Hello...

Discussion regarding the Outsider webcomic, science, technology and science fiction.

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discord
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Re: Hello...

Post by discord »

halo tech is pretty silly....the fighting method and thinking is just....WAY outdated.

basically it's written by people that don't understand warfare at all, i'm no master but i got a decent grasp on the basics.

what it boils down to is range and speed, vessels in halo-verse are slow as hell and have little effective range since knife range fighting is much more visually dramatic, for the same reasons as star wars, rule of cool.

fredgiblet
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Re: Hello...

Post by fredgiblet »

Yeah, their idea of assault rifles is hilarious, more like an oversized, underpowered SMG.

fredgiblet
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Re: Hello...

Post by fredgiblet »

Of course on the other hand a realistic take on war would involve lots of boredom. Anyone seen the Onion video on Modern Warfare 3 that as released a few years back?

discord
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Re: Hello...

Post by discord »

fred: yeah, hurry up and wait and without the spiffy special effectsy splosions they would have to put the focus on characters and their interactions and you cant make a decent story out of that!

can you?

javcs
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Re: Hello...

Post by javcs »

UNSC weapons are, for the most part, utter crap compared to modern weapons. They mass more, have weaker rounds, shorter effective range, etc. than their modern equivalents.

For example ... the UNSC turreted weapons ... IIRC, they're a .30 caliber chain gun. With an effective range of 30m, according to their canon specs.
The UNSC MA5-series is weaker than today's 5.56mm NATO from an M16, with significantly inferior effective range.

About the only 'decent' weapons that the UNSC had were the Halo 1 pistol (.50cal explosive rounds are good at ruining somebody's day), their sniper rifle, and the battle rifle.

Most Covenant weapons are pretty crap too. The Spiker, for example, fires its rounds at some ridiculously low velocity.
Covenant "plasma" weapons aren't really plasma, they're globs of 'something else' something 'superscience/spacemagic-y'. Also, IIRC, canon specs put the temperature of the globs at 470 degrees. Think it was in Fahrenheit, but I suppose it could have been Celsius. Doesn't really matter, since it's nowhere near what it ought to be.

Halo politics are stupid too - apparently the UNSC/ONI gave weapons to the anti-human faction of Elites during one of the post-Halo 3 Elite civil wars. Correct me if I'm wrong, but that just seems a tad unwise.


At any rate, possibly something closer to general parity with the Outsider-verse might be Mass Effect, but Outsider is in an interesting place, where there aren't really that many other sci-fi entities on their level, people are generally higher or lower on the tech tree and most of them are going to be softer science as well.
I'll agree with B5 being (or seeming) mostly on par, though too. At least, earlier on, ie, without the superraces and whatnot.

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Arioch
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Re: Hello...

Post by Arioch »

First-person shooters almost universally have weapons with extremely short ranges and poor damage that require multiple hits for a kill. This is a gameplay requirement, and has nothing to do with realism. They also almost universally have medical kits that can bring a soldier back from the edge of death to perfect health within a few seconds (and technology level doesn't matter; they have these things as early as WWII). Again, everything to do with gameplay, and nothing to do with realism.

First-person shooters also generally require that tactical ground combat be decisive to the conflict in question, which is very hard to justify in a science fiction setting without the fleet capabilities being a joke, if you're talking about a conventional war. In the Pacific theater in WWII (which is our best analogy for a planet-hopping campaign), the infantry combat was important, but it was by no means decisive. It was the naval battles that decided that conflict. Once naval superiority was gained around an island, the infantry defenders were doomed (cut off from supply and reinforcements); the aftermath was only in question in terms of how many casualties the defenders could inflict before they were overwhelmed.

So expecting realistic statistics out of an FPS setting is asking a bit much. Taking the stats from a FPS game and the (often flimsy) universe cobbled around it, and comparing it to a more conventionally developed science fiction setting is generally not going to be a very fair fight. Especially when you're talking about the capabilities of the starships in an FPS shooter setting, which are nearly always an afterthought, if dealt with at all, and often hobbled to make infantry combat more important. I haven't played Halo, though, beyond about an hour of the first installment on a friend's Xbox.

fredgiblet
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Re: Hello...

