Anyone else looking forward to Halo 4?+ some trailer speculation

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**purplefood**

On the ground they do well. (Not that well but they do well)
The ovenant own the air and space.
If the Covenant lose the ground war they simply glass the planet.
Humanities engagements in space do not go as well for them unless they have set things up perfectly, and even then...

**Soladrin**

Totalwar1402 wrote:
purplefood wrote:The ghosts would not be able to charge the Marines or they'd be annhialated by fire.
Even the assault rifle has a good chance of killing a ghost pilot and ghosts are fairly short range.
So a square formation would force them to do exactly what cavalry did and instead of charging them they would have to make runs against the square and pick them off one by one whereas no matter what direction the ghosts came from the marines would always be able to present fire.
Not perfect but still okay...
A skirmish formation would be okay but unless you wiped out all of the ghosts on the first pass you would be spread out and easy prey for the ghosts...

That's my fairly amatuer opinion on that.

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Totalwar1402 wrote:

So they're Imperial China then?

I know, that same human exceptionalism in literature is one of the few things I didn't like about Mass Effect. It seemed so obnoxious and counter-intuitive to the series moral point. Its also probably something I like about 40k, it doesn't force the humans are awesome in every way idea down your throat. Their empire is dying and has regressed to the point of near madness.

In fairness the novels put a decent point across.
Humans are losing.
In Ghosts of Onyx you see they are doing so badly they are using child soldiers on suicide missions. Their objective isn't a fixed mission such as kill x or capture y. It's go over there and kill as many of the covenant before you die. To me that shows a humanity willing to do anything to fight extinction. Humanity in Halo is presented as both positive and negative, the bright bits are bright but the dark bits are dark...

Losing? They have a funny way of showing it! (happy laugh)

Reminds me of the (sorry if you don't know reference) Wars of Light and Shadow book series where the Clansmen are meant to be losing in the background, yet every battle scene is of them butchering with ease the Alliance army which outnumbers them 10;1. Theres a fine line between noble and heroic sacrifice against overwhelming odds and stormtrooper syndrome where you just don't get that vibe. Ghosts of Onyx was one of those books for me.

Trouble is the Spartans weren't created to fight the Covenant but for the Earth based government to sow terror among insurrectionists by having a force of invincible soldiers. For which Halsley and co commited and excused acts of utter barbarism. Which I think was also out of touch with what Halo is like in the games. Theres never any hint that the UNSC is bad, like you get in the books; in fact they're whiter than white as it were.

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Razorspirit wrote:Im rather scared that the pistol grenade thing is going to turn the game into COD. Seems like a noob tube, but as long as you still don't get to choose what your starting weapons are, multiplayer will still be fun. Looking foreward to storyline. Very interested in seeing where they go with it since the covenant is broken and the flood has vanished to the shadows for the most part. Wonder how long Cheifs been in stasis as well.

DMR/Battle rifle is Halo's noob tube IMO since you can easily beat any other equiped soldier with the possible exception of the sniper rifle with range and a good shot. Doubt one weapon would be that bad. Remember the grenade launcher?

Yes, losing. By the time Halo begins, 90% of humanities worlds are little more then floating orbs of glass. Their primary military planet among them. The only reason we won is because the elites rebelled.

**Totalwar1402**

Tostedandy, I understand that deploying square was a perfectly valid and rational tactic during the early modern period. The problem is that this is a sci fi setting where both armies have long range, high power automatic weapons. Both bullets and plasma. Standing in ranks just isn't advisable under those conditions; WW1 is the best example of why a modern army should not do this. Also, an armoured ghost protecting the driver is much harder to stop than a horse and moves considerably faster. It also, cannot be stopped by being packed together in formation. I haven't played Napoleon, yet I have played Rome Total War and you need to think more like charging armoured elephants into phalanxs to get an idea of the carnage that would cause. Yes, the covies should have just rolled some wraiths up when the humans squared up. or even jackals as sharpshooters; but they didn't because it was another case of the Halo books being needlessly silly and childish. Oh we have an AI who has the personality of the Duke of Wellington lets make him put the marines into square formation!

