Also, it says on Halopedia that Covenant shields are probably plasma, as all of their other energy-based items are plasma based, which makes sense. It certainly isn't a laser field. Furthermore, the covenant ships need to lower their shields to fire their weapon, so the magnetic guiding system used on the torpedo's CAN'T go through the shield, that would mean, by your standards, an EMP couldn't pass through the shield either.[quote=]Currently, no practical methods for creating shields such as these are feasible. However, the concept of a Plasma Window would provide a barrier similar to energy shields, instead generating a field of plasma instead of energy to block incoming projectiles or plasma. Given the Covenant's effective use of plasma in most of their technology, this may be the method they use. Alternatively, electromagnetism may be used to repel objects or interfere with the magnetic fields of plasma bolts.[/quote][quote=]The attacking ship must lower a section of its shield in order to fire the torpedo.[/quote]And finally, my source simply said MAC, it didn't specify whether it was ship-mounted or a SMAC.A MAC typically fires slugs of either ferric tungsten or depleted uranium slugs at 0.4/10 of the speed of light. The high muzzle speed gives the slug the kinetic energy and momentum necessary to damage a target and partially mitigates the unguided nature of the slug and its lack of maneuverability.It doesn't matter if the missile can change trajectory, if it takes several minutes to reach it's target the enemy ships can simply scatter, so at most only one ship is affected by the blast radius. Only way a nuke could be viable is if it was left as a mine, and detonated when the enemy got near it. If fired at the enemy, it would be almost useless since like I said, it'd take minutes for it to reach them, and by then they've scattered.Nova bombs were also FAR more powerfull then ANY Shiva warhead and isn't even comprised of nine Shiva's like you hinted to. The warheads used in a Nova are nothing like a Shiva, and so can't be compared.Also, as I showed earlier, the magnetic force used to guide the torpedo can't pass through the shield, hence why the shield must be lowered, so I seriously doubt an EMP could pass through the shields and do any sort of harm to the systems. And you're right, I was assuming, however I said I assumed the armor would stop the radiation.The nukes would have a large blast radius, I never said they wouldn't. I said they wouldn't have a multi-mile large blast radius when detonated in space. Your summery is accurate, but that is in a 1v1 situation, and assuming the covenant ship isn't within fireing range. That's also assuming the nuke isn't shotdown, which at it's slow speed and accuracy of covenant weapons, is highly unlikely. I don't recall a nuke ever being usefull when fired at the covenant, however I do know they were quite usefull as mines.I'll label your final points in numbers.1: Indeed it is, far slower.2: Incorrect, modern day missiles take minutes just to go from one side of the earth to the other, assuming rocketry has progressed, it would still take minutes for the nuclear missile to traverse the same distance a MAC could traverse in seconds.3: They were unnotice because they were never actually fired at the covenant. Nukes were used as mines, not missiles, because as missiles they wouldn't work, they were too easy to avoid and shoot down.4: I said a nuke couldn't do hull damage on it's own and it can't. The nuke removes the shields, but doesn't do any hull damage. A second nuke is required to inflict the hull damage. Whereas MAC's do both hull and shield damage on a single round (depending).5: By my "MAC's can't be shot down" statement, I meant they simply move too fast. Sure if the covenant weapons actually hit the thing, it could be shot down. But try shooting down a bullet with another bullet, you aren't going to do it, it simply moves too fast. So the covenant would never shoot down a MAC round.Unless you're some kind of coding genious, and can code in all those spacial anomalies and crap into the game, I couldn't care less. I said those things couldn't be put ingame, and couldn't affect gameplay. I never disputed their existance in real life, only a fool would do that. I disputed their relevence to the arguement at hand, as they wont be put ingame (atleast not accuretly) and will serve no purpose ingame, and so should serve no purpose here.Ok lets see here.Covenant shields as plasma is an assumption since you seem so keen on pointing out all my assumptions. Also yes they open to release the plasma because if they didnt then the plasma would burst on the inside damaging the ship and lowering shields, it still guides the projectile itself long after closing the shield back up. This is fact based off of the books because the spartans use this small window of time to enter the ship, while on the other hand durring battles these torpedoes have tracked their targets far after that window of time would have closed thus completing a full shield circuit meaning that the EMP could get through the shields of the ship.If you goto halo wikia and search MAC, it will come up with this artical:http://halo.wikia.com/wiki/MACLook it up then get back to me.If the missiles move at the speed they should to be effective which we will have to assume that they do or else even archer missiles would be useless on ships because the ship would be traveling faster then the missile then we know that it moves at a slower but still effective speed to be a viable weapon.Also Durring the battle at reach there is no specification of using nukes as mines and it would be very unlikely that good mine laying would have been easy to do accuractly beforehand leading me to guess that they were placed after the covenant attack started.Also you contradict yourself. As for your nuke thing, the blast radius is excedingly small in space when compared to an in-atmosphere detonation.Let me lay out two scenarios for ya one with nukes MAC's and Missiles, then one with no nukes and a few more MAC's.1. 20 cov destroyers vs 20 UNSC destroyersAs they approach the UNSC destroyers fire all 40 of their MAC guns (we'll assume they ALL hit) Covenant shields drop, maybe minor damage.At the same time the destroyers fire hitting them with 40 pulse lasers and 40 plasma torpedoes. Lets assume the destroyers get lucky and fire off their full salvos of archer missile pods. The battle is over now as all UNSC destroyers are enevitably either dead in space or just vaporized. Meanwhile maybe a few of the covenant destroyers are dead in space or destroyed, but for the most part at least 7-10 would be left with enough structural integrity to pilot themselves. And thats if the UNSC forces got lucky.2. 20 cov destroyers vs 20 UNSC heavy frigatesLongsword fighters are send out to engage enemy ships, meanwhile 5 nukes (more then enough to effect these 20 ships as only 4 are used on the fleet that attacked reach) are launched into the cov ships path (using your trap scenario)The nukes go off lowering all their shields and leaving them temporaraly dazed from the blast, the frigates fire their MACs and full salvo of missiles to hit right afterward.The covenant get lucky and fire off 40 plasma torpedoes before getting hit. Around 5 covenant ships (small estimate) get disabled or destroyed in the first attack.Five frigates survive to charge and fire their MACs again finishing off 5 more destroyers which are already heavily wounded. Durring the charge they also fire off the last of their warheads, assuming that at least 1 wasnt one that fired a nuke initially. The battle ends and the space is left with debris floating everywhere. While no ships survived the tonnage gets calculated out to a UNSC victory by damage done.These assumed space battles put the nukes at their weakest and MACs at their strongest based on the arguements you try to make. More MAC's prove less tactical then less MACs + nukes. EDITAfter seeing that the covenant carrier which is the same approx size as the covenant destroyer having hull resistance of up to 100 archer missiles, AND considering that a frigate has 780 archer missiles (26 pods of 30 missiles each) there is no doubt that the UNSC forces here would fly away unscathed. Completely out of missiles but unscathed none the less.
I'm not sure about you, but nowhere in this post do I see anything even remotely close to a source, or anything, regarding the fighters being decoys for the nukes. Infact the ONLY time longswords are mentioned is when you said they were launched. Admit your flaw and move on.
Also, I never said a destroyer was in the cruiser class. I said a cruiser is both a term for a large ship, AND a class. When I called the destroyers cruisers, I was using the term, not the class.
