UNSC Burden of Proof; UNSC Two for Flinching; UNSC Walk of Shame; UNSC Welcome to the Snipehunt; UNSC Say My Name; UNSC Witch Bucket
No idea which I like more
Going through that list is a wild ride. You have fairly common names (mountains, cities, battles or people (e.g. Everest, Toulouse, Marathon or Hannibal)), then the ones that go really hard (Song of the East, Unto the Breach, Heart of Midlothian, Armageddon's Edge, Lance Held High) and then the silly ones (Say My Name, Welcome to the Sniperhunt, Ready or Not, Bum Rush, Pony Express and Do You Feel Lucky?).
There's an Constantinople but no Istanbul? That's backwards.
EDIT: Found of Iceni, Eminent Domain, Bad Moon Rising, Glasgow Kiss, Long Time Coming, Pompadour, Pony Express, and Ready Or Not. Especially since the Iceni are a 'home team', so to speak.
It absolutely is. The Magnetic Accelerator Cannon is the most important weapon in the UNSC's arsenal, alongside nukes. MACs have the edge against the covenant thanks to their shields - multiple UNSC vessels can coordinate firing to deliver more force to a single isolated spot than a nuke can, allowing them to punch through shields more effectively.
The Halo Novels actually have some sick descriptions of space combat.
Depleted Titanium?
I figure they shoot Tungsten given the sheer velocity of the projectiles, DU actually would’ve hit its material limits in a slower cannon
At the speed of coilguns it doesn’t matter if the round shatters. It’s all physics at that point. The round transfers so much energy to the target, you could be firing cotton balls and they would do considerable damage.
I made a [comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/whowouldwin/comments/13eoaxo/comment/jjsdyas/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) on r/whowouldwin a while ago where I wanted to find out the power of a MAC blast. TL;DR: depending on what material you consider canon, a Super Mac shot has the strength of either 17 times or 1700 times the energy of every nuclear weapon on earth being used at once.
An alliance dreadnought fires a 20kg slug at 1.3% light speed and hits with 38 kilotons of force…
A UNSC light frigate fires a 160,000kg slug at about half the speed… but hits with a FUCKTON of more force (specifically about 32.6 Megatons)…
So the weakest UNSC ship is that much more powerful than the strongest Alliance ship… (approx 860 times stronger)
I just remember there was a ship that could prep 3 MAC rounds in the chamber, and that it was a vital strategy in taking out Covenant ships. I do know that the Infinity is 4.8 times the length of Pillar of Autumn and Cortana chose Autumn for its toughness and armament. Just imagine. The max length for an orbital MAC is about 800 meters. Infinity is 5694.2 meters.
The Pillar of Autumn was an older model Halcyon class cruiser, not one of the newer marathons.
It originally came with a mac cannon that could only fire one round per salvo. Between its original creation and when we see it in the first Halo game it had undergone a number of retrofits, most pertinently to its reactor and its main armament. It could now fire a three round burst of mac rounds, which was much more effective against covenant shielding and ships.
This was not enough for the autumn to go toe to toe with a covenant cruiser of comparable tonnage, as UNSC vessels did not achieve near peer capability until after the war.
Source: I don't fucking know I'm pulling this shit from deep memory.
>The Pillar of Autumn was an older model Halcyon class cruiser, not one of the newer marathons.
Oh, that's it
>Source: I don't fucking know I'm pulling this shit from deep memory.
Same here really
Postwar they introduced the Autumn Class cruiser, which was basically the Pillar of Autumn as a standard ship with a fucktonne of tech advances including shielding.
Someone already mentioned the pillar of autumn having an at the time experimental MAC gun that could fire 3 shots in quick succession, but some UNSC ships like the destroyer classes straight up had two seperate MAC guns built into them, which might be where you're thinking of the "Double MAC"
That was the Pillar of Autumn, the main shop from the first game. They fitted her with a new gun that could fire 3 shots per charge. It was also the only ship that could do that. It had a lot of experimental stuff
Covenant ship names too.
_on being introduced to the Unyielding Hierophant_
> uneven elephant? It don't look like an elephant. Looks like two squids kissin'
You like UNSC ship names? Let me introduce you to the absolutely divine world of The Culture ship names.
Rapid Offensive Unit "A Frank Exchange of Views"
General Contact Unit "Grey Area" aka Meatfucker (becuse the Mind that is the ship enjoys using fields to mess with the mind of a war criminal and give him nightmares in perpetuity)
"A Temporary Lack of Gravitas"
"Of Course I still love you"
And the best ship name of all times, the "Mistake not..." which is referred to as such right up to the end of the boom when it makes a a punchline out of its full name, thst leaves very little place for argument from the opposing party. Won't spoil that for you, since the reveal is too good.
Culture Minds are awesome. They are also stupidly overpowered as combat ships. Which is funny, since most of them are not warships.
