Question: Did the Covenant not launch their own fighters? Last I checked we're never told. Because if they did, then the boarding craft would have had good cover.
Do you consider doing more starwars vs 40k videos ? because there are a ton of things you could match against each other. And most importantly, it would be super *interresting* if you chose the right things to compare to eachother .
You forget about what Covies did to MAC Platforms at Reach. They made jumps in close proximity of platforms. If corse plotted correctly, you could destroy MAC cluster within seconds. This wonders me, why Covies did not jump 2-3 CCS for each cluster. Destroying 1-2 MACs in 2-3 clusters would allow them to reach Earth - it would open path for CAS.
Nice break down, but I think you got something wrong a little. The unsc’s Didn’t ignore the boarding parties, they figure that the fleet is weirdly small compared to reach, they thought there might be another wave entering else where, in respond they didn’t engage the fleet with all of their resources, but waiting for another wave, which allows the boarding parties to have a chance entering odps. And another point where you might be wrong is, the boarding ship is in the hundreds, yet the ships actually gets to the 3 ODPs is in dozens, means that the unsc is actually focusing on taking the boarding ships down, but Covenant succeeded using horde tactics to get to the platforms. You can see those details in the cutscenes and gameplay.
And Another point is, the UNSC’s lost isn’t due to this breach, they actually fought for weeks on space and ground. It’s multiple enormous wave of truth’s fleet that dwindled down and eventually destroyed the defence of earth. Sources from the novels.
Agreed, we need to make sure he sees it. This is exactly what I thought as I watched, it was classic Soviet style mass rush which got through. Furthermore, one must consider the fact that I dare say the boarding craft would be escorted with Covie fighters, such as space Banshees and Seraphs, which would be able to at least distract and hold off the Long Swords even if they did Engauge.
Yes! Thank you! Also going to add my hopes that EckhartsLadder acknowledges this, because the battle for Earth is actually incredibly unique. Covenant naval doctrine, for the vast majority of the war, IS NOT SUBTLE. In early engagements, human captains quickly notice that covenant capital ships always take up an aggressive posture. This doctrine lines up well after the disposition of the sangheili is further explored, and their naturally aggressive glory hungry tendencies become obvious. However, instead of a large fleet showing up and the sangheili shipmasters charging straight in to danger for the chance at being the martyrs that died taking down the formidable ODPs and setting the rest of the fleet up for a classic(honestly napoleonic) cavalry style breakthrough, they hold position outside of the killzone. 4th quarter of the game, only a couple minutes left on the clock in terms of how long this war has been, and suddenly two very strange things happen. Covenant fleet shows up, but it is 1/50 the size of the fleet that attacked Reach. Instead of charging headlong in to danger and adopting that classic sangheili aggressive posture, they hold position; even allowing a HUMAN shipmaster to take the initiative, and even though it was called off, didn't respond to the initial charge that fleet admiral Harper had intended to spearhead. In Hood's mind, knowing everything he knows and after seeing decades worth of Covenant invasions, that tiny and seemingly almost tentative fleet would've had to be driving him crazy with questions. What would make a sangheili shipmaster bring such a small fleet to assault the human homeworld, and after clearly being challenged by a fleet of "puny pathetic humans," would stay the shipmaster's natural response which would be to start tearing the human ships to pieces? Remember, it's not until the super carrier breaks orbit and settles over New Mombasa that they discover that it is a prophet whose ultimately in charge. San Shyuum tactics, their willingness to use manuevers that could be considered "sneaky," has never been seen before. In all the major covenant assaults on human worlds, he has never seen how a prophet conducts an invasion. As for the boarders, the reason they vocalize the line "boarding craft, and LOTS of them" instead of just leaving the quantity vague or only having the number of boarding craft just be represented by the number on a screen in the background, was to emphasize "hey, well there might not be as many capital ships as we were expecting, but the boarding crafts are here in the volume we're used to seeing." There were just too many to shoot all of them down. Now, again, here we see something unique; something new. At Reach, Covenant ships fought their way close enough to the planet that they could deploy ground troops. It was costly, but it was a VERY sangheili approach to the problem. Again, assuming he's dealing with an Elite leading the assault, Hood sees the boarding craft, but he has an ace up his sleeve. While the boarders sent to the Athens and Tmulsa might cause some havok, it will take them time to fight their way through the ODP's considerably beefed up garrisons worth of marines which they would have to go through to get to any vital systems which could take the guns offline. And even if they did manage to take those two platforms down eventually, the only way to get the super carrier past that cluster was to take down all three platforms; and the greatest soldier in human history who just got his armor upgraded and has the support of a fully prepared marine garrison is standing right in front of him on that third platform. But, here comes the thing he has never seen a sangheili strike force do; sneak a bomb onboard a vessel. Not an honorable fight to the death like an Elite commander would do, but just bring something that causes a big enough boom to make fighting irrelevent. Lord Hood was learning the difference(just like we were on that first play through) between fighting an Elite and fighting a Prophet.
The Covenant won for plot reasons. If this was a straight up fight between the two forces, without the context of the Covenant needing to get to Earth for story reasons, then those 15 ships would have easily been defeated, every single time.
Again, that was for plot reasons. We see that one of the carriers flew straight past Cairo station, at a time when the stations main gun was operational and firing. That Carrier in reality should never have been able to get anywhere near the station, let alone get past it. The Orbital Defence Platforms are not stationary, they have the ability to orient themselves, giving them a huge firing arc.
RU-vid Account #2 MAC defence platforms can destroy any Covenant ship in a single shot. Plus, when the targeting is being handled by an artificial intelligence like Cortana, they are almost guaranteed to hit every time.
A mac round can punch a hole through a ship. Where that shot lands determines if it's dead. You can seal decks and survive if nothing crucial is destroyed. Considering it was the only ship to make it through, I'd say they rushed the gap they created. You dont know what the Cairo was targeting while that ship made a run for it. I could have been firing on the other 20 ships coming at them.
True, however, you have to remember that the UNSC had dozens of ships in the area. They were ordered to protect the Cairo, Athens, and Malta. Their combined fire, plus the Cairo, should have obliterated any Covenant ship.
