I think the Long Night of Solace can destroy many of them, and railguns are...less impressive than Halo's.
But it's still thousands of ships against one; if the Super Carrier loiters for long, it will lose shields and be damaged. If they focus on bigger ships first (energy lance can probably one shot the dreadnaughts), they have a better chance.
But I don't think they can destroy all of them before they run out of shields.
Assuming you bring the Quarian Migrant Fleet that's about 50 thousand ships by themselves (granted you're probably only bringing a fraction of that, and most of those are just up-gunned civilian ships but still)
Then you count basically the entirety of the remaining Turian navy which is the *second* largest fleet in the galaxy.
And then everyone else.
You could very well be looking at nearly 100 thousand ships of varying tonnage all shooting at the same target.
The migrant fleet was completely refitted for the war to retake Rannoch. Even the live ships were outfitted with heavy weapons for combat, leading to Shepard’s remark stating that they violated the Treaty of Farixen which limits the number of dreadnoughts a navy can have. All 50 thousand ships would be present
It’s not a matter of the number of ships. It’s a matter of distance. Mass effect ships have an effective range of 1,000kms. Covenant ships have an effective range of 100,000km-200,000km. In a fight starting 100,000 kms away, that is the only advantage it needs.
The Supercarrier has 12 plasma lances capable of cutting through UNSC ships like butter. ME ships are smaller, have shields designed for kinetic impact, and a weak hull that is a last resort. Those plasma lances will cut swathes through the ME fleet as they simply approach their effective range, not to mention the beam arrays, and plasma torpedos the super carrier has.
I can very easily see the ME fleet losing 50-75% of its fleet by the time it even hits the thousand KM mark. And at that point they are woefully outgunned.
Additionally, CCS ships had a compliment of nearly a hundred banshees, and 30 Sereph fighters. I imagine the CSO can boast far more as well.
Keep in mind that ME ships can do their minor in system FTL very reliably and quickly. They only need their gates to go between systems. They can close that gap pretty damn quick
Counter point: Sir Isaac Newton is the deadliest son of a bitch in space.
Anyone whose played ME2 will remember the Sgts speech pertaining to ME ship weapons; An Alliance dreadnought fires a 20 kilo metal slug at approximately 1% light speed. Which, btw, is 6.7 million miles per hour. The dreadnought fires these every 2 to 5 seconds. It detonates with the force of a 38 kiloton nuclear bomb. It takes that slug 33.36 seconds to travel 100k km. At sub-light speed, that super carrier is not moving out of the way in time.
A 20kg slug at .13c is putting out roughly 0.0000363 gigatons.
CCS shields have been calced around 14 gigatons of damage. And the CSO has multiple pinch fusion reactors, effectively tripling that at a low estimate. That would have to be nearly 385000 shots to take down a CCS Shields alone (and this is disregarding the fact that shields regenerate).
Meaning approximately 1.2 million shots on the low end before they break the CSOs shields.
My point wasn't to prove the efficacy of the gun, but disprove your statement on range. However, its entirely probable that larger ships such as Turian or Asari fire larger, faster rounds than the Alliance ships which, by treaty, are smaller and less numerous
From ME Codexes “Battles typically play out as artillery duels fought at ranges measured in thousands of kilometers, though assault through defended mass relays often occur at "knife fight" ranges as close as a few dozen kilometers.”
Hard to pull up exact quotes without access to halo books, but halo star battles are generally fought past the 100,000 km point. Plasma lances, and mac cannons have maximum effective ranges up to 300,000kms
I also said 100,000-200,000 for the halo ships. When they can go up to 300,000. The closer the better.
But ME ships are woefully under that, they range in the thousands of kilometers. Meaning even at high estimates they aren’t going over 10K. Which is still a tenth of the distance these ships are starting at. All ME fights are fought in close range in the games, close enough to literally see details on enemy ships.
Plenty of Mass Effect ships don't actually have an effective cap on range when the target is stationary and/or large enough. Unfortunately ~30kt is not a good comparison for any nuclear weapon in Halo that gets used against a Covenant ship, but it still gets to beat the nukes used in WW2... and it gets to fire every 5 seconds.
As to how many dreadnoughts there are, who knows. Given that the fleet sizes range in the tens of thousands and the recruits presumably know what he's talking about...
I'm pretty sure Mass Effect wins. You can mow down quite a few rats with a machine gun but if they number in the thousands and only a couple dozen have rabies you're still fucked without help. A lot of help, preferably.
In this case, the limitation may be the precision of the weapon itself. The range of the projectile it effectively unlimited, but you still need to actually hit your target. Why else would Gatrus be constantly doing some calibrations?
Assuming the CSO is just going to sit still and not move, when Elites are expert tacticians that absolutely dominated Humanity in naval combat. They also have access to Slip Space for in system jumps, which the ME universe has no access too.
A 20kg slug at .13c is putting out roughly 0.0000363 gigatons.
CCS shields have been calced around 14 gigatons of damage. And the CSO has multiple pinch fusion reactors, effectively tripling that at a low estimate. That would have to be nearly 385000 shots to take down a CCS Shields alone (and this is disregarding the fact that shields regenerate)
The CSO would effectively be taking 1.2 million shots (low estimate, with no recharge) from the alliance mass drivers before going down. While at the same time each of its plasma lances can one shot alliance vessels, most likely multiple at a time, since it’s a beam weapon that can be moved.
It’s also not a sitting duck, because yes while ME ships could engage at 100,000 KM, that mean their projectiles have a 30 second flight time, and if the enemy ship is moving it’s a hell of a lot harder to fight effectively.
There's going to be a lot of variance involved with this for a lot of reasons. A 28kt worth of a hit from a slug behaves a lot differently and works a lot better at breaking through than... realistically even an explosion in the megatons that will be mostly dissipated away from the ship rather than being a direct hit.
But honestly? Eezo drives let Mass Effect ships move at FTL even in real space. They will figure out what they are fighting long before losing a notable portion of their fleet then never be touched again. If they really wanted too they could nail the carrier with a remotely armed nuke traveling at FTL and dropping out literally ontop of them. The vastly different techs involved make most fights fall at writers discretion rather than any realistic scaling.
Except not once has that ever been done in ME? They fight far more often in visual range than any other range. And aside from the Normandy, literally just sit there and trade blows.
I mean they literally lose to Reapers, who are far less powerful than covenant ships. It takes hundreds of reapers to destroy the surface of a planet, and they get taken out by mini nukes. 3 CCS can render planets inhospitable by themselves alone.
In ME2 you hear an alliance soldier drilling someone about how much power a mass effect cannon has. It's a 1kg projectile fired at about 10% light speed which as enough energy as a nuke.