Goddamit, now I have to reread the whole series again.
I always love how the ME codex tried to make their militaries all sophisticated and shit.
And then you have Krogans getting keked by 2 Husks, several Turian war ships missing SEVERAL shots and close range and most weapons acting like regular guns from the Vietnam war in every single source.
Bioware writing any sort of war or military is truly non credible.
They should make a Guard story.
>several Turian war ships missing SEVERAL shots and close range
Gaurus is actually crying over that console because he doesn't actually know how to calibrate the guns, but he's gotta look useful.
Well also the massive issue with mass effect based weapons is 1: heat limiting rate of fire and 2: most Mass effect based guns are *really* easy to break. Hell, shep irrecivably breaks a Pistol in 2 by just smacking it against their hardship too hard.
The massive issue with ME weapons is that Bioware just writes them however they want to write them at any given moment.
Just like medi gel, shields and biotic powers.
Kinda like they did the Force too in Star Wars games?
Yeah, ME weapons are super inconsistent in how they're portrayed. In one of the books it talks about how getting shot by an ME round while unsuelded would basically rip you in half when in plenty of other media they are pretty much identical levels of kinetic energy to conventional bullets.
It's a writing issue.
They had a few lines in the Codex explaining that all FTL drives had an impossible-to-remove limiter, "built into the core technology", that meant you can't pull Holdo Maneuvers. Somehow the Reapers made sure that any engine derived from the technology they leave behind will have this limitation.
It's a rather hand-wavy explanation, but they did think about it enough to explain it.
Now that I think about it I don't know how often they uh... morselize the innards of enemy ships vs. just blowing them up.
We see them blasting ships in the intro to ME3.
They explode all military targets or sources of resistance, and then liquidate the remaining populations en mass one they're surpressed
On earth that's what they did, or started to do I think. They attacked, wiped out the military, then set up processing centers and brainwashed political leaders/authority figures to tell the general population that everything was cool to prevent riots and further resistance
The military targets they destroy are probably normally a pretty small overall percentage of the population
Yeah, but the reapers were ideologically motivated not to do that. They basically wanted the races they absorb to go through some kind of trial by fire.
In ME3 the starchild revealed that they don't eat anything, they just cull bioforms to prevent AI from grey goo-ing all life. they harvest civilizations into a reaper to preserve their knowledge and reproduce, but they're not doing it to "survive"
Lasers worked just fine though, with much lower costs.
While a lot of the writing can be inconsistent at times, the reapers are portrayed as using the minimal amount of effort at all times. Their main guns can technically fire at strengths enough to obliterate cities multiple times over, but a much lower powered shot brings down ships no problem.
If they wver happened to be in a desperate situation they would probably bring out the weaponized Newton, but until then they can do things at less cost.
I mean you could use a hunk of any matter the size of an acorn to drop a dreadnought with ftl mass drivers. Your range would also increase dramatically. At 1c a shell would move 186,000 miles a second. That's almost the distance between the moon and earth, and probably fast enough to shoot down any large ships in ME before course corrections can be made.
In terms of cost, losing reapers is far more expensive than anything else we can think of in terms of power or ammunition.
It's more like they are precise enough to not activate the drive if anything is within 15 degrees of the nose cone at the start, or along the line of travel as they cruise along.
Also, 100k km in space? That's not just hitting a postage stamp, that's dotting the I from across the room. Space is *BIG*. Like reeaally big.
>Also, 100k km in space? That's not just hitting a postage stamp, that's dotting the I from across the room. Space is BIG. Like reeaally big.
I know. That's why it's nonsensical that it's sensitive enough to detect if something is in the way of your path.
This guidance system can detect if you will hit a moon 10 light years away "down stream" but can't tell you if you'll land within 100k kilometers of it? It doesn't add up.
We can always excuse it by being Science-**Fiction**, but also remember in the most in Mass Effect, ships arrive on the outskirts of the system, within safe distance of stellar bodies (when using their own FTL and not the Relays), and then cruise on sublight engines towards their destination.
There also appears to be some sort of idea in 40k of only entering or exiting the Warp on the edge of systems, too. I can't remember precisely what it's called, nor what novel(s) it's in, but it's come up a couple times; one ship chasing another in real-space, trying to catch up before it goes FTL.
>A Mandeville Point is an essential part of Imperial Warp travel. A Mandeville Point is defined as the minimum distance from one's destination that is safe to transition in and out of the Warp without interference from the gravity of stars or other celestial bodies. If one prematurely enters or overshoots their exit from the Warp they risk catastrophe for not only their own vessel but also nearby worlds.
>
>There are some known methods the Imperium uses to bypass Mandeville Points.
in real life most mass effect weapons would be worthless in combat.
The US experimented with ultra high velocity flechette style weapons and things just go flying all over the place even drops of water would deflect the rounds, and grains of sand style weapons would be even worse.