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purplefood wrote:On the ground they do well. (Not that well but they do well)
The ovenant own the air and space.
If the Covenant lose the ground war they simply glass the planet.
Humanities engagements in space do not go as well for them unless they have set things up perfectly, and even then...

Thats the theme as laid out, but none of the battles in books live by their own creed; which becomes progressively worse.

Name one narrated MAJOR battle detailed in the books where more humans die than covenant. Even Reach is pretty clear that they own far more of them in ground and space before giving way. Onyx is just, I don't even want to talk about Onyx.

**purplefood**

Totalwar1402 wrote:Balance. They inflict a hundred to one casulaties (guesstimate) in every battle BEFORE you add the Spartans. Thats not a last stand, thats a rolling massacre.

They talk as if they're losing, but its not really shown in the battle scene and the most epic ones have the UNSC shockingly triumphant in nearly all cases. Including the fleet battles despite them claiming a Covenant ship can beat three UNSC vessels of the same class; BEFORE you consider that the UNSC has next to no cruisers whilst the aliens have whole fleets of those monsters that dwarf every UNSC ship.

I'll admit, it isn't shown in the foreground of ether the books or the games. However, you can see the kind of losses humanity is taking in some of the further background. In the first successful naval engagment between humanity and the covenant humanity lost 13 ships to 1. Out of 40.
Subsequent engagements go as follow:
117 ships against 12. UNSC lose 37 ships.
17 against 3. UNSC lose 11.
The UNSC eventually started fighting smarter but still take heavy casualties...

**Totalwar1402**

BTW this has became massively off topic. Guilty looking face. So I should probably stop commenting about some of this stuff, if you want to start a topic elsewhere be happy to continue but i suspect you're pretty tired of me ranting about the Halo books.

**purplefood**

Totalwar1402 wrote:BTW this has became massively off topic. Guilty looking face. So I should probably stop commenting about some of this stuff, if you want to start a topic elsewhere be happy to continue but i suspect you're pretty tired of me ranting about the Halo books.

It's a nice kind of ranting to be honest...
Nothing too vitriolic and you have some fairly decent points...
But yeah, best get back OT.

**Toastedandy**

Totalwar1402 wrote:Tostedandy, I understand that deploying square was a perfectly valid and rational tactic during the early modern period. The problem is that this is a sci fi setting where both armies have long range, high power automatic weapons. Both bullets and plasma. Standing in ranks just isn't advisable under those conditions; WW1 is the best example of why a modern army should not do this. Also, an armoured ghost protecting the driver is much harder to stop than a horse and moves considerably faster. It also, cannot be stopped by being packed together in formation. I haven't played Napoleon, yet I have played Rome Total War and you need to think more like charging armoured elephants into phalanxs to get an idea of the carnage that would cause. Yes, the covies should have just rolled some wraiths up when the humans squared up. or even jackals as sharpshooters; but they didn't because it was another case of the Halo books being needlessly silly and childish. Oh we have an AI who has the personality of the Duke of Wellington lets make him put the marines into square formation!

Ghosts are weak. I don't know why you are thinking they are armoured uber leet alien tech A ghost is NOTHING like an armoured elephant, it would be more similar with the bike from tron than a frikkin war elephant. I can tell you from exp, that a ghost is no protection against massed fire from even 2 competent players, and that's with Chiefs armour. If the 100 of the UNSC can hit with 2 rounds each, then the Ghosts would be killed (Just for perspective of how weak a ghost is) But again a little elaboration would be appreciated, its not a debate unless you have an opinion

**LordofHats**

Really what the EU showed is that the UNSC is a horribly corrupt government. Again, not mentioned in the game, but the Earth and its colonizes are effectively ruled by a military controlled UN and exist under a very loose dictatorship. The UNSC can pretty much do whatever it damn well pleases and there's nothing anyone can do about it. They were experimenting on children long before the Covenant came along (Spartan II Program).

