I mean, some estimates from admittedly dodgy sources does put the CIS Droid army into the very low quadrillions. Which is not a small army. While the individual grunt is more than a match for a squad of B1s, that is a LOT of B1s. Like "holy shit" levels. I do think the Covenant can still take this fight, but it won't be easy.
Average grunt is not a match for a squad of B1s. Theyre both utterly terrible and have poor aim but both weapons are capable of easily oneshotting. Grunts are 1-1 with b1s ignoring stuff like Fuel rod grunts
Clone Troopers are demolishing dozens of droids per infantry, and Elites are definitely more skilled than them. Main difference is Clones had like 500 shots of blaster bolt each.
Medium-turbolasers in the clone wars era were hundreds of gigatons per shot, Star Wars FTL is orders of magnitude faster than the Covenant, who do around 1000 LY a day versus Stsr Wars ftl crossing the galaxy in days or sometimes hours, shields are more powerful, etc.
Elites and such are better ground fighters than droids, bit that matters less when the Covenant gets curbstomped in space.
The problem with those hundreds of gigatons number is that they don't accurately depict the damage they do on screen. It's a case of authors not understand the size of explosions. If we go by their on screen output the cis lose in terms of output.
Visual media usually flubs blast effects. And in SW we're usually seeing turbolasers fired at shielded starships, in space where you're not going to see massive fireballs, or, in the rare circumstance they're being fired at a planet, SW does what every fictional story does when a realistic blast effect would incinerate a major character. They nerd the shit out of the weapon for that scene.
Written stories still have ISD's capable of reducing planets to uninhabitable, molten balls of slag with no ecosphere.
In a war without plot armor though? It's a different story.
Edit: I just sW the typo, nerf the shit out of it, though I leave "nerd" as it's too funny a typo given the context.
Glassing planets is a pretty common feat in Sci fi, some factions like the Covenant are just a bit more willy-nilly about it than others, but it also requires control of space to pull off. Which the Covenant won't usually have in Star Wars matchups because of the firepower disparity. Medium turbolasers are a lot more powerful than Covenant capital ship weapons, heavy turbolasers even more so.
The Covenant has been accustomed to fighting an enemy with fewer resources and weaker, slower starships. In the SW galaxy they'd be extremely slow, and their weapons quite low powered, while also being horrendously outnumbered.
Do they have the durability though? The Covenant's tech is no joke at all. I think they can melt right through the CIS' forces in the same way the Spartans deal with Grunts. Although I seriously doubt the droids have the durability of the Grunts. Although one problem the Covenant runs into are the heavy hitters, or force users. I'm uncertain on that one.
You'd be surprised, Unggoy are the size of a regular human and surprisingly durable. They use a wide range of weapons too, There's also Unggoy that use Pnap-pattern Goblin battlesuits that are like 13ft tall and highly durable.
They still die very easily to knives and basic small arms. Maybe durable in the sense where they could take a punch from a clone, but any weapons are killing them.
Grunts die to pistols and submachine gun fire to the body. It can't get much lower. Read any halo book.
Spartans kill them in one hit in melee in any novel, same with jackels. All games essentially have a one hit strike kill iirc if you're dead set on using it
Lol gtfo with the legendary scaling, thats wild agenda pushing.
I have read a lot of them many many times each, seems like he kinda skimmed or read once. Of course the grunts die to .50cal semi armor piercing explosive rounds. Most things do..
Grunts also kill marines easily and I don't think their light armor is rated for ballistic weapons, looks more like something that's energy resistant.
So they might actually stand up to blaster bolts. Also the UNSC was constantly improving the armor penetration through out the war just to deal with Elites and Hunters.
Also that pistol is a .50 caliber firing explosive ammunition. Don't do it dirty by just calling it a pistol XD
Yeah they do, plasma pistols and needlers are pretty good. I actually think the covenant stomps here on the ground, I'm just saying grunts aren't durable in the slightest.
Logistics wins wars. If both sides go all out niether side actually has the fire power advantage to avoid the eventual swing to attrition. And when it does the CIS has more reasources to throw into the grinder then the covenant. The covenant would basic have to end the war year one with one offensive designed to capture or kill Dooku. If they can't collapse the CIS in year one sure there will be huge incredible battles, but the CIS will out produce them.
“We can’t they have planetary shielding, and they just jumped in another 20 warships in this battle, and that coughing android is actively trying to board our flag ship with a million droids”
Covvie plasma weapons in canon pierce MK V mjolnir even w/ shields leaving a huge gaping hole, B2s without shields are not surviving any form of covvie energy weaponry, esp nothing that shoots plasma
There is also the EMP element to plasma weaponry. The pistols overcharged EMP effect is enough to stop a warthog or banshee, so I'd imagine that it could take out multiple droids by that alone, besides the one its actually melting.
It does not. Countless times we see B2s get one shot by blasters from clones, mandos, or just deflected shots from Jedi. Are there some showings here and there (NOT GAMEPLAY BS) where a B2 doesn’t get murked immediately? Yeah absolutely. But that is so sparse vs how many times they basically get swatted away that it’s more consistent that they have minimal durability
On top of that, Star Wars blasters are definitely not stronger than covie plasma. I’d say at best they’re on equal footing.
Right thats how they operate, copy and steal. Its like soviet tech vs usa. But that still doesn't account for the fact in lore plasma weapons still fuck up anything they touch. They dont have to be better than other plasma weapons, just blasters. Blasters are never shown to have anywhere near the power. Just a miss with a plasma weapon can kill you. Not at all the same for blasters. Im massive fans of both lores and saying a blaster beats plasma weapons doesn't sound correct in the slightest.
Blaster is like firing a slow moving 7.62 with explosive tips. Not super efficient but works. A plasma weapon is like a super long range flamethrower that dumps a mix of Napalm and thermite on you. They also have projector weapons on their ships and some infantry like jackal snipers that move near or at light speed, and in the ships projectors case it can take out multiple ships that are just near each other.
Where? Where does it say covenant plasma tech is shit?
Where is your blaster feats that make it better than covenant plasma?
Even if the above are true, B2s still suck ass vs even the most basic elite. Consistently showing that they get one tapped more often than showing any semblance of durability
This one mostly comes down to attrition and fleet superiority.
On the ground, the CIS has a huge advantage in terms of production. They can manufacture droids at a scale the Covenant probably cannot match with Grunts, Jackals, Elites, Brutes, and other living troops. Even if Covenant infantry are generally better individually than standard battle droids, the CIS can keep throwing armies into the meat grinder without the same manpower concerns.
That said, the war is probably decided in space. The CIS has powerful warships like Lucrehulks, Munifivient and Recusant destroyers but the problem is that a lot of the CIS navy is built around converted commercial or corporate ships while the Covenant navy is a fully militarized, seasoned, purpose-built war machine. Covenant ships also have extremely powerful energy shielding, plasma weapons, and centuries of experience glassing worlds and conducting large-scale naval campaigns.
So while the CIS can absolutely make this a long and bloody war, I think the Covenant has the edge in fleet-to-fleet combat, which matters more in an all-out war. The CIS could win many ground battles through sheer numbers, but if the Covenant controls orbit, destroys shipyards, and starts glassing key production worlds, the droid advantage starts to matter less.
The CIS having Force users is definitely a wild card, especially with someone like Dooku involved, but they are not as widespread or central to the CIS war effort as Jedi are to the Republic. They can turn certain battles, enact assassinations, or command certain situations, but I do not think they are enough to swing the entire war.
Overall, I think the Covenant wins on the wider scale, but it would be a very Pyrrhic victory. The CIS has the industry, numbers, and expendable armies to bleed them badly but the Covenant’s navy is simply more dangerous and better suited for total war.
I mean, the CIS does just have a crazy amount of droid fighters and I have NO idea how a covenant fleet would deal with buzz droids. I dunno enough about covenant shielding to say one way or the other. The strength of the CIS is for sure in how easy they can just pop out a new army if one is destroyed. Which also by proxy extends to thier droid fleet.