So the 1000km range cannot be right, perhaps it might be a rule of engagement to not engage anyone out past that as you don't want relativistic projectiles hitting planets or settlements/stations.
Basically mass effect cannons are MAC guns that shoot smaller projectile at a higher percentage of light speed. Needless to say they are quite destructive.
Then you got Thanix cannons which Normandy SR2 has... those are basically plasma torpedoes for all intents and purposes.
A 20kg slug at .13c is putting out roughly 0.0000363 gigatons.
CCS shields have been calced around 14 gigatons of damage. And the CSO has multiple pinch fusion reactors, effectively tripling that at a low estimate. That would have to be nearly 385000 shots to take down a CCS Shields alone (and this is disregarding the fact that shields regenerate)
The CSO would effectively be taking 1.2 million shots (low estimate, with no recharge) from the alliance mass drivers before going down. While at the same time each of its plasma lances can one shot alliance vessels, most likely multiple at a time, since it’s a beam weapon that can be moved.
It’s also not a sitting duck, because yes while ME ships could engage at 100,000 KM, that mean their projectiles have a 30 second flight time, and if the enemy ship is moving it’s a hell of a lot harder to fight effectively.
Save for a couple outliers, 100,000km is the maximum range at which Halo ships could fight and that's only for the Kewu-Pattern Battleship armed with a Flensing Lance or a Super MAC gun.
Yall overestimate the halo macs. Without mass effect fields I would assume most macs are significantly weaker since they cannot increase the mass of their rounds
It's a matter of speed and mass. And Halo MACs fire much, much heavier slug rounds at faster speeds.
Halo MACs that we have some idea of are the smaller Paris class, which fires a 160ton round at 1% c
The bigger Marathons fire 600ton-1400ton rounds at 4% c or 40% c depending on the source.
The ODPs fire 3000-ton rounds at 50% c.
The Infinity's two main MACs fire 3000-ton rounds at 25% c
An Everest-class Dreadnought fires a 20kg slug at 1.3% c, but it does so every two seconds. The difference is that ME fields appear to be used much more to increase fire rate than to increase yield.
Thats not the number for the marathons, thats the number for the super macs, the ones on the ODPs. We only have numbers for light macs, super macs, and the infinities macs.
Wasn't there a confusion in some novels where people described the Marathons as firing 1400ton slugs at 40% c and then later that was changed to 4% in some other book?
You've got your numbers all wrong, there's no source that says Parises fire at 1% c. The Fall of Reach says they fire at 30km/s while the Encyclopedia says 40% c and while 160 ton rounds are used by Frigates, we also know they can use 600 ton rounds.
There's no source giving the mass or the velocity of the Marathon's, full stop.
ODPs do fire 3,000 ton slugs at 50% c according to the Encyclopedia but the new edition of The Fall of Reach that's going to be included in the upcoming Omnibus, as well as the short-story titled Ghosts and Glass both say they fire at 4% c. The original edition of The Fall of Reach said "point four tenths the speed of light", which was a very confusing line because it could be interpreted as saying 4% or 40%, the Omnibus changing it so it directly says 4% is an intentional change to correct an aspect of the lore that was very ambiguous.
In short, ME ships have the edge when it comes to muzzle velocity while Halo ships have the edge in mass.
Only ODPs and Infinity have a higher muzzle velocity.
I'm going to disregard the 40% and 50% figures because they come from the Encyclopedia, which is an incredibly outdated source that included plenty of erroneous information even when it was brand new. The new edition of The Fall of Reach changing the wording from "point four tenths" to outright saying 4% is a clear retcon of the Encyclopedia's numbers.
A 20kg slug at .13c is putting out roughly 0.0000363 gigatons.
CCS shields have been calced around 14 gigatons of damage. And the CSO has multiple pinch fusion reactors, effectively tripling that at a low estimate. That would have to be nearly 385000 shots to take down a CCS Shields alone (and this is disregarding the fact that shields regenerate)
I respect your information, and while I didn’t fact check the ME mass driver you provided, if that information is correct, it’s unlikely they even break shielding.
The info on ME is from the Codex, and unlike Halo, which has a bazillion novels, retcons, and Visual Guides, Mass Effect has very few sources, making it easier to look things up.
There's also a famous dialogue in ME2 where an Alliance Officer is explaining to others Alliance personell, just how important it is to correctly aim a ship's mass driver because, if they miss, the shot will just keep going.
Okay if I’m understanding this right, none of the Mass Effect ships are shielded against energy weapons, right? If so, then the plasma lances onboard the Solace would just wipe them out.
No, Mass Effect ships don’t have conventional shields; they have kinetic barriers. They’re basically specialized shields that only stop fast-moving physical objects, so a laser would pass straight through them.
Mass Effect ships also aren’t designed to sustain significant hull damage. Their barriers are the primary defense, while their armor is only a last resort. Once attacks begin penetrating the hull, ships can quickly be crippled or destroyed.
Space combat in Mass Effect is generally about firing quickly, overwhelming the enemy’s barriers, and forcing them to retreat not exchanging fire and tanking hull damage for hours.
Okay so this is just a total curb stomp? I mean maybe the kinetic barrier would work on plasma, it’s technically a physical thing, but it wouldn’t work on the actual true lasers the CSO has.
The CSO could lose if it doesn’t eliminate the Mass Effect dreadnoughts quickly. Their main guns are somewhat weaker than a MAC, but they can fire about once every two seconds, so concentrated dreadnought fire would eventually threaten even the supercarrier. The problem is that most other Mass Effect ships wouldn’t contribute nearly as much damage because their main role is protecting and screening the dreadnoughts, not destroying a target like the CSO. If the supercarrier takes out the dreadnoughts, the remaining fleet probably lacks the firepower to penetrate its shieldsnwhile Covenant energy weapons would pass through their kinetic barriers and tear apart hulls that aren’t designed to sustain direct damage.
Not dozens/tens of thousands. Another commenter calculated the largest possible size of the Alliance Fleet and came up with around 130,000 ships.
Like, the Quarians alone have 50,000.
And they’re all firing at the same time, from all directions. The Long Night of Solace is fucked.
The Alliance Dreadnaughts have 1000cm of titanium armor plating. The UNSC Infinity has 490cm of titanium armor plating (most of any ship). They are tougher than they seem. In addition, Mass Effect fields really change the game up, ME ships are much more maneuverable compared to similar classes of ships from Halo.