I don’t see how they lost other then plot armor. 20 ODPs at Reach held off 300 Covenant Ships. How did 13 covenant ships blow past 300 ODPs? It was just for narrative
Well the majority of the ODPs, at least half, would be shadowed by Earth itself. I do still find it weird that only one cluster was in effective range though. You'd expect even distant ones to be good out to at least Lunar Orbit range.
you forget reach had a defense fleet of nearly 200 ships itself, including one of the last UNSC Fleet carriers (a 4 km long behemoth of a ship) they also utilized the repair platform trick again so that their ships got 2 free volleys. i would say Regret (being an alien bastard) would probably have gotten blown sky high trying to land, but once he was below the grid, you do NOT point a gun that big at a continent. once the UNSC fleet engaged the covenant in a brawl, the ODP's would have to hold fire lest they blow up their own ships.
In all truth they didn't lose the battle of earth then. The UNSC won this battle, consider 300 odps so at most you have 75 able to see a single location. Say only 25 are in "range"(thats a joke in space with something travelling that fast. Range would be out beyond mars, accurate range would be far shorter tho). A fleet of this size wouldn't be able to win this battle. They could however with a healthy dose of plot armour get beyond the odps (both CSO's somehow managed that). As for the actual battle for earth its never seen but it should reasonably be assumed that once the covenant doscovered earth was humanities homeworld the fleet sent would be in the 100's or more (hell they already lost a huge fleet weeks earlier that was coming to earth). If you go by the books alone the fleet guarding high charity was tens of thousands of ships, something tells me the covenant navy had alot of ships to spare before the civil war.
i know next to nothing about dune. but for the other three i suppose that stargate personal shields are the strongest. if i remember correctly the ancients had a shield device who made you pretty much invulnerable until the energy died out. which could take hours or even days. Also i don't remember the goa'uld personal shields from the system lords ever fail. (with the exception of apophis maybe as he crashed with his ship but we don't know for certain).
I would say that stargate wins with dune being a second place, dune personal shields make the user almost invulnerable (for what i remember, anything short from a 300m sandworm would just bounce off) but tend to overheat even before running out of energy like stargate's. But there's one thing that flips the scale in dune favour and that is that stargate personal shielding is much harder to get, while in dune even the lowfries of a mercenary group could afford one.
You've got to remember that Dune energy weapons are continuous-wave laser projectors, or basically constant fire high energy continuous lasers. Most other energy weapons are burst fire plasma type energy weapons, with the exception of Star Trek with modulated frequency phased laser weapons. So not sure what the reaction of plasma weapons would be, but light based energy weapons would most likely act like the Lazguns do toward shields in Dune.
I’m pretty sure ONI was the only one to have both a super duper super soldier army, and to actively go around trying to commit genocide against an alien race. Sure the imperials were douches but I don’t think the intelligence side ever tried to and got pretty close to wiping out an entire species.
I feel the same way even with moving the fleets like they did I feel like the U.N.S.C marines onboard the stations would have been more than enough to repel the boarding parties. The U.N.S.C came out on top in ground engagements with covenant ground forces more often than not even without spartan backup.
Well there are two things. The Covenant did start bypassing the ODPs by slipspacing on the other side... And also I think one thing was the number of boarding craft that were launched. The number seemed accelerating very rapidly so I'm guessing hundreds upon hundreds. And the concept art does show space banshees so seraphs and space banshees were launched too.so I think chances are the sheer numbers would mean some would get through
19 ships for the Covenant were displayed in his chart, if each sent 100 or so landing craft then you'd have 1900 landing ships to down. Not an easy task.
I think given how many boarding craft we see leave the fleet to attack the stations compared to how many actually make it to the station you might be understimating how effective the Longswords were at defending.
100% American Buffalo Spartans MK IIs, 8/10 times. Systems Alliance Marines, 7/10 times. Spartans were the ultimate UNSC soldier, basically designed for completing implausible feats. N7s have roughly the same technology as Spartan MK IIs, but the Spartans were shown to easily counter a well trained army with the exact same technology (AKA the Sangheli/Elites). The only way for the N7s to win is with luck or the proper skillset in their team to counter Spartans. Systems Alliance Marines have roughly the same tactics as UNSC Marines, but also generally have better equipment. If the UNSC marines have something like a rocket launcher, the battle will likely be greatly in their favor. However, small arms only will likely result in a Systems Alliance marine victory most of the time. The best chance for the UNSC is heavier weapons or a lucky win
Seems to me that the UNSC may have considered the boarding parties less of a threat than they should have. They may have considered a "ground fight" on an orbital platform a fight the UNSC could win while still keeping the orbital platforms operational. More often than not, the UNSC was extremely successful in protracted ground conflicts with the covenant, largely leading the covenant to retreat to space and glass the planet. Kind of hard to believe that the UNSC would not have considered the possibility that elite boarding parties would not bring some means of destroying the orbital platforms with them. But then again you have some serious firepower in the form of covenant capital ships as you've stated. I mean... the covenant have gotten a first hand demo of how lethal these orbital platforms were when attempting to take other human colonies. I have one big question though... what constitutes a "kill zone" for orbital MACs? Surely not an envelope where a shell loses too much velocity? Is it a certain critical distance where firing solutions are hard to resolve for enemy ships?
Effective Kill range would be at what distance the other ship has enough time to react to the oncoming round and dodge. They still carry the same velocity until they strike a target or are pulled into an objects gravity well.
@@jacobm8242that part, shoot too far and the enemy can just move slightly to the left or right and you’ll miss by hundreds if not thousands of kilometers
No, they were vastly outnumbered and caught off guard with most of their defense fleet being lost to the CSO. The battle of reach was lost no matter what die hard tactics you used.
Wolferos Remember, the Covenant forces that attacked Reach was more than 10x the amount of the ones that attacked Earth, and there were significantly less platforms defending according to Eckharts. Also they probably had less warning than Earth did.
Besides being horribly out gunned and out numbered if the tactics the UNSC employed in general not counting the ODST and Spartans actions was as bad or worse then employed here... then no they never stood much of a chance.. if any ever
Hood needs more in-person experience with the Covenant. Also, when the Covenant main fleet (massively damaged by the Great Schism) arrives for the Second Battle of Earth, why didn't they aim DOWN and fire upon Truth's forces? Defend with a few cruisers and frigates per MAC group, spread them over orbits BREAKING geo-synchronicity to avoid the bulk fleet, and rain fire on Truth from orbit. A few frigates, longswords and pelican gunships could weed out boarders, destroyers/frigates/cruisers can defend platforms from Covenant attack vessels (possibly pulling off boarding actions of their own here and there), thus allowing stations to align with New Mombasa AFTER Truth breaches atmosphere with his main forces. Keeping the platforms moving, regrouping them into smaller units for easy defense, and recognizing that if they fail they are dead anyway, redirecting the orbitals to surface strike would have been the sensible thing. Halo 2 Teaser Trailer "I'm asking you to retarget the orbitals!" "And let more of them slip the kill zone? That's insanity. There's nothing more I can do!" **Not in the SECOND battle, it isn't!**
One thing I don't understand. How does destroying 2 ODP's enable the Covenant fleet to get through the defenses? There are supposed to be 300+ ODP's in Earth orbit plus the huge Earth fleet.