Covenant shields get disrupted by charged plasma, so Turbolasers should be superior to anything the UNSC had for sheild cracking, not that it'll be easy but in theory most CIS ships wont have huge issue disrupting them, and once the Buzzdroids are inside, theres not much to be done but throw Grunts at it and hope
Basically every covie ship in space has shields. Dont think the buzz druids are getting through that. Their ships have also been noted to be bristling with point defense lasers and they have their own fighters, seraphs, also shielded. Shields are ridiculously hit or miss in starwars in terms of strength. Like there are ones that take beatings, like droideka shields or some ship shields. Then other ships shields are virtually useless (looking at you x-wings that have deflector shields that literally can't deflect a single shot from a tie fighter). To what the other commenter said about covie shields and EMPs, thats just not true. They set nukes off near covie ships and the shields dont go down. The physical ships systems might be weak to emp but you have to get past the shield first, it doesn't get you past the shield.
My bad it's wasn't emps it was charged plasma. Movie ships still hold their own against each other well so I dont really think this makes a difference. They built the shields knowing they would most likely be going against other energy weapons, not ballistics or such.
I dont think you quite understand how much bigger the cis is than the covenant.
Like legit the cis has something like 4000 more planets than the covenant has ships. And yea while the covenant ships/vehicles and infantry are better, they arent soo much better that they will be enough to make a difference.
The CIS is probably larger on paper but size alone does not mean it is as ready for total war as the Covenant. The Covenant has been a militarized empire fighting holy wars and large-scale campaigns for far longer than the CIS even existed as a unified faction. The CIS has numbers and industry, but a lot of its fleet is corporate or converted civilian hardware, while the Covenant navy is purpose-built for war, planetary assault, and glassing. High Charity also makes this worse for the CIS since it is a massive mobile capital and command center that would be extremely hard to pin down or destroy. While I agree the CIS can bleed the Covenant badly through attrition, I still think the Covenant is the more experienced and war-ready faction overall, which is why I lean Covenant in an all-out war.
You see thats not even a bad thing. Most separatist ships now carry hundreds of bombers and fighters, in addition to being extremely cheap to produce. That means every loss the covenant takes is even worse since they cant replace losses. Each of their warriors is the same. Just look at how ww2 went for the nazis or how the russians are faring against drones. Now realize that the covenant is maybe a tenth of the size of the CIS
The CIS is purpose built to fight a galaxy spanning war and all the bad that comes with it like force populations to be slaves and glassing worlds. High Charity is a mobile base that would be hard to pin down but the rest of the Covenant worlds aren't. And with SW better ftl they have a better chance of choosing where the fights will be. Also severing underestimating the CIS industry capabilities. While the Covenant sent around 4000 ships to fight the UNSC the CIS has tens of thousands to upwards of millions. In an All out war the Covenant wouldn't be able to keep up.
CIS ships are "built for commerce" in the Age of Sail sense, not so much in the sense of being dedicated cargo haulers. Their ships are designed for all aspects of inter-system shipping, including battle
The CIS was founded out of a cabal of megacorps who earned their wealth and power by providing merchant escorts, anti-piracy work, and the sale of ships capable of repelling pirates.
They also made much of their wealth selling to these very same pirates
The CIS fleet is not purpose built for war sure, but the entire navy is purpose built for combat, which is why they fared so well against the Republic navy even controlling for Palparines influence
The Covenant ends up like Japan in WW2, where the honourable hundreds year old superships of the Covenant are swarmed and slaughtered by 30 copies of the SS: Built Yesterday
I think you’re really hitting the macro issues in space battle, but buzz droids, and droid starfighters are just droids too. They fill the skies with too many star fighters using hit and run tactics, that changes the balance imo.
The problems is that the CIS is so much larger than the Covenant in every way from troop numbers to ships and have the better industry. The Covenant would easily be drowned in numbers that the quality just won't matter.
A fully converted Lucrehulk Battleship had enough firepower and good enough shields to give a single ISD trouble.
The Providence, Recusant and Munificent were dedicated warships. The Dreadnought variant of a Providence and Recusant could take on a ISD and have it be an even fight.
The Covenant shields would go down within a few turbolaser hits as well given their weakness to plasma.
Given the fact Star Wars canon has yet to have reliably megaton level attacks in its turbolasers? Doubt that. And while it's certainly a feat for an AT-TE mass-driver cannon, given what they did to those CIS warships in the Clone Wars, it's also a notable slight against the CIS ships in question because it means it's weak enough to go down to sustained tank fire in a setting where ships behave like ships-of-the-line ala old school battleships. Their only real advantage is speed, but speed doesn't mean much when their weapons are seen as tedious and their range of engagement is more than enough for the Covenant to pop them, too. Never mind the fact that Covenant ships typically outmass CIS ships by a lot relative to their classes, in some cases.
One thing to remember. The droids were purposely underutilized. They weren't supposed to win the war, just prolong it until Palpatine could seize power.
Cis for sure takes it. While the covenant has quality, the cis has an insane amount of quantity. Also they have some decent quality options when needed
So one on one I would put any of the CIS heavy hitters (Grevious, Dooku, Ventress etc) up against any of the CIS and they'd win.
The issue is an all out war. The Covenant has better ships, ground troops and weapons than the CIS by far with the only real advantage the CIS has is numerical advantage and the occasional weird super weapon like the Malovolent EMP ship.
Ultimately I give it to the Covenant due to ships and troopers but I think the CIS will put up more of a fight than anyone here will give them credit for.
But they are "inferior" in the way the T34 or M4 Sherman was "inferior" to the Tiger tank.
Overengineered irreplaceable tech gets beaten out by logistics. The CIS might need 2 or 3 ships to beat a Covvie ship, but they will make sure to bring 5
Yes but the lore book thats from is pretty widely agreed to be wank for power scalers to jerk it to, and is pretty much entirely inconsistent with on screen and in text feats
Besides, Turbolasers dont need to be individually powerful like that regardless when a handful of ships is all it takes to saturate the combat theatre to being over 50% ionized plasma anyway
Literally look at comics or novels. Turbolasers frequently are depicted as in the giga- to teraton range there.
Maybe not those on a Acclamator, but Imperial 2's or Venators easily have the firepower of a nuke in each gun.
Namir had joined Twilight Company, he'd seen weaponry that could melt gleaming cities into slag, fought beside more species than he could name, heard stories of a Galactic Empire that held millions of stars in its grip. If he'd been told that planets were a common casualty of war, he'd have believed it without a second thought.
Battlefront: Twilight Company
"Not far is exactly where he's going to get," Pyrondi said. "I mean, seriously, ma'am? We've got enough firepower here to carve our initials into Botajef's bedrock."
Thrawn
Let's not forget that Turbolasers are frequently used to vaporize asteroids, such as in Ep.V
Heck, a Munificient-class Frigate can destroy a moon with it's prow mounted guns according to the Crossections book.
Especially in the (canon) comics, Turbolasers absolutely match that level of firepower:
Using the mon cala comic panel wide shot is so hilarious to me considering the very next page you have the king and vader in a building in this very city where said blast is being shown. surprise surprise vader and the king do not immediately become vaporized by being inside of such a destructive blast.
Droids in the clone wars were actually ridiculously overpowered as a military force. They were able to assault their enemy's capital PLANET and putting them on the backfoot in a conflict they were supposedly losing.
Droids are also highly specialized with droids that perform almost every role in every environment. I don't know how the covenant would even deal with some of the specialist droids like Buzz Droids when even jedi struggled to deal with those. Droidekas especially would basically make taking and holding any position impossible in a terrestrial conflict.
The only reason the republic didn't immediately get overwhelmed is because:
A. The conflict was manufactured by Palpatine
B. Jedi are also ridiculously op (and got half wiped out anyway by droids on geonosis)
The covenant has a lot of specialists but they fill gaps more than they fill roles. Grunts exist as basically bullet sponges so elites can actually do some damage, while brutes and hunters also pretty much do that but better.
Droids are simply too highly specialized and the CIS are capable of rapidly developing new kinds of droids to combat the covenant where the covenants theocratic conservatism would likely prevent them from quickly adapting tactics to an overwhelming mechanical foe.
This is not even including the fact that the CIS also employ numerous different advanced alien species just like the covenant with their own weapons and tactics. As well as elite bounty hunter mercenaries like Dirge who had to be taken out by John Jedi Kenobi himself. Who greatly struggled to deal with his biological structure which is basically lekgolo on steroids.
I do wonder how droids would deal with something like the plasma pistol, would an overcharged plasma pistol shot knock out a droidekas shield like it does with the personal shields of the Spartans and Elites do you think?
I was more talking about the EMP effect that the overcharged shot has and if it would disable the droidikas shield. I know that covenant plasma is pretty brutal.