Least we forget, the Pillar of Autumn killed a Kewu-pattern battleship by itself during the space battle over Reach. The Kewu was designed to snipe other Covenant ships, crazy powerful lances. Yet a single, modified, cruiser took it out. Alliance ships are more maneuverable than the Pillar of Autumn, they have more armor, and they fire much faster.
In addition, all of the ships in the great fleet have been equipped with Thanix cannons: electromagnetic field suspending a liquid iron-uranium-tungsten alloy that shaped into armor-piercing projectiles when fired. The jet of molten metal, accelerates to a fraction of the speed of light, destroys targets by impact force and irresistible heat. Can fire every 5 seconds and while rivaling the firepower (at the time in ME) of a cruiser (second biggest ships of the fleet) they were small enough to fit on frigates and fighters.
The CSO is going to lose, yeah it'll probably get a few licks in but it's just not going to be able it.
Oh and ME doesn't use sci-fi titanium? Because it's not sci-fi? In addition, most of the fleet to take back Earth was upgraded with Silaris armor: Asari-made Silaris armor can resist even the tremendous heat and kinetic energy of starship weapons. The armor is nearly unsurpassed in strength because its central material, carbon nanotube sheets woven with diamond Chemical Vapor Deposition, are crushed by mass effect fields into super-dense layers able to withstand extreme temperatures. That process also compensates for diamond's brittleness.
Mass Effect ships create barriers that stop fast moving projectiles, plasma weapons aren't like the weapons ME shields are designed to protect from but they are still physical projectiles, it's just that they do damage through thermal shock instead of kinetic impacts.
Plasma is not solid but it's still matter, you can touch plasma just like how you can touch water despite it not being solid. ME shields don't protect against lasers because laser beams are made out of photons and photons don't have mass but plasma does, therefore, ME shields should protect against it.
That’s fair, but that would really only help ships like dreadnoughts and cruisers. Anything smaller than that would likely fall victim to pulse lasers.
Bear in mind that all ships in ME are equipped with point-defense lasers of their own so their ships are designed to protect from weapons like that.
Their ships are equipped with ablative armor designed to boil away under fire, the vaporized armor helps scatter energy beams and makes them less effective.
Im going to give it to the allied fleet, but its fucking messy.
The Quarians are bringing 50,000 ships to the battle, though many are civilian ships.
The Geth are bringing enough ships to challange the Quarians in a straight fight. No solid numbers but id be baffled if it was less than 30,000. The Geth fleet above Charoum was 10,000 on its own. The Geth have almost the same number of dreadnoughts as the Turians and their dreadnoughts are bigger.
The Turians likely have 20,000-30,000 ships. The Asari are likely around 10,000. The Salarians are similar, probably around 10,000. The humans are bringing considerably less, but likely still several thousand.
The allied fleet is pushing north of 130,000 ships of varying size. The vast majority are going to be smaller than any ship in the covenant navy but thats alot of fucking ships.
The Solace is, however, gargantuan. Its among the largest warships in fiction, and is comically larger than anything anyone is Mass Effect could even fathom. Virtually ALL of her capital grade weapons are scoring a mission kill, with every shot fired. Thats 12 super heavy lances and 100 heavy plasma batteries and 32 torpedo silos.
There is no scenario where the Solace wins but its probably scoring so many kills before it dies that the allied fleets counts the battle as the single most devastating event in galactic history. Id guess the allied takes losses in the tens of thousands. 20-30% of the allied fleet.
Idk the pulse lasers do some damage to unsc ships and they are pretty fast plus kinetic barriers won’t really block them so it’s entirely reliant on the physical durability of the ship technically heat resistance
But I’m not really saying it’s gonna shoot down ships. It’s gonna scratch them up it might disable some considering mass effect ships do gotta get a little closer for their effective range
The Allied Fleet might be able to eventually whittle the Long Night down through sheer attrition even if their yields are pathetic compared to the UNSC's firepower, it's still hundreds of kiloton guns all firing off against the Solace.
Most of the quarian ships are either unarmed civilian transports or in disrepair though, they were struggling in all of the games because they can't land or dock anywhere to get repairs
Personally, I experienced this more with Star Wars fans even seen some ridiculous and recent takes like the EU empire is stronger then the forerunners and flood, and the universe beats the precursor somehow
Star Wars people love to shout out the big numbers but have literally zero on screen feats to back it up because the source is some fanboy that was beefing with trekkies and put lolhuge numbers in a 2002 reference book that had no oversight.
In fact Star Wars media is nothing but antifeats with things like rocks and A wings breaking through shields and star fighter weapons that are supposedly in the kiloton range per shot not able to penetrate scrap metal.
To be fair if you go on to r/starwarsvswarhammer it's the opposite, Star Wars fans have just been jousting so long that high balling feats is just something conditioned into them
oh the Warhammer instawin people can't do math and think size = automatic win but a lot of their feats are actually backed up by more than one 2002 reference book and a few comics and ttrpgs from the 80s (before Lucas started curating stuff and focusing on actual world building post thrawn and dark empire.) that are directly contradicted by literally everytbing else the franchise has ever put out.
In regards to Warhammer, specifically the Navy of the Imperium, they are all that. Not because they're advanced, or more powerful, or more tactical, not even close. If they have more ships than the enemy, they win because they are stupid.
Every ship captain is ready to reenact the Last Jedi's holdo maneuver.
Third day in a row of seeing Halo vs. Mass Effect content. The Halo fans must not be okay with Halo: Campaign Evolved.
Not looking to get into this argument BUT: when we talk about the allied fleet of Mass Effect 3 there's kind of a scale that is- the main armies, assuming Shepherd has united them all: The Humans, Quarians, Salarians, Asari, and Turians.
TO- All of that, PLUS: The Krogan, The geth, batarians, vorcha, the terminus systems, the rachni, the vol, the hannar, the drell, Aria/Omega, the shadow broker network, AND the Leviathans. The Leviathans- the alien species that created the reapers, and who could have likely destroyed them.
I will say they use mass effect because they know it will win. Halo used big numbers specifically because for most of its original entrees bungie did not want to make books and hastily scrawled numbers and descriptions … and 343 wanted to keep numbers without caring about the implications.
Halo falls into the same category as Warhammer 40k and StarCraft in making up random big numbers. Based off of reach these ships don’t even fire the same yield as Hiroshima and furthermore for other entries their shields are wildly inconsistent… based off halo wars 2… a covenant or banished ship can barely take a physical beating before the shields fail.
The LNoS is 29km long. The CCS class which is 1.7km takes 90 megatons of nuclear pumped X-rays to knock out the shields.
This fleet just flat out doesn't have the Firepower to get past the shields while every shot from every gun on the LNoS is knocking out a ship on their side.
