User:JackVibe/Sandbox

"Luckily—listen to me "luckily"—the needles only detonate when they’re embedded in living tissue. Now that’s lucky because it’s not gonna blow a hole in the wall you’re hiding behind or tear the tires off of the vehicle you’re trying to escape in."

- Anonymous UNSC E2-BAG/1/7 serviceman

Needlers, sometimes known as the Needler pistols, are a class of single-handed, fully-automatic infantry specialized weapons developed by the Covenant that launch Subanese crystalline shards with the chemically-charged ability to track targets. The Covenant and its remnants formally designated the needler as needle launcher or shard launcher, while the United Nations Space Command's Office of Naval Intelligence has typically type-classified encountered needlers variants under the designations of Type-33 Guided Munitions Launcher (T-33 GML) or Type-56 Guided Munitions Launcher (T-56 GML).

Design details
"Anything stuck with enough needles will blow sky high—and if a Foxtrot is unlucky enough to be carrying grenades, those are gonna cook off too."

- Anonymous UNSC E2-BAG/1/7 serviceman

While there are multiple known patterns of the needler, all needlers generally share the same design, which revolves around its function to fire individual crystalline shards. The top of the weapon contains the needler's distinctive ammunition, Subanese crystals, with the exposed needles protruding from holes in the upper cowling of the weapon chassis. The bottom of the weapon, which contains the power supply, doubles as a stock, with an extended handguard on some variants. The two main components converge at the muzzle in front of the grip; the muzzle is situated between an upper and a lower channel brace; the channel braces extend outwards around the muzzle, presumably to prevent the muzzle from being blocked.

Ammunition


"I caught three in the leg as I was diving behind a broken wall—they lodged right in there where the greave meets the boot. When they went off, it damn near broke my ankle and flung like little splinters of glass or crystal or whatever all up my left side—the corpsman was pulling [the shards] outta me for the better part of two hours."

- Anonymous UNSC E2-BAG/1/7 serviceman

The needler fires shards of Subanese crystal—colloquially known as blamite—a pink crystalline substance mined from the interiors of Suban, one of Sangheilios' two moons. The exposed crystals are held within the upper cowling of the weapon, allowing the user to use the exposed shards as an improvised melee weapon.

Upon impaling a target, the crystalline shards become chemically reactive, and detonate after a few seconds. Injuries inflicted from the exploding shards are gruesome, as microscopic pieces of crystals can become embedded in tissue. If multiple shards make contact with a living target, then a chain reaction occurs—their chemical properties "supercombine" and the shards detonate simultaneously through proximal resonance instability, causing an immediate and violent explosion that is almost always lethal. While the shards are devastating against living tissue, they are relatively ineffective against energy shielding, and ricochet off most surfaces, leading to little risk of causing hull perforations. Certain variants of the needler fire calibrated crystalline shards that can embed in armor.

Operation


"I don't know how it works, but it seems the needles can only follow you if they can "see" you."

- Anonymous UNSC E2-BAG/1/7 serviceman

As with all Covenant needle-based weaponry, the needler's inner mechanism break the crystals into needle-like shards, then launch the shards at targeted enemies. When the trigger is pulled, the needle is fed from the top into the barrel and broken into shards. The needler notably features an additional magnetic auger within the weapon that catalyzes the shards by charging their chemical mixture; the shards then become capable of tracking specific heat signatures of sighted targets. The shards are propelled through the barrel, out of the muzzle between the channel braces, and towards enemies. The user reloads by shaking the weapon once, prompting a new magazine of crystals to protrude from the chassis again. The magazine capacity of the needler varies within and across different patterns.

While it is believed that the Covenant had likely reverse-engineered the Forerunner shard cannon to create their own needle-based weaponry, the needler is considered unique among Covenant weapons in that it does not require Forerunner technology to function. The needler was one of the most unusual weapons in the Covenant arsenal and the least understood; by 2552, how the weapon functions still remains a mystery to human military experts and scientists, despite the weapon being encountered early on during the war. Like most Covenant weapons, the needler lacks any kind of electronic, physical, or radiative connections between its trigger and firing mechanism. The physics behind the weapon were apparently not well known as joint human and Sangheili teams were known to be studying the weapon some time after the war.

Development history
"It's about as close to a fire-and-forget small arm that we're likely to ever see—and it ain't ours. This is why we're losing."

- Anonymous UNSC E2-BAG/1/7 serviceman

Prior to the Covenant's formation, the Sangheili mined Subanese crystals from Suban, and grew to believe that even rudimentary scientific investigation was tantamount to heresy. When they first began to incorporate the crystals into weaponry, they knew how to manipulate and weaponize the crystal, but they lacked deeper understanding of its properties. The pre-Covenant weapons were unique, if poorly understood, and the Sangheili would lose interest in the weaponry until the dissolution of the Covenant.

Prior to 2552, the needler, along with most needle-based weaponry, was manufactured by the Sacred Promissory on High Charity. After the fall of High Charity during the Great Schism, the manufacturing of the needler fell to Lodam Armory, and any understanding of the crystal from the San'Shyuum was lost with High Charity's record complexes.