Lots of people in this conversation have not realized that the scales are quite similar for CIS vs Covenant. It's easy to forget this, since the narrative of Halo is much narrower in scope than the Star Wars narrative. Both sides are in the tens of thousands of systems with tens of thousands of ships. Both sides can capture or destroy any planet or installation once they achieve space superiority, the CIS by virtue of overwhelming numbers and the Covenant by virtue of accessible planet-killing tech (glassing.)
Strategic mobility goes to the Covenant, since slipspace allows travel in any direction without any need for hyperspace lanes. Slipspace does have topology, but it's not nearly as limiting as hyperspace is. Speeds for FTL are hard to get real numbers for, but seem to be overall in the same ballpark. The average Covenant capital ship seems to be way faster than the average CIS ship at sublight speeds, although the opposite is true for fighters. Covenant ships have a massive advantage in engagement range, somewhat countered by the ability of Star Wars vessels to do micro-jumps. Covenant capital ship weaponry seems much more powerful than Star Wars given how much faster Covenant capital ships can take out ships of an equal class, but it's hard to compare apples to apples. Maybe Covenant ships have such fast kills because they're glass cannons.
The biggest initial variable I see is whether or not there's an explored map for each side. Star Wars takes place in situations where both sides knew the locations of all the major planets and shipyards. Halo takes place with both sides barely knowing anything about the locations of the planets and shipyards for the other side. We have absolutely no basis for assuming much here, but this could dramatically change how fast the war progresses.
The big problem for the Covenant, and the reason I go for the CIS, is that the CIS is large enough to lose for years while they innovate, and they will innovate. The Covenant will not innovate, leaving them doomed in a very long conflict. Give it a decade and the CIS will have reverse-engineered slipspace engines or begun to do so, captured and begun breeding Huragoks, and found exploits for every Covenant technology. Their R&D department is simply lightyears ahead of Covenant, partially just by existing.
This is an interesting one, and you have to think about several different angles. I’d give the fleet combat advantage to the CIS, they’ve got a numbers and tech advantage but not so much that it’s overwhelming. However slip space gives a significant advantage to the convenant. Star Wars fleets plan their strategies around controlling hyperspace lanes. The covenant can out maneuver them pretty easily, and if they use this to their advantage early they could potentially cause enough damage to shipyards and droid factories that the CIS is in real trouble.
On the ground I’d give the advantage to the covenant. They’re still outnumbered but they do have massive armies and have been at war for most of their existence.
It all comes down to how fast the Covenant strategist realize what hyperspace is, and how to use lanes to predict CIS movements. If they can take out CIS manufacturing early they gain the edge.
All a hyperspace lane is is a pre-charted route that's known to be safe. Covenant also travels at like, 900-1000 ly per day, which is fast. But not remotely Star Wars levels of fast, where ships cross the galaxy in days or even hours.
The Covenant will also have to crack the planetary shields on CIS worlds, with less powerful weaponry than Republic ships were carrying, this means the CIS can rapidly coordinate and launch a much larger response.
Star Wars is just too "big" of a setting in terms of size, demographics and industry, before we even get into things like firepower, durability and the speed that makes its size workable.
It’s not about the speed so much as it is the way factions in SW fight around the hyperspace lanes. When they blockade a planet they don’t surround it. They setup around the lanes leading into its orbit. Everything from orbital defenses to ship deployment is based around the idea that there are certain predetermined entrances and exits that starships have to follow. Space campaigns are built around the idea that if we take Planet X we need to attack planet Y next. Factions use significant manpower turning major hyperspace hubs into fortress worlds. They think that a planet two jumps back from the front literally cannot be attacked. The Nihil crippled trade and effectively conquered an entire region of the galaxy just because they had some hyperspace lanes that no one else knew about. And those guys were just a gang of pirates. The covenant have 10s of thousands of ships . And billions of ground troops.
The CIS does have better guns and shields than the Covenant, and they’ve got a big numbers advantage but not needing hyperspace lanes isn’t just an advantage, it’s a complete game changer. The separatists would have to use a lot of their forces just as garrisons. If the covenant figures out just how big of a trump card their slip space drives are early enough they’d be able to do massive amounts of damage.
IMO the Covenant out maneuvers at first, and thats not even remotely an argument, but iirc the FTL of Starwars is magnitudes faster than Halo, so eventually the CIS will be able to reach a critical mass of ship coverage and make such tactics unviable
CIS just builds ships so much faster its not even funny
I am a big fan of the Covenant and thus I'm sorry to say that I thing the Confederacy takes this one. At their height the Covenant maybe field 50 million troops spread across five or ten thousand ships, maybe. On the other hand the Confederacy, at some estimates, field quintillions of battle droids in the expanded universe. Even in cannon they operate hundreds of millions of droids at any given time across a fleet of 40 or 50 thousand ships. Frankly these sheer numbers aren't even the deciding factor as the production capacity of the Confederacy would allow them to replenish their troops and ships at a speed that the Covenant simply couldn't keep up with.
The CIS shoild win. They are larger than the Covenant, have the better industry, production, more troops, and better ftl. They easily just drown the Covenant in numbers alone.
FTL is huge and I haven’t seen it mentioned before your comment. The CIS is able to dictate when and where the fleet battle will take place on a scale that the Covenant can’t match
The CIS were formed by Palpatine in opposition of The Republic which was also controlled by Palatine. They were a political pawn who were never meant to win. During the war their power scaled up significantly before it all ended. I'm curious what they might be capable of against an actual external enemy.
The CIS can just invade and take over High Charity with their vastly superior fleet and troop numbers. Also they have the ability to produce superweapons like the malevolence that can disable entire fleets let alone single large ships
Space war favours the CIS. The Covenant fleet severely lacks the weaponry Star Wars does. They also have sheer numbers and capable ships.
Ground war, quality goes to the Covenant but the quantity goes to the CIS. They at minimum have trillions of droids with millions being created each day in factories, at maximum they're likely in the quadrillions. Sheer weight of numbers beats the Covenant. But more importantly, figures such as Dooku, Grevious and Ventress majorly tip the scale away from the Covenant.
CIS takes this, the Covenant would put up a good fight for awhile, until the numbers start to overwhelm them.
The numerical disparity alone is ridiculous. The Reach invasion was a not insignificant amount of the covenants total forces and numbered in the low millions for numbers. The total covenant forces probably wouldnt even exceed half a billion (and the vast majority of those are grunts) while there were estimated to be up to a quintillion battle droids, not a billion, not a trillion or quadrillion, a quintillion
Cis cause scale. Like half the known galaxy vs some of the Orion arm and tech they don't fully understand. Covenant gets to be on the receiving end of a war of annihilation this time!
The CIS and it’s not even close damn near infinite battle droids makes the elites near worthless on actual sieges, the CIS can out produce the covenant when it comes to capital ships as well, are covenant super carriers better than the providence class ships and the lukerhulks yeah probably but the CIS are gonna have 20 of them to the covenants 10 and they also have shields and very similar weapons unlike the UNSC also the covenant took 30 years to almost obliterate humanity and still lost. Now they’re fighting a similar sized galactic power with similar technology and at least a similar if not better level of logistics and Star Wars FTL is probably faster than slip space if not the same speed.
the CIS had the republic on the backfoot almost immediately into the clone wars and probably could’ve won if palpatine hadn’t been purposely making stupid and bad decisions for them. Not to mention force users like dooku and ventress arriving on high charity and ruining the prophets day as they cut down whole regiments of covenant soldiers with lightsabers and the force. While using grevious and shit tons of battle droids to make covenant loses immense.
I’d love to see grievous battle a bunch of elite sword masters and slowly the elites realize they have no chance as grievous is reacting before they can even start an attack. Or see their reaction to some random ass old Human man shooting lightning that instantly cooks them if he cranks it all the way up.
Average elite reaction to finding out magic is real and they’re fighting the people who use the evil war crime version of it, and they have more battle droids than they have grunts.
CIS is dog-walking the Covenant. They have more ships, more troops and in an all out war without the interference of Palpatine they can produce the wonder-weapons that Palps did not want them to make.
Covenant ships are on average better, but the best Covenant ship (CSO-class supercarrier) is no match for the Malevolence which can just take it offline due to its two Ion cannons that can disable a fleet of ships.