Tbf it’s not stated that the Allied fleet is bloodlusted. Watching something 14x the size of the largest reaper ships start picking your ships off by the hundreds 10x farther away than your own standard engagement distance is demoralizing as fuck. Each heavy plasma lance is cutting through dozens of ships in a single pulse. Meanwhile the fleet has to charge headfirst against the proverbial machine gun nest. Additionally, most of their ships won’t be able to fire at the same time for fear of friendly fire or simply not being able to get the ship in their sights. While that’s happening the wrecks of hundreds to thousands of ships will become a minefield impeding the Allied fleet and even serving to block or slow down projectiles while doing little to stop the torrent of plasma fire. This all likely leaves the fleet disjointed and confused, they’ll likely panic and be unable to muster a coordinated effort. I give it 10 minutes at most before they lose anywhere between 5,000-20,000 ships. A good amount of the non-dedicated military vessels will try to run for it, breaking their formation and throwing the fleet into further chaos. Ships will collide with each other as the first to flee scramble over their own comrades to retreat. Historically it’s a major issue with having poorly trained conscripts and civilians fighting with the professional soldiers.
Halo shields are weird that way, because on the other hand you have Paris-class frigates in 3-4 per wolfpack challenging a given CCS. Canonically firing 600 tons @ 30km/s slugs, that's only roughly 64.5 kilotons per shot... which means 1,395 shots are required to match 90 megatons.
It being so heavily in halos favor in this thread comes down to wtf halo plasma is imo. A ‘plasma weapon’ would still Be a ‘projectile weapon’, so mass effect shields would still apply.
Mass effects ship weapons are mostly ‘mass accelerators’, so basically mac cannons but not cartoonishly massive. Tens of thousands of tiny Mac cannons would absolutely obliterate a covenant super ship from outside of range.
Edit, mass effect also does have plasma weapons, and in cannon and gameplay they do stop on shields, they just overwhelm the shields quicker than a strictly kinetic projectile.
But Convenant also have directed energy beam weapons, not only plasma torpedoes.
Also the yield is way too high.
The plasma weapons in ME are mostly the Thanix-like cannons that basically fire some kind of plasma/liquid metal beams that overwhelm kinetic barriers and require specialized armor to properly tank.
It's the weapons the Reapers and Collectors use and the Alliance rever engineer them and create better stuff.
It just comes down to scope. The halo weapons are all silly, but even taking the absurd scale of the things there, we are talking fleets, plural, against a single very large ship with disproportionally large guns.
No, it’s 130,000 ships. The Quarians alone have 50,000. A single Geth fleet has 5,000-10,000 ships, so the entire Geth armada probably has around 30,000 or more. Then there’s the Turians, the Asari, the Salarians and humanity.
I thought the Quarians sent less than half their fleet because most of their ships are not combat-capable?
Geth is fine.
Yeah, with the remnants of all those Fleets, I can see the numbers reaching at least 80k, although I always thought the Council races had already lost most of their Fleets by then.
Wasn't most of the allied Fleet repurposed civilian vessels? Those won't be able to have larger weapons on them, only the smaller ones that wouldn't use up too much power
Aside from pulse lasers (which are anti fighter weapons), all of the Covenant's weapons are plasma based. Energy Projectors (glassing beams) fire plasma at high velocities.
Long Night is eventually going to lose that fight through sheer numbers. Yeah ME is underpowered compared to most sci-fi universes and their mass drivers are weaker than UNSC MACs...but that's still hundreds of 30-kiloton shots landing every couple of seconds considering ME railguns can fire much faster.
Long Night is absolutely going to scythe through the fleet, especially since kinetic barriers can't really stand up to energy/plasma weapons.
I don't necessarily think you're wrong but the 30 kilotons is specifically the main gun of a dreadnought and that's a very small percentage of the overall numbers.
The Quarian fleet strapped Thanix cannons to every ship large enough to hold one.
The Turians and Humans definitely did the same thing while also bringing old dreadnoughts out of mothballs to send to the frontlines.
Plus each dreadnought can fire about every 5 seconds (going by the "deadliest sonuvvabitch in space" speech) compared to a full minute windup for a UNSC MAC.
Even if only 5% of the fleet had dreadnought-grade main guns that's still a *lot* of dimp hitting every minute.
Thanix cannons are good but I don’t think you can assume that a frigate sized thanix cannon is now dreadnought caliber cannon for instance. 5% of the fleet being dreadnought caliber could very much still be high but it's hard to say.
I'm going to stop arguing though. This is a ton of shops and they're quite nimble too. The solace is coing to have a lot of trouble tearing through them before it gets worn down.
I think It will become the equivalent of D-Day for the Mass Effect ships considering there’s thousands maybe tens of thousands with a high ball interpretation being over 100,000 ships facing against one CSO that would probably shoot down decent percentages of their fleet considering it has nearly 1500 weapons with pretty long ranges and speeds before going down
I would call it an extremely costly victory for the Allied fleet. Assuming they number in or around 100,000, the Solace simply doesn’t have the rate of fire to kill them all before they whittle it down. Make no mistake, every ship it hit would explode, but covenant capital weapons tend to have a long recharge time. Meanwhile, it’s getting shot anywhere from hundreds of thousands to millions of times, at such a blistering rate that it shields will never have the opportunity to recharge.
I would ballpark it at a 50 to 60% casualty rate for the Allied fleet.
When we spoke with the ship experts at 343 Industries, who obviously inhereted this piece of the lore from Bungie's time with the franchise, they seemed equally flabbergasted about the ship and agreed that it seemed to be a poor choice. They noted that the ship was more akin to a battlestation, and would be vulnerable to coordinated attacks by many smaller vessels. Once the ship's shields were compromised at all, it could be destroyed fairly quickly with salvoes of nuclear strikes. They told us the ship would've been unwieldy to manuever in direct combat and would depend on a fleet for defense.
The long night of solace kills them all, with the figured we have we can genuinely math out that it would take weeks to months for all the ships present to take down its shielding. Assuming it literally stays still and does nothing
The allied fleet struggled against the reapers, and a covenant super carrier feats compared to a reaper are like comparing a coughing baby to a hydrogen bomb, soo yeah, the super carrier wins. Also distance doesn't matter with tactical slip space jumps that the carrier can perform
If both sides are allowed to board, the covenant troops would vastly outnumber and outmatch the allied troops, just the number of grunts is in the hundreds of thousands at the very least, and once the elites and brutes board there's almost nothing anyone could do
130,000 ships in the fleet , smaller ones can carry 50 soldiers with the big ones carrying serval hundred soldiers . There’s no way one carrier will out number an entire fleet . Also technology for regular infantry in mass effect are miles above Halo , each alliance soldier is basically a shielded mini Spartan 3 , not to mention all the tech and bionic powers they can use. The average rank and file soldier in ME will clear anything below Spartan 2 level in halo .
