Starcraft protoss versus halo's covenent

my point was: how do they plant the device

i never played halo, so i am probably gonna say stupid stuff now

A carrier has no way in, the only room that it has is the area for the pilot, you cant send someone in there without the pilot seeing you

so unless the covenant has something invisible that can fly through space and plant a tracker on a ship, that wont work

 

During the battle, one of any of their ships to plant it while the carriers shields are down.
Vampire, banshee or even shooting it from a cruiser, it won't matter.

 

a shot that doesnt explode,

wont the protoss notice that?

or rather, wont they notice that while their shields are down, no effort is made to destroy them?

 

The covenant can do a hit and run, just take down a few ships, lower the shields on a few and shoot a small device that slows down and attaches itself onto the hull.
But then again, the covenant have only 1 chance to do it, if it fails, the protoss would scour they're own hull for the FTL trackers

 

Zealots, Stalkers, Immortals, Colossals, Dark Templar, High Templar, Archon, Phoenixes, Void Rays, Carriers, and Motherships.

Grunts, Jackals, Elites, Hunters, Ghosts, Wraiths, Scarabs, Banshees, The Covenant dropship... thing... Spectre(?), and the huge Covenant ships.

Zealots would easily take on Grunts and Elites, and Jackals with shields. But Zealots could be picked off by Hunters, Jackals with Energy Rifles, Ghosts because of maneuverability, and any Covenant air vehicle.
Stalkers are probably a fair match for any Covenant ground unit. Wraiths would be no problem at all. Stalkers could easily walk up to a Wraith while the plasma torpedo is still trying to crash down. Not to mention Blink and the Wraith's horrifying maneuverability. And the Stalker's lasers are meant for tearing through armor. I think the Banshee aircraft would give Stalkers a run for their money though.
Immortals would be vulnerable to the obvious small arms fire, rendering Wraiths, Hunters, and Banshee bombs useless. Their immense size, heavily armored structure, and dual cannons would tear things up though. I think a single Immortal wouldn't be able to take on a Scarab, but throw enough at one and it would go down. Hardened Shields and all.
Colossals are... colossal. I'd say as tall as a Scarab, and two of them side by side would be Scarab size. I don't think their lasers (god damn what are they even like nowadays?) are quite as powerful as the Scarab beam.
Dark Templar would be able to decimate anything on the ground, unless caught by a lucky shot or have the whole area they're in bombarded. A Scarab, well placed Wraith shot, or Banshee bomb would turn the Templar into a grease spot.
High Templar are devastating with a psionic storm, but they would only be able to use it every once in a while I bet. Heavy damage to a Scarab if it wouldn't destroy it. Of course the High Templar aren't covered in armor like a Zealot, so I think they'd be a bit maimed if a Grunt or Jackal got a few lucky shots in.
Archons. Uh. They shoot psionic lightning from their HANDS. And they're probably twice the size of a Protoss. They could probably tear Banshees out of the sky, and nuke any Wraith nearby. It would take massive firepower to bring one down, or enough focused fire.
A Phoenix. I think they could strafe out most Covenant ground forces, and Banshees, but enough fire could wear them down, and the Covenant do have numbers.
Void Rays would be taken out just the same as in the Starcraft universe. Smaller, numerous troops. Wraiths, Scarabs, the Covenant dropships, and other larger things would be ripped apart by the Void Ray's... rays.
Carriers. Whoo boy. It would take quite the amount of Covenant ships to bring one down, and that's if they can get close with the swarm of Interceptors.
Motherships. Uh... yeah.

 

I think the carriers would be brought down by the plasma torpedoes, any unlucky interceptor would disintegrate
and since they got the numbers, it would be a giant wall of plasma destroying the interceptors and in time, hit the carriers.

Pheonixs would be shot out of the sky by Vampires with either their heavy needler or statis beam.

Archons would be disabled due to 30 or so charged plasma pistol shots.

High templar would destroy armies with Psi storm but if a few banshees could speed in and take them out,
i'd give the fight to the covenant

 

And those pesky flying Covenant insects are lethal to almost every Protoss. Small guns, so no hardened shields. Way out of range of Immortals, Colossi, Zealots, HT, DT and Archons. To fast for Stalkers, Phoenix and Photon Cannon fire... A swarm of those and a few Hunters to back them up would already be enough to any Protoss force. Without Capital Ships, that is.