ODP's are clustered in groups of 3. They cover the earth, but taking down the Athens and Malta let Regret bum rush that cluster of ODP's and allow for his ship to pass through.
Look, I know it's been five years, but you have to picture 100 clusters of 3 dots scattered evenly accross the high atmosphere. Earth is big, so picture out how much distance there would be between those clusters. The distance would be massive and as a result destroying one cluster means that you actually punched a very big hole in the defense grid.
I'm referring to the Autumn-CLASS cruiser, the one built post-war that has a bunch of reverse-engineered Forerunner tech like the Infinity does (energy shields, a more powerful MAC, a highly accurate slipspace drive, etc.)
My money's on the Autumn. Its MAC is WAY more powerful than anything in the ME universe, and I think its shields could take at least one hit from a Reaper. Couple that with its precise slipspace drive and it can shoot, reposition via slipspace, shoot again and reposition before it can be hit. The Reapers were so overwhelmingly powerful only because of their numbers and the fact that ships and tech in the ME universe wasn't that advanced compared to the Halo universe. Ships were slow and cumbersome and they lacked shield technology. The Normandy of course is an exception, but it was just a really small frigate. A post-war UNSC heavy cruiser would be more than up to the task against a single Reaper, provided it doesn't start in CQB.
03:38 One thing I will say is you did not represent the covenants firing range it is possible that the longswords would not want to engage so close to the main covenant fleet and would stay further away and they might have a bit more difficulty protecting the ODPs with so little time but I do agree that the frigates and longswords should have been able to protect them
I didn't think MAC's had a limited range for firing a Anti-capital ship projectile ... in space ... at a super high velocity? Couldn't the ODP's just pick off the smaller Covenant ships? like the C.C.S. BattleCruisers?
Kinetic weapons like mac guns technically have infinite range But when an enemy ship is so far away that it takes a moment for the round to reach the ship, it can dodge it.
Dragon Templar4 If outside the kill zone, they probably would have less chance to shoot it, as it could most likely dodge or sacrifice a smaller ship to take the brunt. Either that or the targeting computers didn't work that far, which reminds me of a quote I heard from Mass Effect, of an officer telling a gunner not to "eyeball" any shots, as it could lead to the destruction of a planet in a billion years or so.
As much as I love Halo and its lore, I've always kind of felt the Battle of Earth to be a little bs. I get that it's mostly for the sake of plot, but there's no way the Covenant could have penetrated Earth's defenses without taking heavy, heavy casualties. ESPECIALLY with 300 odps and a sizeable UNSC fleet to boot.
I'm gonna agree with your "they underestimated the danger of the boarding crews" theory, 'cause when the first station exploded, everyone was like : "look, they already pushed them back !.. *BOOM* ... Ooops !" and it took Cortana to understand in a timely fashion what was going on.
2:55 I think what might've happened is the Navy thought the garrisons on the platforms were enough to deal with the Covvies, but the garrisons thought the Navy would shoot down most of the boarding craft and so chaos ensues. Just my guess with absolutely no evidence though :D
0:25 Here's our (you) Awesome video. I'm not all that interested and affluent in Halo, but you make it more interesting than any of the books or games do! I get the impression the UNSC not caring about the boarding parties could've been a dig at how one of the most repeated bits of Halo trivia is "Humanity usually loses in space but wins on the ground". Just a thought, though.
You missed the glaring problem with UNSC: they don't do dogfights, that's why the longswords don't go after Covenant shuttles. Longswords and other space "fighters" aren't fighters, they're bombers, made for delivering an explosive payload, that's why they don't have machine guns, etc. It's not til the introduction of the Broadsword that the UNSC has anything close to a "fighter". And someone is going to say it 🤦♂️, Sabers were only at Reach, they never made it past the experimental stage
Worth noting that Broadswords existed during the early Human-Covenant War as fighters, but they just weren't shown much. The one we see in Halo 4 is the new breed that has been retrofitted with Saber Program upgrades now that the UNSC is rolling out a fleet-wide upgrade program. It's ultimately a heavy refit, not a new class though.
Starkiller Base is the decider, but then IIRC the Tau have blown up a couple of suns in stellar engineering projects. As with the Imperium, the Tau's awful FTL tech would be their weakness in a galactic scale war. They also don't have the Imperium's fuckhueg warships thing that normally lands 40K the win in these comparisons. I'm pretty confident that the Tau would slaughter in ground engagements, would do well in space battles, and would most likely perform admirably on the larger logistics and strategy level. The Tau are strategic geniuses, something that the SW universe lacks aside from Thrawn. Who, funnily enough, is also a blue xeno. :P
Other than a sheer overwhelming fleet attacking at once at multiple points across the planet, no there is no way for the Covenant to effectively break through. Logistically, it makes the most sense for the Covenant to enter into Earth's orbit at equatorial headings, this is also where the UNSC's MAC stations would have been in geosynchronous orbit. For the Covenant fleet to change their heading it would mean that they would have to use a good bit of their Delta V, this would mean that they're basically in it for the ride. We must also remember, the Covenant weren't expecting to find this heavily guarded of a planet, they had no idea that Earth was humanities' home world, and they had three huge ships which would be so much easier for the cannons to target. Remember, the larger the ship, the easier it is for MACs to target and hit the ship. This would mean that for every 2,648 km (orbital) there is a cluster of three MACs. Each of these cannons has an effective range of about 1.5 light seconds (450,000,000km) giving the ship captains (brutes) 75 seconds to respond and move their ship. This battle is poorly portrayed in the game when we can walk around Cairo station, but these stations would be able to fire at ships over the horizon by reducing the velocity at which they fire their projectiles (which would not be hard to do because the stations are being controlled by AI which can do all of the calculating), at the very minimum harassing the capital ships. Assuming all of this, and that the Brutes were able to keep their ships from getting hit, it would still mean that the boarding craft had to travel that same distance in order to reach the stations. This would give the UNSC fleet ample time to re-position their frigates to give anti-boarding support, and the Marathons ample of time to give supporting fire to the stations. All of this, coupled with Earth's marine garrison and Master Chief, there is no way that Humanity should have lost this space battle. The only way I realistically see the Covenant coming out on top is if they tried to come in from the poles (which the MACs could still fire on them given they modify the projectile's velocity) and try to stage an offensive from there. Also consider the elements of the UNSC's defenses that aren't shown in the game such as extensive longsword bases across the planet's surface and potential orbit, as well as nuclear minefields in orbit. The only disadvantage that Humanity had was their low number of ships. Had they not sent 50% of the forces allocated to Reach, they would have had such a superiority that it would make it near impossible for the Covenant to invade. Especially with the small fleet that we initially see in Halo 2. That's my opinion though, sorry for it being so lengthy.
