The Covenant (Halo) invade the Federation

Enterprise E · Post by **Enterprise E** » Fri May 02, 2008 6:02 pm

A couple of years after Nemesis, the Federation loses contact with one of its outermost colonies on the Orion arm of the Milky Way galaxy. When they send a ship to investigate, they make contact with a Covenant Cruiser and receive only one message: "Your destruction is the will of the gods; and we are their instrument." The ship retreats to inform Starfleet Command of the situation, seeing as there is no one left on the colony, the inhabitants either having evacuated or been killed. The Covenant has invaded the Federation with the intention of wiping out all of the humans. Any allies of the humans will also be targets, but will only be actively targeted if they are with the humans, or are actively fighting alongside the humans. There will be no Covenant Civil War to interfere with the Covenant's war with humanity. Will the Covenant be able to exterminate humanity, or will the United Federation of Planets be able to repel the Covenant invasion?

Narsil · Post by **Narsil** » Fri May 02, 2008 6:29 pm

Now, this is an odd situation. On the whole, the Federation forces have far more Neat Gadgets than the UNSC do. But the UNSC has a bit more brute force up its sleeves, which is really what helped them against the Covenant. Mind, this is just random recollection of other threads on similar subjects; I don't know for certain as I don't have much information.

Now, what the Covenant does have is the Arbiter. The Arbiter, being the direct equivalent of the Master Chief but with a cloaking device (srsly!), is going to probably have enough fanboys wanking him to make this pretty much a completely and utterly impossible debate if they turn up.

Of course, if I'm not mistaken, haven't the Covenant been known to glass worlds before, putting them on higher firepower levels than the Federation which can only really destroy most population centres before running out of photon torpedoes?

I'm going to tentatively say that it would be largely a tie, until such a time as a more educated individual says otherwise.

l33telboi · Post by **l33telboi** » Fri May 02, 2008 6:56 pm

Ugh, there's been a slew of threads popping up on SB lately that deals with Halo and I even started reading the novels, and one thing became more then a bit obvious just a few pages in. Without some heavy rationalization nothing makes sense.

We've got ships that are almost lighter then air, velocities regularly reach into the c fractional area, but the events don't fit those velocities, the ships are supposed to be fusion-based, but even then they'd have to carry several times their own mass in fuel in order to do what they're said to do.

Basically, the outcome varies on how you quantify the verse.

Narsil · Post by **Narsil** » Fri May 02, 2008 7:34 pm

Hmm... we could substitute the Halo forces for the science fiction forces that they were very slightly ripped off from. It'd be a rapidly-lost fight for the Federation, mind, since the Covenant were quite clearly based off of the Idirans in a thematic sense, but still...

Post by **Trinoya** » Fri May 02, 2008 9:07 pm

The federation has a major advantage in transporter technology and shields. While outnumbered somewhere on the realm of three to one (roughly, it might even be as high as 4 to one), the federation is fielding much more superior craft. Precision phaser strikes and the transporter will make the vast ground combat for which the cov. are so eager to employ pretty much useless, especially because cov. ground tactics are heavily supported by air/space based units and they rely on that to give them a tactical advantage over their in universe counterparts.

Now before the fan-boys come out and assault me with talk about 'shielding this' and 'energy beams that' we already know that a MAC gun can EASILY destroy cov-ships in 1-3 shots depending on type, shielding, etc. Mac guns are below straight up nuclear yields of earth, per the Halo series.

Even with low end torp yields your talking about 5-8 torpedoes to do the job, and they have a much higher fire rate than mac guns.

It also says something about cov. targeting systems and range that they have a hard time dealing with fixed installations in space... a problem that would be made many times more problematic with the warp capable federation.

This isn't the most unbalanced thread I've ever seen of course... It will be hard to ever beat the "Babylon Five vs the empire and federation" threads I saw ages ago... but frankly the shield advantage here is so massive that I think this will be over really quickly.

And before the wars fans think I'm playing favorites with feds... I think the empire would soundly crush halo as well, somewhat faster than the feds due to the numbers issue no longer being a problem.

