Setting:Halo
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Halo is a vidyagame series exclusively released for the ECKSBAWKS, ECKSBAWKS 360 and PC. The series was developed by Bungie, though Microsoft has bought the rights to the game. The Halo universe is pretty massive, with all sorts of media ranging from video games and graphic novels to action figures and a series of short movies released to DVD. It became famous for being the game that saved ECKSBAWKS from doing an Atari Jaguar by identifying an untapped new market of loud, stupid fratboys, and was the only reason anyone would even want to buy an ECKSBAWKS console. Yes, many people coughed up hundreds of dollars to buy a xbox just to play Halo: Combat Evolved (including me). Its storyline is pretty much a copy of any everyday generic sci-fi storyline you can think of, with some bland angsty space-opera bullshit thrown in for good measure and a multiplayer that isn't too original either. It's also famous for its FUCKING cliffhangers and the definitely too many retarded fanboys convinced it's either the Lord of the Rings of sci-fi, the inventor of all vidyagames, the inventor of the FPS genre or all three of the above.
Occasionally it breaks away from this pattern and explores a more fatalistic and human side to the story without having to suck Master Chief's dick or obsess over ancient alien technology every three seconds, and is generally regarded as being about ten times better and more mature for it. Unfortunately, this lasted a grand total of one game before 343 Studios acquired the license and got right back to inserting themselves up the Chief's rectum.
/tg/ isn't big on Halo and topics pertaining to Halo will normally be saged, trolled, told to go to /v/, or some combination therein. On /v/ however, Halo is... still widely hated. Then again, /v/ hates video games in general. The hatred of /tg/ comes less from the actual game/gameplay, and more from it being off-topic and a few fanboys being retarded asshats.
Setting
The Halo universe takes place in the 26th century. Mankind, led by the United Nations Space Command (UNSC), has developed its own crude faster-than-light drive (the Shaw-Fujikawa Drive) and finally colonized other worlds. At its height, human civilization occupies nearly 800 planets, forming a ring of outer colonies and rings of inner colonies with Earth as its capital. This is not what they're talking about when they say Halo, mind you.
Sometime in the year 2525 (believed to be roughly half past three), an agricultural world in the outer colonies, creatively named Harvest, is attacked by an unknown force. In the succeeding months, all attempts to make contact, or even defend against the alien forces are met with swift destruction. It is not long before more colonies are wiped out.
The unknown menace finally identifies itself as the Covenant, a coalition of several alien races bent on destroying humanity. At first they seem to be doing this because that's just what aliens do, but later on it is discovered that the story is somewhat deeper. Apparently humans are the descendants of an ancient super-advanced alien race called the Forerunners.
This made the Covenant kinda jealous, because it was them who first discovered the Forerunner technology, adapted it to their own, and finally started worshipping the Forerunners. Apparently, knowing that your gods had a favorite, finding out that it isn't you, and finding out that it's instead the species that invented truck balls upset them just a little. So, back to glassing. It's not long before the UNSC military, and humanity itself, finds out that it is being pwned. Clearly the only solution to this would be a ridiculously tiny unit of infantry (thirty three men to defend eight hundred planets, lolwat?) In clever armour with a name in allcaps. This leads to the Spartan-II program, humanity's last hope.
Battletech and Halo
Taking full advantage of the resurgence of mech combat in video games and the currently crippled state of Battletech's videogame franchise, Halo 4 now includes a Shadowcat lookalike. Fear the coming "Halo did that mech first" cries from thirteen-year-olds everywhere.
Warhammer 40k and Halo comparison
Spartan vs. Space Marine
TL:DR part 1
If we're going to try to make any kind of comparison, here, then the FIRST thing we have to look at is what the primary sources (i.e. word-of-God from the creators, in this case Bungie and GW) actually say about the capabilities of the two forces. Right? Right. Both Black Library and the various Halo novels are usually sub-contracted out, and both are pretty inconsistent; the Halo novels tend to be a bit better than BL, but they're certainly not perfect.