The needler remained in widespread use among the Covenant splinter factions after the war. Despite the conflicts on Sanghelios, most mining sites on Suban continued to produce ammunition for the needler. While Banished warsmiths were unknowledgeable of the weapon's mechanisms, the needler's gruesome and simple design meant there was no immediate desire to alter or improve its design. In contrast, there are renewed interests among Sangheili miners, engineers, and artisan-armorers in studying the properties of the crystals, with pre-Covenant design patterns leading to new breakthroughs; the Hailstorm variant of the needler, which fires shards with stronger homing capabilities, was derived from a pre-Covenant weapon used during the volatile early-interstellar period of the Sangheili history.

Usage
"First order of business when dealing with a hostile armed with a Needler is finding cover; second order of business is killing the Mike Foxtrot with the Needler."

- Anonymous UNSC E2-BAG/1/7 serviceman

Within the Covenant and its splinter factions, the needler is favored for its mechanical simplicity and, more importantly, the potential to inflict gruesome damage with negligible accuracy through a combination of the shards' tracking ability and the "supercombine" explosion from multiple shards being buried within living tissue. As such, the needler was a common sight among the lower caste, like the Unggoy, Kig-Yar, and Yanme'e, as well as poorly-train soldiers, like Minors across different species. However, the needler is considered a specialist weapon; subsequently, it also saw widespread usage among specialist troops like the Storm shock troops, Stealth Sangheili, and Special Operations Unggoy. Larger variants of the needler, the needle cannon, are adopted as anti-air weaponry mounted on both vehicles and weapon emplacements, like the and the.

Multiple needler variants have been used throughout the Human-Covenant War, and the UNSC has catalogued multiple patterns of needlers under the "Type-33 Guided Munitions Launcher" designation as early as 2533. The needler was a subject of study among human military experts and scientists. The needler was one of the many Covenant weapons featured in Doctor Robert McLees' Machines, Materiel and Munitions from the Human-Covenant Conflict, 2525 - Present. During the Battle of Actium in 2545, the 34th Armored Division recovered a Nahle'hax-pattern needler from the Covenant that was later displayed at Outpost Discovery, an exploratory initiative launched by the UNSC after the war.

Following the Great Schism and the dissolution of the Covenant, needlers were inherited by its various splinter factions, and even found appeal among human pirates who considered the weapon flashy and intimidating. Previously uncatalogued needlers have been observed, with a needler variant employed by Jul 'Mdama's Covenant being recorded by the UNSC in 2556 under the Type-56 designation. The Banished also quickly adopted the needler; troops like Unggoy Conscripts and Ultras, Kig-Yar Freebooters, and Skirmishers notably fielded the during the Battle for Zeta Halo.

Type-33 needler
The "Type-33 Guided Munitions Launcher", or "Type-33 needler", is ONI's type-classification for multiple needlers that were catalogued in 2533, employed throughout and after the Human-Covenant War.

Type-56 needler
The "Type-56 Guided Munitions Launcher", or "Type-56 needler", is ONI's type-classification for multiple needlers that were catalogued in 2556.
 * Type-56D needler: This variant of the needler that features a holographic Smart scope projector on its barrel.
 * Hailstorm
 * Talon of the Lost

Posu'gelka-pattern needler
The Posu'gelka-pattern shard launcher has an ammo counter on the chassis. This variant was employed by the Banished during the Battle for Installation 07 in 2560.

Gameplay
The needler is a staple across the Halo games, being introduced in Halo: Combat Evolved and continuing through to Infinite. It is a fully-automatic infantry weapon used by Unggoy, Kig-Yar, Yanme'e, Sangheili, Jiralhanae, and the Flood. In Halo 2, it can be dual wielded, though made impossible to do so in Halo 3.

List of appearances

 * Halo: The Fall of Reach
 * Halo: Combat Evolved
 * Halo: The Flood
 * Halo: First Strike
 * Halo 2
 * Halo: Ghosts of Onyx
 * Believe
 * Enemy Weapon
 * Halo 3
 * Halo: The Cole Protocol
 * Halo Wars
 * Halo: Helljumper
 * Halo 3: ODST
 * Halo Legends
 * Homecoming
 * Halo: Blood Line
 * Halo: Reach
 * Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary
 * Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn
 * Halo 4
 * Spartan Ops
 * Halo: Spartan Assault
 * Halo: Initiation
 * Halo: Escalation
 * Halo: Broken Circle


 * Halo 2: Anniversary
 * Hunt the Truth
 * Halo: Spartan Strike
 * Halo 5: Guardians
 * Halo: Last Light
 * Halo Mythos
 * Halo: Collateral Damage
 * Halo: Fireteam Raven
 * Halo: Official Spartan Field Manual
 * Halo: Battle Born
 * Halo: Renegades
 * Halo: Outpost Discovery
 * Halo: Meridian Divide
 * Halo: Shadows of Reach
 * Halo Infinite
 * Halo: The Television Series
 * Homecoming
 * Reckoning
 * Transcendence
 * Halo: The Rubicon Protocol