magic win button. Its power is directly dependent upon the amount of matter and the amount of antimatter annihilated; it is entirely possible for a simple mass driver to do more damage than an antimatter warhead if it flings a large enough mass at a high enough velocity to impart more energy on target than the matter/antimatter annihilation of the warhead can deliver.

warty goblin · 11-05-2009, 10:51 PM

While surveying space in a sphere with radius ten light years is a rampant pain in the ass due to the staggering volume that represents, that also strikes me as the stupid way to look. I wonder how hard it would be to observe stars for unnatural/unusual emmisions in their spectra, such as might be caused by the radios and other communications of an intelligent species. One probably isn't going to be able to to actually watch Survivor: Reach from ten light years away doing this, but figuring out that all is not normal over there seems to me to be pretty likely.

I'd need to crunch the numbers to be sure, but frankly I don't have the time or energy to look up the relevant equations/factiods at the moment.

golentan · 11-05-2009, 11:55 PM

The full list of stars within 15 light years of Reach.

Spoiler

They showed up to reach with 300+ capital ships. Who knows how many support vessels that requires. You're telling me that they are so mindblowingly incompetent that they can't afford to, on facing what is obviously a core world due to military buildup and a visible from space urban population 10 times larger than anything they had encountered, perform a quick analysis of surrounding systems and spend the 6 hours round trip and 36 small ships that it would take to find earth from a quick scan of easily visible stars using the massive parallax that starships with sensors adequate to engage an enemy in space can provide?

10 light years is huge, yes. But unless humanity's homeworld is located on a comet they don't need to care about that, do they? They just need to survey the environments humans have been proven to live in. Planetary systems, around stars, do a quick check for chatter and you're off. If a probe doesn't return, send a forceful followup mission. That's without even using any method for ruling out some of the radioactive hellholes around here.

I think you just made the Federation's case that much stronger.

Yeah. Both sides field relatively small fleets. But the federation is at best a local power, while the covenant claims galactic status. That's what I meant by pathetic numbers. And the federation seems to be bigger than the UNSC (150 species? That's half as many homeworlds as earth had colonies, without factoring in colonies), and has the benefit of better weapons and shielding. The covenant had trouble with the UNSC, not "We're going to lose" trouble but "take a 15 year war of attrition to win" trouble. If the feds can stretch the war of attrition longer, they have the benefit that they keep advancing while the covenant stands still. Because if the covenant improves beyond minor tweaks it means that they've lost their dogma, which means they're no longer the covenant, and all the subservient species stop sending troops and go home.

And you're saying with shielding, better weapons, better numbers, teleportation ("hey, prophet. I just sent your bridge staff a present. Be careful unwrapping it, the contents are sensitive.") and theoretical warp strafing (because it is theoretically possible I'm given to understand) they don't have enough fight in them to survive?

Renegade Paladin · 11-06-2009, 12:16 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by golentan

The full list of stars within 15 light years of Reach.

Spoiler

They showed up to reach with 300+ capital ships. Who knows how many support vessels that requires. You're telling me that they are so mindblowingly incompetent that they can't afford to, on facing what is obviously a core world due to military buildup and a visible from space urban population 10 times larger than anything they had encountered, perform a quick analysis of surrounding systems and spend the 6 hours round trip and 36 small ships that it would take to find earth from a quick scan of easily visible stars using the massive parallax that starships with sensors adequate to engage an enemy in space can provide?

You're presuming that it is in fact obvious that Reach was a core world. They don't know anything about humanity's disposition; for all the Covenant knows, they'd been glassing minor outposts and Reach was but one of many other planets. The population of Reach does not in any way tell them they're close to the human homeworld.

Quote:

Originally Posted by golentan

10 light years is huge, yes. But unless humanity's homeworld is located on a comet they don't need to care about that, do they? They just need to survey the environments humans have been proven to live in. Planetary systems, around stars, do a quick check for chatter and you're off. If a probe doesn't return, send a forceful followup mission. That's without even using any method for ruling out some of the radioactive hellholes around here.

I think you just made the Federation's case that much stronger.

Yes, but just because Reach was ten light years from Earth doesn't mean it had to be. The distance could easily have been much larger, and the Covenant had no way to tell whether it actually was or not. They had no way of knowing that sending a ship to every star within ten light years would be anything other than a wild goose chase.

Quote:

Originally Posted by golentan

Yeah. Both sides field relatively small fleets. But the federation is at best a local power, while the covenant claims galactic status. That's what I meant by pathetic numbers. And the federation seems to be bigger than the UNSC (150 species? That's half as many homeworlds as earth had colonies, without factoring in colonies), and has the benefit of better weapons and shielding. The covenant had trouble with the UNSC, not "We're going to lose" trouble but "take a 15 year war of attrition to win" trouble. If the feds can stretch the war of attrition longer, they have the benefit that they keep advancing while the covenant stands still. Because if the covenant improves beyond minor tweaks it means that they've lost their dogma, which means they're no longer the covenant, and all the subservient species stop sending troops and go home.

