http://www.freewebs.com/navspecwepsection3/UNSC-Covenant-scalechart4.bmp Hope this helps.

Well the problem here is of frigates, cruisers, and capships. I would definitely put the Cradle, the refitted colony class, and the Marathon-class as capitals, as well as a Pillar of Autumn-style Halcyon. However, the standard Halcyon is just slow and weak. It definitely fills the heavy cruiser role in SoaSE, where TEC has the Kodiak. And Fall of Reach mentions that Halcyon classes are the smallest ships ever to be called cruisers, being dwarfed by a Marathon. So I would put a stock Halcyon in the heavy cruiser slot, a Marathon as a capital, and the refitted Halcyon as a capital as well due to its overwhelming firepower. It would definitely be a battleship, however the cost and time of building one should definitely make the player want to not get them killed. It would not be a support capship at all, it is simply too deadly for that. The PoA styles are able to take out a Marathon in a 1v1 fight, I think.

As to the MAC/nuke question: This isn't going by canon or whatnot, just my own stupid ideas. MAC is definitely not a special ability due to it being the main offensive weapon of every UNSC ship that has one. Nukes are most definitely a more powerful weapon than a single nickel-iron slug. Besides, the books say UNSC nukes are superhardened to contain the blast for a bit longer allowing pressure to build up in the casing so you get a blast wave when the casing gets blown away. Besides, nuclear warhead are expensive and take lots of time to produce due to their complexity. MAC rounds are simply precision-machined balls of iron and nickel. You see a difference here? MAC rounds, after bringing down a Covie shield keep going simply due to massive kinetic energy. 1 nuke = shields down, large area. 1 MAC = Covie plasma will hit you and hurt while that split-chinned elite laughs at your miserable attempts to harm his ship. Covenant shields, if not drained, stay there and force the MAC to bounce off or disintegrate. MAC = ship's main gun. Nukes = WMD's. I don't see Marzas and Kodiaks needed AM to fire their main guns.

the halcyon class crusier is 1.17 kilometers long
the PoA's mac gun fire three succesive "shredder" rounds and has thousands of archer missiles it can keep going with a loss of 90% of their armor
only one other ship was ever refitted in a similar fashion and this was the PoA's sister ship the Dawn Under Heaven

still please go to the halo site and sketchup pages i requested and tell me whst you think

also the PoA kept going with only 1 secondary reactor, a hole bored in a spiral shape all the way through the hull, after having a couple hundred missiles detonating in their tubes.

you only be allowed two of these ships and they should be Capital Ships

That was the Pillar of Autumn, a singular ship. The Halcyon class was nothing like it, and infact was a shitty ship as has been stated. Slow, and weak, and big. It's only saving grace was it was a bitch to kill. Now I don't know about you, but I'd think a big slow and weak ship would fit better as improved cannon fodder, or more specificly, a "meat shield" (If it was living lol) for the other ships. It sure has HELL doesn't deserve anything close to a capital ship.

I'm also not sure we should have a "Refitted halcyon class" as a buildable ship, maybe make the PoA a "hero" ship that you can only build one of, but that's it. It kinda kills the entire point to make it spammable. It's like "Why build this significantly newer, and supposedly better warship, top of the line battle cruiser in the UNSC fleet. When you could build a refitted Halcyon, a ship that's many many years older then the Marathon, and is suppose to be shit, but it's actually far better". All you'd ever see would be massive fleets of Halcyon's and refitted Halcyon's.

The standard Halcyon class has close to zero offensive firepower and is slow. It has two uses that I can see. The "meatshield" as stated above and as a defensive ship around your planets to back up any defenses you might have. The Pillar of Autumn is a heavily and expensively modified Halcyon class that probably costs a lot more than a Marathon and what with secrecy being needed and all that it would take a lot of time to build in-game. The stock Halcyon itself is an expensive ship because of all that armor and bracing it has. All that Titanium-A costs money. And when you add in what ONI did to the Pillar of Autumn with those refits to the MAC gun, the reactor and its cooling system, the Archer bay, you have an expensive ship already waaaaayyyy more expensive and taking lots of time to build. I'm saying a refitted Halcyon would be way more expensive and take way longer to build than a standard Marathon. If a Marathon takes maybe 60 seconds to build, the refitted Halcyon takes about 120 seconds to build, and costs 2x as much. How's that for balance! In return for that expense of time and money, you get a ship as fast as a frigate and packing enough firepower to make the Covenant fear it. It would be perfect for hit-and-run assaults on Covenant positions with some frigates as backup. They slip in, smash some stuff up, lose a few frigs, slip out to nearest friendly planet.

EDIT(DAMN  )

Besides "spamming" was the only way the UNSC could beat the Covenant so wouldn't it be a little more canon?

currently with acolyte gone i don't even have a coder, i've been having to figure it out as i went along.

What about this idea: We have the normal meatshield Halcyons (the worst starting cap) but then at a super high research level you could turn them into refitts (the perfect endgame cap)?

idk tell me what you think about it

well it wouldn't really be dieing if it conquered the map but yeah i was wondering about it myself because i really wanted to include refitts but didn't know how. hmmm it might have to wait for the expansion pack

please read Halo: The Fall of Reach and Halo: Ghosts of Onyx for much for ship detail on all particularly the halcyon

turns out i already have that CCS in my collection! Don't worry i'll be upgrading it and adding more detail (still need to ask permission though) but that will be in the mod's second release which will include the Covenant. The first release will contain only the UNSC and the vanilla races. Thanks for the wiki pages

Would the PoA be the "superweapon", the sixth cap ship, or the missing fifth?

Two exparimental ships designed for the sole reason of transporting the Spartans on a very covert mission doesn't warrant making it a spammable ship.

Maybe a good compromise that'd also help maintain "realism" in the mod would be to make the research of the refit EXTREMELY expensive, and make the ships themselves very expensive. So if the game turns out to be like the Halo universe, with the humans getting their asses kicked, it'd be far more efficiant to just build Marathons then trying to refit obsolete warships. But if they're winning and have the money, they can refit their old Halcyons to give them a bigger and better fleet.

I don't think you can put build limits in this game but the plan would be to make both the research and the cost of the Halcyon refits extremely expensive