All in all, the more you listen EckhartsLadder the more you question why (The topic) and then he explains the why. People like EckhartsLadder is one of the most thorough people I know (figuratively) and that already makes him a great person in my book because it's not halfway done
I have to say that Dark helmet would win this one. Darth Vader would approche DH and he would start laughing at DH incompetence that he would laugh so hard and so long that Vader would actually die of laughter
The most intelligent thing to do, in my opinion, would be to layer nukes and mines fairly heavily just outside of the ODP's range, and dot them throughout their fields of fire. It should be possible to either wait for the boarding parties to fly near them, or herd them in that direction using the UNSC's fighters. From there, the frigates should be placed in a staggered formation in front of the ODP's to provide additional point defense, while the heavier ships could hang back to reinforce where needed.
EckhartsLadder, your strategy was exact same strategy i done one time when I played Star Wars empire at war on the Force of Corruption expansion. I played the Pirate faction on Galactic map mode and held Bothowi. Since their ships kinda looked liked uncs ships (even tho their not). Mine was keep my large ships and corvettes close to my lvl 5 station with some artillery ships in the back, mean while fighter squadrons will dog fight other fighters and kill what ever bombers they come across. And of course my bombers do runs on the enemy ships. Since my station has a MAC like canon, I used it to take out enemy artillery ships and damage/destroy capital ships. Didn’t matter either rebel or empire, they never got through.
From what I remember from gameplay and studying into this myself I feel that they didnt see the boarding parties as much of a threat as they stated and believed if they attempted to attack the stations they'd win, but the thing they didn't know was that the boarding parties also had plans to sneak bombs onto the stations to destroy them which is what caught them off guard and helped cause more damage than intended. And when you think of the soldiers on the last station after the first 2 blow up they probably took a massive moral hit as 1. They just witnessed 2 stations blow up really quickly. 2. Their station is next as it's the only one in its cluster left. 3. They're now gonna have to fight to protect their station from both the covenant boarding parties and the bomb on it. So I think the bombs on the stations that were snuck on also played a factor in the fight as well.
Yes, they do have infinite range, and at the speed they’re fired at, the covenant would have to time to dodge a large number of ODP attacks, so really, they would be trying to survive the human fleet directly attacking them, while being shreked by the three ODPS directly in front of them, and probably be too distracted to notice the dozen or so ODPs further out that would likely wipe out the entire covenant fleet in a single volley.
The Vong's real strength was being immune to the Force, right? Forerunners don't give a damn about no hokey religions, so I think they'd win it quite handily. They could probably hold if not win without committing any actual Forerunners to the fight. Just send a Monitor to oversee the strategy with an immense fleet of their automata.
Avensis Astari True but what if they do a "Forerunner" move like they did with the flood and try to analyze the Yuuzhan Vong like the did the flood instead of just completely wiping them out😂😂😂
The Forerunners were actively at war with The Flood, they just weren't winning. Hence the studies to try and understand how best to defeat it. It was an infection the were bombing with antibiotics while trying desperately to seek a cure.
As usual, you are 100% right. I have been thinking these thoughts for years. The only way I could see this succeeding with your tactics is if they blitzed one group of cannons.
The only reason the Covenant won on Earth was for Plot armor. in taking reach the Covenant lost up to one trhid of the entire fleet they gathered in Epsilon Eridani,which was the largest fleet conglomeration the covenant have ever done, that means they lost up to 350 warships, making this one of the few instances the Covenant did lose more capital ships than the UNSC, and that makes sense considering that in the storyline the pyrrhic victory at Reach made the very foundations of the covenant tremble , that's why in some books they consider the huge casualties taken by the Covenant in Reach one of the first steps towards the great schism.
It's entierly possible that the UNSC couldn't afford to let the covenant fleet going around the solar system without reacting. I am not familiar enough with Halo universe to be completely sure, but I imagine there is many humans instalation and asset around in the whole system, and that earth is the only one protected by a significant space station network. Maybe the idea of all the installation around mars, venus, jupiter, etc... being obliterated by the covenant fleet caused the UNSC to attack the intruder. Beyond the potential material losses, staying on a defensive position might have had a huge psychological impact on the earth population and maybe even in the UNSC chain of command: taking what appear to be passive stance while the ennemy is at the gate, especially if you believe you have a fighting chance, would have cause moral to drop among the civilians and military alike; causing unrest, desertion and general miscontent, even if the strategy is in the end effective. Finally, The High command might have feard that covenant were knowinly attacking mankinds homeworld, and that the regrets fleet was only the 1st wave. they then decided to take their chance against this fleet, and try to destroy before the main force arrive. This is a mistake, but considering they had no idea how much time they had to respond to this potential threat, they decided to go on a frontal assault, seeing this as their only chance. All in all, the decision UNSC took during this battle to attack the opposing fleet was a costly mistake, but it might as well have been the only course of action they could have take. A. Leblanc out.
theres one issue with your plan, and thats the covenants own fighters, seraphs for example, which are shielded and faster and more nimble than UNSC longswords. Theres also that the fact that unlike with the UNSC fighters against covenant capital ships, the covenant fighters are more than capable of taking out, or severely damaging UNSC capital ships, due to the fact that human ships are not shielded, and plasma weapons, even smaller fighter sized ones, go through armor like butter. You would need a large number of your fighters to defend the UNSC capital ships against the many fighters coming from the covenant so pulling all to defend the platforms might save the platforms, but the fleet would be decimated anyway, and due to the non shielded and immobile nature of the platforms, even a small covenant fighter or frigate could destroy them with long range weapons, being only able to fire a few times a minute the covenant would just essentially send a few ships toward each kamikaze style. Its just an unwinnable fight for the UNSC tbh, the covenant could fire any long range type weapon at the platforms and there would be nothing the UNSC could do to stop it. Its demonstrated numerous times throughout the books that human ships only win when outnumbering the covenant around 3-1 or in some smaller scale engagements, with exceptionally brilliant tactics. A defensive fight backed against a planet however is just not going to go well for the humans, the covenant dont care about the casualties they sustain, they have superior numbers and vastly superior technology.
