Talk:Covenant Battleship

Votes for Merge

 * Merge This is obviously a Covenant supercarrier as mentoned in Halo: First Strike which says there was a ship that had 5 bubies sectons, and larger then a carrier -- Fist of Rukt 01:43, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Against - Definately not. it is pure hypothesis that the supercarrier had "5 bulb [ous] sections". Cheers,  Relentless Recusant [[Image:Jedi_Order.jpg|20px]] 02:13, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Yours is the pure hypothesis. Mine is based on fact! -- Fist of Rukt 04:42, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Actually, yours are both hypothesis, but RR's is a fanon name, while FistofRukt's is a fanon merge. I'll take a fanon name when a canon name isn't present over a fanon merge any day.--Rotaretilbo 05:23, 12 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Against - As per myself.--Rot 22:42, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
 * AgainstAgreed with RR.Bllasae 17:34, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Merge or not...this is still Important....
A Battleship is NOT s Class of Cruiser.... a Battleship is it's own group with Classes of Battleships...The Ship Template needs to be changed. --Gzalzi 22:48, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

NOT a Supercarrier
I think that it is fairly obvious that this is not a Supercarrier. The battlesip is stated to be only around 2km long. That is a lot shorter than an assault carrier which is about 5km long and a Supercarrier is supposed to be BIGGER than that. Also carrier's don't tend to be that well armed relying mostly on their escorts and their fighter craft. L55 02:13, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Possble image
In Halo: Genises a large covenant vessel, the vessel that made contact. This ship could be a covenant battleship.-- Sozai 'Zorfitee xiizz'uee  FLEETCOMM 02:26, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

Battle of Harvest
How in the world did everyone decide so quickly to move all the information about the Battle of Harvest from the supercarrier article to the battleship article? These ships are stated in First Strike to be 2 km long. The comparison image on the page, which presumably came from Genesis, indicates the mystery ship is pushing 6 km. I'm just curious... what's going on with this? Not to mention, if the battleship, one of the smaller(ish) ships in the covenant fleet is THIS powerful, how in the world did the lone supercruiser, a ship nearly twice this size, get destroyed by one human ship at the Battle of Reach? I was good with the idea of it being a supercarrier, as that's the only ship classification that would make sense to be larger than the 5.3 km long assault carrier, and be so incredibly strong. Quakeomaniac 04:32, January 9, 2010 (UTC)
 * Uh, we had this discussion in another talk page. Halo: Evolutions triumphs over Halo Wars: Genesis.外国 人 (7alk ) 04:37, January 9, 2010 (UTC)
 * I read that, but it simply said it suggested a different size, but WHY has it been decided that Evolutions (which I admit to be unfamiliar with) is superior? Quakeomaniac 04:54, January 9, 2010 (UTC)
 * New Canon redefines Old Canon. Like how Halo Encyclopedia did to the Halo Universe...外国 人 (7alk ) 04:57, January 9, 2010 (UTC)
 * Aye... I wish science ficion universes could be a bit more consistent. But we all know how it works, people want to make money off it, so they don't care too much, not like we fans do. Quakeomaniac 05:00, January 9, 2010 (UTC)

It was I who made the initial Supercarrier comparison images and added the pics to that page a few months ago. I pulled the size comparison from the tactical screens in the Everest bridge and did the calculations to get our ship's size. Also, anyone could see the truly massive size difference between ships within the artwork.

However, the pictures and info were moved to this page because, in most Halopedian's opinions, third-party literature canon supersedes third-party artwork canon. Does that make sense? When I originally posted the pics, it was because we had only one source of canon to go by and had to make the logical choice as to where it belonged. Now that we have two references, we have to pick the one that makes the most sense and is supported by the higher canon. In this case, it would be Evolutions.

The ship could be explained to have looked so big on the tactical battle screens in Genesis for many reasons. It was a different color (red) from the other UNSC ships (black) so maybe Cole had selected it on screen or something to enhance the image size. As for why it seemed so strong, it was humanity's first real battle with an alien vessel. In the first few seconds that the majority of Cole's fleet was destroyed, we hadn't discovered the "one-two punch" tactics that are necessary for UNSC ships to disable a Covvie's shields and then puncture the hull. It was likely mass chaos as the human ship commanders wildly emptied their arsenals and were picked off one by one. Cole changed this by deducing the proper battle plan to destroy the enemy--firing every single weapon in his fleet in .1 second intervals. Overkill? Maybe. But he obliterated the ship. --Nerfherder1428 17:26, January 9, 2010 (UTC)