Yes, and pathetic numbers for a galactic power would still steamroll the Federation. They fielded hundreds of capital ships to Reach, any one of which had the firepower to smash any given Federation starship with impunity. That's the lynchpin of the whole thing right there; Covenant ships are heavily armed and shielded in a standard of "heavily armed and shielded" that has a much higher baseline for comparison than Star Trek.

Quote:

Originally Posted by golentan

And you're saying with shielding, better weapons, better numbers, teleportation ("hey, prophet. I just sent your bridge staff a present. Be careful unwrapping it, the contents are sensitive.") and theoretical warp strafing (because it is theoretically possible I'm given to understand) they don't have enough fight in them to survive?

Covenant capital ships are heavily shielded; transporters would be useless. This is a major plot point of the Halo story, you know; the UNSC is grossly overmatched and only survives because of the vastness of space and ignorance of the Covenant re: the locations of their colonies.

And no, I'm not saying that with all of those things they don't have enough fight in them to survive; I'm saying they don't have enough fight in them to survive because, aside from teleportation that is easily blocked by pretty much anything down to and including several meters of dirt and a magnetic field, they don't have those things. They do not have better numbers (what part of only mustering 40 ships to counter a threat to their capital escaped you?), they do not have better weapons, and warp strafing is both unproven and possibly useless even if it works because a photon torpedo is orders of magnitude less powerful than weapons that Covenant shielding routinely shrugs off with ease. That is why the Covenant wins this scenario.

golentan · 11-06-2009, 01:17 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Renegade Paladin

Covenant capital ships are heavily shielded; transporters would be useless. This is a major plot point of the Halo story, you know; the UNSC is grossly overmatched and only survives because of the vastness of space and ignorance of the Covenant re: the locations of their colonies.

I don't think you understand the point I was making. The federation uses antimatter warheads as standard weaponry. There is no theoretical maximum yield. Which means they can build a warhead weighing 2 kilograms and it will have a blast greater than a mac gun, with less cost involved. At longer range. With a faster reload time. From warp (because even if they can't shoot from there, they can teleport from there and the covenant can only develop countermeasures if they survive to report). They don't have to land it inside (though that would be awesome) they just need to get it near enough. And starfleet seems to be mildly military at best, a full federation mobilization should be a lot more impressive. And they have longer Realspace Range listed.

It should have been obvious reach was a core world. Humans live in sphere. Denser population closer to center of sphere. Entire rest of sphere destroyed before battle of reach. Suddenly: Large Fleet, heavy population, massive last ditch battle and evacuation effort. Covenant reasoning: ????

At least scout. Don't discover earth months later when one of your top three leaders goes there with a token defense force and winds up conquering the place by accident.

Renegade Paladin · 11-06-2009, 02:46 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by golentan

I don't think you understand the point I was making. The federation uses antimatter warheads as standard weaponry. There is no theoretical maximum yield. Which means they can build a warhead weighing 2 kilograms and it will have a blast greater than a mac gun, with less cost involved.

Alright, you made the claim, let's see the numbers. How much energy is released by two kilograms of antimatter interacting with an equivalent mass of matter? Don't be shy; you've obviously done the calculations if you're making the claim. Right?

Hint: There is a theoretical maximum yield, and that maximum is defined by the potential energy release of total annihilation of the mass of antimatter. That you think that there's no maximum limit just because there's antimatter involved shows that you don't understand how it works.

golentan · 11-06-2009, 03:25 AM

An antimatter warheads sole limit is the amount of reaction mass.

The given yield of a MAC is 1.7 teratons. It has a maximum effective range of 100,000 km given UNSC targeting.

The energy is released as photons. An antimatter catalyzed fusion reaction of 10^18 protons gives a one kiloton yield. Since the yield scales linearly, this gives a one teraton reaction for 1.68 kg. Thus a 1.7 teraton weapon (easier to handle than a pure matter/antimatter reaction but has other problems) has a payload of 2.8 kg. This is what I was thinking of when I did my post.

This is taken from wiki, but checking it against the mass energy equivalence I think I dropped some stuff. I remembered the value of a kilogram of antimatter as ~90 petajoules and did a mental flip to petatons. I think I wound up just calculating the simultaneous trigger mass without the reaction fuel itself.