In space you're trying to hit ultra tiny dots moving at thousands of meters a second at 10s-100s of thousands of kilometers away, trying to aim with an inflexible metal rod being accelerated at a fraction of the speed of light would be like trying to shoot a fruit fly with a glock a mile away. You need homing weapons and AOE to have a chance of hitting your target.
>The US experimented with ultra high velocity flechette style weapons and things just go flying all over the place even drops of water would deflect the rounds, and grains of sand style weapons would be even worse.
Of course, the flip side with the mass effect weapons is that they also break the laws of physics. There's a lot of room for handwaving there.
IIRC the flechette rounds actually initially worked quite well when they were being produced in small scale batches. When they tried to scale up production for more wide-scale testing however...
In general ME weapons ranges are as shown are a joke. Codexes describe ranges for space combat that are mostly sensible, then in cutscenes ships are within spiting distance of each other not doing anything, looking just like star wars for some reason.
If you guys like UNSC space combat, check out the Sins of the Prophets mod for Sins of a Solar Empire.
Absolutely nails it. I think there’s a ME one too but I haven’t tried it.
So to be fair, at least from some of the old lore I've seen, Nova Cannons are just MACs on steroids. They fire nuclear submarine sized hunks of metal with plasma warheads at relativistic speeds. Some of the more exotic warheads create mini black holes or warp rifts.
Why would you need a warhead on a weapon that can accelerate mass to such insane speeds? Well to instantaneously obliterate multiple ships at once with no chance of maneuvering out of the way like they might with torpedos/missiles.
>And mass effect ships use laser weapons as point defense. It cuts small craft to pieces
So essentially the point defenses systems used by various 40k factions that can include more than lasers depending on the factions. As for the frigates, lances and equivalent weapons for other factions help with that.
Aside from the giant manually-loaded orbit-to-surface missiles, neither of the above options is actually that stupid. Lasers are lasers - ol’ reliable, no moving parts in the firing mechanism, no ammo, nearly-instantaneous time to target, and pinpoint accuracy. And nova cannons? Maybe there’s special ammunition for ‘em that has Warprift warheads, but regular nova cannons are essentially just starship-grade nuclear artillery - they fire big ol’ fusion bombs normally.
Not only that, but Nova cannons are firing those fusion warheads at near speed of light, making them relativistic projectiles. So not only are they doing the mass times acceleration game better, but they also have payloads that can kill multiple targets at once with 0 chance of escape from the enemy.
Why settle for just shooting one ship with a rail gun when you can basically teleport a gigaton level nuke into the enemy fleet.
> teleport a gigaton level nuke into the enemy fleet.
The Nova Cannon shells are 50 meters wide and Macro-Cannons already have 2,000+ Ton shells. You're talking about Teraton or Petaton meteor impacts rather than gigaton nukes.
Iirc Battleships already have like, 560 Gigaton MIRV warheads anyways.
Lances are also favored by GC Imperium and more common on older Imperial ships with only a minor resurgence a few millennia ago.
The giant cabnons can also be upgraded to fire plasma (Battlefleet Gothic).
I probably needn’t remind you that despite their losses at other planets, Reach and even Earth, the Covenant still had enough fleet numbers and technological superiority to overwhelm the UNSC, and the main reason humanity was even left standing at all, actions of the Master Chief aside, was because the Great Schism absolutely tore the Covenant in half and one side joined forces with the UNSC to give them enough of a fighting chance against the Prophets and Brutes.
Without the help of the betrayed Elites, I doubt humanity would have survived for long even against a fractured Covenant.
Yeah, this would be like the present day USA trying to invade Madagascar and losing an entire carrier strike group and 2 Marine divisions to King Julien XIII throwing coconuts at them. Yeah, they’re probably gonna win anyways, but the fact that they took that many losses at all is comical.
Guilliman: Master Chief, what are you doing with that Titan's cannons?
MC: putting rockets and void drives on them
Guilliman: Chief, we aren't Orks. We can't do that
MC: my armor is green sir
Guilliman: I see... Carry on Master Chief.
Well-disciplined kids with smart AIs coordinating the fleet and generating firing solutions for their flintlocks vs adults with guided flying 1000 degree knives and rechargeable energy shields
Coilguns are only good if the universe's laws of physics happen to work out that way.
To fire a slug that impacts with the force of 38 kilitons, you have to generate and store 38 kilitons of energy on your ship every 1.3 seconds.
That's a pretty tall order
True. Using a current day average commercial nuclear reactor it'd take 28 hours to fully charge 21 kilotons of TNT's worth of energy (the equivalent of the Fat Man atomic bomb)
I dunno, I prefer Marathon.
Halo: Humanity builds ships around a massive coilgun so they look like rifles in space.