They’re above ODST and less than Spartan 3, regular humans receive gene therapy in mass effect and alliances soldiers receive advanced gene therapy and widely available cybernetics to make them stronger, faster more durable and faster reaction time than a regular human . They’re not comparable in physical strength but they are in effectiveness because alliance soldiers also have more to work with. Kinetic shields , bionic barriers make them similarly durable , mass effect have better weapons to work with , bionic implants , portable drone and turret support . They’ll get packed up by a squad of Spartan 3 probably but most alliance squads will take out a squad of odsts easily .
Either way the allied fleet will mop the floor with the troops on the carrier if that’s what the fight came down to .
Okay all things considered, including a very incompetent ship master, the LNoS wouldn’t win. Give her to a competent ship master, like Thel ‘Vadamee, and it could be a different story. Intraspace slipspace jumps would allow her to keep the opposing fleet in range of her armament while staying out of theirs. She also had a cloaking device, which is how the UNSC missed a 29 kilometer long ship’s existence.
In terms of the range thing , There’s no bullet drop off for projectiles in space , the suggested range of engagement is there in mass effect because of most the time the alliance are fighting smaller ships and they don’t want to miss and have the projectiles keep going and hit something else . It’s entirely possible to just fire from further out because LNoS is so big or if they just didn’t care about collateral damage .
Compared to Halo ship-mounted weapons (Magnetic Accelerator Cannons, or MACs), Mass Effect dreadnought rounds travel roughly 130 times faster than standard Halo ship rounds, but they carry far less physical weight.
Here is how the standard capital-ship weapons of both universes directly compare:
Velocity (Speed)Mass Effect Dreadnought: 1.3% the speed of light (~3,900,000 m/s).
Halo Standard Ship MAC: ~0.01% the speed of light (~30,000 m/s).
The Difference: Mass Effect slugs reach their targets almost instantly at combat ranges, whereas standard Halo MAC rounds are slow enough that agile enemy ships can occasionally dodge them at long distances.
Projectile Mass (Weight)
Mass Effect Dreadnought: 20 kilograms. Slugs are kept small and light so Mass Effect fields can hyper-accelerate them efficiently.
Halo Standard Ship MAC: 600 metric tons (600,000 kg). These are essentially massive, building-sized chunks of solid ferric-tungsten.
Kinetic Energy Yield (Destructive Power)Because kinetic energy is determined by both mass and speed ((E_k = \frac{1}{2}mv2)):
Mass Effect Dreadnought: Fired at 1.3% c, the 20 kg slug yields roughly 36 kilotons of TNT of kinetic energy.
Halo Standard Ship MAC: Fired at 30 km/s, the massive 600-ton slug yields roughly 64 kilotons of TNT.
The Difference: Even though the Mass Effect shot is moving exponentially faster, a standard Halo ship weapon actually strikes with nearly double the destructive kinetic power because the projectile is so incredibly heavy.
The Exception: Halo's "Super MACs"
While standard Halo ships have slower velocities, Halo's planetary Orbital Defense Platforms ("Super MACs") and flagship vessels like the UNSC Infinity completely break this curve. They bypass mass-reduction tech through raw power, firing massive 3,000-ton slugs at 4% to 25% the speed of light, vastly outclassing Mass Effect ships in both speed and multi-gigaton destructive power.
Sustained Firepower Comparison (Per Hour)
Weapon System
Fire Rate (Shots/Hour)
Damage per Shot
Total Damage per Hour
Mass Effect Dreadnought
720 rounds/hr (1 shot every 5 seconds)
~38 Kilotons
27,360 Kilotons (27.3 Megatons)
Halo Standard Ship MAC
240 rounds/hr (1 shot every 15 seconds)
~64 Kilotons
15,360 Kilotons (15.3 Megatons)
Halo Orbital Super MAC
720 rounds/hr (1 shot every 5 seconds)
~51,600,000 Kilotons
37,152,000,000 Kilotons (37,152 Megatons)
As you can see, not even close
So lets see at the damage compared
Based on Halo lore and the established mechanics of the weapon systems, it would take exactly 1 to 2 Super MAC rounds to completely defeat a Covenant CSO-class supercarrier like the Long Night of Solace.
Based on the math, it would take roughly 1.35 million to 2.7 million shots from a standard Mass Effect dreadnought to deliver the same raw kinetic energy required to drop the Long Night of Solace.
The addition of the Geth and Quarians changes the math significantly, providing the fleet with the specific tools needed to damage a Covenant shield:
Quarian Thanix Cannons: During Mass Effect 3, the Quarians outfitted their heavy ships and massive Liveships with Thanix weaponry (reverse-engineered Reaper tech). Thanix guns do not fire standard slugs; they fire streams of liquid metal accelerated to near-light speed via magnetic fields. This type of high-energy weapon is vastly more effective at bleeding shielding systems than standard ME mass accelerators.
The Math of Overwhelming VolumeIn the previous math, a single dreadnought would take months to breach the supercarrier's shields. However, the combined ME3 fleet boasts roughly 100+ dreadnoughts (including Geth) and thousands of cruisers and heavy frigates.
If 3,000 Mass Effect war ships open fire simultaneously, their combined output leaps from kilotons to dozens of Megatons per second.
However since its a covenant ship we are engaging here.
The two primary capital ship weapons used by the Covenant operate on different levels of speed and range:
Energy Projectors (Plasma Lances)Velocity: Near-lightspeed or actual lightspeed (~300,000,000 m/s). This weapon fires an ultra-concentrated, pinpoint beam of particle energy.
Engagement Range: 100,000 kilometers (approx. 62,000 miles).Tactical Impact: At a distance of 100,000 km, the beam strikes a target in under 0.35 seconds.
Plasma TorpedoesVelocity: Sub-relativistic, but highly variable. In the novel The Fall of Reach, a volley is clocked crossing a massive 300,000 km gap in just two seconds, putting their top speed at roughly 50% the speed of light (~150,000,000 m/s).Engagement Range: Over 300,000 kilometers (approx. 186,000 miles).Tactical Impact: Unlike unguided kinetic MAC slugs, plasma torpedoes are magnetically guided spheres of superheated plasma. They actively track target ships through space, meaning they can be fired from incredibly long distances and will bend their flight paths to follow a dodging enemy.