They talk as if they're losing, but its not really shown in the battle scene and the most epic ones have the UNSC shockingly triumphant in nearly all cases. Including the fleet battles despite them claiming a Covenant ship can beat three UNSC vessels of the same class; BEFORE you consider that the UNSC has next to no cruisers whilst the aliens have whole fleets of those monsters that dwarf every UNSC ship.

???

Have you read the EU? The UNSC hardly ever wins and universally portrayed as valiantly losing their engagements. Its even stated at the very beginning of the Fall of Reach. John and the Spartans tear apart an entire battalion only to realize that it wasn't enough to save the planet. The UNSC won only a few space engagements.

**Henners91**

Soladrin wrote:
Totalwar1402 wrote:Nope, have to disagree, they really went further than just implying that. For example:

in The Fall of Reach they appear with their entire fleet in fron of the defence guns when they have the ability to go wherever they want in slip-space but were incapable of having their own AI tell them this.

in Ghosts of Onyx the whole elite fleet wanders into a nuclear minefield because they don't bother using their sensors

in The Flood, a hundred ghosts charge into a formation of marines across open ground and are blown to bits. Even though the opponent is deploying in square like some 18th century army. Which was just, just wrong.

Ghosts of Onyx the covenant don't learn to provide failsafes to prevent an attacker turning the air supply off despite the cheif having done this to capture a battleship in the previous game. The book even highlights this point.

First Strike, the whole covenant fleet rushes out to kill the UNSC admiral on said captured battleship, rushing out because he goes Cole Train on them before self destructing the ship and destroying all of them including a High Charity type ship.

Thats not religion. Even the most blind faith in tradition can only make you so stupid, this just implies that they lack common sense and any notion of what their stuff does. Its like, despite being thousands of years old, having been put in a life or death situation where they have to make use of every resource to stay alive they still act like you got a medieval knight from the past and handed him a plasma rifle and energy shields. No, that just makes no sense. IMO, I may be an atheist myself, but the opinion that religion makes you dumb/incapable of change is a relatively recent concept and is woefully ignorant of the fact that most generals, soldiers, statesmen etc throughout history were religious to some extent. It simply didn't impact their thinking to the extent implied and I think its a tired cliche in literature.

Oh, and 40k gets away with it for two reasons.

1-40k doesn't have any pretense of taking itself seriously as sci fi. It is just Grimdark.

2-They aren't completely stupid and at least the have the excuse that most of their gods do exist in some form in the verse itself.

Oh I aree. But you have to keep in mind that Elites are the supreme military commanders ( or at least used to be ). And it's been noted many times that they value honour and tradition over everything else. Which explains a lot of their idiocity, though not all of it. It's pretty much like WWII in a sci-fi setting. Blitzkrieg versus traditional tactics.

Never read any Halo stuff, only played the games, but didn't the Covenant nick their technology from the Founders? If so, it's no small wonder that they might not understand it fully themselves.

**Soladrin**

Yeah, that's why humans are much better at actually making tech and adjusting it, we have thorough understanding of it.

Where as the covenant have always had forerunner toys, but completely bound by doctrine and such they have almost no understanding of it, and in the end all the actual labor is done by engineers, who themselves were made by the forerunners for that task. So in the end, the covenant know feth all about their own gizmos.

To give you an example, when cortana and MC hijacked a covenant flag ship. Cortana adjusted some stuff in the magnetic fields for the plasma weapons, which transformed it into a beam weapon, capable of making 90 degree turns and with pinpoint accuracy. She subsequently used it to kill of any nearby covy ship. (IIRC)

**CrazedVaultBoy**

Ever heard the term nerdgasm? well I did exactly that for the trailer... needed a new laptop