 

Ladies and gentlemen, it is my honor to unveil our newest weapon in this fight against the Covenant forces. Officially called the Beam Arm Mounted Falciform, the troops prefer to call it by the other meaning of the official acronym. Generals, I give you the BAMF

 

What is that and why haven't I seen that beatifull thing before?

 

o.0
holy crap...

Its almost as menacing as a thor with jet packs...

its like, next years april fools joke,
6 of those guys take on 12 battle cruisers, 5 siege tanks and 50 marines,
without a single loss.

 

Maybe I didn't make this clear enough for the covenant crowd, Marines in Stacraft use weapons that are veichle mounted in the Halo universe. It takes nearly a dozen direct hits from the Marines before a Zealot's shield even goes down. And then it takes another 16-18 direct hits before the Zealot's armor breaks down to the point where the emergency recall kicks in. In the Halo universe this same one weapon 1-shots everything besides Hunters and the more skilled/armored/shielded Brutes and Elites on legendary. Really let this sink in, somethine that 1-shots your average Elite takes 25+ hits to down a Zealot. If you assume a Zealot could 1-shot an Elite (which is reasonable considering Zealots essentially dual wield swords) and each elite could do one "Marine" direct hit (which really is an over estimation unless every Elite is equiped with a fuel rod cannon and can hit the Zealot every time), 1 average Zealot can take aproximately 7 average Elites.

Most people that are coming out on the side of the Covenant really don't understand how well shielded and armored every Protoss unit is. Another thing that seems to be repeatedly missed is that Scouts are armed with anti-matter missles whose explosiveness is close to (or greater than) that of a small nuclear weapon. Looking around some Halo lore the missles Scouts launch would have a similar destructiveness to that of a Shiva-class Nuclear Missile which according to Halopedia will take out a Covenant capital ship's shields with one direct hit (and maybe even destroy the ship itself). If someone really wants me to, I can go through and try to find Halo equivelants to Protoss weapons so we have a better idea what is going on.

Like I have reapeatedly said, the Covenant could win some battles with the Protoss but they would have to have a solid numerical advantage and a situation that removes some of the massive resilience the Protoss have.

 

The humans in halo have devised a device that obliterated an entire covenant fleet that was about to attack and try to eradicate them.
it was something like 6 nukes encased in some sorta metal that fused and increased the damage onehundredfold.
thats a crap load of damage!

but anyways, a nuke has no chance of taking out a covenants capital shields, they needed like 50 nukes detonating at the same time to destroy it (im talking about the one during harvest).

If a covenant plasma torpedo could 1hit ko a human cruiser,
it would take like 10 to take out a carrier.

 

You have to look at stuff from the books and such versus stuff in the game because of how toned down it is.

And yes the nuke the humans devised is said to be able to destroy planets.

Also could someone put this in lounge

 

Bthammer my information is now coming from Halopedia (which is a nice collection of eveything Halo, I am impressed). I would have made a kill post on this debate already but the Starcraft wiki has zero numerical lore information, so everything is a guestimate based on names and non-numerical lore (which there isn't alot of on the SC wiki either).

Here is a quote regarding the nuclear missle I mentioned in my previous post:

I also looked up the bomb you guys are talking about, it's called the NOVA bomb and won't destroy a planet in the true sense of the word but it will destroy everything on it, and severly damage other celestial bodies.

Anyways, back to the debate at hand, I was probably wrong in comparing Shivas to the Scout's anti-matter missles, a better comparisson is probably the Fury tactial nuke which can destroy a Covenant Cruisers if detonated inside the shields (and probably severly damage or destroy larger ships if set off inside the shields). Becuase of this it would likely take several to bring down the shields on a Covenant capital ship. Despite this original overestimation on my part it still wouldn't be that diffcult for the Protoss to take down a Covenant capital ship because there would be atleast a dozen Scouts per Protoss Carrier and if they fired in tandem the destructive force would be close to that of a Shiva (and thats assuming the Protoss just don't fly through the shields).

The only thing thing I could find on the size of a Protoss was a fleet was that Tassadar's fleet at the begining of SC1 was comprised of 50 warships. Considering the Protoss think of Scouts as exactly that and the only two kinds of ships that the Protoss have that are larger (at that particular time) than that are Carriers and Arbiters. My guess considering there was a powerful subfleet within Tassadar's fleet there was 2 Super Carriers (the Gantrithor and another) along with something like 30-40 Carriers and 10-20 Arbiters. If we assume that there is 10 Scouts per Carrier we get something like 300-400 Scouts.