Post by fredgiblet »

On the one hand I understand the needs of the game. On the other hand, standard issue pistols with longer range and higher per-shot damage than rifles make me twitch.

Also: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5tRNs2X5Q4

Karst45
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Re: Hello...

Post by Karst45 »

fredgiblet wrote:On the one hand I understand the needs of the game. On the other hand, standard issue pistols with longer range and higher per-shot damage than rifles make me twitch.

Also: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5tRNs2X5Q4

It always fun to see that again. when realism is too much.

discord
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Re: Hello...

Post by discord »

fred: yeah, that bloody handgun bothered me too, the best...or okey the SECOND best sniper rifle is the standard issue handgun? the handgun was pretty great up close and personal too....basically it rocked.

Halo 1, give me a handgun and triple ammo load out and i could have just not cared about the rest of the guns.

javcs
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Re: Hello...

Post by javcs »

The game mechanics don't really need to match up with reality well, especially since a lot of the time, there's things like energy shields and superadvanced armors.

The internal game mechanics are one thing ... it's when they start issuing 'real world' specifications for things that it gets really stupid. Or when they start writing books. Some of the Halo books have Mjolnir armor ignoring .30 cal chaingun fire in places, and you turn around and it's threatened by their assault rifles/smgs or the shotgun (seriously? a shotgun smashes through the armor?).

As for the whole 'ground combat being vital to the conflict in question', that's true, fleet combat often winds up being a joke, or at least an afterthought, relative to ground combat capabilities, but there are ways around that - either because you're on the ground for specific reasons, doing/looking for things that ships and orbital bombardment capability doesn't help you with, but that's building a story reason to have ground troops running around and not have things be settled in orbit.

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junk
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Re: Hello...

Post by junk »

Arioch wrote:First-person shooters almost universally have weapons with extremely short ranges and poor damage that require multiple hits for a kill. This is a gameplay requirement, and has nothing to do with realism. They also almost universally have medical kits that can bring a soldier back from the edge of death to perfect health within a few seconds (and technology level doesn't matter; they have these things as early as WWII). Again, everything to do with gameplay, and nothing to do with realism.

First-person shooters also generally require that tactical ground combat be decisive to the conflict in question, which is very hard to justify in a science fiction setting without the fleet capabilities being a joke, if you're talking about a conventional war. In the Pacific theater in WWII (which is our best analogy for a planet-hopping campaign), the infantry combat was important, but it was by no means decisive. It was the naval battles that decided that conflict. Once naval superiority was gained around an island, the infantry defenders were doomed (cut off from supply and reinforcements); the aftermath was only in question in terms of how many casualties the defenders could inflict before they were overwhelmed.

So expecting realistic statistics out of an FPS setting is asking a bit much. Taking the stats from a FPS game and the (often flimsy) universe cobbled around it, and comparing it to a more conventionally developed science fiction setting is generally not going to be a very fair fight. Especially when you're talking about the capabilities of the starships in an FPS shooter setting, which are nearly always an afterthought, if dealt with at all, and often hobbled to make infantry combat more important. I haven't played Halo, though, beyond about an hour of the first installment on a friend's Xbox.
Keep in mind those specs aren't from inside of the game. They are essentially from an official publications which counts in a lot of of ways as an official fluff bible of sorts.

Most people do understand that for the sake of gameplay effective range is lower than it should be.


That said, as far is funny broken stuff goes, the starcraft book - shadows of xelnaga wins that round by far.

You have hydralisks who are unable to pierce the windows on a tractor, who then turn around and are able to bring down Battlecruisers with the very same attack.

For the record a battlecruiser is essentially the staple capital ship of the terrans and servers as both a carrier and troop transport as well (in universe, not in the games)

Just a Crazy-Man
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Re: Hello...

Post by Just a Crazy-Man »

yeah and what of the books?

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