Post by **Mike DiCenso** » Sat May 03, 2008 1:30 am

Narsil wrote: Of course, if I'm not mistaken, haven't the Covenant been known to glass worlds before, putting them on higher firepower levels than the Federation which can only really destroy most population centres before running out of photon torpedoes?

It is correct that the Covenant ships have carried out the "glassing" of planets, however, it is a relatively slow process compared to their Trek and Wars (ICS) counterparts. A fleet of 20 Romulan and Cardassian (4 D'Deridex warbirds and 16 Cardassian Keldons) ships were expected to strip the Founder's homeworld down to the core in just 6 hours time, while 36 Covenant ships (a mix of one big ship, and a number of cruisers and destroyers) would take a number of hours just to boil Jericho VII's (an Earth-like planet) atmosphere off, possibly a full day.

Remember that the Federation has to be on par with the capabilites of the Romulans and Cardassians, or either or both powers would have just run them right over long ago without breaking a sweat. So the upper limits for a Federation ship, should at least be on par with a Covenant ship's upper limits, though in reality, it is likely higher depending of the type and class of starship.

Also, a Federation starship will likely not rely solely on it's photon torpedoes for planetary bombardment anymore than the Romulan and Cardassian one did. In fact, in "Mirror, Mirror" [TOS, Season 2], The ISS Enterprise of the Mirror Universe seemed to be set to carry out the extermination of the Halkans with phasers only. Torpedoes are not even mentioned once for consideration in use for this bombardment.

It is less certain if the regular universe USS Enterprise would have used just one weapon or the other, or both in carrying out General Order 24 on planet Eminiar VII in "A Taste of Armageddon" [TOS, Season 1].
-Mike

sonofccn · Post by **sonofccn** » Sat May 03, 2008 3:48 pm

Trinoya wrote:Precision phaser strikes and the transporter will make the vast ground combat for which the cov. are so eager to employ pretty much useless,

I may be wrong but the Cov. are not really prone to ground combat,hence why humanity was loosing. Unless there was something they wanted on the world they glassed it like Reach. Atleast that is how it seems to me how they operate. I could be wrong.

As to the whole combat thing I say it could go either way. On one end we have Cov. ships glassing world with gigaton claimed yeilds. on the other Earth ships were a threat and they basicly fired giant railguns and nukes. So I'd guess it a toss up. The feds could blast apart Cov ships like they were made of tissue paper or Cov ships could soak up photon torpedos like a spong does water.

Post by **Trinoya** » Sat May 03, 2008 9:22 pm

While that is a good point, the cov forces still employ an unusually high number of ground combat forces as opposed to air forces, and many more ground based vehicles/installations. While one could counter they are just over prepared, they don't seem ever to really have the foresight they require when going into a situation (for example, just popping up at earth and not realizing that it was the home world of the human race). In fact, it seems that they rely on, mostly, a 'shoot first ask questions later' philosophy, and pray that it works in the end (hence why the lost Halo to mankind blowing it up).

Still, I'll concede the point nonetheless that yes, if the cov really do not see a point to keeping a planet, they do in fact glass it. Still, they can not seem to do this at any decent range and in fact required ground combat forces to first land on planets and disable their orbital defenses so that they could perform glassing.

Praeothmin · Post by **Praeothmin** » Mon May 05, 2008 3:17 pm

The covenant's main ship weapons usually boil off chunks of Titanium armor on the UNSC ships.
If I remember correctly, Titanium alloy is less resistant then Duranium or Tritanium alloys used in Trek ships hulls.
Add to that the fact that their shields can get hit by a Plasma weapons that was capable of vaporising (or boiling off) half an asteroid containing a Federation base.

I'm not too sure their normal weapons are that powerful compared to Phasers and Photon Torpedoes.