Using the above as a baseline and including a clangomerate of all Protoss ships I think a decent sized Protoss fleet would look like:
1 Mothership
1 Super Carrier
10 Arbiters
30 Carriers
50 Void Rays
200 Scouts
300 Corsairs
300 Phoenix
1300 Interceptors (40 per Carrier and 100 for the Super Carrier)

On the Covenant side using the information for the Battle of Reach:
1 Supercruiser
1 Assualt Carrier
120 Battlecruisers
193 Cruisers
504 Seraphs (4 per Battlecruiser 12 per Supercruiser/Assualt Carrier)
2016 Banshees (16 per Battlecruiser 48 per Supercruiser/Assualt Carrier)

My best estimate for Protoss to Halo weapon coversions would be:
Mothership (atleast 8 controled plasma torpedos per volley, controlled so can't be avoided, not counting special weapons)
Super Carrier (Unkown likely varies with ship, for this assume only equiped with Interceptors)
Arbiters (plasma turret)
Carriers (Interceptors)
Void Rays (energy projector that starts at 4x strength builds up to x16 strength)
Scouts (pulse lasers, fury tactical nukes)
Corsairs (rapid fire pulse lasers)
Phoenix (dual pulse lasers)
Interceptors (pulse lasers)

My best estimate for defensive ability would be (I am assuming 1 SC BC laser battery shot is aproximatly 3 MACs):
Mothership (shields 60 MACs, hull 60 MACs)
Super Carrier (shields 50 MACs, hull 80 MACs)
Arbiters (shields 1 MACs, hull 1 MACs)
Carriers (shields 15 MACs, hull 30 MACs)
Void Rays (shields 10 MACs, hull 15 MACs)
Scouts (4x Seraph)
Corsairs (2x Seraph)
Phoenix (2x Seraph)
Interceptors (.8 Seraph)

The battle would look pretty similar to my initial description, the Inceptors would be the first thing in range of the Covenant fleet. The Inceptors would destroy the entirety of the Covenant starfighters (while taking major losses, my guess would be that less than 300 Imterceptors survive the initial encounter). After that though the Arbiters are manuverable enough and at long enough range to avoid getting hit by anything the Covenant has, which means at the very least the Carriers can't be hit by the Covenant forces. The Corsairs, Phoenix, and Scouts would likely be able to destroy the Covenant fleet without the assistance of the Protoss capital ships, they would just be to fast to recieve any major hits and to sturdy to to be taken down by what they can be hit with. If the Protoss capital ships did engage though, the Void Rays and Mothership would inflict incredible damage to the Covenant ships, however if it was just the Void Rays and Mothership, the Protoss would likely lose because while they would be able to absorb a lot of damage (far more than anything the Covenant has) the damage the Covenant fleet would put out would just be overwhelming.

In essence the Protoss would win because of their insane fighter core, not because of their capital ships.

 

I think lordkelwing has the right idea. The combination of firepower, speed, and resilience the protoss can summon wins over anything the covenant can bring up. Even being outnumbered, the protoss could easily drive a spearhead into the covenant lines and take out their command structure before the covenant fleet can react.

In military doctrine its ts called blitzkrieg, to win a war not by destroying an enemies army, but by surgically destroying his ability to wage coordinated war. Bypass the lines, go for command centers, and suply lines, and leave their main force trapped behind in "kessels" or cauldrons.

That and requires armor, firepower and mobility and the protoss outclass the covenant in every way in those departments. As I said before, the covenant would need to have their full fleet appear in front of Auir unannounced and then they might have a chance at doing some damage... otherwise its a massacre.

 

But Covenant plasma torpedos are still stronger than a MAC.

I accept the scout nuke missle thingy but the covenant have anti missle lasers which took out alot of UNSC Javalins before they could come close.

I still think that if the covenant fleet fired all their plasma torps. in a wall, it would take out any Small protoss ship as well as damage the main fleet quite a bit, not to mention the mass interceptor loss

 

Your right plasma torpedos are stronger than ships MACs, my guess is, it is probably a 3 to 2 ratio. 3 ship MACs equal 2 plasma torpedos. I measured the strength of Protoss ships in ship MACs because that is what most Covenant ships are measured in.