So we did that already. We went through the official sources; the codex, the official Halo sourcebooks, etc. We did that pages ago. Not everything can be compared directly, so really we could only get solid information on the physical improvements that went into the SPARTANs and Space Marines bodies, and a little bit about the different armors. And guess what they told us?
They told us that SPARTANs have a lot of really, really cool stuff; bioenhancements that make them inhumanly strong, fast and perceptive, built-in AIs, automatic high-performance first aid systems, powerful high-tech equipment. They're damn good soldiers, easily capable of taking on a very large number of humans and winning.
And they also told us that Space Marines have all that and much, much more. This is the problem that the "SPARTANs are superstrong!" and "SPARTANs never miss!" and "SPARTANs are ninjas!" arguments are failing to understand; there is NOTHING, literally nothing at all, that tells us that SPARTANs are any better in any of these fields than Space Marines are, and a whole hell of a lot that tells us they're WORSE in most of them. This is a strictly comparative point, not an objective one; you can argue that Space Marines are as weak as you want, but that doesn't change the fact that SPARTANs, according to their own source materials, are weaker.
I'm just gonna quote myself here; yes, these are two long posts. You still might want to read them, since basically everything that anyone has said in this entire thread is dealt with in them. We're making a comparison, people; the answer to "Pssh, Space Marines just have plot armor, they aren't that good" is "Read the sources; they're a hell of a lot better than SPARTANs".
There is one ability which SPARTANS receive from their biological implants and Space Marines don't, directly; improved reflex action speed, due to faster neurotransmission. That is, indeed, an important advantage; although it should be noted that even in this area Space Marines aren't clearly behind, as they receive years of intense hypno-therapy and chemical conditioning which is designed to give them this very ability, along with many others. But let's leave that aside and focus only on the physical implants for now.
Space Marine biological improvements give them a host of OTHER advantages, which more than compensate. Here's a list, leaving out those that SPARTANS also possess, such as super-dense muscle, hardened bones, and enhanced eyesight; we'll assume that SPARTAN biotech and Space Marine biotech are equally efficient for the purpose of this discussion, so those enhancements that they both have we won't count on either side. Furthermore, we won't bother to mention those enhancements which Space Marines possess, but are not directly relevant to a combat scenario. The particular implant which provides each enhancement is also listed.
- Growth of (ceramically-reinforced) bone tissue into dense, interlocking plates, which provide a bulletproof layer of secondary armor over vital organs. Yes, it is explicitly called "bulletproof". (Ossmodula)
- Increased blood supply and redundant circulatory organs, both increasing a Space Marine's strength and speed by supplying far more oxygen and nutrients to his muscles than a human (or SPARTAN) can, and allowing him to survive normally catastrophic damage to his original heart. (Secondary heart)
- Increased oxygen-carrying efficiency of blood, allowing a Space Marine to draw more energy from a given amount of oxygen than normal. (Haemastamen)
- Increased oxygen capacity due to additional lung volume, allowing Space Marines to function in environments too oxygen-poor for humans to survive. (Multi-lung)
- The ability to absorb oxygen from toxic environments without injury. This includes the ability to breathe and function normally underwater.(Multi-lung)
- The ability to form scar tissue within seconds after suffering an injury, preventing blood loss and infection from wounds. (Larraman's Organ)
- The ability to perform continuous combat operations without sleep for a much longer time than normal before performance begins to erode, and to maintain conscious situational awareness even while sleeping. (Catalepsean Node)
- Immunity to toxins whether aerosol, contact/injected or ingested, as well as the ability to go briefly unconscious and carry out a rapid emergency detoxification of the body if something extremely dangerous has managed to bypass all the layers of defense. (Preomnor, Multi-lung, Oolitic Kidney)
- Chemical regulation of all bodily functions, maintaining the peak efficiency of both implanted and natural organs. (Oolitic Kidney)