The actual weight of an equivalent warhead without adding kinetic energy using a pure matter/antimatter reaction is 5000 tons. Assuming you can't use the enemy for reaction mass or impart velocity, of course, in which case the weight drops by half or more. That's still greater than the weight of a 600 ton MAC round.

Actually, now I can't figure out how the UNSC can fire those puppies. Equal and opposite reaction, they should pick up fractions of C in a second, jellying the crew unless they can impart artificial gravity (can't think of another way to manage) on the order of thousands of Gs with perfect precision.

...

I may have to switch my vote to covenant for the win here.

Texas_Ben · 11-06-2009, 10:19 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Renegade Paladin;7262969

The [I

Federation[/i] tends to field a miniscule number of ships per engagement; during a full scale emergency on the Klingon-Romulan frontier (TNG S5E101, Redemption Part 2) the Federation could not muster more than twenty or so ships. Considering that the Romulan border during that era was the source of the Federation's greatest conventional military threat, you'd think they'd have a significant part of their fleet in the vicinity, and if that's a significant part of their fleet, it doesn't say much to their fleet strength. And that's even without the infamous 40 ship task force sent to engage the existential threat posed by the Borg cube in Best of Both Worlds; if that's the best they can do to respond to the imminent invasion and assimilation of Earth then they obviously do not have a very numerous starfleet.

A few things: It was a full-scale emergency along the Klingon-Romulan border, not the Federation-Romulan border. And if your ally is being attacked, you're going to go help them out, sure, but you aren't going to commit all your forces, or even a sizeable chunk of them, especially since the Klingons have a very strong military to begin with.
And as to the battle at Wolf 359: They assembled 40 ships to take out just one Borg ship. They had to do so on short notice, and as it was Starfleet's first real encounter with the Borg they had no way of knowing how dangerous they were.

And there are plenty of examples of the Federation engaging in combat with task forces comprising of hundreds of ships, most notably during the Dominion war. For example, (And one I've already brough up, no less), over 600 ships were involved in Operation return.

Likewise, you seem to be under the mistaken impression that the Covenant are in the habit of throwing huge fleets at every problem. The fleet at reach, consisting of 314 Covenant ships, was the largest fleet engaged by UNSC forces during the war. The average fleet size was much much smaller than that. A few examples:
Battle of Sigma Octanus IV --24 Ships
Battle of Sigma Octanus IV --12 Ships
Battle of Installation 00 --31 Ships
Battle of Jericho VII --36 Ships
Battle of Earth --45 Ships
Battle of Onyx --54 Ships

Which points to the average fleet size being between 20-50 ships, with them throwing a couple hundred ships at large operations.
Also, while poking around on the Halo wiki for those numbers, I found that the Fleet of Particular Justice, which was the fleet present at Reach and later at Installation 04 was the 3rd largest fleet fielded by the covenant. So if their third-largest fleet was around 300 ships and their largest, the Fleet which was defending High Charity, was also stated to be "Several hundred", we can assume that the overall Covenant fleet strength is several thousand ships.

Starfleet's fleet strength, according to this was 3,500 pre-dominion war, So we can put the Federation and Covenant at similar numbers as far as fleet strength is concerned.

Since the federation weapons outrange covenant weapons by a considerable margin (300,000km vs 100,000km for their longest-ranged weapon, plasma torpedoes have a significantly shorter range than even that), they are perfectly capable of whittling them down before they close the distance... If indeed they can do so at all: I can't find anything on Covenant ships, but Federation ships can reach .8c at full impulse. Since the covenant ships aren't capable of dodging MAC rounds, which travel at .4c, it's a safe bet that .8c is well beyond their capabilities.

Even if they could close the distance, I find it highly unlikely that they could even hit the Federation ships. UNSC ships were capable of dodging plasma torpedoes fired by the Covenant, and they needed to overcome their inertia before they can move. Federation Starships are equipped with inertial dampers, which means that they can change direction on a whim. That plasma torpedo? Whoosh, nothing but net... er, space.

Quote:

Originally Posted by golentan

The given yield of a MAC is 1.7 teratons. It has a maximum effective range of 100,000 km given UNSC targeting

Except that it isn't. They give you everything you need to calculate the kinetic energy of a MAC round... that is, it's mass and it's velocity.
With a mass of 600,000kg and a Velocity of .4c, the Kinetic energy is equal to (.5)MV^2. Plug it all in, and you get this. Convert that to Gigatons of TNT, and you fall short of 1.7 teratons by quite a bit.

The MAC discussion is incindental, however, since it serves merely to establish a baseline for weapon power in the Haloverse. Which doesn't really matter since Covenant weapons are out-ranged by fed

Also, my earlier figure may not have been correct: The yield of Photon torpedoes may be as high as 690 Gigatons.