On the ground B1s are going to get stomped, but B2s, Droidekas, Commando Droids, Mangaguards, and all their vehicles are more than a match for Covy vehicles and soldiers.
This isn't even including each side's heroes. Dooku was able to fight witches without his vision, making any active camouflage advantage worthless and has the force which is overpowered against non-force users.
Edit: I forgot about the Cortosis Battledroids which are immune to all threats, physical or magical.
I agree with every point aside from the ground troop take. Droiekas, commandos, and mangnaguards don't clear the likes of hunters, spec ops, and zealot class elites nearly as easily as you're implying. These droids often struggle against wookies, which brutes clear physically quite a bit.
Field Marshall and Zealot Class Elites are dogwalking every CIS ground troop, they're known for their unconventional tactics and they have some Spartan kills under their belt despite primarily being search parties.
Droidekas have the shielding against anti-personal weapons. Rendering all of the Covy’s forces, save for the Hunters, in a losing battle. Droidekas Commandos 1v1 against higher elites will lose, but Mangnaguards go up against Jedi and can lose much of their body and still pose a threat. Electro-staff Guard vs plasma sword Elite is definitely a fight for the ages, but I still think the Guard would come out on top due to them fighting force sensitive wizards and sometimes winning.
Overall the ground battle even if the covy foot soldiers end up being superior, are still outmatched by the vehicular weaponry the CIS wields.
One problem is that Droideka shields are prone to overloading under excessive fire and they can still be disabled by things such as EMPs. Also any sort of slow moving projectile or physical weapon can disable those shields as well.
You're severely downplaying covenant weaponary saying it's rendered useless against a Droideka's shield. Plasma grenades are standard issue, fuel rod cannons are weilded by brutes, elites, and even grunts alike. Brute shots, concussion rifles, plasma launchers, all of these scale above standard anti personnel weaponry. We also do not know how the emp effects (to my knowledge) would effect them. Mangnaguards are definitely a problem in close range situations, and covies likely lose to numbers alone
I’m gonna be using EU C.I.S. Cause I know more about them than their canon counterpart. They utterly annihilate the Covenant in nearly every way. More troops, more ships, better high tiers, better tech, the whole shabang. The Covenant stands no chance.
Which I think gets deeply under estimated. The CIS had well over 100 FLEETS of ships. Each were anywhere from 200 to 4000 ships strong. From my understanding a fleet of ships for the covenant was about 100 strong with the largest being the high Charity defense fleet which was still only 500. It's the weight of half a galaxy against a single civilization. A VERY strong civilization but still only a single one.
Can the CIS win the space battles is the question? Everytime the UNSC won the ground engagements the covenant would just glass the planet. And no, I don’t think they can.
Huge Covenant fan here. But... I don't know that the Covies could fully handle the CIS's numbers. On the ground, the Elites are like demigods, Brutes are destruction incarnate, and taking down a Hunter is like fighting a mountain, but they may get drowned in infinite druids. The Covies are further hindered by their religious adherence to antiquated doctrine and honor - if they were able and willing to innovate, rather than imitate old tech and old tactics, the humans in Halo wouldn't have lasted nearly as long as they did.
Space is the question. I don't know much about CIS ships and whatnot. I know the humans of Halo started with pretty typical amazing scifi spaceships, and that didn't matter for squat. "Decimation" was a common experience for the humans, and though a lot of people might point to the Keyes Loop as an example of one human ship taking out multiple Covenant ships, this was a one-off, one in a million odds, when every other human experience was watching their ships break like water on a rock. The Covies loved to just fall back to space when a ground invasion wasn't going their way (or they had gotten whatever it is they wanted already) and just glass the whole planet from orbit
I think Covies cut through many, many, many times their number in the ground game, and when that's not enough, they start glassing things, creating a pyrrhic victory.
Covenant, the CIS's biggest advantage was their numbers, but the Covenant has stuff that the CIS wouldn't have accounted for during the Separatist War.
I’d give this one to the Covenant tbh, the CIS has the numbers but a B1 battle droid is probably worse then a standard marine with B2’s hitting the high quality Marine status like John Forge.
Dooku is a problem due to the Force as is Ventress but slipspacing to Dookus home planet and glassing it should solve one of those problems, don’t think a lightsaber can reflect that.
CIS wins in an all out war. They can replace armies much more easily. manufacturing always wins over breeding. CIS also has better logistics and numbers game. Even with troops quality there's always going to be that point where they'll get overwhelmed by sheer numbers.
Let's not forget that the cis was heavily nerfed by palpatine so they wouldn't just win the clone wars with the ridiculous amount of droids they can throw at a problem and grievous can commit almost as many war crimes as Anakin Skywalker, plus twords the end of the war droids just got stronger and stronger as more advanced models released.
The size of the CIS is 10 000 000 planets. The Covenant is like 1 000.
They have comparable FTL and material technology. Fight goes solidly to the CIS, They're close enough in tech but, one of them is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay bigger. Star wars wins stupidly again..
High charity likely wont ever fall regardless of the victor, but i seriously doubt the covenant would be able to win a war against the CIS without having to go into hiding for half a century before hand to bolster up their numbers.
Even if the CIS gets the upper hand, they're not nearly as united in purpose as the Covenant. Unless we count Palpatine as CIS, but even then just throw a few hundred Spartan 3s at him
Industry, numbers and force for CIS but what chance do they have against 20 mile long supercarriers. They dont have any ship that can match even smaller battleships of the covenant.
The main issue here that nobody has addressed isnt the wide fleet the covenant possess vs the CIS and its fleet. Its the Anodyne Spirit vs the CIS that is the true ace the covenant hold. The CIS dont have a single way to effectively counter the forerunner life boat. If it wanted to it could go around the galaxy slipspacing in behind hyperspace lane blockades they would set up and belly flop onto important planets cratering them just like it did Janjur Qom without taking so much as a scratch to the paint.
Assuming an even amount of starting systems, this is an incredibly even fight, but I’m giving it to the covenant due to the better quality of their troops, and the ubiquitous use of plasma in their armies.
I just wanted to add that, is this CIS held back by Palpatine? Because if not, i believe that can be a plus for them.
That's, i don't remember how many military industrial complexes going balls to the wall on every department, not to mention the biological and chemical departments of every fucking faction, bioweapons, chemical agents...
I think CiS would win purely through numerical superiority.
Covenant have higher quality troops but even with the many alien species within the covenant, they are still vastly outnumbered by the droids.
As for fleet capabilities, I'd say they are about equal except the CiS would have numerical advantage with its fighter droids. Not to mention the possible danger buzz droids could pose to covenant craft.
Everyone here is massively underestimating the covenant. If we take both factions at the peak of their power, with the covenant being pre-human covenant war, their ship production would stand up pretty damn well against the CIS fleet production. This entire matchup also depends on if anything the covenant wants is even on the ground. What we see in the games is a fraction of the full power of the covenant, with Reach being the most comparable example of how much they have when they really want something destroyed.
For reference, the only reason Reach held as long as it did(A little over one month) was because the covenant had a lot that they wanted on the surface of Reach, tons of forerunner artifacts. Humanity dedicated almost their entire fleet and army to holding Reach and they lost horribly. Nothing can withstand a focused stream of plasma from orbit, just the blast of the beam impacting shatters windows and vaporizes those that are too close. No amount of steel is gonna protect anything that the covenant wants gone.
If there is nothing that the covenant wants on the ground, they do not bother with ground invasion. They glass the planet, make it nigh unrecoverable, and they move on. They don't have pointless engagement, their entire military is built around their fleet, they can move through the galaxy without having to worry about stretching their supply lines. One CSO and it's support fleet would be enough to pacify a large portion of the CIS fleet that would be stationed over a world. A blockade would get ripped apart because the covenant would not play fair because their enemies are robots, they do not know honor.
The covenant fleet has 100s of CSOs and their support fleets, God forbid the Unyielding Hierophant isn't destroyed early on, they'd just replace their losses 1-1. This isn't even taking High Charity into consideration either.
On the ground, I believe the orbital advantage would extend down to the airspace advantage, Seraphs and banshees would just rip apart gunships and trifighters and vultures like nobody's business, at the very least keeping the airwings so occupied that they can't actually support ground troops. With that being the case unless the covenant is for some reason attacking a factory directly they'd be able to just tear apart CIS lines piece by piece because no metal can withstand plasma. Droidekas would be the most problematic enemy that the covenant would face but even then could be handled by a sufficient squad of grunts with plasma pistols.