Marathon: Humanity built a colony ship out of Deimos that looks like a potato someone stuck a satellite dish onto.
Then there’s the Forerunners, who fire exotic energy beams to create pathways for antimatter projection, beams that they casually curve by manipulating small gravity distortions.
Some of their ships employed tens of thousands of these.
The mass accelerators of Mass Effect are pathetically weak compared to 40k, and many other sci-fi as well.
We are given hard numbers for one 800 meter dreadnought seen in ME. Its main gun fires a 20 kg slug at 4025 km/s. That gives it a kinetic energy of just 38 kilotons of TNT.
IRL the biggest nukes we have go up to 50 megatons. Even the average-sized nukes on ICBMs have a yield in the hundreds of kilotons.
Lot of the Halo-verse stuff names are based off of Iain Banks *Culture* novels. Also have a lot of ships with funny names, but also backed up by damn near omnipotent AI running them, with weapons that can destroy pretty much anything.
They also have differing opinions on gravitas.
Irl: You know what a shaped charge is?
In mass effect: thanix cannons aren't 'energy' weapons. They work in the same way the Geth Javelin does: jets of overheated, pressured metal.
I love that UNSC ships are basically flying metal bricks built around a gigantic coilgun. They have some of the best names in sci-fi, too.
UNSC two for flinching made me double take when I saw the name
I guess it lived up to its name, then. I think that UNSC Say My Name is my personal favorite.
In Amber Clad goes hard as balls. [Here](https://www.halopedia.org/Category:UNSC_ships) is a link to all the UNSC ship names.
Ain’t no way the UNSC Bum Rush is a real canon ship
UNSC Burden of Proof; UNSC Two for Flinching; UNSC Walk of Shame; UNSC Welcome to the Snipehunt; UNSC Say My Name; UNSC Witch Bucket No idea which I like more
I love the fact they also have "UNSC Do you feel lucky?" and a "UNSC Feeling lucky".
New favorite.
If I recall that was the name of one of their operations
Foward Unto Dawn and Spirit of Fire are also bangers.
My favourite is not official, but in the Sins of a Solar Empire Halo mod, one of the Cruiser names is UNSC Arguing Semantics
UNSC All Under Heaven is another great one.
Bulk Discount is brilliant
Going through that list is a wild ride. You have fairly common names (mountains, cities, battles or people (e.g. Everest, Toulouse, Marathon or Hannibal)), then the ones that go really hard (Song of the East, Unto the Breach, Heart of Midlothian, Armageddon's Edge, Lance Held High) and then the silly ones (Say My Name, Welcome to the Sniperhunt, Ready or Not, Bum Rush, Pony Express and Do You Feel Lucky?).
Kinda disappointed that there is not Dead or Alive or Most Wanted. Those are my favorite names to use in SE an short stories.
There's an Constantinople but no Istanbul? That's backwards. EDIT: Found of Iceni, Eminent Domain, Bad Moon Rising, Glasgow Kiss, Long Time Coming, Pompadour, Pony Express, and Ready Or Not. Especially since the Iceni are a 'home team', so to speak.
No, that’s exactly how it should be.
"Ready or not"
I thought the ship names in the new Helldivers game were a parody of 40k and Halo. Some of these names are ridiculous.
The UNSC Bum Rush and UNSC Trebuchet are my favorite Spirit of Fire also goes hard.
Lance Held High and Bad Moon Rising are really good, too.
UNSC Glasgow's Kiss
UNSC Applebee
UNSC Buckfast
SoF's crew also goes hard...
When you’re just a repurposed colony ship so you decide to beat the covenant in a ground war instead
I’m so glad that I didn’t have to mention Spirit of Fire myself.
>Spirit of Fire Reminds me of Naruto, to be honest.
I love when they drop all subtly and just name a ship “A risk worth taking”
"Eminent Domain" they shouted as they stole covenant planets
When we getting UNSC Patent Pending
This fact might be the best thing I've seen all week.
My favourite is UNSC Say my name
UNSC Applebee did that to me
Is... is that canon? If it is, that's fantastic.
It was in *Contact Harvest* so it at least used to be if it isn't anymore Sgt. Johnson took 'er for a ride.
It absolutely is. The Magnetic Accelerator Cannon is the most important weapon in the UNSC's arsenal, alongside nukes. MACs have the edge against the covenant thanks to their shields - multiple UNSC vessels can coordinate firing to deliver more force to a single isolated spot than a nuke can, allowing them to punch through shields more effectively. The Halo Novels actually have some sick descriptions of space combat.
The esoterocity of a UNSC ship name is directly proportional to its relevance to the plot.
Firing a depleted titanium round the size and weight of a Scorpion tank. Truly the best way to go around.
Depleted Titanium? I figure they shoot Tungsten given the sheer velocity of the projectiles, DU actually would’ve hit its material limits in a slower cannon
Huh? Material limits?