Psykers. I've never heard of a force user that could change the planet's orbit, or burn down a daemonic realm, or mind control an entire sector (which is like a couple trillion people at once). Force user are more stable though, not having to deal with the perils of the Warp.
The problem is with what you've stated in other videos; Covenants ships/fleets have a lot of Seraph fighters and type 27 banshees (space banshees). They probably escorted those boarding parties most of the way. Frigates could hit them, but the Longswords would need to defend the frigates from Seraph/Banshee attacks but Longswords are generally outclassed by the Seraphs (unless they had Sabres because those can be fitted for orbital defense and outclass the Seraphs in-kind). So the overwhelming force of the Covenant fighters would likely outright delete the Longsword presence. The sheer number would be staggering. If they succeeded to oust the boarding parties, the fighters would win and begin slamming the Mac-Platforms little by little until the same hole is created. So your strategy would just slow them down a bit, since Covenant's overwhelming force of fighters, along with said-fighters being better. If there's a chance they have Sabres, then your strategy works way better.
So basically the UNSC coulda, woulda, shoulda won this.. BY FORCING the easiest targets the boarding ships and teaching the Covenant tactics and FORCING the Covenant to close to endangering ranges to be effective. If they can SEE the Covies intended tactics and that they was lazily taking their sweet time moving in to support the boarding forces an yet while able to make the Covenant make the difficult choice of realizing their gonna either lose horrendous amounts of their forces to win or back off here an yet dont capitalize on it they probably wont fair so well against forces like Star Wars factions or Mass Effect counterparts who learned the hard way, alot of them, what happens when you waste time, and/or DON'T capitalize on advantages while maximizing on the advantages of their enemies mistakes. IF the UNSC fought their whole war with the Covenant as bad as here its no real wonder they lost so bad, so much, almost non stop
Robert Agu Not really, the UNSC fought with stunning ferocity throughout the war, with a pretty even odds on the ground but the space force get edged out technologically and sometimes even numerically, leaving the ground force to be glassed/orbital bombarded. The ONLY reason the they suddenly become idiots here was because of Covenant's plot armor. They needed to get on Earth, activate the portal to the Lesser Ark to progress with the story.
Admiral Jay perhaps but to truly win and not struggle. They shouldve seized every advantage, mistake and opportunity they could to turn the tide on the Covenant much as they could ESPECIALLY when the only other outcome as they well knew wasnt even totally enslavement but more or less extinction. The Fleet should've been upgraded to least be able to have at least one or 2 major ship types that spelled absolute salvation and utter death and defeat for even the Covenant's best forces and strongest ships if not taken seriously.. something that was an immediate game changer and could turn instantly a losing battle to a winning one soon after appearing. Like the Spartans super shock soldiers or ODSTs attacking in mass. They might not have fought so desperately so often was what was trying to get at. The Covenant never really was troubled by or took much more then the Spartan super soldiers as a major threat to their operations if i remember right. The UNSC fleet never seemed usually to be alot more then a nusiance most the time. Heres a battle where the UNSC could've delivered a crushing blow and make the enemy not be so cocky the rest the war, the moral boost, an so on also wouldve helped tremendously here.. but slow human leadership failed to really capitalize on what no general, admiral, or anyone else in similar posts even today wouldve failed to do. Sure you an me both in charge first thing id done is blown them transports right outta the sky when i noticed the Covenant was stupid enough to send them in alone.
Robert Agu The amount of stupidity in your statements is beyond comprehension. The UNSC wasn't losing because they were fighting bad, they were losing because they were incomprehensibly outmatched. There are dozens if not hundreds of examples and instances where the UNSC fought infinitely better than the Covenant. Harvest, the Keyes Loop, Arcadia, Sigma Octanus IV, Psi Serpentis, Algolis, Great Bear, Battle of the Rubble, Metisette, Indra Asteroid, and many more clearly show that the UNSC didn't just roll over and die. The covenant outnumbered, out-teched, and outfought them. But it *never* out-thought them. The UNSC consistently displayed far superior tactics. The fact that the UNSC managed to hold them off for nearly 3 *decades* proves this beyond doubt. To put it simply, the UNSC (1 single species that had been space-faring for just over 200 years) managed to fight and hold off the Covenant ( *8* species -2 of which were warrior cultures, that had been space-faring for over *3,000* years) for over *3 decades.* To address the things you pointed out- "They should've seized every advantage, mistake and opportunity they could to turn the tide on the Covenant" -your quote - They did capitalize on their advantages. The problem was that they only rarely got the opportunity to do so. The UNSC was better at ground combat, but the Covenant only ever invaded planets that had forerunner tech on it. Most of the Human planets they found they just glassed. The UNSC needed at least 3 ships to destroy 1 covenant ship. They knew that. The few times the UNSC went on the offensive the fleets they sent usually did outnumber the Covenant 3 to 1. The problem was that they only rarely managed to go on the offensive. They were fighting a defensive war. Which meant they had to split their fleets to protect all their planets, which meant most colonies only had a dozen or so ships guarding them, which meant they usually didn't have the needed 3-1 ship advantage. The UNSC knew the Covenant were fanatics. They commonly used this fact to gloat the Covenant into traps, most notably at the battle of Psi Serpentis "The UNSC fleet never seemed usually to be a lot more then a nuisance most the time." -your quote -The reason they were losing so much in space battles wasn't because they sucked at tactics, it because they had such inferior technology. The covenat was over 3,000 years more advanced than them. To put that in perspective, 3,000 years ago our most advanced "ships" were wooden canoes. It'd be like a bunch of fishing boats against aircraft-carriers. "The Fleet should've been upgraded to least be able to have at least one or 2 major ship types that spelled absolute salvation and utter death and defeat for even the Covenant's best forces and strongest ships if not taken seriously.. something that was an immediate game changer and could turn instantly a losing battle to a winning one soon after appearing" -your quote - They couldn't "upgrade" their ships because, again, they didn't have the tech. Hell, they only managed to crack energy shielding in 2551 (the war ended in 2552). Plus, as the war dragged on, the number of ships they had kept getting lower and lower. Not to mention their shipyards kept getting destroyed. That, and it being far quicker to build frigates than cruisers meant that cruisers became increasingly rare. If you want proof, just look at history. At that start of the war, most UNSC *battlegroups* had between 5-10 cruisers, but, 30 years later, at the battle of Earth (the most *important battle of the war* ) there was a grand total of 8. *8!