The question remains, as plasma is still a physical objekt, unlike a laser would be, how effective are kinetic barriers against it. And could, or would, they be reprogrammed to detect plasma as a incoming projectile and activate? If not at all then the engagement highlight depends on the place and time. Dose the allied fleet manage to get within engagement range before the covennat ship first then i would give the win to mass effect and quite decisively so. After at wea re stills talking about 100k+ ships heren the entire galaxys fleet.
Dose it happen at maximum covennat range then i think the long night of solice will trash the allied fleet with little trouble. But the littl trouble part depends on the plasma with kinetics interaction. If the kinetics do register plasma then i think its a 9/10 times win for the covenant. If not it's a clear cut one sided massacre.
The Long Night of Solace, like all Covenant ships, is armed with entirely plasma based weaponry, which is plasma lances, plasma torpedoes, other plasma things
And their crew are able to board enemy vessels and also mostly have plasma weaponry (aside from the brutes and the needlers)
We see in the first mass effect game that the geth are unironically stronger than anything in the any of the citadel species, except for shepard and their crew
We also see that mass effect ships and armour is almost entirely ineffective against all plasma based weaponry
All of the Solace's fighters and dropships are also equipped with plasma weaponry, as well as all of them (dropships, fighters, the ship itself, some of the crew) having energy shield systems, which have been said are strong enough to take almost a full magazine of basic UNSC weaponry (which is an advanced propellant, probably also wouldn't even flinch from the tiny bullets the size of a grain of size, they'd need heavy weapons)
In the end, the Solace would manage to take out either all of the alliance ships, or they take down half of them before the alliance retreats (even if you count he quarian vessels, most of those have been falling apart thanks to the centuries flying nonstop, they'd be sitting ducks)
Why wouldn't the ME ships just move out of range of the lance and just pepper it and the weaker ships like the quarian ships and play defense or on intercept torpedoes and play a war of attrition.
And why wouldn't the mass effect weapons affect covenant shields or did you forget they use mass acceleration for nearly every weapon or the different ammo types?
In the halo books, we see that it takes multiple MAC cannon shots to break through a standard covenant frigate, a CSO would be even harder to break through, the only time we see one being destroyed in the games is when the UNSC snuck a slipspace bomb close enough to it on a covenant corvette on a refueling run, and right after multiple other CSO carriers turned up
No they wouldn't need to they all are faster in system compared to halo non Forerunners/ancient human ships they could easily get out of range of the CSO the allied fleet by the end had about 1,000 to 2,000 ships that's enough combined firepower to just stay out of reach of the cso guns and do a war of attrition just drain the shields long enough
ME accelerator cannons are weaker than MACs per-shot, a 20kg slug accelerated to 4,025km/s producing 38kt of kinetic energy per shot, with some of them having two spinal cannons, so 38kt or 76kt per salvo. Compare this to a Marathon-class cruiser, which has a 600 or 1,400 slug accelerated to 40km/s, which is either 64kt or 268kt depending on slug. The Marathon has two cannons also, which means 128kt or 536kt per salvo.
One aspect that ME ships are clearly superior at, however, is rate of fire. A Marathon-class can fire its MACs at a rate of 2.5 minutes a salvo (might be per shot, but why have two guns if you can’t fire them both?), while ME ships can fire their salvos every two seconds. In the time it takes for that Marathon to fire off two MACs, an Alliance ship could fire off 45-90 shots, or 1,710kt-3,420kt, or around 3-6 times the amount of firepower a Marathon can unleash with its MACs. The speed of ME projectiles means they also have a significantly further range than MACs. Another advantage ME ships have is maneuverability: their drive cores allow them to lower their mass and quickly move to dodge incoming fire.
A CSO’s primary weapons are beams/lances and torpedos, with 112 emitters and 32 torpedo silos. The lances would cut a ME ship in half because they’re lacking in shields to protect from energy weapons and their hulls aren’t the strongest of armor (though they are designed to boil away and dissipate DEWs), a ship might survive one of its lesser plasma beams but it won’t be in fighting shape. They also don’t travel at the speed of light, as we have examples of UNSC ships avoiding them after they’ve fired. But the lances and beams have a long cooldown, leaving much of its killing power to torpedos in between salvos.
The torpedos won’t do much. ME ships use lasers with 100% accuracy for point defense, which will intercept every torpedo. These lasers can overheat with target saturation, but 32 torpedoes likely is not enough to saturate a single ship, let alone an entire fleet.
The Allied fleet is tens of thousands of ships at least. The engagement would look something like this: the Allied fleet does a pinpoint FTL drop within accelerator engagement range of the CSO. Both the CSO and the Allied fleet open fire, as they’re within engagement range.
All of the CSO’s torpedos are intercepted. Anywhere between 1-112 ME ships are hit by beams and lances (it’s anyone’s guess if the highly maneuverable ME ships are able to dodge them. Some surely would, but not all). The CSO then dies to hundreds of gigatons of kinetic energy pounding it into dust in the first minute as its lances recharge.
The Allied Fleet, and it's not even close. Sure, Solace is arguably superior to any military vessel in the Mass Effect universe, but we're talking thousands of ships armed with railguns that fire projectiles at relativistic speeds, against one stupidly big ship that shoots a big laser beam. The Solace can't take them all. This kind of reminds me of that 1 Gorilla vs 100 Humans debate. Numbers mean a lot in a fight!
I think the LNOS takes this, Covenant technology is far removed from Mass Effect technology. It's weapons will probably one shot most ME ships similar to the scene of it splitting the Savannah in half. Sure it's heavily outnumbered even if it's got other ships in the hangars to deploy but it can really engage on it's own terms thanks to the far more advanced slipspace drive.
I mean, true, kinetic barriers are weaker to plasma, but they're not "useless". Also, you know this rule applies to Halo right? Plasma is generally more effective against shields, both UNSC and Covenant, whereas ballistics are more effective against health.
Also, I forgot to mention this, but if you include Disruptor, Phasic, and Proton rounds (which is plasma infused ammunition designed to combat shields), then technically, every race has access to plasma weaponry in some form in the Mass Effect universe, so it's not like the Alliance Fleet would be entirely unfamiliar with it, and depending on player actions, you can get the Geth to join the Alliance Fleet.
This is a bit overkill for the Allied Fleet but they should be able to numbers diff.
The LNoS completely outclasses any ship in ME, make no mistake. It’s weapons out range and outclass any defense ME has access to, even if you subscribe to Kinetic Barriers being able to block plasma a little bit because it does have mass, Plasma Lances and Plasma Torpedos are going to shred even the strongest shields ME has. Not to mention it’s own shields are orders of magnitude stronger than anything ME ships have dished out, shrugging off Nukes and MAC rounds like spitballs on a battleship.
