In Response To: The Forerunner (also posted on b.net) (Wintermute)
: In Niven's Motie series, the moties are a technologically advanced race but
: only because they have fortress/museums [...] just to get back to where they were technologically.
-Human's didn't pick back up where they left off. Covies did. Slight issue.
: Humans are a much older race than we think. Maybe we nuked ourselves back
: into the stone age like, and before
: tFoR we were just getting to the point in space where we were going to
: rediscover or reclaim some of our ancient technology.
-How? What tech? Where?
: The Prophets found some of our ancient tech, and they basically created a
: religion around it so that all the other races in the covenant would hold
: it sacred.
-The Prophets were already taking to the stars by the time they met the Elites, and the Elites probably were too. Again, problem.
: The Prophets probably know that we humans are these
: "gods" but they won't tell the rest of the Covenant because they
: want to stay in power. That's why they tell the lesser Covenant castes
: that their "gods" have willed our destruction.
-If we were Gods, and they worshipped us... uhhh... problem? lol
: This is why they're technologically advanced but are behind on AI
: development, and don't have the best tactics in battle.
-The Covenant scavenge everything. Even AIs were probably just reverse engineered from captured ship remains.
: They tend to be
: aggressive with their tactics to the point of being wasteful of troops and
: weapons platforms. Think of a kid with his dad's gun. All he knows is he's
: got power, but not the full extent of how to use it.
-As far as we know the Covenant probably have a few hundred times Earth's population spread across the universe. They also probably have a much much higher draft rate- being zealots and all. Which means they have billions of bodies and swarms of ships that have absolutely nothing better to do than find and destroy humans. They can afford to waste a few. Relative to the size of their army, they probably don't even feel the losses.
: This also explains why the Covenant keep from glassing certain planets of
: ours, because they know that there are clues pointing to caches of
: technology buried there and they don't want to destroy them.
-This is the part that makes sense. The rock on Cote d' Azure was exactly that.
: This also explains why all the Forerunner control panels seem familiar to the
: MC in the books, why 343 GS calls him reclaimer, why GS says lost history
: referring to human history, why GS refers to installation 04 as a Fortress
: World, even why the Forerunner are called the Forerunner in the first
: place.
-Wait, where does the fortress come from? The Foreruners had "client" races- by "out" he could mean "you must be a client race so your history is important to us".
: I bet that the ancient human race had a tangle with the Flood, and the
: Covenant learned about it through their discoveries of
: "Forerunner" technology, and that's why they fear them.
-...Or because the Flood are an unstoppable destructive force that can eat the whole galaxy unimpeded by even the best Covie efforts?
: Also, you'll remember that 343 GS tells the MC that he should upgrade to a
: class 12 protective suit to protect himself from the Flood in the Library.
: Maybe the corridors on Halo are so big because a class 12 armored suit is
: basically mechanized armor.
-Wild assumption. MC is the most powerful Earth unit, and he is actually smaller than the UNSC mechanized suits (or equal-ish size, but probably lighter).
: That would mean the Forerunner could still posess human dimensions and still
: need the large corridoors. That would also allow the resident researchers
: that were to "study and contain the Flood" the ability to vent
: Halo's atmosphere or whatever else they needed to do in order to prevent
: the Flood from spreading on or escaping from Halo.
-Halo kills all sentient life in the universe or any species whose combined biomass is great enough to make a good food source for the Flood. BIG problem. Not to mention the Flood are partially based on a race that can survive in space. (novel, Ringworld? I'll get unlazy and check someday)
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