* -They did try to build a "major ship type" that spelt "utter death and defeat for even the Covenant's best". Its called the Infinity. And it took *8* bloody years to build, and was only completed after the war was over. "they probably wont fair so well against forces like Star Wars factions or Mass Effect counterparts who learned the hard way, alot of them, what happens when you waste time, and/or DON'T capitalize on advantages" -your quote I would hardly compare the UNSC, a faction that fought an incomprehensibly superior foe to a bloody grind for nearly 30 years, to either Star Wars of Mass Effect. Both of which are famous for their characters stupidity (if your wonder who I'm talking about, its the Empire and the citadel council). Plus, you're kinda wrong. -Star Wars was not hopelessly outmatched by their endgame faction (the yuuzhan Vong). All they had to do was alter their technology a bit, and then they were able to fight the Vong on roughly equal footing. And even then, they still had to use a super weapon to win. -Mass Effect got its ass kicked. They *HAD* to use a super weapon to win. The fact that they literally couldn't win without said super weapon was the entire point of the third game. Meanwhile, the UNSC won by *surviving.* They couldn't just alter their technology to make a fair fight, and they couldn't just use an instant, one click I win, super weapon. In fact, they had to *destroy* several super weapons to survive. Simply put, the UNSC was so stupid here because the plot demanded it. There is no sign or indication of them being even close to this dumb anywhere else in the lore. P.S. -Whats with the spelling errors and massive run-on sentences? You realize that RU-vid comes with spellcheck built-in to website, right? Its literally giving you the correct spelling.
The UNSC did mobilise everything they could for the Human-Covenant war, from dragging the powerful Valiant heavy cruisers back to service, to modernizing the underpowered but durable Halcyon's, even converting colony ships into combat-capable assault ship (e.g. the Spirit of Fire, similar to how the US turn oilers into carriers in WW2). Most of them did pretty well. Valiant became a powerful flagship for fleets, and was Cole's flagship (the Everest) during his journey on kicking Covenant's collective butts. The modernized Halcyon's were absolute monsters of ships, the Pillar of Autumn commanded by Jacob Keyes singlehandedly took on a Covenant supercruiser and won (though a large credit to Keyes' brilliant tactic) and crippled a few more cruisers depsite being considerably damaged from the former encounter. The UNSC also had a mega-project, the Infinity, though it wouldn't be completed until after the war. It drove the UNSC to near-bankruptcy, most likely of constant delays redesigning the ship to incorporate new technologies. The problem is those 'powerful' ships were fuxking expensive. Humanity hasn't reached the point where they can throw ships without a second thought (The Covenant has!). Maintaining huge ships (and project for them) isn't cheap, that's why they initially retired the Valiant. The original Halcyon itself wasn't economically viable either, let alone the modernized one. The result is them not mass produced (not like they could mass produce anything else worthwhile, resources in Outer Colonies all glassed to shit) => too few to turn the table on their own. The Covenant had both technological and numerical advantage. Humanity losing 300 ships? That's a big fucking deal. The Covenant losing 300 ships? Unfortunate loss, but they won't give a shit in the long run.
So many fictional militaries seem to forget about point defense. During WW2, a battleship had over a thousand crew with half being used for antiaircraft. Once the the CIWS was implemented, point defense reached a pinnacle. Most modern navy ships only have one or two of these guns. Point defense seems to ruin shitty plot points. If the Raddus had a ciws, those tie fighters never would have reached the bridge. I think your video is spot on.
and like, you have a whole god damn planet of people there, just fill the entire god damn station with hundreds of soldiers and a bunch of food, that'd stop the boarding parties
Bungie wrote it like a Hollywood movie. The people make smart decisions, then make a catastrophic decision that makes you think it was written by an idiot, just so they could move the plot along easily.
Reminds me of empire at war, I love my hyper velocity canons. Put one on just about every planet I can. that and maxed out station, couple of capital ships, and a interdictor. They have a hell of a time taking my worlds, the main weakness is getting swarmed by fighters, but holding patrol frigates behind the station and capital ship seems to kill them off decently well. At the very least even if I lose the space over the world, they take tons of losses and make it easy to retake. I guess it can get boring if they just keep spam attacking worlds they can't take.
i think the reason for the defensive line would be that there are Covenant ship that can take out the ODP from outside their kill zone (althought that class of ship wasn't present at the first battle). Also, in ground combat (boarding action) the UNSC and the Covenant are on pretty even terms so i think Hood was confident enough that the Marines would be able to repel the Covenant boarding parties
Tactically you're right on the mark and given the knowledge available to them at the time I'd have done the same thing. The one fear I have is that with the fleet being outright destroyed chief wouldn't have been on delta halo, the schism may have been put off and delta halo may have been fired so their tactical good may have been a blessing in disguise for humanity. Unless of course I'm missing something
I believe the overconfidence of the Human's ground to ground capabilities played a huge role in this battle. When they saw that boarding parties were coming in they might have felt as though it was a minor threat and probably assumed they could handle them with help of ODSTs and Spartans (of which at least 3 were available). What caught the UNSC by surprise though was the kamikaze like behavior the covenant boarding parties adapted. They brought a bomb with massive escort forces. Detonating it with huge self delt casualities in each detonation. The ODPs also were controlled by Cortana and could not be easily shut down without those surprise bombs. All the ODPs were also powered by planet side generators, as stated by multiple books. The ODPs were very difficult to stop firing unless you had a ground force or managed to destroy the whole thing. Overall it doesn't excuse the poor judgement of defending from boarding parties, but it does at least explain why the UNSC might not have been as urgent to destroy boarding ships in flight rather than engage them ground to ground on the ODPs themselves.