- Improved hearing, including the ability to selectively filter out or enhance particular sounds, and immunity to nausea or disorientation from inner-ear disturbance. This includes immunity to the disorienting effects of explosions and other rapid changes in pressure. (Lyman's Ear)
- Ability to track by smell and taste like a bloodhound. (Neuroglottis)
- Protection against extreme temperatures and low-pressure environments, including limited protection even from vacuum. (Mucranoid, Melanochrome to some extent)
- Direct neural connection to the machine-spirit of their personal suit of power armor, essentially allowing them to react and move much more quickly and flexibly than is possible without such a connection. This is why Astartes power armor is personal; only one Space Marine can connect to a given suit in this manner, and it must be individually adapted to that particular Space Marine. (Black Carapace)
So in short; SPARTAN-IIs are, probably, faster to react than Space Marines are. That isn't certain because of the aforementioned hypnotherapy and mental conditioning, but let's assume they do. Assume that SPARTAN-II nervous signals just move faster through their bodies than those of Space Marines do; this gives them an edge in reaction times. How big an edge, we don't know, but let's assume it's pretty damn big; they're STILL going to get wrecked. That is the only advantage they possess, and the Space Marines have everything else they have plus a hell of a lot more.
A SPARTAN has reinforced bones; a Space Marine has reinforced bones AND has grown them into a suit of bullet-proof plate armor around his internal organs, which makes him much more resistant to injury.
A SPARTAN has enhanced musculature; a Space Marine has enhanced musculature AND more efficient oxygen transfer AND more oxygen circulating overall, so unless you want to argue that the SPARTAN augmentation is by itself more effective than all of those put together (which you can't, since Space Marine and SPARTAN muscle enhancement work identically) a Space Marine is much stronger than a SPARTAN, and faster as well.
A SPARTAN has enhanced eyesight; a Space Marine has enhanced eyesight AND improved hearing (over which can exercise conscious control to the point of selectively focusing on certain sounds) AND can find his enemies by smell alone, which means that he's nearly always going to be the ambusher rather than the ambushee.
In addition to all this a Space Marine can function normally in environments where a SPARTAN would quickly die; maneuver and remain indefinitely in places that a SPARTAN cannot either see into or fight in (such as deep underwater); fight without sleep, unimpaired, for an extended period (permitting him to keep the SPARTAN under continuous pressure until he started to make mistakes due to fatigue); and survive injuries that would kill a SPARTAN immediately, including flat-out ignoring any wound less serious than a smashed bone or vital organ trauma. A SPARTAN is less physically capable than a Space Marine in every aspect of warfare, and on top of that the average Space Marine will have literally decades of experience over any SPARTAN-II.
None of this is 'fanwank'. I haven't made any of this up, it comes straight from the Codex and official materials. I don't play Space Marines, and I don't particularly like it that they're so over the top and Mary Sue-ish, but I do mind your claim that noting the fact that Space Marines are ludicrously powerful even in comparison to other sci-fi supersoldiers somehow removes my objectivity.
TL:DR part 2
Improved lactate recovery versus better oxygenation; SPARTANs lose out, and the reason is twofold; first, that it's not clear that lactate even hinders muscle contraction; and second, that even if it is a hindrance, preventing muscle fibers from going anaerobic (through increased oxygenation), or even slowing down the process, is a much more efficient way of increasing effective strength and endurance.
This is a case where Bungie actually tripped themselves up, because they put a little too much real science in their pseudoscience; since the Halo games have come out there's been further research on muscle fatigue, and it's been discovered that lactate both hinders muscular activity (by lowering the sensitivity of certain contractile tissues to a particular calcium ion) and also aids muscular activity by increasing the amount of calcium which is present, as well as neutralizing the limiting effects of potassium buildup! That being so, even if we assume for the sake of argument that the net result is a hindrance, the benefit is still at least partially counteracting itself, and it certainly won't be very efficient.