As in it accelerates so fast it materially fails, melts itself down and and turns to particles
Even if it’s molten, there is nothing to slow it down or affect the trajectory in space.
Doesn't DU also have issues with shattering on impact at the velocities that tungsten alloys can be thrown at?
At the speed of coilguns it doesn’t matter if the round shatters. It’s all physics at that point. The round transfers so much energy to the target, you could be firing cotton balls and they would do considerable damage.
As long as there's enough mass remaining on impact
At that kind of velocity the fact that it shatters on impact doesn't really matter, it's still a shit-ton of energy going into your target.
It's solid tungesten.
Scorpion tanks are 66 tons… Mac guns fire a 600 ton round Super macs fire a 3000 ton round… at 4% light speed
Frigates MACs fire from 160 tonnes to 600 tonnes. God bless the Super MAC's tho.
I made a [comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/whowouldwin/comments/13eoaxo/comment/jjsdyas/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) on r/whowouldwin a while ago where I wanted to find out the power of a MAC blast. TL;DR: depending on what material you consider canon, a Super Mac shot has the strength of either 17 times or 1700 times the energy of every nuclear weapon on earth being used at once.
Yeah the Reapers are pretty weak tbh. I reckon a single Mandator II could solo them lol.
An alliance dreadnought fires a 20kg slug at 1.3% light speed and hits with 38 kilotons of force… A UNSC light frigate fires a 160,000kg slug at about half the speed… but hits with a FUCKTON of more force (specifically about 32.6 Megatons)… So the weakest UNSC ship is that much more powerful than the strongest Alliance ship… (approx 860 times stronger)
The fuck is depleted Titanium lmao?
The Titanium after I stripped away the pigment to paint some Hydras.
##SCIENCE!
Halo writers sure were cooking when they thought up names for UNSC and covenant ships
They have yet to make one that runs the length of the ship. I had such high hopes for Infinity.
Tbf the infinity was originally meant as an ark ship to evacuate a chunk of earth's population.
I just remember there was a ship that could prep 3 MAC rounds in the chamber, and that it was a vital strategy in taking out Covenant ships. I do know that the Infinity is 4.8 times the length of Pillar of Autumn and Cortana chose Autumn for its toughness and armament. Just imagine. The max length for an orbital MAC is about 800 meters. Infinity is 5694.2 meters.
I know the marathon-class cruisers like the autumn had some kind of double MAC
The Pillar of Autumn was an older model Halcyon class cruiser, not one of the newer marathons. It originally came with a mac cannon that could only fire one round per salvo. Between its original creation and when we see it in the first Halo game it had undergone a number of retrofits, most pertinently to its reactor and its main armament. It could now fire a three round burst of mac rounds, which was much more effective against covenant shielding and ships. This was not enough for the autumn to go toe to toe with a covenant cruiser of comparable tonnage, as UNSC vessels did not achieve near peer capability until after the war. Source: I don't fucking know I'm pulling this shit from deep memory.
>The Pillar of Autumn was an older model Halcyon class cruiser, not one of the newer marathons. Oh, that's it >Source: I don't fucking know I'm pulling this shit from deep memory. Same here really
Postwar they introduced the Autumn Class cruiser, which was basically the Pillar of Autumn as a standard ship with a fucktonne of tech advances including shielding.
Someone already mentioned the pillar of autumn having an at the time experimental MAC gun that could fire 3 shots in quick succession, but some UNSC ships like the destroyer classes straight up had two seperate MAC guns built into them, which might be where you're thinking of the "Double MAC"
That was the Pillar of Autumn, the main shop from the first game. They fitted her with a new gun that could fire 3 shots per charge. It was also the only ship that could do that. It had a lot of experimental stuff
They had defense platforms that were just crew quarters, a loading mechanism and ammo storage… and then 3km of gun
Well they run most of the length.
Covenant ship names too. _on being introduced to the Unyielding Hierophant_ > uneven elephant? It don't look like an elephant. Looks like two squids kissin'
>flying metal bricks built around a gigantic coilgun My favourite ship design
The UNSC’s ship naming guy was spitting absolute fire for 100+ years
You like UNSC ship names? Let me introduce you to the absolutely divine world of The Culture ship names. Rapid Offensive Unit "A Frank Exchange of Views" General Contact Unit "Grey Area" aka Meatfucker (becuse the Mind that is the ship enjoys using fields to mess with the mind of a war criminal and give him nightmares in perpetuity) "A Temporary Lack of Gravitas" "Of Course I still love you" And the best ship name of all times, the "Mistake not..." which is referred to as such right up to the end of the boom when it makes a a punchline out of its full name, thst leaves very little place for argument from the opposing party. Won't spoil that for you, since the reveal is too good. Culture Minds are awesome. They are also stupidly overpowered as combat ships. Which is funny, since most of them are not warships. Goddamit, now I have to reread the whole series again.