Ok, I can certainly go with this logic here. Also, the covenant battleships as described in First Strike would presumably be EXTREMELY powerful ships anyway. Twelve energy projectors is an immense amount of firepower, enough to vaporize much of the human fleet in one salvo. If the ship can generate enough power to fire all of them at once, it is probably also capable of generating quite a powerful shield. After all the Incorruptible in GoO lost most of its power firing a single projector and a pair of plasma torpedoes. Quakeomaniac 12:03, January 11, 2010 (UTC)

Naming
Not sure where the connection between the ships in First Strike and the one at Harvest is from. Is there any actual evidence they're the same class? The ship Cole encountered on Harvest was referred to as a "Super-Destroyer" on pg.471 of Evolutions. This seems to indicate it's a different class of ship, or alternatively "battleship" was used in First Strike to refer to capital ships in general, the actual class designation being Super Destroyer. In any case, the size comparisons are inconsistent with info from Evolutions. --Jugus (Talk  | Contribs ) 22:04, January 22, 2010 (UTC)


 * Actually Jugus, the size is the very reason that we moved the Harvest ship into this category. A battleship is two kilometers long. Evolutions also says that the Harvest ship is two kilometers long, one wide. The physical description and weapon loadout of a battleship in First Strike match this ship as well. I do agree that we can't be for sure, but I'm going to have to go back to look at your Super-Destroyer reference. (Nerfherder1428)


 * I'm confused. In case we're now using Evolutions as the reference for the size, isn't the 5703 meters comparison picture, which is still on the page, inaccurate? But anyways, it was referred to as a super destroyer, so I'm not sure what to make of it.--Jugus (Talk  | Contribs ) 13:01, January 25, 2010 (UTC)


 * Yes, we're using the Evolutions reference to size. I'm the one that made the 5703 calculation/picture for when we believed this ship was classified as a Supercarrier (so yeah, that comparison picture shouldn't still be there actually). But after the release of Evolutions and after someone moved all that ship's information to this article, I explained ^^above^^ why my original calculation from Genesis could easily be explained otherwise and why the Evolutions size does in face supercede that information in both canon and common sense. But yes, your newfound discovery of the title of "super destroyer" merits a little discussion. I suppose I'm with you on this one. So for the rest of you out there, any arguments against?--Nerfherder1428 00:54, January 26, 2010 (UTC)


 * So. Now that we have two names for the ships, Super Destroyer for the one at Harvest and "Battleship" for the ones seen in First Strike, should we split them or just call it "super destroyer"? My opinion? Keep it in one article and call it a super-destroyer. "Battleship" might simply be referring to capital ships in general, instead of a specific class. --Jugus (Talk  | Contribs ) 10:35, January 26, 2010 (UTC)


 * The way I see it, a Super-Destroyer is a modified variant of the standard Destroyer, so there should be a section within that article or at least a trivia. This is similar to the UNSC where we see a Phoenix-class Colony Ship refitted as a Command Starship in Halo Wars (It is possible that the original Phoenix-class Colony ships lack the side structure which sport the Defensive Turrets), and a Marathon-class Cruiser modified at the request of Preston Cole(with some odd attachments).-  <font color="#FF4F00">5 əb<font color="#FF4F00">'7 aŋk (<font color="#FF4F00">7alk ) 12:05, January 26, 2010 (UTC)


 * Well crap. Looking at the Halo Encyclopedia, it seems we have an even bigger problem. Not only does it list the "Covenant Battleship" as an actual title of one of the Covenant's starships, but it puts its length at two-HUNDRED meters (656 ft) rather than two-thousand. Yet it still includes the information about the dozen energy projectors and such. So...I highly suggest we at least create the Super Destroyer page with info about the Harvest ship. Unlike the Spirit of Fire and Everest modifications that were added to an existing class of ship (Phoenix and Marathon), this "Super Destroyer" is clearly and completely different in appearance from a standard destroyer, thereby suggesting a different class of ship (much like how Halcyons and Marathons are both cruisers). The Covenant Destroyer and Covenant Super Destroyer are literally nothing alike. So no, it should definitely get its own page rather than a section in the Destroyer article. As for this page, I'm all kinds of lost.