Space Marines use a much more straightforward and efficient method; they simply pour more oxygen into the muscular tissue to allow it to respire freely even while working hard. For one thing, that by itself prevents the production of practically all of the byproducts of muscular exertion, since they can only be produced in an anaerobic environment; and for another, aerobic respiration is about nineteen times more efficient than anaerobic. That means that the SPARTAN MEI proteins cut in too late; they slow down lactate buildup, yes, but by the time lactate buildup is occurring at any speed your muscle fibers have already run out of oxygen, and as a consequence are now requiring nineteen times as much energy input to do the same amount of work. The Space Marine implants, by contrast, are going to work much more efficiently simply because they're preventing an anaerobic environment from ever occurring in the muscle tissue; that means that a Space Marine is going to be using a lot less energy to exert the same amount of force as a SPARTAN, which translates to greater strength, greater speed, and greater endurance.
In short, the SPARTAN enhancement is cutting in after deterioration has started and then slowing down the rate at which it multiplies; the Space Marine enhancement begins working sooner and prevents deterioration from ever occurring, or at least begins counteracting it at an earlier point in the process. This means that, even if a SPARTAN and a Space Marine have exactly the same peak strength and speed, a Space Marine is going to remain at peak functionality for far longer, and when he does begin to suffer from fatigue the effects are going to appear more slowly, than the SPARTAN will.
Functioning in a low-oxygen environment; Fair enough, in most cases it wouldn't matter. Do note, however, that in combination with the ability to breathe in a poisonous atmosphere this means that in some circumstances SPARTANs would be sharply time-limited (by the amount of breathable air their armor contains) while Space Marines would not; for instance, if SPARTANS and Space Marines were fighting on a polluted industrial world or in the aftermath of a virus-bombing the Space Marines could safely breathe the air, and the SPARTANs couldn't. This is a decided increase in tactical flexibility for a space-going military force, and it is a great benefit in general; but I agree, assuming we're talking about the two forces meeting on an Earth-like world, it's not very important.
Immunity to toxins: In a face-to-face combat situation, effectively all this does is render chemical and biological weapons ineffective. Mustard gas won't bother Space Marines much, for instance, even if you can manage to get it inside their armor. But since the SPARTANs have never demonstrated the use of that kind of weapon, I agree, that can be left out of this comparison.
Larraman's Organ versus biofoam injectors: Here I'm going to disagree again, though only conditionally.
Biofoam injectors are specifically called out as a temporary, emergency measure; they hold things in place temporarily and stop bleeding. In a brief engagement, I agree; they're just as good as Larraman cells are as a short-term solution, so if a Space Marine and a SPARTAN are just going to fight for an hour and then part ways, this is a wash.
However, I think if Space Marines and SPARTANs were to be heavily engaged with each other for any length of time, the comparison would rapidly get worse for the SPARTANs. The difference is that Larraman's Organ does NOT provide temporary first aid, it allows for a rapid and permanent healing process to begin at once. Biofoam is a first-aid measure that you use to stabilize somebody before medevac can get there. It's specifically called out as such, in fact. Biofoam breaks down and becomes useless after a few hours; if you haven't gotten surgical treatment by that time you're just as badly off as you were originally, unless you apply ANOTHER dose of biofoam.
Larraman's Organ, by contrast, simply supercharges the body's natural healing process. It literally creates instant scar tissue; as long as a bone isn't broken or a vital organ isn't badly traumatized, the wound is basically healed by the Larraman cells. The seal created by Larraman cells is biologically identical to the Space Marine's own flesh; if a Space Marine suffers a flesh wound, even a deep and damaging one, Larraman's Organ scars it over and within seconds, it's as if the injury is weeks old. No, it isn't an immediate, full repair, but it goes much further than simply filling the gash with anti-bacterial foam. A SPARTAN who suffers a severe flesh wound has to get surgical aid within a few hours, or the foam will degrade and he'll be just as badly wounded as ever; a Space Marine who suffers a severe flesh wound will recover rapidly and without help, not even needing a re-application of Larraman cells. This is what I meant when I said Space Marines are capable of "flat-out ignoring any wound less serious than a smashed bone or vital organ trauma".