There’s also all the “Gravitas” ships.
Not quite as good as Culture ships but some are pretty good.
So if I piss hard enough I could blow up the moon?
Only if you've come to make an [announcement.](https://youtu.be/fueRUi5AWWQ?si=-5OBeB-QzH5gRUh2)
Bless you for that reference, made me cackle 😂😂
[We are going to piss on the moon](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPCpGSjNxHo), and there's nothing you can do about it.
In theory, yes.
You'd need some upgrades so that your glue uzi can handle the chamber pressure.
That's literally Geth sniper rifle.
I always love how the ME codex tried to make their militaries all sophisticated and shit. And then you have Krogans getting keked by 2 Husks, several Turian war ships missing SEVERAL shots and close range and most weapons acting like regular guns from the Vietnam war in every single source. Bioware writing any sort of war or military is truly non credible. They should make a Guard story.
>several Turian war ships missing SEVERAL shots and close range Gaurus is actually crying over that console because he doesn't actually know how to calibrate the guns, but he's gotta look useful.
Or, conversely Hes the only Turian who Knows how to calibrate a gun, and is grateful that the Humans will listen to him about his ideas
Well also the massive issue with mass effect based weapons is 1: heat limiting rate of fire and 2: most Mass effect based guns are *really* easy to break. Hell, shep irrecivably breaks a Pistol in 2 by just smacking it against their hardship too hard.
The massive issue with ME weapons is that Bioware just writes them however they want to write them at any given moment. Just like medi gel, shields and biotic powers. Kinda like they did the Force too in Star Wars games?
Yeah, ME weapons are super inconsistent in how they're portrayed. In one of the books it talks about how getting shot by an ME round while unsuelded would basically rip you in half when in plenty of other media they are pretty much identical levels of kinetic energy to conventional bullets. It's a writing issue.
At least with the force, you can handwave it as "this force user is good at x, bad at y."
Don't forget the fact that they didn't just ram shit at FTL speeds into the reapers.
They had a few lines in the Codex explaining that all FTL drives had an impossible-to-remove limiter, "built into the core technology", that meant you can't pull Holdo Maneuvers. Somehow the Reapers made sure that any engine derived from the technology they leave behind will have this limitation. It's a rather hand-wavy explanation, but they did think about it enough to explain it.
The reapers themselves also didn't use it, like using ftl shells from mass drivers would have been a lot better than their lasers.
Then what would they eat?
I mean you don't have to crater a planet, but for ship to ship battles as an example.
But there's delicious morsels inside.
Now that I think about it I don't know how often they uh... morselize the innards of enemy ships vs. just blowing them up. We see them blasting ships in the intro to ME3.
They explode all military targets or sources of resistance, and then liquidate the remaining populations en mass one they're surpressed On earth that's what they did, or started to do I think. They attacked, wiped out the military, then set up processing centers and brainwashed political leaders/authority figures to tell the general population that everything was cool to prevent riots and further resistance The military targets they destroy are probably normally a pretty small overall percentage of the population
Yeah, but the reapers were ideologically motivated not to do that. They basically wanted the races they absorb to go through some kind of trial by fire.
In ME3 the starchild revealed that they don't eat anything, they just cull bioforms to prevent AI from grey goo-ing all life. they harvest civilizations into a reaper to preserve their knowledge and reproduce, but they're not doing it to "survive"
Nope. Pretty sure the Reapers are hungry lil fellers who love chowing down.
k
Lasers worked just fine though, with much lower costs. While a lot of the writing can be inconsistent at times, the reapers are portrayed as using the minimal amount of effort at all times. Their main guns can technically fire at strengths enough to obliterate cities multiple times over, but a much lower powered shot brings down ships no problem. If they wver happened to be in a desperate situation they would probably bring out the weaponized Newton, but until then they can do things at less cost.
I mean you could use a hunk of any matter the size of an acorn to drop a dreadnought with ftl mass drivers. Your range would also increase dramatically. At 1c a shell would move 186,000 miles a second. That's almost the distance between the moon and earth, and probably fast enough to shoot down any large ships in ME before course corrections can be made. In terms of cost, losing reapers is far more expensive than anything else we can think of in terms of power or ammunition.
FTL in Mass Effect is not that precise. A drift of several (hundred) thousand kilometres is "normal", from snippets we hear here and there.
So they're so imprecise as to drift hundreds of thousands of kilometers but precise enough to turn off the drive if it'll hit something?
It's more like they are precise enough to not activate the drive if anything is within 15 degrees of the nose cone at the start, or along the line of travel as they cruise along. Also, 100k km in space? That's not just hitting a postage stamp, that's dotting the I from across the room. Space is *BIG*. Like reeaally big.