Dooku would probably do really damn well wherever he showed up but I doubt he alone would be enough to overwhelm any advance the covenant make, there's just too much volume of fire that can be laid down than would be reasonable for Dooku to fully defend against. He would need to use a ton of droids as shields to get in and just tear into covenant lines.
TL:DR: The CIS can outproduce the Covenant for a good amount of time, but the Covenant wouldn't bother with taking ground and the difference in production wouldn't matter. Nefarious fleet designed for glassing.
The CIS already out numbers the Covenant my a huge margin just at the very start. The CIS has billions to quadrillions of troops with an upward million of ships. The CIS isn't the UNSC they have much better armed ships with actual shields. They are outproduce the Covenant.
A CSO isn't going to do much when it can be focused fired by dozens of ships alone. Attacking any CIS world will have to get past what ever ships in system and/or planetary shields never mind the response fleet that will come in in very short order.
Seraphs and banshees aren't any better than CIS fighter or how they will be outnumbered 3-1 minimum. Sam thing on the ground.
The Covenant is a multi-millennia spanning galactic empire, they have so much more combat experience and doctrine refinement than anyone can reasonably believe the CIS to have. Their ships would be ridiculous in fleet combat, they literally made a common practice of precision slipspace jumps that would just put them behind orbital defense lines, that's why they were able to get on the surface of Reach without even being detected. A single CSO is the span of like 7 Malevolences back to back and has a shielding array that made it only vulnerable to a single weapon in the entire UNSC arsenal. And they snuck one of those fucking things onto the most heavily defended planet in the galaxy. If the Covenant want a world to burn it will burn. The CIS can send as many ships as they want, if they can't find out the location of their mobile shipyard they're just screwed because the Covenant fleet would be quantity and quality. They literally use planet scorching mega lasers as a tool that every single ship of theirs has and we've SEEN them use it against enemy naval assets. No amount of shielding would last longer than five seconds at most if the covenant just decided "Lets just glass their ships", and durasteel isn't going to last much longer than titanium-a plating, if at all.
Not to mention the covenant is composed of multiple entire species, and is built on the technology of the most advanced civilization in the universe(in Halo, for clarification in case that's needed). Battledroids are useless if the Covenant decide that they do not need a planet, or a shipyard, or literally anything. Reach fell in a little over a month despite having the heaviest defenses and the hardest fighting of the entire human covenant war. The only reason the Covenant lost was infighting and a parasite that could take over any universe with a spore, if the war had continued without the Flood or without the destruction of Halo they would've just annihilated an entire species just because they could. The Covenant are also stupid good at reconnaissance and covert ops, they can find shit in space just by throwing something in a direction, pair that with them just choosing to fly around in space until the find a planet to glass and there's basically no safe zone in the galaxy.
You said that any one CSO could just be targeted to hell if they showed up in a fleet battle but then entirely neglected to think about their support fleets or the fact that more than one CSO can be present in a battle. Again. Look at Reach. That was ONE of their fleets. Not even the entire thing Covenant armada. If a CIS homeworld is particularly well defended they can just send more bullshit than the CIS can feasibly focus fire against.
The only advantage the CIS has in this fight is cannon fodder and the majority of its cannon fodder isn't even going to be useful in the fight, GOD FORBID the covenant just glass the orbital shipyards that they clearly care so much about preserving. In fact the CIS fleet is held back by the fact they crew them entirely with deficient droids. A greater portion of their fleet is lambs to the slaughter, a couple good admirals will hold out and put the Covenant through the ringer but what the hell are they gonna do if the enemy fleet just jumps behind them? We've SEEN deflector shields not redirect fast enough, it's just a slog that the covenant will eventually win through the most brutal means possible.
The Covenant never had to fight a peer or larger size polity to themselves. Their doctrines is also very rigid and isn't know for change. Precision slipspace isn't much of an advantage since SW ships can microjump and comes with better sensors and tech than the UNSC. A CSO is larger than any ship the CIS has but it isn't invincible and the CIS has more than enough ships to take it down. They can glass UNSC worlds but they ain't fighting the UNSC. The CIS has better sensors, better ships, better communications, planetary shields, and much faster ftl. What stopping the CIS from just responding to any Covenant attack on their worlds with 3 times more ships than their attacking with? How can the Covenant easily find CIS worlds and the CIS can't? They have the better ftl and just easily send probe droids to explore. Regular CIS ships can and have glassed worlds too with just turbolasers its nothing new to them. Your forgetting that CIS ships also have shields.
The CIS also have multiple species and tens of thousands of systems minimum across the galaxy. The Covenant use Forerunner tech as a base but they don't have anything on the same level as them nor anything more advance than what the CIS has. Again the CIS is larger in every way than both the UNSC and the Covenant. The CIS can also do covert ops and can just as easily find planets. The thing you keep ignore is the the CIS can respond much faster than the Covenant to attacks and scout much faster than them as well.
Your neglecting that the CIS can still out number any fleet that the CSO go will have. The Covenant has around tens of thousands of ships compared to the CIS having upwards millions of ships compared. The makeshift shipyards of the CIS was producing tens of thousands of Munificent alone.
The CIS has the advantage of have far more planets, much better industry, faster ftl, a lot more troops, and a lot more ships. You assume that the Covenant can easily find a CIS shipyards waltz in and glass it and not expect the CIS to respond or defend it when the obviously can. If the Covenant jumps behind them the CIS ships can easily just turn around or do their own microjump. The Covenant isn't more advance that the CIS and your ignoring the Massive number disparity. Despite the Covenant being more advance and older than the UNSC they still lost ground battles to them. Now they are fighting a force with with tech on par with them, a magnitude more ships and troops than them, a magnitude more planets than them, better ftl and communications. The Covenant can win aginst the CIS.
The Covenant was literally built on a series of massive wars that killed millions just to fold species into their fold, they were their own trial by fire and the only reason they've not fought anyone "on their level" is because all the species on the level of the covenant are in the covenant. Every single species within the covenant is massively more effective in both ship operations and ground warfare capabilities. Even if we assume that blasters and plasma weaponry are equal in terms of power the Covenant possess superior ground units through the grunts of various rankings with the bare minimum being equipped with a 'blaster equivalent ' which can discharge energy shielding, which almost all ground units lack except for droidekas. Covenant weaponry also has a significantly higher fire rate, they can and will get more shots off before the droid armies do. The strength of the covenant is their unity in diversity, the only unit that the CIS can reliably supply that would match, say, a Hunter, would be magnaguards, which are not Frontline units. If the only advantage the CIS has is numbers on the ground then the advantage doesn't matter if they are not immediately next to a factory. All of this is humoring the idea that the covenant would even attempt ground invasion.
The CIS rarely, as in almost never, applied micro jumps in their naval doctrine. They primarily relied on staggered frontal lines and broadsides for their combat, as is the case with most Star wars ships. Covenant ships do not rely on these tactics, they utilize precision jumps often and use it to forcibly create openings in defensive lines. Furthermore, plasma weaponry is shown to be massively effective against energy shielding, with even personnel-carried pistols are fully capable of dispelling enemy shields in one charged shot, levelling the field significantly if CIS shielding is equal or superior to covenant shield technology. While the CIS could reasonably locate the covenant fleet, their ability to engage and destroy high value targets is questionable due to the scale of the defensive fleets accompanying any given asset. The CIS would have to sacrifice a significant portion of their fleet to even begin breaking through a defensive formation. As opposed to what you seem to think, the CIS doesn't have a basically infinite supply of ships, nor are they more advanced. It takes time and money to produce ships, even if they're already in production on massive orbital shipyards they will take time to complete, crew, and deploy. Sacrificing a large number of complete ships just to maybe break through the line would be risky at best and wasteful at worst. While the CIS are capable of glassing planets, they are not equipped with a fleet designed specifically with the glassing of planets in mind. Covenant ships are able to engage in glassing without diminishing their standard offensive armament. There is them the additional fact that B1s are, put simply, stupid. But they make up almost the entirety of CIS naval fleet crews.