Over a campaign of days, weeks or months, the Space Marines would gain a definite advantage in this area. Either a SPARTAN or a Space Marine will need medical treatment for a very serious wound, but the Space Marines will recover much more easily from any wound that isn't life-threatening. They are going to recover rapidly and without outside aid; a SPARTAN who suffers a flesh wound, by contrast, is going to need specialized help (which will aggravate the wound again; surgery is always traumatic to at least some extent) and will have a longer recovery time afterwards before he's back to full effectiveness. So over any extended time period Larraman's Organ is far more effective as field medicine than biofoam is, and the advantage will continue to build upon itself as long as the fighting lasts.
And as a final point, Space Marine armor also includes first-aid provisions, which I would assume are designed to function in conjunction with Larraman's Organ, probably by providing reinforcement to wounds too big or too serious (either chunks of missing flesh or shattered bones) for the Organ to repair alone, and likely also injecting copious amounts of stimulants. If nothing else, biological regeneration + technological medical help > technological medical help alone.
Speed, agility and reaction time: I don't think either agility or speed is necessarily in favor of the SPARTANs.
Speed-wise, as I pointed out above, the differences between Space Marine and SPARTAN muscle enhancements indicate that Space Marines have both greater muscular power AND longer endurance; a SPARTAN might beat a Space Marine in a sprint (though there isn't any evidence of that), but a long pursuit would certainly be won by the Space Marine, as he would be able to maintain high speed longer and with shorter rest periods. In combination with the effects of the Catalepsean Node, this means that Space Marines actually have significantly greater tactical mobility than SPARTANs.
In regards to agility and reaction time, as I pointed out, it's explicitly noted that Space Marines receive years of hypno-therapy and medical treatment designed to not only radically reduce their reaction time but also allow them a high degree of conscious control over their metabolisms and nervous systems. How that compares in effectiveness to the biotech modification that SPARTANs receive to their neural system, we simply don't know, but to discount it entirely doesn't seem reasonable. Furthermore, the connection provided by the Black Carapace to power armor is just as powerful as the Spartan Neural Interface (as it's described in almost exactly the same way), and all Astartes power armor apparently contains its own machine spirit/AI, which due to the Black Carapace can essentially read the Space Marine's mind and react with no delay at all to his desires. All this means that power armor does not slow the Space Marine down in the slightest; rather the 'muscles' of the armor will make him both faster and stronger, just as MJOLNIR armor does for SPARTANs.
MJOLNIR armor does seem to provide more flexibility and a wider range of motion; however, it necessarily accomplishes that by incorporating less actual armor, and so almost certainly provides less protection over certain areas. The chest and upper arms are the specific areas I'm thinking of, since for Space Marines they're protected by that very thick barrel-chest and MASSIVE PAULDRONS OF DOOM, which also serve double-duty by partially blocking line of fire to the Space Marines head from some angles.
Ossified ribcage: You say that "but anything that has punched through its armour isn't going to be stopped by bone, no matter how hard", but I don't think that's true. The extra layer of bone will render some kinds of weapons entirely ineffective and force specific tactical decisions in order to penetrate it; and do please remember that this isn't bone as we know it. This is bone with the empty, latticework spaces filled with a ceramic armor compound, of the kind we use on main battle tanks.
Consider; the type of weapons that go through armor well are not actually the type of weapons that are very effective at killing people. If you want to cause a lot of damage to a person you use a fat, blunt, relatively slow round, which will shatter, tumble or simply expand inside the body and thus widen the channel it carves through flesh. That's why hollow-point rounds, which 'mushroom' after penetration, are sometimes called 'cop-killer' bullets; they're the most efficient way to cause the most damage possible to a human body.