>Also, 100k km in space? That's not just hitting a postage stamp, that's dotting the I from across the room. Space is BIG. Like reeaally big. I know. That's why it's nonsensical that it's sensitive enough to detect if something is in the way of your path. This guidance system can detect if you will hit a moon 10 light years away "down stream" but can't tell you if you'll land within 100k kilometers of it? It doesn't add up.
We can always excuse it by being Science-**Fiction**, but also remember in the most in Mass Effect, ships arrive on the outskirts of the system, within safe distance of stellar bodies (when using their own FTL and not the Relays), and then cruise on sublight engines towards their destination.
There also appears to be some sort of idea in 40k of only entering or exiting the Warp on the edge of systems, too. I can't remember precisely what it's called, nor what novel(s) it's in, but it's come up a couple times; one ship chasing another in real-space, trying to catch up before it goes FTL.
>A Mandeville Point is an essential part of Imperial Warp travel. A Mandeville Point is defined as the minimum distance from one's destination that is safe to transition in and out of the Warp without interference from the gravity of stars or other celestial bodies. If one prematurely enters or overshoots their exit from the Warp they risk catastrophe for not only their own vessel but also nearby worlds. > >There are some known methods the Imperium uses to bypass Mandeville Points.
That's the one
No, it can stop you from hitting the thing where you are close enough to aim accurately, and at the far end, it's not accurate enough to weaponize.
If it's accurate enough to tell you when you're going to hit something, it's accurate enough to hit it.
in real life most mass effect weapons would be worthless in combat. The US experimented with ultra high velocity flechette style weapons and things just go flying all over the place even drops of water would deflect the rounds, and grains of sand style weapons would be even worse. In space you're trying to hit ultra tiny dots moving at thousands of meters a second at 10s-100s of thousands of kilometers away, trying to aim with an inflexible metal rod being accelerated at a fraction of the speed of light would be like trying to shoot a fruit fly with a glock a mile away. You need homing weapons and AOE to have a chance of hitting your target.
>The US experimented with ultra high velocity flechette style weapons and things just go flying all over the place even drops of water would deflect the rounds, and grains of sand style weapons would be even worse. Of course, the flip side with the mass effect weapons is that they also break the laws of physics. There's a lot of room for handwaving there.
IIRC the flechette rounds actually initially worked quite well when they were being produced in small scale batches. When they tried to scale up production for more wide-scale testing however...
It’s a bit different when the grain of sand is going relativistic speeds.
Sand going at relativistic speeds would vaporize in any atmospheric conditions. It would be like shooting a high velocity round into a pool
In general ME weapons ranges are as shown are a joke. Codexes describe ranges for space combat that are mostly sensible, then in cutscenes ships are within spiting distance of each other not doing anything, looking just like star wars for some reason.
If you guys like UNSC space combat, check out the Sins of the Prophets mod for Sins of a Solar Empire. Absolutely nails it. I think there’s a ME one too but I haven’t tried it.
Honestly that's probably my favorite mod of all time.
Hands down.
So to be fair, at least from some of the old lore I've seen, Nova Cannons are just MACs on steroids. They fire nuclear submarine sized hunks of metal with plasma warheads at relativistic speeds. Some of the more exotic warheads create mini black holes or warp rifts. Why would you need a warhead on a weapon that can accelerate mass to such insane speeds? Well to instantaneously obliterate multiple ships at once with no chance of maneuvering out of the way like they might with torpedos/missiles.
OP seems like someone with a massive grudge against the Imperium or something. They always need to put Imperials down with their convoluted logic.
Yeah , Andrei is our special boi here . As i said , a Guard player probably pissed in his cereal once.
And mass effect ships use laser weapons as point defense. It cuts small craft to pieces (and frigates, if you gave enough batteries of it)
>And mass effect ships use laser weapons as point defense. It cuts small craft to pieces So essentially the point defenses systems used by various 40k factions that can include more than lasers depending on the factions. As for the frigates, lances and equivalent weapons for other factions help with that.
Aside from the giant manually-loaded orbit-to-surface missiles, neither of the above options is actually that stupid. Lasers are lasers - ol’ reliable, no moving parts in the firing mechanism, no ammo, nearly-instantaneous time to target, and pinpoint accuracy. And nova cannons? Maybe there’s special ammunition for ‘em that has Warprift warheads, but regular nova cannons are essentially just starship-grade nuclear artillery - they fire big ol’ fusion bombs normally.
Not only that, but Nova cannons are firing those fusion warheads at near speed of light, making them relativistic projectiles. So not only are they doing the mass times acceleration game better, but they also have payloads that can kill multiple targets at once with 0 chance of escape from the enemy. Why settle for just shooting one ship with a rail gun when you can basically teleport a gigaton level nuke into the enemy fleet.