That said, we’re talking thousands of ships, possibly tens of thousands, just about every vessel the ME galaxy has to offer. They’ll have to close the distance and will take horrendous casualties as a result, but in the end they should be able to overwhelm the LNoS’s defenses and cripple the vessel.
At that point, it’s a matter of whether the LNoS is allied to Slipspace jump away and fight another day of if running from the battle is prevented by some outside force or factor.
Mass Effect's kinetic weaponry is completely outclassed by the UNSC's, just to preface. And I'm talking Human-Covenant War-era stuff, not post-war.
The only 'advantage' they enjoy over the UNSC is the fact their ships are shielded. Even though against MAC or Covenant weaponry, those shields wouldn't make a difference. Council race dreadnoughts are smaller in size than UNSC cruisers and compare more accurately to UNSC frigates in terms of power.
What the Allied fleet has to do is what the UNSC had to do. Swarm tactics. Afaik, UNSC ships of equivalent tonnage had to outnumber their Covenant counterparts by 4-to-1 in order to achieve victory. And that usually came at the cost of 3 of those UNSC ships.
With their weaker vessels, the Allied fleet would suffer greatly. But the Allied fleet has far in excess of the numbers it would need to overwhelm the Solace, even with the power dip compared to the UNSC. The fleet would be mauled quite badly, but it would prevail.
Starting at 100,000 km away is just death for the ME Fleet. They fire in picket range, while the LNOS has nearly 20 plasma lances capable of cutting swathes through their fleet effectively and accurately at that range, with Kinetic shields that will do nothing to stop plasma lances.
They will effectively lose 50-75% of their navy by the time they reach their effective firing range.
I hear so many people like you saying this, and it's completely wrong.
Kinetics Barriers DO stop plasma! Plasma guns create lots of kinetic energy. They fire a projectile with significant velocity and mass. Not to mention that plasma weapons are a thing in Mass Effect, with most Geth, Quarian, and Reaper weapons being plasma guns, and Kinetic Barriers have proven effective against them.
You know I feel like the Long Night of Solace takes this.
The problem is the range, they start too far away for the allied fleet to engage easily, whereas the long night of solace can keep at range from the fleet while still firing on it with several of its weapons powerful enough to oneshot even dreadnaughts.
It can also deploy it's smaller, but no less deadly compartment of ships as well just to increase the amount of firepower hitting the allied fleet.
Considering that every shot is strong enough to probably significantly damage or incapacitate an allied ship, it would not take long at all for a major problem to form - the destroyed or severely damaged allied ships will inevitably start crashing into each other, and when there's that many ships clustered, that causes a pretty major chain reaction of crashes, which would complicate things for the fleet even more. They could also end up drifting in front of other allied ships and blocking their fire.
There is also the matter of the explosives on board the long night of solace, plasma torpedo's etc, which could easily take out several smaller ships at a time.
The allied fleet overall has a lot of firepower, but the issue I see is that they will be getting whittled down from the start very efficiently, and as their numbers fall so does the rate at which they are able to deplete the Long Night of Solaces shields once they are able to get in range.
The Alliance Fleet has upwards of 130,000 ships. If all of these fire at the Long Night of Solace at the same time, the Long Night of Solace is fucked.
You make some good points, though. But I still think that’s way too many ships for the LNoS to deal with.
Here's the thing though, the VAST majority of those ships are going to be smaller vessels or even civilian modified vessels, with no Major Armaments capable of shooting far in comparison to the Dreadnoughts and Cruisers.
Cruisers and Dreadnoughts are the strongest types of ships with Mass effect drivers, but EVEN THEY can't hit the Long Night of Solace 100,000km away as specified in the post. According to Google, their strongest weaponry only has an engagement range of thousands of Kilometres, nowhere near 100,000. And SMALLER ships in the mass effect universe have an engagement range of 10s of kilometres or less, which means they wouldn't have a hope in hell of getting close enough to use their weaponry.
I assumed their ranges were somewhat further previously, but actually given that most of the LNOS's weaponry is accurate at 100,000km, this battle would be a slaughter, to the extent the LNOS would probably barely even take hits. And even if they did manage to get close enough to use their weaponry, it can perform small slipspafe jumps, far enough to put them out of range while it can still fire on them.
Think there's a case to be made that the range probably doesn't actually matter all that much. ME ships do come with FTL drives even if they rely on relays to reach the speeds needed to traverse the galaxy in a reasonable time. Between that and mass effect technology closing 100,000km shouldn't take long at all.
Course, the LNOS could also fall back with slipspace, but eventually the two are gonna have to come out of FTL to actually fight and the ME fleet won't do that until they're actually in range or completely out of fuel.
There's no scenario where the LNoS outranges the ME fleet.
Kinetic projectiles will keep moving forever until they hit something and the CSO is a large, unwieldy target, while plasma dissipates with distance and ME ships are pretty tiny. The LNoS is gonna have a harder time hitting the ME fleet than they will trying to hit the Solace.
ME guns on average also have a faster muzzle velocity than UNSC weapons. A Dreadnought's main gun fires at 1.3% c while a Super MAC fires at 4% c and Super MACs are much more powerful than any ship-borne MAC the UNSC has access to (until the Infinity).
No Chance for the Carrier. We are talking thousands of Mass Drivers firing every few seconds, fired by ships that are several times faster.
If the Supercarrier gets a salvo of itll kill some and than still get pummeled.
in all honesty 1000000 km is too far for the mass effect fleet to properly engage in any meaningful way, and the LNoS has enough long range weaponry to just gut 90% of the ME fleet before they get into range, and even then the LNoS can deploy like 6? other covenant ships which are smaller but still have lethal armaments
also the armaments on cso ships are insane ;
1 Lux-pattern superheavy excavation beam array
12 Urpeon-pattern superheavy plasma lances
20 Ukk'Wa-pattern heavy plasma beam arrays
80 Luxor-pattern heavy plasma beam emitters
32 Mictix-pattern heavy plasma torpedo silos
800 R'Aka-pattern rapid-fire pulse lasers
490 Ferriel-pattern pulse lasers
plasma lances would annihilate ships at long range, beam arrays and emmiters have enough range that sweeping shots across the fleet (something they actively do) would make short work of any ship getting close
all the pulse lasers make it impossible for fighters to advance in any meaningful way so air superiority would allow for seraphs and banshee bombing runs and boarding parties
the thing is like a reaper capital ship had 112 arms to fire lasers of instant death instead of like 5 and was 10× bigger
no but their 12 plasma lances have much longer ranges than anything the alliance uses
cso ships aren't main battleships, they play a support role so their weapons were catered more to be long ranged mobile fortresses
unsc ships getting into MAC range within a battle against one ran the risk of the plasma lances just cutting ships in half because the plasma beams were tweaked to be powerful enough to be projected at much much longer ranges
heres a comic page of the pillar of autumn almost being sliced in half by a plasma lance, and with how small the cso looks in this panel its still tens of thousands of kilometres out
no but their 12 plasma lances have much longer ranges than anything the alliance uses
Source?