The kind of bullet that punches through armor, by contrast, is a narrow, sharply-pointed round fired at the highest practical velocity. That's how you punch through a hard surface. However, that kind of bullet has a tendency to travel right through a person without actually doing much harm; it flies in a straight line, often without tumbling or being significantly deflected, and cuts a small, neat hole in one side and out the other. Low-caliber, high-velocity modern rifles often have this problem. They can get through modern body armor, but they don't have the stopping power to reliably disable the target.
The extra layer of armor that a Space Marine's ribcage forms thus creates a very difficult problem. If you're shooting at the center of mass, you first have to punch through the thickest part of the armor; that's going to take a round with very good penetration. You then have to punch through the ribs as well, which means you need a VERY high-velocity, small, needle-pointed round. . . but that bullet probably won't do lethal damage. And a Space Marine, even more than a human, is not going to be stopped by anything short of very serious trauma. Furthermore, even if you DO manage to punch a shot through and destroy some important organ, the Space Marine is still functional, because all those implants don't merely increase his physical performance, they also provide redundant copies of every vital organ that's behind that bone shield.
What all this means, in combination with the flesh-wound neutralizing effects of Larraman's Organ, is that in order for the basic ballistic weapons of the SPARTANs to inflict any serious damage at all they basically have to hit the groin or the head. Yes, SPARTANs are great shots, but their effective target area has now been radically reduced in size and limited to some of the most erratically-moving parts of the body; not to mention, Space Marines are extremely good shots themselves. The Space Marine can be fairly confident that wherever he's placing his bolter shells, they will do damage, even though against MJOLNIR armor it may well require multiple hits; effectively, this makes a Space Marine much less likely to be severely injured or killed by a SPARTAN than the SPARTAN is to be injured or killed by him.
So, in conclusion: Halo is trying to use pseudo-science to sound at least barely plausible to modern listeners, while 40k just goes ahead and flat-out tells us that Space Marines are t3h best!!!!1!
When you compare the two, a SPARTAN is a very tough, very fast, very skilled soldier with tremendous strength and extremely high-tech weaponry and armor, allowing him to accomplish things that no normal human could ever do and live through things that would kill any normal human.
A Space Marine is all that, with a bag of chips. He possesses superior strength, speed, and endurance, is nearly unkillable and capable of recovering rapidly from practically anything that DOES have a chance at killing him, not to mention he's been brainwashed and tortured for years until he's a psychotic killing machine that cares nothing for fear or pain. He has conscious control over his normally-unconscious bodily functions; which means, among other things, that he can flood his own system with adrenaline at will. On top of everything else, he can also go for up to two weeks without sleeping at all, and if he wants to sleep he can do so while simultaneously standing guard. He's the classic super-soldier but turned up to eleven, and then he tore the knob off and ate it, because he can do THAT too.
In conclusion of the conclusion: the setting with with a thirty seven thousand year tech advantage wins. Who could have possibly fucking predicted this?
Codex: The Covenant
As we know, the Covenant is pretty incompetent, but their tech and machines are pretty nice in a WH40K setting (Ignoring the statements above, look at the vehicles from Halo Wars), just like the Ancients from Stargate, the Covenant has pretty nifty tech but just can't seem to use it well. So this Codex is what would happen if the Covenant was actually lead competently.
Furthermore, for anybody asking about what a Covenant Lich looks like, imagine the bastard offspring of a Tau Manta and a Flying Scarab, does it look Derpy? Yes it does, but by God is that thing Derpy in a Glorious Way. (Also the Harvester look like it has been given birthed by a Tyranid Hive-ship that immediately packed off from being too hideous, but hey at least it has a XBOXHUGE LAZER!)
See Also
- Marathon - Bungie's earlier FPS series, sharing many things to the point that Halo:CE might as well been a reboot of it. If you see an emblem in Halo games that looks a modified Tau symbol, it is a reference to these games.
- 1R0QU012
The CC Debate, in which rage ensues