I feel like you're right in the method of defense but different methods would have to be used later on if the defense was successful and the fleet elected not to make a foolhardy charge into MAC range, or at least were smart enough to disengage early enough to save the majority of their fleet. That said, MACs don't really have a max range as much as a max effective range. Having reloads on standby could mean skirmishing forces could spread out and fire MAC rounds to make the covenant ships cluster only to fire the heavier rounds at the now clumped up force, causing casualties for ships who would have to now avoid their own ships and weather the continued fire around the edges from smaller rounds that are also quite damaging. This would force the fleet back further and probably cause a few casualties after the boarders were intercepted. The real battle would be when more reinforcing fleets started adding to the seige afterwards in this case.
How the UNSC could have won the BATTLE FOR EARTH | Halo Battle Breakdown The roughly 150 ODP that would be able to establish line of sight on the capital ships rotate and lock on to the Covenant ships that were well within the effective range as they were between the earth and the moon, get their firing angles correct as the ODP's would have to adjust for the earths gravity, and have them fire either a volley or at will. The rounds would hit the ship in a matter of seconds, so fast that the Covenant couldn't reposition the ships and even if they did you have enough guns between the dozens of fleets gathered and the stations around the planet that you can even offset your fire to saturate an area around the fleet. The ODP Super MAC's would hit in a matter of seconds, if they were as close as they look then they would hit in around a second or maybe even less. The UNSC fighters and frigates would then proceed to mop up any escape pods, boarding craft, and small ships. This couldn't even be overkill as the number of rounds fired in the battle from one has to number in the hundreds because they fire every 14-15 seconds and it takes a normal person 10-30 minutes to finish the first mission of Halo 2 This battle should have lasted a grand total of as long as it takes to rotate the ODP array into position, load and fire them. The Super MAC fires at roughly 4% the speed of light and I did this math on another video soooooo... ODP speed of light =186000 mi/s 1% = 1860 mi/s 4% = 7440 mi/s speed to 1/4 distance to moon about equal to 8.03 seconds speed to moon about equal to 32.1 seconds That speed is faster than most could react because to turn a ship from a threat, is the time it takes for combat (whoever is on the scanners, sensor systems seeing the threat, whatever you want) to realize that there is a threat, so lets say superhuman and put it at 5 seconds (in real life unless your at general quarters your threat response would be nowhere near this, and they didn't know humans would be at earth) then they have to pass that up to whomever is in charge on the bridge (lets say the captain) who then has to hear the report and comprehend it which lets say 15 seconds because talking takes some time, they have to pass it on to the helmsman who then has to also comprehend the order so another 15-20 seconds, then the helmsman has to turn the ship which even a very maneuverable ship which larger ships ARE NOT takes time to respond before it even begins to move, I give it a minimum of a minute total but more like 3-5 for the unsuspecting Covenant as most warships wont have their combat helmsman and highest trained crews on station at all times and a normal watch crew receives FAR less training and not mentally ready to make snap orders and the like as they dont NEED that level of skill as they have other jobs that are their primary function for ships operation they just man the watch the ship because the skilled crew cant be on station 24/7. We see this sort of process when the Covenant show up from the Human perspective and we also get a sense of the capacity of the Smart AI like Cortana because she is simply waiting for permission to fire, something she should have had already, as soon as she gets that permission the ODP is already spooling up to fire and opens up practically as soon as you get control. Every ODP should have an AI (smart or dumb) to run their functions and should be under standing orders to destroy Covenant ships resulting in a hail of Super MAC rounds tearing every enemy apart almost as soon as they appear because they are being controlled by computers and the Covenant in general do not use advanced AI for religious reasons. EckhartsLadder What video editing program do you use?
Silver Crescent spot on. If this was a because science video you would get the title of super nerd. So translation plot armor is why the convent fleet wasnt obliterated.
@Shekelton you would think that, but that's not how a military works. A helmsman doesn't get to make independent action, they get to do what they're told and question the officer in charge if the order seems wrong. A master helmsman can take action independently of the oic's orders in situations where they do not have time to ask permission, for example the starboard prop stops working while a refueling ship is along the starboard side, they can take actions to try and prevent a collision without asking permission, but normal helmsman can't. The Covenant don't use AI to control their ships, canonically they don't have anything better than a vi which is just a really powerful computer. It still takes time to get that much mass moving, even in space, time they wouldnt have due to the mature of what they are dodging. Besides, even at superhuman levels, and assuming its just the helmsman responding independentally, it would still have to move those massive ships, in any direction, in between 8~30 seconds, enough to dodge around 150 rounds coming at them from multiple angles. That is physically impossible, even for elites and spartans
@Shekelton also, youre assuming they are in lunar orbit, however if they were to reach earth in the time they did after the other two stations were destroyed they would have to be moving at a frankly insane rate of speed. They were much closer, and the closer they got the faster they would get hit and less room they would have to dodge. The only real way that it is actually possible to break the Earth defense grid, unless you are a stupidly advanced race by comparison, is with raw, overwhelming numbers that don't allow the SMAC to recharge and also overwhelms the fleets that were around the planet. As I said, it takes around 30 seconds to reach the moons surface, but that calculation was flawed as I was using the measurement from the earths surface to the moons surface, not from where the stations are in orbit to the moon, also the Covenant fleet was much closer than that. It also doesn't change the fact that there were roughly 150 AI controled platforms capable of getting a shooting solution on them, they AI could have set up a kill field and each aimed offset of the others to saturate the area with fire, effectively performing a precise artillary bombardment the kind that was is possible with battleships, cruisers, and to a much lesser extent modern ddg's and cg's
@Shekelton IF THEY WERE AT LUNAR ORBIT RANGE! They were not! They were stupidly close, and even at lunar orbit range more than likely they wouldn't be able to dodge because of the design of the ship, only having large engines on the aft end. Factoring in how navies actually work, and how combat in space would work if you ignore heat buildup, they wouldn't have the time to save themselves. Especially not with them holding steady as they were when they came out of slip space. Also love how you ignore the other things I said
I’ve seen it mentioned in the halo sub Reddit’s that various covenant ships did an in system jump to get behind the Orbital Super mac stations. However I have not reached this myself so cannot confirm this. But it is possible for conversant ships to perform in system jumps so it’s not impossible they could jump behind the Mac orbital stations.
You missed one key point, truth’s forruner dreadnaught would decimate the Mac cannons as it is virtually unstoppable (we see in halo 3 how it doesn’t even flinch from 3 mac cannons and a long sword bombardment and we also know that the entire race of elites weren’t able to beat the dreadnaught even with forunner tech)
Could be that the Type-23 'Ticks' had a active camo cloaking field. It doesn't state on the vehicle page that it has one, but it also doesn't say that it doesn't. Also the covies could've just launched so many that they couldn't of all been destroyed. Or that the "hide" them in they're fighter waves.