 * The two First Strike references we have don't make any sense. On page 32, we see the name Battleship, but it gives nothing more of a description than that they were preparing for plasma bombardment of Reach. As for the other link, page 301--not only does the featured quote NOT appear on the page (and I'm having difficulty finding it elsewhere), but the quote doesn't seem to specifically refer to a "Battleship" of any kind. In fact, the only ships that I saw described in the following battle are cruisers and carriers. The encyclopedia gives us that Battleships are 200 meters long and have 12 energy projectors (like other articles, they likely erroneously gleaned this information from Halopedia), but we have a as-of-yet unconfirmed source in First Strike that tells us a slightly different story. Jugus, any ideas?--Nerfherder1428 14:34, January 27, 2010 (UTC)

Covenant ship capabilities
This appears to be another of those areas where Halo material contradicts itself. In TFoR we see the colossal supercruiser, a ship nearly twice this length, take but a single barrage from a puny halcyon class cruiser a third its own length (who knows on mass). This implies the supercruiser has little more powerful of a reactor than the autumn, a highly improbably scenario. Now, here we see a covenant battleship, vastly smaller than the supercruiser, taking on an entire fleet, surviving multiple barrages, and destroying a good third of said fleet. The books and Halo Legends/Genesis (?) seem to contradict each other. However, when I read the books, despite them being very good, I never feel like you should fear the Covenant. I never get the impression that they're really all that dangerous. It's more like OMG the Master Chief is the most invincible piece of tin ever put on the face of the universe, just follow him and the Covenant get pwned. I know this is a condescending manner to approach it, but regardless, the books are written to champion humans, I can see that. However, I think it is well known in the Halo canon that covenant vessels drastically overpower and tend to absolutely obliterate human fleets in space, but the PoA destroying a ship 3 times its size singlehandedly brings this into question. Essentially the point of all this mess is this: Are covenant ships realistically more like we see here on this page, or more like the novels? I personally think this depiction of a battle between human and covenant ship(s) is far better. It portrays the covenant as enormously superior and incredibly ruthless and powerful. It really does make you feel like we have zero chance. The novels fail to give this feeling. Any thoughts on my long idea here? Quakeomaniac 23:50, January 25, 2010 (UTC)


 * This is just my own opinion but I would suggest that UNSC ships at the beginning of the war are inferior to those at the end even though they are the same classes and in many cases the same vessels. This may include the strength of MAC's, armor, etc. Then again, Cole's 162 ships performed in a similar manner to the 152 or so ships and an additional 20 ODP's at Reach, each effectively taking on approximately twice as many Covenant ships. This may also be attributed to the fact that heavy capital ships may have been more prevalent in the earlier parts of the war, so I would assume that it all depends of the capabilities of either side, though it is possibly also an inconsistency with other sources. -- 0RBITAL   01:45, January 30, 2010 (UTC)


 * One of the big themes in Halo is how humanity has it's back against the wall and is slowly being pushed towards the brink of annihilation. I think the comic has the right of it, where one covenant capital ship can take out several UNSC capital ships before buying the farm. The novels kinda hint at this but also fail at it with stuff like the Keyes Loop, where apparently the Covenant had the collective IQ of a rock (I'm probably insulting the rock) to have allowed such a maneuver to happen. I mean the whole torpedoes following the Iroquois right into the Covenant Destroyer made me facepalm at the idiocy. It seemed like a stunt pulled right of of DBZ. Plus I always wondered how the Iroquois could fire two consecutive rounds and yet hit both covenant frigates which are probably several kilometers apart. No mention of firing one then maneuvering to fire the other, no it was 2 thuds and then he fired a wave of Archer missiles. Tactics my ass. More like blatant flaunting of plot shields because Keyes had to survive to die in Halo: CE.--Zervziel 17:31, January 30, 2010 (UTC)


 * Glad to see someone agrees with me here. I think the Keyes loop is seriously uhh... messed up. I thought it was established that plasma torpedoes don't tend to follow targets moving at bizarre angles to the launching ship. I'd say flying around in a circle and hitting their own ships (and their ships guide their own torpedoes!) is a bit rediculous and a stupid plot point. I can't picture their ships guiding weapons into themselves. I don't recall the portion of the consecutive shots but I will take your word for it, and yes, that's also stupid. I have a lot of issues with human vs covenant ships always favoring the super duper inferior human ships in the novels. I mean notwithstanding the superior weaponry and shields, there's one thing that should bring you to the conclusion that the novels are so wrong: power. A covenant ship, such as the common CCS-class battlecruiser, is easily twice the mass of the marathon class cruiser (note to some people who don't read this correctly: mass is not length, I am aware the CCS is not twice the length of the marathon). The CCS would thus have a much higher power output (not factoring in the likely higher efficiency of covenant reactors), and if it diverted at least half its power to its shields (assuming the CCS has exactly twice the power of the marathon, which I'm sure it doesn't), it should be invincible against said marathon. This is why I say the comics are more correct, as you've agreed. It took SEVERAL ships to take out the covenant vessel, likely because of the huge amounts of power a covenant vessel can generate, and the much smaller amounts human ships are capable of, thus needing more. Now it should be obvious that the supercruiser/PoA engagement was a load of story necessary crap. The covenant ship should have been able to just sit there and laugh at Keyes all day long. Add to my theory or comment on it if you agree. Quakeomaniac 02:42, February 2, 2010 (UTC)


