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originally posted in:Halo Archive
Edited by Flawless Cowboy:
6/13/2014 9:25:37 AM
7
How in the hell did Earth's defenses fail in the autumn of 2552?
300 of the most powerful ODP stations in fiction plus Home fleet support should have kicked some serious ass. (Please don't say the Covenant planted anti matter bombs on every single ODP station.)
I know Covenant ships are generally more maneuverable than any comparable craft, but Regret's expeditionary fleet should have been pulverized space debris inside the first hour.
EDIT: Also, please explain why the ODP grid's petaton kinetic yield is completely ineffectual against the Mantle's Approach while a simple mining survey charge annihilates it?
This, along with the inexplicable armor change in Halo 4 endlessly infuriates me.
Double Meta Edit: Is this the new Universe Forum as well? If so, cool.
English
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[quote]How in the hell did Earth's defenses fail in the autumn of 2552?[/quote]Covenant ships are vastly superior to UNSC tech. Despite the sheer number of defenses, it was inevitable that the Covenant would breach UNSC defenses. However, considering that Lord Hood managed to contest the Covenant in the lunar perimeter even after the ODG began to shatter for a month is very impressive. Had the Covenant not shattered the ODG, Earth would have held out for a considerable time. [quote]300 of the most powerful ODP stations in fiction plus Home fleet support should have kicked some serious ass. (Please don't say the Covenant planted anti matter bombs on every single ODP station.)[/quote]Ah I see what you want to know now. Okay, so the ODG was made up of 300 SMACS arranged in clusters of 3 around the planet. That's 100 clusters. Each cluster was was assigned to cover a given section of space. Any deviation of that coverage might weaken the defense perimeter. As the cluster above Cairo was neutralized, a hole was opened up in its firing pattern allowing Covenant ships to breach the perimeter and presumably destroy other clusters from beneath the ODG. [quote]I know Covenant ships are generally more maneuverable than any comparable craft, but Regret's expeditionary fleet should have been pulverized space debris inside the first hour.[/quote]Which is why Regret employed ingenious strategies. [quote]Also, please explain why the ODP grid's petaton kinetic yield is completely ineffectual against the Mantle's Approach while a simple mining survey charge annihilates it? This, along with the inexplicable armor change in Halo 4 endlessly infuriates me.[/quote]Armor plating is placed on the outside, not the inside. A more complex answer is that a large portion of the ship's power was being used to power the composer's systems. Disrupting it could have caused a chain reaction of explosions and power loss. Additionally, Forerunner ships are held together by hard light. It could quite possibly be that the ship literally fell to pieces. [quote]Double Meta Edit: Is this the new Universe Forum as well? If so, cool.[/quote]Pretty much. Halo lore all day 'erry day.
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Actually, a pretty satisfying answer. Thank you. Especially about the ODP clusters. That would present a hole to exploit. However, I don't believe that Regret would have any sort of cunning as a tactician, but I guess when you're a Hierarch you can hire the best talent. And also, I'm okay with the Mantle's Approach now.
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Edited by Mr Admirals7044: 6/14/2014 12:04:11 AMBefore becoming a Hierarch, Regret's duties actually had him serve on the front lines, crushing rebellions. So if he may not be a trained tactician, he would definitely have some valuable insight, which would go a long way since he favors the Elites skills and prowess.
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This one is easy: the Covenant learned from their mistakes at Reach. They managed to destroy a number of stations, and either avoid them completely by exiting out of slipspace below their orbit, or "blow past them" like the Assault Carriers did in Halo 2. The ODP's yield, at its highest, is 50 Gigatons, if you ignore the Teraton yield and likely mistake in the Halo Encyclopedia. The Mantle's Approach is 3 times the length of a Forerunner Fortress Class battleship. Go figure.
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Here's my take on the whole Mantle's Approach thing. It had incredibly strong shields and good armor, but a very squishy interior. I heard somewhere that up to two thirds of the ship were hardlight, to allow for variable geometry, such as that displayed when the Didact very quickly reattached the composer, and then the various moving pieces during and after the trench run. So, it would be extremely hard to get past it's outer defenses, (I'm pretty sure the Infinity was only able to penetrate the armor around the composer because Chief disabled a localized shield generator over a section of relatively weak armor plating, considering that the entire section of ship was just recently added/reconfigured around the composer). So once the nuke detonated, it blew the surroundings to smithereens, but also probably disabled most of the systems ship wide, including most of the hardlight (or maybe that energy was what Cortana used to shield Chief from the blast?). The remaining parts of the ship just kind of fell apart
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Still holes. I could accept that explanation if ships jumped directly into Low Orbit, but they didn't. They should have been vaporized. 50 Gigatons would still kick everything's ass. I know how big the Mantle's Approach is. Why did a low yield mining charge wreck it?
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Edited by Quantum: 6/13/2014 9:58:04 AM1. Referring to the small fleet? They didn't take out the defenses, the later Brute led fleet did. They could have used a microslipspace jump... but we can't see shit from the Cairo anyway. 2. 50 Gigatons is overkill, it could be 1 Gigaton but it wouldn't make a difference if the rounds missed :P. 3. Cortana specifically stated that the nuke would not stop the Composer unless the Internal Shield was taken down. This small mining charge was an excavation grade 30MT Havoc nuke.
