Combine vs Empire vs Flood vs Covenant

[say1988]

It does, but nobody knows anything about the real Combine (only the small group that came through), so you can't really judge.

 

[Earthling]

For a second, I thought the OP had something to do with the Combine from Half-Life

I think it is? I didn't recognize quite at first since the other factions were Halo and don't know much Half-Life about the backstory..but reading the thread it appears to be what others are saying. Maybe you can verify if the Star Wars Empire is apparently many times more powerful than the Combine?

 

[Icekommander]

In any case, Wookiepedia clearly states that nearly the entire power output of a Venator can be directed through its turbolasers, which means a single shot can reach 3.6 × 10^24 W. That is the normal mainline armament of a standard clone wars cruiser, not the most powerful ships of its time and outclassed by the newer Imperial ships.

Thats at using 40,000 tons of fuel per second. How much fuel do these ships carry? And it's also unlikely that any sane ship captain would put all his ships energy into weapons, because it would make him a sitting duck with no shields. He would just get ripped apart.


It also depends what era were talking about, for each game.. The covenant pre meeting humanity was a heck of alot more powerful after the events of the Halo's.

 

[capslock]

How many billions of terawatts did the teddy bears' weapons put out?

 

[Harbringer]

We cant asses the power of the combine as weve haven't truly seen it yet, to put it in perspective however, the combine invaded earth, and seven hours later they owned it.

 

[Shaihulud]

Star war universe has the force, millions of inhabitated planets and hundred of thousands of capital class battleships. What other has the same claims? I have never understood the purported threat leve of the Flood really, seems pretty wimpy like.

 

[MobBoss]

Is the Combine, the Draconis Combine?

 

[Shaihulud]

From the description, its the combine from half-Life.

 

[choxorn]

We cant asses the power of the combine as weve haven't truly seen it yet, to put it in perspective however, the combine invaded earth, and seven hours later they owned it.

True, but that was Twenty-Minutes-Into-The-Future Tech Earth. The Covenant may have taken several months and still not fully controlled Earth when they finally got to invading it, but there's a massive tech difference.

The flood may have been able to beat the Forerunners, but when the Forerunners fired the Halos and starved them all to death, they were reduced to much smaller numbers and only escaped Delta Halo due to a Civil War. They are much weaker than they were 100,000 years ago.

I'd say they fight to a stalemate and then get beat by an alliance of the protagonists with plot armor.

 

[say1988]

But that was only the tip of the iceberg when it came to the Combine. The portal was not large enough for them to send the bulk of their forces through. And why would they need to bother, they won in 7 hours after all? We have no idea what they have in their dimension.

As for the Flood, if they successfully spread to a few heavily populated worlds with minimal interference their numbers should grow rapidly. There is nothing to say that they would immediately fight an all out battle.

 

[Harbringer]

I still dont get whats so threatening about the flood.....

 

[GenMarshall]

The Galactic Empire can certanly pwn these guys. They got the freeking Death Star that blows up yer planet!

The Combine Empire would not stand a chance since Gordon Freeman gotten to them first.

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

Star war universe has the force, millions of inhabitated planets and hundred of thousands of capital class battleships. What other has the same claims? I have never understood the purported threat leve of the Flood really, seems pretty wimpy like.

Apparently you never read the Terminals.

 

[lovett]

I still dont get whats so threatening about the flood.....

I have never understood the purported threat leve of the Flood really, seems pretty wimpy like.

The flood may have been able to beat the Forerunners, but when the Forerunners fired the Halos and starved them all to death, they were reduced to much smaller numbers and only escaped Delta Halo due to a Civil War. They are much weaker than they were 100,000 years ago.

As for the Flood, if they successfully spread to a few heavily populated worlds with minimal interference their numbers should grow rapidly. There is nothing to say that they would immediately fight an all out battle.

Yeah. The thing with The Flood is that one must conceptualize them as a virus. They're totally different to the other players in this scenario. To say that The Empire could beat them because they have the Death Star is kinda like saying that the USA can beat Swine Flu because they have aircraft carriers. The difference is that The Flood are a virus with 100% fatality rate which can think and has taken to toting around high-powered weaponry. As say says it doesn't really matter how small they start off as; they grow exponentially and once they infect a world it seems that the only way to stop them is full sterilization.

The point I was trying to make with The Forerunners was that they represent an empire much more advanced and much more powerful than either The Empire or The Covenant. To whit, they can destroy all life in the galaxy. The fact that they chose to do this indicates that they could not beat The Flood by any conventional means; that strongly suggests that The Empire won't have much luck doing so.

 

[say1988]

The Galactic Empire can certanly pwn these guys. They got the freeking Death Star that blows up yer planet!

The Combine Empire would not stand a chance since Gordon Freeman gotten to them first.

And the Empire lost it most powerful weapon due to some teddy bears beating their elite troops, along with the Emperor, his apprentice, and probably a good amount of senior officers.

 

[Patroklos]

I didn't. I said that making up/getting numbers you can't even find on the Internet is pretty pathetic. 100s of teratons to 100s of gigatons is a thousandfold reduction, pretty significant.