 * That's one thing that's confused me was how the supercruiser was destroyed by a SHIVA when smaller covenant ships have taken MAC rounds which is 1.17 teratons. and I saw somewhere the SHIVA's yield is 20 megatons. That really makes no sense to me. I know the supercruiser would still be heavily damaged but an explosion in space does not have anywhere near the same punch. Though if there's anything that screws over the the feeling that the Covenant is a lethal force of nature and just how dangerous the Covenant ships are is the abomination of animation that is Halo Legends. If you thought the novels kinda failed to bring across how dangerous the Covenant Navy is at times then don't watch The Package. It will make your eyes detonate inside your skull from anger. These littlle booster frames are some how capable of breaching not only the shield, but the hulls of CCS cruisers and Assault Carriers. I really hope the animators were never paid for that, because it's fairly obvious they don't respect the source material at all. Halsey went from being 60 something to about 20 in that show. Not to mention blatant line ripping. How does one subtlety hint she is linked to Cortana? Easy! Just blatantly and randomly take lines that Cortana has said at some point and give them to Halsey, which is not only cheap but makes for rather....uncomfortable instances. Halsey telling MC to not make a girl a promise you can't keep was rather creepy given Halsey is the closest thing John would consider a mother.--Zervziel 22:10, February 2, 2010 (UTC)


 * Haha... eyes detonate inside your skull... nice one. Anyway I have no idea what on earth Halo Legends really is, but I'll take your warning here and not watch it. Space based nuclear detonations are in fact just as dangerous as an atmospheric one, it just doesn't work quite the same way. Anyway, look at the MAC talk page, I ended up starting a HUUUUUUUUUUUGE discussion on that, might be useful to you considering what you mentioned there. Quakeomaniac 05:04, February 3, 2010 (UTC)

Ship Size Disparity
If noone objects, I'm gonna remove the image contradicting the 2 kilometers set up by the books. Especially since someone admitted to making it which means it's non-canon anyway.--Zervziel 05:21, February 6, 2010 (UTC)
 * What part of artistic visualisation don't you understand. The artist probably enlarged the size and ignored the canon length to emphasize how strong a Covenant Battleship is.<font color="#5D8AA8">外<font color="#9BDDFF">国 人 (<font color="#5D8AA8">7alk ) 05:46, February 6, 2010 (UTC)


 * I fail to see your line of reasoning. We have the canon length from the book and we know what it looks like from the comic. The fan-made picture was giving contradicting information on the same page. besides the whole point of the wiki is to give reliable, canon information on the Halo universe. So a fan-made picture has no place on here. Also is my computer messing up or is there something wrong with the editing options? Can't get the sig button to come up at all.


 * Calm down a moment Zervziel. It's true that I put together the size picture (and asked for it to be taken off now that its here in the battleship article), but if you did any kind of research or digging on this talk page before typing, you would have seen the reasoning for the picture above along with the explanation that it is NOT "fan-made" but scanned in from Genesis and altered(just colored and positioned actually). So yeah, these pixels are straight from the comic. Read the Harvest section above about why the information was moved from the Supercarrier article to this one.
 * Also, to Ascension: You are a great editor when it comes to the actual infastructure of the wiki but have a terrifying habit of declaring many things artistic visualization or graphical improvements and ignoring them as canon. Not to be a pest, but, according to our policy, artistic liscence doesn't equal noncanon unless it is legitimately stated (Like Frankie's condemnation of Han's appearance in The Duel) or contradicting prior knowledge (Don't even get me started on how bad Second Sunrise Over New Mombasa's characters were drawn). And even if it is stated to be a graphical or gameplay improvement (The H3 Scarab over the H2 Scarab, proven to be different by look, function, and the Halo Encyclopedia), it is still canon unless it clearly defies that which is established. So yeah, just so you're aware. =D --Nerfherder1428 19:34, February 9, 2010 (UTC)