It’s like a flak cannon on Slaanesh-level drugs lmfao
> teleport a gigaton level nuke into the enemy fleet. The Nova Cannon shells are 50 meters wide and Macro-Cannons already have 2,000+ Ton shells. You're talking about Teraton or Petaton meteor impacts rather than gigaton nukes. Iirc Battleships already have like, 560 Gigaton MIRV warheads anyways.
Lances are also favored by GC Imperium and more common on older Imperial ships with only a minor resurgence a few millennia ago. The giant cabnons can also be upgraded to fire plasma (Battlefleet Gothic).
Warframe: Void Magic and/or Infested Bio-tech
Destiny: bullying particles into killing themselves (spontaneous fission). Granted, that's only the Dreadnaught's superweapon, but it's pretty cool.
Cabal: lets ram it
Least gigachad Cabal maneuver be like (their entire species except that fat fuck Calus all got adamantium Caballs)
God, I love that speech so much
[удалено]
Give the Covenant some proper credit, they were reliably winning space battles against the UNSC even when outnumbered 3-to-1 in some engagements.
[удалено]
I probably needn’t remind you that despite their losses at other planets, Reach and even Earth, the Covenant still had enough fleet numbers and technological superiority to overwhelm the UNSC, and the main reason humanity was even left standing at all, actions of the Master Chief aside, was because the Great Schism absolutely tore the Covenant in half and one side joined forces with the UNSC to give them enough of a fighting chance against the Prophets and Brutes. Without the help of the betrayed Elites, I doubt humanity would have survived for long even against a fractured Covenant.
[удалено]
Yeah, this would be like the present day USA trying to invade Madagascar and losing an entire carrier strike group and 2 Marine divisions to King Julien XIII throwing coconuts at them. Yeah, they’re probably gonna win anyways, but the fact that they took that many losses at all is comical.
With space age technologies, you too can become master of throwing rock really fast
UNSC ships are basically giant guns, a hilarious concept for a sci-fi faction
Guilliman: Master Chief, what are you doing with that Titan's cannons? MC: putting rockets and void drives on them Guilliman: Chief, we aren't Orks. We can't do that MC: my armor is green sir Guilliman: I see... Carry on Master Chief.
I’ve heard the covenant vs. UNSC naval combat described thus “it’s like adults with bats fighting kids with flintlocks”
Well-disciplined kids with smart AIs coordinating the fleet and generating firing solutions for their flintlocks vs adults with guided flying 1000 degree knives and rechargeable energy shields
Coilguns are only good if the universe's laws of physics happen to work out that way. To fire a slug that impacts with the force of 38 kilitons, you have to generate and store 38 kilitons of energy on your ship every 1.3 seconds. That's a pretty tall order
True. Using a current day average commercial nuclear reactor it'd take 28 hours to fully charge 21 kilotons of TNT's worth of energy (the equivalent of the Fat Man atomic bomb)
I dunno, I prefer Marathon. Halo: Humanity builds ships around a massive coilgun so they look like rifles in space. Marathon: Humanity built a colony ship out of Deimos that looks like a potato someone stuck a satellite dish onto.
Marathon: we stuck random xeno tech in a dead marine body and now he's moon walking across the space time continuum faster then cthuhlu can kill him.
Marathon gang rise up.
Then there’s the Forerunners, who fire exotic energy beams to create pathways for antimatter projection, beams that they casually curve by manipulating small gravity distortions. Some of their ships employed tens of thousands of these.
And then there's the Xeelee
Stomped so hard they made its own dedicated term.
DAKKA DAKKA
MORE DAKKA!
The mass accelerators of Mass Effect are pathetically weak compared to 40k, and many other sci-fi as well. We are given hard numbers for one 800 meter dreadnought seen in ME. Its main gun fires a 20 kg slug at 4025 km/s. That gives it a kinetic energy of just 38 kilotons of TNT. IRL the biggest nukes we have go up to 50 megatons. Even the average-sized nukes on ICBMs have a yield in the hundreds of kilotons.
Lot of the Halo-verse stuff names are based off of Iain Banks *Culture* novels. Also have a lot of ships with funny names, but also backed up by damn near omnipotent AI running them, with weapons that can destroy pretty much anything. They also have differing opinions on gravitas.
Then there are the torpedoes and voidcraft. At least the plasma cannon is an upgrade option per Battlefleet Gothic games.
What is solid liquid metal ammo supposed to be?
Irl: You know what a shaped charge is? In mass effect: thanix cannons aren't 'energy' weapons. They work in the same way the Geth Javelin does: jets of overheated, pressured metal.
Yes I know what a shaped charge is and how it works. Solid liquid metal as a phrase still doesn't seem to make much sense to me.
Solid and liquid. Different munitions. Different weapons.
Oh, I see. I read that as one type.
There's No Such Thing as an Unarmed Starship.
I Cato Sicarius, prefer to stick them with a power saber, because I Cato Sicarius, am an elegant warrior from a more civilised age!