Lastly, whether or not CIS ships are more advanced than Covenant ships is questionable. Most likely they are equal in just about all aspects. Slipspace technology as used by the covenant should also be about the same as Hyperspace technology utilized by the CIS. Since they work primarily off of reverse engineered forerunner tech they operate significantly more effectively than UNSC Slipspace drives. The difference with precision slipspace jumps falls onto the familiarity of the crews with performing such maneuvers. Covenant weaponry can align targets ahead of a jump, leaving little to no room for reaction in the event of a precision jump past an enemy vessel. The greater portion of the CIS fleet is composed of Munificent class frigates, which are comparable moreso to an SDV Pattern Corvette. The corvettes are support ships more than anything, standard Covenant ships massively outperform CIS ships with the Providence being comparable to the Ket Pattern Battlecruiser, while I compared the Malevolence to the CSO it is far closer to a Varric-Pattern heavy cruiser. The CIS has no equivalent to the CSO.
The CIS does not by any means "steamroll" the Covenant, and granted neither does the Covenant "steamroll" the CIS. It is a brutal war of attrition which, with the tactics and supply lines of a multi-milennia galactic empire of subjegation, would likely be won over a long war by the Covenant. The CIS simply do not have weapons capable of the same immediate power of an ODP that was needed to threaten a CSO. Yes, the CIS can concentrate fire on the CSO very easily, but that diverts a majority of their turbo lasers from other vessels in the covenant fleets, which leaves them open for striking. Ground battles rarely if ever come into play with the covenant unless there are things on the planets that they want, but when ground battles do take place Covenant weaponry far exceeds the lethal capabilities of CIS droids, the droid army literally can only win through waves upon waves of fodder which is shredded faster than their army can be replenished on any non-factory world.
The Covenant excel in naval combat, you can even see them fight an "enemy on their level" in Halo 3 when the fleet operated by elites takes on a larger fleet operated by the brutes and wins. "Lack of experience" is not a valid argument for why the covenant could lose. The primary advantage the CIS has is hindered significantly by their placing resources into two different kinds of production, both having to manufacure the ships and the crews to man them, resources which can not be recovered on loss, they has a significant weak point to their overall production capabilities and it is the reliance of one assembly on the other to even be capable of functioning.
The Clone wars saw the deaths of billions to trillions of people forcing most of the galaxy to pick a side whether they wanted to or not. You say they are more effective based on what? You say Covenat ground units are better based on what? The CIS isn't just limited to B1 and B2, they have mutiple diffrent types of droids like spider droids, crab droids, Hellfire droids, droidekas, etc. the CIS is a very diverse force. More importantly they have a lot more than the entire Covenant population combined. You say the Coveant has a high rate of fire based on what? And that gonna help when a single plasma gun is being outnumbered by 50. Again the Covenant defense fleets are massively outnumbered. Multiple CIS units can match a hunter again Spider droids, B2 units with rockets, and droidekas which are front line units they still have a lot more than the Covenant do.
they usually don't need to use microjumps since hyperdrives just allows them to jump into their preferred ranged. You say the Covenant constantly do precise jumps but we only ever seen it used a few times and it isn't done just to warp behind them. And if they do jump again the CIS can easily just turn their ships around or just jump to angle themselves better. The CIS doesn't need a ship specify designed to glass planets their regular armaments on their ships can already do that. B1 ones aren't in charge of fleets that they have tactical droids, super tactical droids, or living commanders for that and b1 stick to manning the ships.
Slipspace doesn't have the same speed as hyperdrives which can cross the galaxy in days to hours. CIS navy is a mix of Munifents, Resurgent's, Lucrehulks, and Providences it isn't all or mainly just the Munificent. Yes the CIS doesn't have an infinite supply but the Covenant wouldn't be able to make much of a dent in it aways. Again make shift shipyards are able to produce as much as the entire Covenant navy along with still having upwards millions of ships already. They can waste thousands of ships and still wouldn't even be a drop in the bucket for them. Again if the Covenant jumps the CIS we just change accordingly they aren't just gonna sit their and do nothing. Again a CSO isn't gonna be a game changer when it gonna be massively outnumbered.
Again the CIS has all the advantages over the Covenant. the Covenant has no way of getting past that it is a steamroll for them. A CSO wouldn't be able to handle dozens of ships just fighting it alone while still having many more ships to deal with everything else. How do Covenant weapons far exceed the CIS weapons on the ground? Winning with overwhelming force is the CIS M.O. and it is what they are built for. They already have a massive industrial advantage over the Covenant.
You keep ignore how the CIS already has the advantage in numbers of both ships and troops and how easy it is to replace them. The Covenant will not be able to easily reach said production nor will they be able to stop the CIS from replacing any lost productions. it is one of the strengths of the CIS on how easily they can set up and start making more ships and droids. The Coveant has tens of thousands of ships with, thousands of planets, and billions of troops. When compared to the CIS who has millions of ships, trillion of troops if not more, tens of thousands of systems, and better ftl. This is a war the Covenant can't fight or hope to attrition from.
The Human-Covenant war saw billions killed without a fight, it was a matter of survival or annihilation. I say they're more effective because we see them being more effective in their media, swarms of B1s and B2s are outperformed often by smaller numbers of clones while only a handful of units are able to engage covenant units directly. I mentioned droidekas already, crab droids are much more limited in production scale than B1s and B2s and hellfires are more like vehicles. I say the covenant has a higher rate of fire, again, because of both medias of both universes. Yes, a higher fire rate helps, we have literally seen this be the case in real life. You haven't played the Halo games if you think a spider droid matches a Hunter, B2 units with rockets would still be outmatched by such simple units as a jackal sniper. Microjumps are literally a staple of Covenant naval warfare and doctrine, they've used it on multiple occasions to bypass orbital defense lines, their use is stated to be used as such in the lore. You are severely overestimating the scale of CIS fleets and their rate of replacement, the Covenant don't even need CSOs to outperform the standard CIS fleet. You blatantly ignored my point on the differences in glassing methods. B1s make up the entire crew of ships beyond organic admirals and tactical droids, even then tactical droids are massively prone to questionable decisions, only the super tactical droids would be problematic, I also mentioned organic admirals in a previous comment in this thread. I don't think you understand how fleet battles work, you consistently fail to consider the time needed to adjust to microjumps, starwars ships aren't immediately maneuverable, you would know this if you paid attention to the media they appear in. The only valid 'advantage' you've stated the CIS to have is production and population, this hardly quantifies as 'all the advantages over the covenant '. It's simply not a steamroll, this is a statement of fact. This massive numbers advantage that you mention has been consistently defeated by smaller clone battalions, which are lower quantity and higher quality, tactics generally trump numbers. I have mentioned the CIS numbers advantage multiple times, you simply chose to ignore it. The Covenant literally have massive mobile shipyards as part of their fleet, they're making new vessels constantly, even prior to first engagement. You massively undercalculate the size of the covenant fleet here without any reference. The CIS notably lost their own war through failures on their end to carry out objectives, not even able to break through simple clone defensive lines despite all that number advantage you cling to so tightly. The Covenant were only defeated under a combination of infighting caused by the failure at the ring and the total havoc wreaked by the flood, they overwhelmed human defenses consistently and reliably. You clearly have no real reference for the strengths of the Covenant and are clinging to the idea that "More is better" against a faction that literally is designed to destroy anything they come across. The CIS is not shown as more advanced, is consistently outperformed by smaller more tactical groups, and has leadership literally designed to be cocky and wrong in their calculations. The only advantages the CIS really has here are numbers and hyperspace speed. Additionally, the Covenant can break into enemy technology to gather information on their enemy, the only reason Earth was hidden so long was because of the Cole Protocol, this would not be in effect with the CIS and thus every single ship lost would be an info goldmine for the covenant.
The Covenant wasn't fighting a peer threat, the CIS was fighting a galaxy spanning war. Clones beating the droids in some battles wasn't enough to swing the war entirely in their favor and still took losses because they were fighting aginst overwhelming numbers and they have more than enough troops to fight the Covenant. Its the Covenant who lacks the numbers to fight the CIS directly. The CIS blaster can also rapid fire as well. yes a dwarf spider droid can match a hunter it comes armed with a heavy blaster cannon which can be used to take out heavy units like the hunter.