Nobody made up any numbers. The Venator's terrawatt yeilds and the Acclamator's gigawatt yields are both verifiable cannon.

Means nothing of the sort and you know it - one turbolaser shot is not the same as the whole ships' armament.

Says who? You? Nothing says that the ship can't apportion that power to its batteries as it sees fit. But lets say we split the energy available between all the Venator's. The had 8 DBY-827 turbolasers as and per the source it could "divert almost all of its reactor output to its heavy turbolasers when needed," its heavy turbolasers being the DBY-827 mounts. The reactor output of a Venator was 3.6 × 10^24, the source not being made up internet claims but rather the Star Wars: Complete Cross-Sections published book which is well known and accepted canon.

So we are clear, the ractor puts out:

3,600,000,000,000,000,000,000,000W

Or in other words:

3,600,000,000,000TW

The source said that the Venator would divert "almost all" of this to its heavy turbolasers so lets be conservative and assume half of those terrawatts are needed for other things. Keep in mind that the qualification "almost all" means that the power available would far exceed half of the reactor output, but I am being conservative to discourage later quibbling.

So with the number halved the power available for the turbolasers is:

1,800,000,000,000TW

Assuming each of the 8 mounts (dual, so two turbolasers each) gets equal power that means each one can project fire bolts with yeilds of:

112,500,000,000TW

Now we can argue all day about transmission loses and whatnot, but at the end of the day the common SW cruiser is yeailding batteries of weapons dropping yeilds that as far as we know are greater than all the firepower of the Covenant and humans in the HALO universe combined.

And at any rate that's the problem with contradictory sources - this is a less precise statement than those that just say "200 gigatons" as the other source does, and several sources put lower ranges on even the "newer Imperial ships" (for instance the fansite stardestroyers.net has numbers at around 1 gigaton...)

Make your choice, at first you are saying numbers from the interent are not usable and now you are appealing to them as authoritative. And the SD.net site gives 1 gigaton as a LOWER limit of minimum firepower, it does not in any way speak to an upper limit.

But you said to use primary sources, and I did.

Not going to ask for a citation since I know there's no clear number - but it is clear, not in any single battle could the Empire bring that much to bear. 1000 ships from a Halo verse Fleet could stand up to a Star Wars fleet and if anything the evidence points to the Star Wars fleet ending up outnumbered because they don't field that many ships at once. And again, I'll give it to you the Covenant aren't undefeatable of course - but then again the Flood is stronger.

Considering the Empire has hyperdrives that make crossing the entire galaxy a couple days travel worth of effort, what exactly is keeping them from concentrating millions of ships at a single spot? Hell, the ON FILM Battle of Coruscant showed upwards of several thousand ships in one battle, so you are pretty much demonstrably wrong on this point.

 

[Patroklos]

Thats at using 40,000 tons of fuel per second. How much fuel do these ships carry? And it's also unlikely that any sane ship captain would put all his ships energy into weapons, because it would make him a sitting duck with no shields. He would just get ripped apart.

1.) We have no idea of the true nature of SW power generation any more than we do about ST warp corps or HALO whatever they came up with. We have a cannon source for output and there is no reason to not use it other than willfull denial.

All we know is that it uses hypermatter and at peak use consumed 40,000lbs of fuel per second. We have no idea what the density or storage requirements of that fuel is, for all we know that could fit on the heat of a pin.

For comparisons sake, a B-1 Lancer bomber carries 62 tons of fuel max, and a Venator has millions of times the internal volume as a B-1 lancer.

2.) We have no idea what the power requirements for shielding are, but it is pretty much accepted that sheilding has little do to with the power you pour into it and rather the power you can ABSORB. The heat/energy/momentum has to go somewhere, so when talking about shielding the question is not how much power you provide to the equation, but how much power you take out of the equation.

3.) We don't know what the propulsion requirements as far as power are, but these vessels are build to reach near relativistic speeds in realspace and be propelled to hyperspace beyond that. The relatively slow speeds we see on screen during combat should make a small fraction of the resources available, like single percentage points fraction.

 

[Patroklos]

The point I was trying to make with The Forerunners was that they represent an empire much more advanced and much more powerful than either The Empire or The Covenant. To whit, they can destroy all life in the galaxy. The fact that they chose to do this indicates that they could not beat The Flood by any conventional means; that strongly suggests that The Empire won't have much luck doing so.

This is not an accurate assesment. The Forerunners would have beaten the Flood handily if they had not been betrayed by the AI they put in charge of their military, which then also aided the flood in destroying the Forerunners.

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

The heat/energy/momentum has to go somewhere, so when talking about shielding the question is not how much power you provide to the equation, but how much power you take out of the equation.

Moving energy somewhere requires energy. Basic thermodynamics.

This is not an accurate assesment. The Forerunners would have beaten the Flood handily if they had not been betrayed by the AI they put in charge of their military, which then also aided the flood in destroying the Forerunners.

Who corrupted Mendicant Bias again?

 

[Moff Jerjerrod]

The Star Wars Combine comes out on top!