 * Somehow, I think you misread my comment. I simply ignored the aesthetic difference in the designs and just focus on what has been kept consistent in all of the products of the Halo franchise.. and yes, I'm aware of the "issue". Somehow, I don't really trust the Encyclopaedia because of the lack of new content. Concise? Lolno. Informative? To some extent. Pretty (with images)? Heck yes!<font color="#5D8AA8">外<font color="#9BDDFF">国 人 (<font color="#5D8AA8">7alk ) 02:42, February 10, 2010 (UTC)


 * I understood that part, but my point of it contradicting the canon length is still valid. I simply deleted because it really doesn't help Halopedia's credit to have contradicting information on the same page like the Halo Encyclopedia.--Zervziel 02:38, February 10, 2010 (UTC)


 * Here's another way to put it: The image is canon... but the depiction of the Battleship is not (50/50 you can say). One can assume that the artist(s) is trying to emphasize the power of a Covenant Warship against a fleet of human warships.<font color="#5D8AA8">外<font color="#9BDDFF">国 人 (<font color="#5D8AA8">7alk ) 02:42, February 10, 2010 (UTC)


 * Especially in light of Halo Legends, I think we can all agree that there is always a level of artistic license in images not directly created by Bungie. And in this case I agree with Ascension in that the artist was clearly trying to demonstrate the power of the Covenant battleship by making it appear significantly larger than as established in canon. - Lord Hyren 06:42, March 5, 2010 (UTC)

The Article is Completely Wrong
I've noticed this for a while, but until now, I have not addressed this problem.

For starters, the size citation of the vessel is completely incorrect; according to the encyclopedia, a Covenant Battleship is actually a mere 200 meters, not 2,000. Though the vessel in question does possess 12 energy projectors, it is almost certainly not the 5-lobed ship mentioned in Halo: First Strike. Whoever put that 2,000 meter size citation screwed up big time, for the book, both the original and the current printings, show the Covenant Battleship as being 200 meters long.

For the ship in the article's gallery is, according to the story, "The Impossible Life and Possible Death of Preston J. Cole" by Eric Nylund, 2,000 meters long and 1,000 meters wide. So at least the length is correct, even though the name is not.

""Two Kilometers long, one wide," Cole said. "Energy readings off scale (Halo Evolutions, pg. 463).""

To further demonstrate that the ship in the book is the same one seen in the "Halo Wars: Genesis" comic, here is the short story's description of the Covenant ship around Harvest;

" The Covenant warship had sweeping organic curves, an odd purple phosphorescence, and was patterned with glowing red ovals and lines-the whole thing looked like a sleeping deep-sea creature of gigantic proportions (Halo Evolutions, pg. 463)."

Second of all, the vessel in that image, according to the appropriate story in Evolutions, it is not even a Battleship at all, but an as-yet unrevealed Covenant warship of a different kind. Again, from the short story, it is named, albeit fairly passingly;

"Certainly Cole knew this the first time he faced that Covenant super-destroyer at Harvest (Halo Evolutions, pg. 471)."

From this final passage out of the 3 that I have provided plus the proper length citation, it should be clear that this article needs to be renamed and redone, for it is clear that there are two ships in question here, and only the Super-Destroyer is the correct one. It is also the only one of the two that has been visualized, while the Covenant Battleship has not, and those unnamed, 5-bulbous-sectioned, 12 energy projector-possessing ships around the Unyielding Hierophant, also have not. What their designation and name is, as yet, a mystery, unless this is another size mistake made by the encyclopedia, and perhaps stemming from the story bible itself, or a revision over HFS.

This also provides with yet another type of Covenant destroyer type; the 680+ length vessel encountered at Sigma Octanus, the 1,500 meter long vessels in Halo Wars, the CPV-Class Destroyer, and a vaguely referred to Heavy Destroyer. With this 'Super-Destroyer' added, we have a total of five distinct types of destroyers in the Covenant Navy, rivaling that of the numbers of cruiser types, which range from the Light Cruiser, the Cruiser, the CCS-Class Battlecruiser, to the fearsome Reverance-Class and the 'Super-Cruiser' destroyed by the 'Pillar of Autumn' at Reach after it destroyed scores of UNSC vessels.

I recommend that the article be both renamed and split off and apart to accomodate the existence of the Super-Destroyer, the Battleship, and the 5-lobed ships from First Strike, given that this article actually denotes 3 types of ship rather than just 1. Each ship should have their own respective articles, completely separate from each other.

--Exalted Obliteration 23:15, 17 October 2010 (EDT)