While I think the wall of plasma torpedos would be interesting, they aren't actually that big if you look at an image of them relative to a Covenant ship. There is to much room in space, no ship with the size, speed, and manueverabliliy of a fighter is going to be hit with a plasma torpedo unless it wants to be hit.

As for the anti missle lasers, we are talking about different kinds of missles. The missles on a Scout are probably about the size of missles on modern aircraft, and are designed to be used at much closer range than Archer Missles (I couldn't find any info on Javelins, I think you may have the wrong game).

Here is how I forsee a space battle with just capital ships playing out (1 PT = 1.5 MAC, 1 EP = 2 MAC) (shields/hull measured in MACs) (Attack measured in MACs):
1 Supercruiser (6/6, total 6/6) (19 total 19)
1 Assualt Carrier (6/6 toal 6/6) (13 total 13)
120 Battlecruisers (4/4 total 480/480) (5 total 600)
193 Cruisers (1/2 total 193/386) (1 total 193)
Covenant total (685/878 total 1563) (825)

Versus

1 Mothership (60/60 total 60/60) (12 total 12)
1 Super Carrier (50/80 total 50/80) (0 total 0, the Carriers are just used as shields from Covenant fire)
30 Carriers (15/30 total 450/900) (0 total 0)
50 Void Rays (10/15 total 500/750) (8 total 400)
Protoss total (1060/1790 total 2850) (412)

What's interesting about these numbers is the Protoss have almost double the HP but have the firepower, if you were to do raw number crunching the Covenant would edge it out against the Protoss. However, there is one catch to this, assuming the damage each side did was focused completely on the ships the other side wanted after the first volley the Protoss would be down 18.33 Carriers (no loss in damage) while the Covenant would be down 137.33 Cruisers (137 damage lost). If we take this a step further, the Protoss would lose the rest of their Carriers, the Super Carrier and the Mothership would take some damage (no damage loss for the Protoss), meanwhile the Coevenant would lose the rest of their Cruisers and 30 BCs (another 205 damage lost). After two rounds the Protoss have about 1337 MACs (I didn't set that up I swear) with the ability to still do 412 damage, while the Covenant has about 739 MACs left and the ability to only do 483 MACs in damage. In the next round the Covenant would lose more than 250 MACs in damage while the Protoss would lose only 132 , at that point the Protoss would gave more Health and damage left than the Covenant giving them the victory.

What's really interesting about the above simulation is the reason why the Protoss win, they have better cannon fodder than the Covenant, something that makes no sense if you play Sc. In essence the Protoss would crush the Covenant if they had their fighters and would edge out a victory in a shooting match like the one above. The only real way I see the Covenant winnig a space battle against the Protoss is if the Covenant kamakazie their ships into the Protoss ships.

While I am sure someone could poke holes in the above if they tried hard enough, you have to remember the above analysis actually underestimates the Protoss because by comparisson to the Protoss Covenant weapons are ballistic in their ability to be controlled. Meaning the Protoss would be far more likely to hit the ships they want than the Covenant, if the Protoss hit the ships they wanted after 2 rounds the Covenant would only have the ability to do about 293 MACs in damage while the Protoss would still be at 412 or very close to it.

Anyways, unless someone wants to get a ground debate going, the above is going to be my last mega post on this issue.

 

As for Banshee torpedos: Interceptors fly in a straight line. I have never seen one avoid weapons fire. I think that a wall of 2000 Banshees would easily be able to take the interceptors. Especially with other support. Still, that evasion might be explained in the lore.

Since LK kinda killed the space thing: back to the ground.
I assume everyone here knows that the Covenant Energy Sword is actually Forerunner tech? Sweet. What I want to say: it can insta-kill the a Spartan on legendary. -which is the realistic setting- That means that the Energy Sword ignores shields, or just easily disables them. Further, everybody seems to forget that all Brutes and Elites can cloack.

 

Zealots basically have two Energy Swords.

And have trained with them for literally hundreds of years.

 

C-l-o-a-c-k.
But yeah, they had more training. However, there are far less Zealots, and they have no ranged weapons. And has anybody ever heard of the energy grenate thingies? You know, those Covenant pick-ups fron Halo 3. They disabled all mechanical devices, and drained all shields instantly. That would severely damage Protoss units at ground level. And if a Colossus tips over... imagine what damage that would do to surrounding Protoss forces. Hehe.