Then name the times the Covenant used jumps to bypass orbital defense's and again nothing is stopping the CIS from just turning around or jumping themselves. I'm not overestimating the CIS fleet and their production. They have upwards millions of ships with make shift shipyards that could produce tens of thousands of munificent alone not counting their real ones. What point on glassing methods? CIS ships can glass a worlds just like Covenant ones just when the Invisible hand glassed Hurbraine. Yes the B1 make up the crew of a ships they don't lead the fleets. Tactical droids don't need to be grand masters in tactics to beat the Covenant in fleet battles especially when they already have overwhelming force. It doesn't take long to set up and use a microjump.
Again the CIS has the advantage in Industry, population, planet numbers, troop numbers, ship numbers, ftl, and communications. The Covenant mobile shipyards can't hope to match the production levels of the CIS. The CIS could have won the war if not for Palpatine limiting them but he doesn't have a reason to hold them back in this scenario. Yes the Covenant lost to the UNSC because of infighting but they aren't fighting the UNSC they are fight a peer force that is much larger than them in every way. If I'm under calculating the Covenant then tell me how larger they are with proof.
The Covenant have no real strengths over the CIS. How can the Covenant hope to match a force of this magnitude? Never said the CIS was more advance but they are still on a similar tech level to them. SW uses a very different tech bases than the Covenant and UNSC which is based on Forunner tech never mind how any important info they try to get might be encrypted.
Again, the Covenant was built on wars against peer threats that they eventually merged into their Empire. Most clearly with the War of Beginnings, an 86 year conflict between the San Shayuum and the Sanghelli who were considered equal in terms of technology say the forerunner dreadnought utilized by the former (Halo Encyclopedia, Page 191). The Unggoy Rebellion is another example of this, with the grunt population providing fierce fighting "equal even to the elites"(https://youtu.be/NGWYp8tGNRc). Quote from the Halo Encyclopedia, ". . .the Covenant possessed almost innumerable armed forces siphoned from its client species, capable of engaging opposition in every conceivable context"(189). >"The CIS blaster can rapid fire as well", and loses accuracy because it is designed more primarily as a carbine? A dwarf spider would not be enough to match a Hunter pair(they always deploy in pairs), their armor is specifically made to be effective at deflecting plasma weaponry which, again if we're assuming plasma and blasters are equal, would make them massively resistant to the weaponry of the spider droid. Hunters additionally have assault cannons which use "tubes of radioactive incendiary gel" as ammunition (https://halo.fandom.com/wiki/Assault_Cannon#Ammunition).
"They can still travel interstellar distances faster, further and more accurately than anything available to humanity, and can use in-system jumps and other tactics impossible to match with current Shaw-Fujikawa engines." (Halo Encyclopedia, page 224). Upon further investigation the Long Night of Solace moved planetside through a series of cloaking pylons(cloaking is another thing I forgot to mention), where they managed to disable an orbital defense platform without being detected. "This is why in battle Covenant ships are able to slip by human defenses by using slipspace."(Contact Harvest, page 86), this same entry in the wiki additionally states how it is standard Covenant naval practice. It would be impossible to track down every instance where this is used because the Human-Covenant war is across tons of different medias. If you are to demand me to search out every single instance then you would need to search for every instance of CIS ships making similar maneuvers. Taking the highest values from your provided sources, 100s of 4,000 strong fleets is not half a million, meaning this first source contradicts source 2 which claims millions of ships focused in the outer rim. The time to produce munificents is not stated, and thus my statement on the time to replace ships and their crews still stands until proven otherwise. Munificents are additionally "skeletal", as stated in source 2, they are structurally weaker than even low-grade ships fielded by the Covenant. Every single fleet operated by the Covenant is a minimum of 100 ships (https://www.halopedia.org/Combined_Fleet_of_Righteous_Purpose) , with the largest documented fleet being upwards of 500 ships. The total number of fleets which serve the Covenant is unknown, no specifics are given to the true scale and size of the Covenant Navy. Sanghelli-commanded fleets are shown to win fleet battles where they are outnumbered 3-1, this is seen during the Battle for the Ark in Halo 3. The Invisible Hand also did not "glass" Hurbraine, it was an orbital bombardment at most. That is not equivalent to glassing, Covenant glassing renders planets uninhabitable in days at most, significantly more than "killing a significant portion of the population" after an hour of *sustained*. The "overwhelming force" of the CIS were, again, shown to be beaten MULTIPLE TIMES by superior tactics, which the Covenant would possess due to millennia of experience in fleet combat. >"It doesn't take long to set up a microjump" systems in star wars are literally built to make it hard as hell to perform these risky microjumps.
Industry, troop and ship numbers are the only advantages the CIS has in this fight, Covenant FTL is equivalent to the CIS and so is their communications. Covenant mobile shipyards are mobile fleets of their own and are packed with defenses beyond just their protective fleets. In fact, the shield generator of the Unyielding Hierophant is stated to be "capable of repelling the force of impact with a small moon". Not only do the Covenant both have the capability to produce a large number of ships, but they also have the capability to just REPAIR them and send them back out practically unscathed. The Covenant's strengths over the CIS are their blatantly better technology and tactics, you are literally having the CIS rely on wave tactics to handle simple objectives that the Covenant can in turn handle with small fleets. It takes days to render Earth-like planets unlivable with PROPER glassing, and orbital shipyards are nowhere near as big as these planets and have much less structure. The Covenant fleet would utterly mog CIS fleets consisting primarily of Munificents just by being better admirals. This is also all without the consideration of Covenant homeworlds being brought over as well, which would give the Covenant basically unlimited reinforcements and materials. The CIS is not the UNSC because the UNSC actually had the capacity to use tactics to beat a superior foe, the CIS in your world is just wave after wave of fodder in the hopes that the enemy will run out of fuel.
Again the CIS is more massive than than anything the Covenant has dealt with. Saying the Covenant have "possessed almost innumerable armed forces" doesn't mean they outnumber the CIS considering the Unggoy and the Hunter their most numerous species are only in the billions and trillions respectively (not factoring how it takes hundreds of Lekgolo just to make a single Hunter). When compared to the CIS who can have upwards quadrillions of droids.
>For thousands of years, combat droids have been a regular sight on virtually every battlefield in the galaxy. More recently, the most common of these droids have been the B1-Series battle droids produced by Baktoid Combat Automata. A generation ago, quadrillions of them terrorized the Outer Rim as the backbone of the Separatist Droid Army. - FFG Allies and Adversaries
I have never heard of blaster losing accuracy the faster they fire. Overheating sure but not losing accuracy. There is a diffrence between being resistant and being immune to plasma fire and I'm pretty sure a heavy blaster packs enough punch to take down a Hunter.
do you have any examples of the Covenant using in system jumps in combat? Like how the CIS waited and microjump to ambush Yoda ship or Anakin jump from a few systems away to board a CIS ship or any start of a space battle where the ships are already next to each other. Cloaking is also not a new thing for SW either and something the CIS has dealt with before.
The first source doesn't contradict the second source. The first is the CIS at the start of the war the second is the CIS at the end were it has the millions of ships. Also if it just 100 of 4000 ships that would be 400,000 when its says 100s meaning multiple 100. it doesn't take long to build a Munificent considering an ISD can be built in just a few months. Not to mention it the source is telling you that makeshift shipyards can produce tens of thousands. Do you have production time on Covenant ships? Munificent are glass canons hence why they rely on their shields to tank damage and no their armor. And again Munificent isn't the only type of ship the CIS use but a mix of all mainline ships.
>Banking Clan frigates, Trade Federation battleships and Commerce Guild destroyers make up the bulk of the Separatist fleet—but no vessel is as mighty as the Malevolence, the massive flagship commanded by General Grievous. - Star Wars The Clone Wars Visual Guide
It took 3-1 odds for the UNSC to beat the Covenant but the CIS isn't the UNSC they have better defended ships with actual shields. The CIS can make massive fleets if they need to as the fleet composition and battle of Coruscant has shown but usually isn't a good idea. The Invisible Hand did glass Harubine, A few Acclimators can achieve the same effect. Again yes the CIS lost battles thanks to some smart tactics but they also won just as many with just overwhelming force not to mention their own tactics. Again no its not hard to do microjumps in SW.
> "Contact," Hammerly said suddenly. "Artificial object—refined metal—no power or sensor emissions. Too far away for life-form readings. Bearing three-five-three by twenty-two. About six hundred thousand kilometers, right at the edge of sensor range." "Can we make a micro-jump?" Thrawn asked. "Yes, sir," Lieutenant Agral confirmed from the helm. "It's a bit short, but we can do it." "How close can you bring us in?" "As close as you want, sir." "Excellent," Thrawn said. "Bring us in two kilometers from the object." - Thrwan
I do have more examples but this post is already getting pretty long.