I would have sent out some longswords out to take out borders. Afterwards I would send out some high capacity MAC operator ships out partially as a bait and partially to damage/destroy some smaller cruisers.this would then be used to bring in the main carriers to be decimated by the ODPs.
I’m assuming the longswords were too busy dealing with banshee interceptors, seraphs, and phantom gunboats. The defensive perimeter is actually the best bet, as all the ships had auto-turrets. I think its safe to assume that they were trying to destroy as many boarding craft as possible, but between how many there were, and the covenant’s fighters, I think its safe to say the UNSC were just out numbered, at that point.
I see your point about boarding craft and seeing how easily a phantom goes down you can probably take out a boarding craft in a few shots from something equivalent to a tank pew pewer.
See the thing I think here was the fact that fleet admiral Harper was not in position when the covenant arrived. He was massed ready to take the fleet directly to the covenant it was hood who said to form a perimeter around the MACs. So it’s possible by the tome Harper deployed three fleet to protect them that it was to late and a small number of the boarding craft made it in. We again don’t see a large force arrive in Cairo in game as there main goal isn’t mass troop deployment but setting up a bomb to destroy the MAC platform. I think the main reason we can point to for the ultimate defeat is Fleet Admiral Harper. Also with Truths arrival and the forerunner dread that would have been problematic as well. But we know on it’s arrival Hood was still in Cairo meaning the platforms where still dishing it out to the covenant fleet. I’m probably getting to involved in it lol. Personally I think Hood should have had command of the fleet and platforms directly. He shouldn’t had waited till the conflict started to give orders to Harper. Just my thoughts anyway. Love the videos
Tell me if i'm wrong but the covenant have performed in system pin point slip space jumps into enemy formations before, human tech at the time of 2552 couldn't but they certianly could
One major problem, ODPs are scary inside their range but they cannot move. If you've ever looked into the Honor Harrington series of novels, regardless of what anyone may say, the impracticality of stationary defensive platforms is covered quite extensively. Simply put because you always know where thr ODP is going to be your weapons have an effectively unlimited range as maximum effective ranges in space are determined by the opponents ablitiy to evade, something which an ODP cannot do, sit your cruisers out of range and just shoot at the platforms until you hit. Do that and now the UNSC must give battle in the area which the covenant are the strongest or they lose their only ace in the hole for space combat.
I thought the same (give or take) when I first played Halo 2 on how so many boarding craft. I just assumed Seraphs and other craft kept the Longswords occupied while Banshees disabled and overwhelmed PDF while Sangheili Rangers and Drones dropped by Phantoms fucked with other defences.
Remember, the Prophet of Regret fleet is not an invasion force. Instead, it was a small expedition fleet with most of its ship acting as an escort. The Covenant Force on Reach is the true invasion force. This is why the UNSC at the Battle of Earth was able to hold out for weeks before the Prophet of Truth invasion fleet comes in. About the boarding parties, I think most of the boarding craft were intercepted by the UNSC Homefleet that is why there only small portion of boarding craft were able to land on ODP. In the Halo 2, you can see that when Malta and Athens were destroyed. The Prophet of Regret fleet begin to rush towards the Earth instead of trying to take advantage gap to destroy all the Earth's ODP because they wanted to conserve fleet and focus on finding the Forerunner portal. This was quite opposite to the Reach were the Covenant Fleet immediately take advantage when one of the ODP station offline, and destroy the other ODPs for good before proceeding into Reach. It is good thing that the Covenant didn't found out that the Earth was the most important world for Human despite accidentally found it by mistake. That is also explain why they didn't use more aggressive strategy because they might thought it was just another small human colony world unlike Reach which they already know that Reach is one of the UNSC military stronghold.
I believe, the UNSC Tactics was actually quite sound, considering they expected a Breach in the Cole Protocol and not a suprise discovery by a Prophet. Reachs defenses were breached by a Single Cloaked Supercarrier, followed by a Invasion fleet. They couldn't know, there was no Reinforcements. Considering the size of the Reach fleet, paired with the knowledge, that this is the Human Homeworld, this would have been a Invasion like no other before. So it would have been wise, to lessen the numbers before the Main Strike Force arrived. This is confirmed by Hood mentioning, the larger Reach Fleet. So i believe the Main Problem was, that the UNSC didn't know, the Covenant was just as suprised to see them and were expecting them to come in full force and that they basically spawned on their front lawn. (Oh and that the gros of the fleet wasn't even in position, when the boarding pods hit, seen in Halo 2 where there are still ships seemingly leave earth orbit while the Pods already latch onto the ships)
The Baneblade would literally Crush the other contenders under its tracks, not kidding. Seriously though you are pitting a Super-heavy tank vs Small-Medium Class Tanks, how is that fair? A T-34-85 (Saber) A Stuart (Scorpion) A Tiger I (Mammoth) VS A MAUS (Baneblade)
TerenceTheGreat As I said, I asked for this battle before, and ALWAYS the first comment was PUT IN THE BANEBLADE! But I think I'll remove the Baneblade again. I don't even know more about WH40k than it's name.
Well, that's exactly what the UNSC have done. If you see the screen on Cairo, Admiral Harper moved the fleet to engage boarding party and later the main fleet. Hood kept him and his fleet around the ODP. Point is that range of fire of Covenant could actually have been enough to cover the boarding party inside the range of fire of the ODP, even sailing outside that range. So the last hope for UNSC was that of moving in group and engage everything at range while standing inside the range of the ODP cover. But in space engagements probably this things aren't possible and consequently ships would have been dragged from both sides inside and outside the range of fire of the ODP, from both sides. And actually is what happened. Two CAS entered the range of the ODPs and surpassed Cairo Station after the destruction of the first two stations. Situation was grim since the start. They did whatever they could to win the battle but unfortunately, with the war-era time technology, UNSC was dramatically in inferiority position against the Covenant. If this battle was fought after the war, with post-war technology, then the Covies probably wouldn't have had that performance and their fleet would have been destroyed no matter what.
perhaps the human home fleet was organised the way it was is because the humans didn't know what to expect. the admiral was after all confused as to why the fleet was small so he might have held back unsure if what secret weapon or plan this fleet might have had in store. not to mention they might have been caught off guard you see not only were in the middle of a ceremony but the only thing tipping them off was a small blip that could have been anything a fleet to a small jackle pirate ship.