Roondar · Post by **Roondar** » Mon May 05, 2008 5:40 pm

Praeothmin wrote:The covenant's main ship weapons usually boil off chunks of Titanium armor on the UNSC ships.
If I remember correctly, Titanium alloy is less resistant then Duranium or Tritanium alloys used in Trek ships hulls.
Add to that the fact that their shields can get hit by a Plasma weapons that was capable of vaporising (or boiling off) half an asteroid containing a Federation base.

I'm not too sure their normal weapons are that powerful compared to Phasers and Photon Torpedoes.

They might use armour called Titanium, but I'm not too sure it's actually the same stuff as what we would call titanium. Especially since there are apperantly bits in the Halo canon that imply said titanium taking (at a minimum) nuke-level blasts and not vaping away instantly.

l33telboi · Post by **l33telboi** » Mon May 05, 2008 7:06 pm

Roondar wrote:They might use armour called Titanium, but I'm not too sure it's actually the same stuff as what we would call titanium. Especially since there are apperantly bits in the Halo canon that imply said titanium taking (at a minimum) nuke-level blasts and not vaping away instantly.

Titanium-A I believe it's called. And no, it's not really normal Titanium, for one thing, ships surrounded by several meter thick armor made of this is still almost lighter then air, which means it has to have some crazy low densities.

...Then again their tanks are also supposedly made of it and they don't seem to light.

Like I said earlier, it's a crazy world.

Praeothmin · Post by **Praeothmin** » Thu May 08, 2008 1:46 pm

L33telboi wrote:Titanium-A I believe it's called. And no, it's not really normal Titanium, for one thing, ships surrounded by several meter thick armor made of this is still almost lighter then air, which means it has to have some crazy low densities.

Well, aside from the bits about taking nukes and not vaping (although we do not know the power of said nukes), it vaped pretty much when it was hit by full-powered blasts of covenent weapons in the books.

And we have no idea if when altering the density of the armor they also made it tougher.
Don't forget, as you said, that they had 2 meters thick of the stuff.

And ST has made aluminum transparent, but we do not know if it is more resistent, less resistant, in other words, aside from the property we know they've altered, we do not know anything alse but the name.

Mith · Post by **Mith** » Fri Jun 13, 2008 12:21 am

I doubt the Covenant are that dangerous to the Federation. I mean, Warbirds are supposedly about as strong as a Galaxy, and the same goes for Galors and Excelsior ships. The Federation has plenty of both ships (more so the Excelsiors), as well as other ships more up to date than the Excelsior. It takes about an hour to destroy a Class M planet's crust, and it takes hours for Covenant ships to glass a planet's surface.

Not to mention they use fusion, as in, antimatter is at least 2x stronger than the highest estimations, and even if we assume that the Covenant have a way of making it more effective, the Federation has already done that with their own power source...several magnitudes over.

I mean dear god, these people use 30 megaton weapons, which apparently isn't enough energy to keep a Constellation class starship in warp for that long, let alone match them in firepower.

The Federation beats the snot out of them.

Lots.

Praeothmin · Post by **Praeothmin** » Fri Jun 13, 2008 4:21 pm

The problem is that the books are "all over the place" in terms of Firepower, whether from ship weapons to hand weapons.

One moment, a grenade can take out a Hunter, and the next, one is simply hurt by a Rocket launcher's missile...

Same goes for the Ships.
In "Ghosts of Onyx", 14 Nuclear warheads of a total of 30 Megatons is sufficient to destroy 12 out of a 16 Ship Covenant fleet.
Only the most powerful vessels survived.

If 14 (or 12, don't recall exactly) warheads can do that, imagine 1 64 Megaton Photorp...

On the other hand, some of those Plasma bolts vaporize hefty chunks out of the Titanium armor of the UNSC Ships...

Pretty hard to quantify...

l33telboi · Post by **l33telboi** » Fri Jun 13, 2008 5:25 pm

There might be discrepancies, but just to point out, the higher end feats on these vessels and the like is pretty... high.

Vessels with multi-kilogee accelerations, plasma-torps that accelerates from going near c one way to reversing course and going near c the other way, bombs that are meant to crack open planets and destroy a moon with a proximity detonation, etc.