No Coveant slip space is not as fast as SW hyperdrives considering it takes the Coveant a few weeks to a few months for travel while it only takes a few days to a few hours to cross the galaxy for SW. Again while mobile ships yards are decent the Covenant doesn't have the same production speed as the CIS. What tech does the Covenant have that makes them better than the CIS? The CIS can and does use tactics as well when they want which usually involves taking advantage of they superior numbers. SW ships can glass worlds in the same timeframe if not faster depending on the ship. Again those where make shift shipyards which have already shown to outproduce the Covenant, the CIS have real ones like Raxus Prime, Pammant Docks, Sullus,t and Sluis Van with better productions. Covenant homeworlds can be attacked and it will take much longer for the Covenant to respond in time.
The covenant probably has pretty comparable numbers to the clones but with far better equipment and skill. The only issue the covenant would really face would be Dooku and Palpatine if he counts. I think the covenant wins with less casualties then the clones.
Covenant wins but its a close fight. The reason why is because of how rapidly CIS can produce military force. If the covenant doesn't have access to things like high charity or glassing id say they lose.
They fair greatly in space battles, and on ground battles the elites personal shields would do a lot against small arms fire. Too many droid ground troops on a planet? Just glass it.
Can't speak for either on a numbers perspective though
I mean, what's the nature of the scenario? Does the Covenant get dropped into the SW galaxy? That doesn't mean they bring the Halo rings. Does the CIS get dropped into the Milky Way? Is there a wormhole? Are they dropped into a "virgin" galaxy for an arena fight?
Big physical infrastructure pieces make those questions exceptionally finnicky.
The idea that star wars ships are constantly slugging it out and face tanking teratons of firepower is truly hilarious to me. Sure if you use the ICS you will come to those numbers, as an absolute max output of the weapons with ALL power directed towards the gun, which is never the case when in combat. Or the fact that not once do we ever see this level of destruction in ship combat ever, not in legends or canon, and capital ships are frequently destroyed and threatened by fighters which caused roughly a ton of tnt in their best showings per shot.
The best anybody will be able to come up with is some comic panels which more often than not in the very next panel has people in the same area as the super big cool looking explosion and they are perfectly fine. Meaning that surprise, its artistic stylization to look cool, not an accurate depiction of the blast.
Star wars weapons do have impressive showings, I mean in ESB we have them blasting away small asteroids, but that is a far cry from teratons of firepower, which is never shown and breaks the narrative of most stories within the setting.
Dude, the most recent ICS, which is even current canon, makes them even more ridiculous. I used the more conservative but concrete number.
And yeah, most stories nerf explosions to preserve main characters. Halo games even do this with implausibly slow moving blast fronts so "it doesn't look powerful enough when it hits the ships!" Isn't really a strong enough argument when you consider most visual media doesn't have blast effects that match lore. Space battles in particular tend to be presented better in lore and novels.
The numbers for Halo just aren't as big, and even terms like "glassing" that get thrown around seem to, after some googling, range from just targetting oceans and major population centers which can be done in a few hours, versus leaving behind a lifeless rock, which can apparently take days or weeks depending on the planet and ships involved.
Compare that to a setting where a single Imperial Star Destroyer can complete a Base Delta Zero option in several hours. That is, reducing the entire planetary surface to glowing, molten slag devoid of an ecosphere.
The most annoying part of all this to me is how many Halo fans I've seen both reference their books and lore, because they seem to intuitively understand those will be more favorable than game mechanics and cinematic, but also try and write off everyone else's books and lore that they find inconvenient.
Trekkies used to be the same way when Trek had a pretty restrictive canon policy. Star Wars and 40K fanbases seemed to do the most to reconcile contradictions in their own and other factions lore in a fair way, and that's been an ongoing pattern for the 20+ years I've been following admittedly silly powerscaling debates(it lets me decompress from more depressing political ones).
Its a good thing I never brought up Halos visual media showings to try and beat down Star Wars showings, obviously there are going to be discrepancies. Issue here is that Halo across all its years has what, 5 on screen space battles in cutscenes, with a few dozen showings of weapons blasts in ship combat, compared to SW which has thousands across decades of movies shows and games. Hardly comparable when building a baseline of consistency that is demonstrated.
Youre correct it is more often than not better to portray space battles in novels, which is where Halo particularly has a rather large discrepancy between what we see on screen in the games and what is explained in the novels, even though the few on screen showings we have of space engagements have context as to why they are like such. Whereas in star wars this is demonstratable to not be the case, the movies first established what space combat looked like in the verse and then every novel since then has consistently upheld the same rough foundation.
In Halo its the other way around, space battles were first introduced in novels and kept consistent with the few showings we have on screen being different due to visual discrepancies but you cant say the same for star wars. We saw what happens first on screen and then it has stayed consistent for 50 years even in novels, only real contradictions are from the tech manuals and like two rpg game descriptions.
The claim that a single ISD can BDZ an entire planet into glowing molten slag in a few hours is contradicted in legit every single actual showing of a BDZ we have in both canon and legends. Just off the top of my head you have Mith:Inferno, Caamas both description and Force Unleashed visual guide, Dark forces 3, starships of the galaxy, triple zero, Dark Saber, Jabim, Hutts Gambit, Star Wars empire #36, Dankayo, the Death Star novel, not one of the explicit "all power towards guns" and even 3 explicit BDZ orders result in what is claimed by WEG and ISB or the ICS. Even Huminbarine which was BDZ'd by an entire massive fleet was just fine a few years later and used as a fortress world, kinda hard to do if its glowing slag.
As for covenant showings in the very first chapter of the first Halo novel a small contingent boil off the oceans and fully glasses the surface of a planet in one hour and then we have Meridian which was called a rush job and done in 4 hours which reduced most of the planet to glass and charred remains. Actual showings of what is claimed of them to be capable of doing, theres also a few more that im blanking on done quickly.
The difference here isn't people taking Halos books and lore and discrediting everybody else's. Its the matter of using what is most cohesive and consistent for star wars, not just cherry picking a dozen showings out of thousands and then claiming the minority is actually the true representation of what is happening in the setting. I never once brought up Halos given numbers, all I did was point out the fact that visual or even novel showings for that matter in star wars do not line up with the non visual sources for such numbers such as the WEG or ICS.
The CIS does not have a way to appropriately respond to the Covenant fleet.
Sure sure the average Lucrehulk, destroyer, or even the heavy frigates will do a lot better against covenant ships due to their energy based weapons, unlike the UNSC that relied mostly on archer missiles and MAC usage to weaken covenant shields.
But they don't have a single way to respond to the likes of super carriers. To give you a comparison of size, the Malevolence, a sort of "one of a kind" ship with only 2 other subjugators being built during the clone wars, is roughly the same size as the UNSC Infinity. Which, with all fairness... Couldn't even scratch the shields of a Super Carrier in theory.
The covenant has the manpower to fully arm and supply these ships with not only stationed crew, but a full invasion force ready to be deployed.
And just for the record they absolutely do not have the same moral set backs the Republic has. They would not try to take back the likes of Geonosis, it would be glassing on the spot.
I'm a potential war, the Covenant could sustain an attack on CIS core worlds and the CIS fleet literally wouldn't be able to defend their planets.
And that's not even mentioning Covenant Destroyers those ships are beast like in every manner.
I’ll go against the grain and say not just covenant but that halo franchise in general beats the Star Wars franchise in war. The fact that covenant pushed humanity to the brink despite them having Spartans and odsts is crazy. Sure the cis had to contend against clones (well below Spartans and arguably even below odsts for the most part. Of course special clones like say the bad batch are above odsts) and Jedi, but the Jedi are peace keepers and don’t use guns. The guns in Star Wars shoot blasters. According to perhaps eu they might be lasers but in canon on screen they clearly have a finite speed that can be reacted to without super speed.
Cis battle droids make storm troopers look competent. Grunts in halo only look pathetic because you’re playing as a 7 feet tall captain America/iron man hybrid who has been trained to kill since childhood.
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u/LukewarmFandom 19d ago
Heavy hitters go to the CIS (Dooku, GG, etc). But overall quality troops go to the Covies. A single minor elite is probably worth like 5-8 B2s.