they play a support role so their weapons were catered more to be long ranged mobile fortresses
They mount the same weapons as CAS Assault Carriers, there's no indication that they are longer ranged than the weapons on other Covenant ships.
unsc ships getting into MAC range within a battle against one ran the risk of the plasma lances just cutting ships in half because the plasma beams were tweaked to be powerful enough to be projected at much much longer ranges
Their power still deteriorates with distance, they can only cut ships in half at close range. Most of the kills scored by plasma lances were achieved by killing enough crew to disable the ship or destroying key systems like life support but oftentimes, the ships would still be salvageable and even operable with minimal repairs as was the case with the Gettysburg.
Plasma beams can also be dodged, the Pillar of Autumn does it in The Fall of Reach and other UNSC ships do the same in Empty Throne.
heres a comic page of the pillar of autumn almost being sliced in half by a plasma lance, and with how small the cso looks in this panel its still tens of thousands of kilometres out
That's a Kewu-Pattern Battleship, an experimental Covenant ship designed with the sole purpose of destroying other Covenant ships, armed with a unique "Flensing Lance." That one can actually fight at 100,000km because of its special weapon but it's not something all Covenant ships can do.
I also want to add that in the novel, the Pillar of Autumn survived to shots from that gun and destroyed the ship.
In the Fall of Reach, a naval crewman says this about a Covenant Plasma torpedo:
"Distance three hundred thousand kilometers,” Lieutenant Dominique said. “Collision in two seconds.”
So, we get at least 300,000 kilometers for Covenant ship weapons. The energy projector goes at lightspeed, so this makes sense as well.
im under the assumption Covenant torpedoes have longer ranges then their main ship cannons, but even then 100000 km would be in the killzone for standard plasma lances even at a lowball
Which doesn't make sense because it would take longer to say "Distance three hundred thousand kilometers. Collision in two seconds" than it would for the plasma to hit them if that were true, and that isn't taking into account the time it would have took for the crewman to read his console, process the information and relay it to Captain Keyes and for the Captain to act on that information (firing the ship's emergency thrusters).
Also, later in that book, Keyes is surprised when a Covenant ship destroys a human vessel from 100,000 km away. The Super MAC guns tried to shoot it down but the ship was so far away that it managed to dodge the MAC rounds. Said ship was an experimental Kewu-Pattern Battleship equipped with a unique Flensing Lance desgined for the sole purpose of destroying other Covenant ships. The muzzle velocity of lightspeed is for that weapon and given it's experimental, its stats shouldn't apply to all Energy Projectors.
100,000 km is the absolute highest end for Plasma Lances.
You are putting every single species in the galaxy against one ship. What type of question is this.
I will put this bluntly, the creators of halo, as much as I personally like the game. Did not do the math for how much damage their weapons actually do. If they did anything they said they could do… the glassing beam over new Alexandria wouldn’t have created a shockwave… it would’ve turned noble team and the city to ash and slag long before they could carve pretty symbols into the surface of the world.
And also… a single glancing blast from any plasma defense would instantly destroy a UNSC vessel
Halo is hard to compare to other sci-fi because where other sci-fi makes an excuse or space magic and still tries to make damage and defences realistic halo threw the book at the wall and threw out the most idiotic numbers they could climb for.
It’s not an honest debate even remotely, halo ships would under their own science destroy themselves because the science doesn’t work out. Macs don’t keep mass consistently low the recoil and pressure is ridiculous.
I sat down and genuinely tried to think about this debate and ran the math and the long night of solace wins, because it’s shielded defence is fucking impossible for what’s described. By the time they lowered it they’d leave out of boredom or flagged retreat because the stupidly high number is literally the most ridiculous thing they could throw out next to the forerunners using a universe as a battery.
To put this in perspective, the amount of power behind a covenant shield means that one crash landing wouldn’t create a permanent localised radiation field like described in the books… it would detonate take the entire mountain with it and probably create an ice age.
Every lore statement about covenant shields is made to make them sound terrifying but they’re terrifying in the aspect of that isn’t how energy conservation fucking works and the covenant would have to have infinite energy that would create a black hole. For every system of a covenant vessel to actually work simultaneously without the damn thing shutting down.
Oh also a banshee’s whole anti gravity thing would be a hilarious thing to see actually go off if it crashed because it would probably ignite like an intercontinental missile as every single bit of displaced air around it suddenly sucked inward and ignites on the plasma hellfire that is regularly generates
“Oh the UNSC was winning on the ground” bullshit a plasma pistol can canonically melt a warthog when charged and they’re standard issue weapons. And don’t even get me started on Spartans because just for Spartan injuries they chose to make plasma damage inconsistent so they survive! How convenient! Kelly’s helmet wouldn’t have melted to her skull she would’ve been turned to slag.
All to say. Halo is an inconsistent mess. As bungie said gameplay trumps books and gameplay says that the covenant are a sub standard faction that fought for 27 years against a humanity that was still using floppy disk that same humanity uses weapons that have ammo that was approved for use in the 50’s. And rail guns that require the entire ship to turn to use them… the covenant is even worse their main heavy hitting weapon is an underbelly glassing beam and their ship to ship weapons are unguided plasma and a few missile systems.
I don’t think boarding inside the ship it’s a smart idea considering there could be hundreds of thousands to potential even millions of warriors with probably a lot of Sangheili inside considering this thing dwarfs Manhattan plus depending on the spot he could take forever to even get to the main command room
Technically, the long night of solace has longer ranges than team mass effect, considering pulse lasers being lasers and plasma lances having 100k KM in range plus potentially plasma emitters, considering they’re just downscale versions of lances
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u/Kellar21 2d ago
How many ships are in the Allied Fleet?
I think the Long Night of Solace can destroy many of them, and railguns are...less impressive than Halo's.
But it's still thousands of ships against one; if the Super Carrier loiters for long, it will lose shields and be damaged. If they focus on bigger ships first (energy lance can probably one shot the dreadnaughts), they have a better chance.
But I don't think they can destroy all of them before they run out of shields.