Forerunner's board-to-board with Tacitus

It seems that they didn't want to go through the trouble of rewriting FoR. It would appear that the Covenant invasion was focused primary in the Viery Territory until mid-August, where the reinforcement fleet began striking cities such as New Alexandria.

There was a total blackout in satellite communications, it seems. Early on in the invasion you could put the blame on the relay; lack of knowledge as to the size of the invading force and ONI coverups... but the invasion just got out of hand later, particularly when the EEF was engaging the Covenant on other colonies. At no point does the Pillar of Autumn receive word of what is going on - they don't even know that something strange is happening until shortly before the Fleet of Particular Justice arrives, when one of the crewmembers notices unusual EM readings bouncing from Reach's moons.

I think 343i's explanation falls apart because it relies on a cover-up that would be impossible, not to mention completely counterproductive to implement.

For one, I don't buy the idea that a single groundside relay was responsible for all communications across the planet - all ships (and likely satellites) have basic maser and radio communications of their own; how else could they communicate in deep space? The only possible way they could keep the majority of the fleet in the dark would be to create artificial "equipment failures" on every UNSC ship. Even if the UNSC fleet brass could somehow orchestrate such a thing, and keep each of the ships in consistent geostationary orbits so that they can't see what's going on in the other side, what's keeping the Covenant from showing up on their side of the planet and ruining the whole plan? Something like that would probably happen every few minutes as the Covenant ships orbited the planet, unless all of them were also on fixed geostationary orbits. Which seems unlikely, since the Covenant wouldn't know nor care about the UNSC's contrived cover-up; they'd have no reason not to show up on the other side of the planet.

Even ignoring the fact the cover-up would be a practical impossibility, it's hard to see why would they keep half of the planet in the dark if they only wanted to keep Keyes and the Autumn out of the fight until RED FLAG could begin. The rest of the fleet wasn't going to partake in RED FLAG, so why deliberately hold them back? It's particularly strange because the UNSC had no way of knowing a larger Covenant fleet would show up. Shouldn't they be concentrating all their efforts to fight the Covenant who are already present and wrecking havoc on Reach?

It seems that Bungie's intent with Reach and 343i's explanation are at odds with one another - the Data Drops seriously downplay the extent of the invasion before August 30, whereas the game depicts a full-scale invasion going on by as early as August 14 (as evident by the hologram of force deployments aboard Ardent Prayer, a massive Covenant fleet arriving, and large-scale glassing going on). It's clear that with the Data Drops, they wanted to mesh the stories of The Fall of Reach and the game together, but the result comes across as more than a little contrived. To me, a better idea would've been to add some changes to the re-release of TFoR to accommodate the new canon from Reach.

The thing about the majority of the EEF over Reach being unaware of the Covenant is shown in the last data drop. They had been placed in traffic at the opposite side of the planet, and the downed relay meant that they were isolated - it was only when the Fleet of Particular Justice arrived that they realised what was going on. Perhaps the majority of satellites were interdependent on each other, meaning that a single downed comms. relay would play havoc on the whole planet.

Personally I found 343i's explanation somewhat sloppy in places. It would make more sense to keep this large part of the EEF contained together if RED FLAG was already green-lit: the rest of the EEF around Reach (along with the reinforcements that engage whichever fleet arrived after the Long Night of Solace's demise) would be kept away from the Covenant as they search around for Forerunner relics - when a (super)carrier finally heads into the atmosphere, the EEF engage and disable it.

I agree. The communications between the Navy and the Army during the battle seem to have been a mess. Stanforth, of all people, being unaware of major events like the Solace being destroyed is the biggest oddity to me.

I also find it difficult to believe that the majority of the UNSC fleet over Reach wasn't aware of the Covenant presence. Considering how the planet was orbited by thousands of satellites, in addition to the sensor equipment on each of the UNSC ships, I can't see how a significant majority of the fleet could be reasonably kept in the dark.

It seems more plausible to me that at least part of the fleet brass knew about the Solace (though how the information wouldn't reach Stanforth is a mystery), and perhaps they were planning on doing something about it, but SPECWAR simply jumped the gun and destroyed the Solace before the Navy could come up with a plan of their own.

But again, I find it nearly impossible that Stanforth didn't know about the Solace until Holland told him days later. Perhaps the line in the Data Drop could be interpreted in different ways? Stanforth would've been extremely busy with coordinating the fleet in other operations against the Covenant, so it's possible he knew the basics beforehand, like the fact that there was a Covenant supercarrier, but Holland provided him with the specifics, like the carrier's name and the precise way it was destroyed?

All in all, I'd agree that the poor coordination between the Army and the Navy, especially Stanforth not knowing as much as he should for one reason or the other, must've been the main reasons for the failure of the operation. The comms equipment failures across the planet had their part, but if coordination between the UNSC forces had gone smoothly, a lot of the problems could've been avoided.

I'm having some difficulty updating the Operation: RED FLAG article; I make a couple-thousand bytes worth of extra content before rejecting it because of its poor quality - I just can't get it into the right words.

The problem is bringing up the events that caused RED FLAG to fail:

• The loss of communication across parts of Reach and between the colonies when the Visegrad relay went down.
• The Army and Navy not working together, related to the above. This is evident in the destruction of the Long Night of Solace, a target that Admiral Stanforth would have had captured, had he been informed of Operation: UPPER CUT, or even its mere existence. He wasn't notified until several days later.
• Related to the first two, ONI appears to have collapsed on the colony - Stanforth wasn't aware that the Covenant were on Reach until at least a week after an ONI base was nearly destroyed. He was also not informed of UPPER CUT, as previously-stated, despite his established career in the organization (albeit, within Section 3).
• The majority of the Epsilon Eridani Fleet around Reach was left on one side of Reach in heavy "traffic" (that is to say, a large number of ships were clustered within a small area) while the Visegrad relay was being repaired. While it could be viewed as solely being a cover-up by Stanforth, this had been going on since it went down. As such, much of the Navy was unable to defend Reach, or even aware that it was under attack until the Fleet of Particular Justice jumped over their side of Reach on August 30.

Overall, I'd say that communications problems were the reason for the failure of RED FLAG, which only got as far as Phase 1, either because Stanforth was willing to risk lives while waiting for a supercarrier or no one informed him of what was going on in time to progress further.

According to Isaac Hannaford, the Sabre pilots we see in LNoS were initially intended to be ODSTs in special vacuum-manouvering gear.

Looking back at my old Government and Politics work, it would seem that a Secretary of State is an elevated ministerial position, whose organization (instead called a "department") is responsible for things that require direct government intervention. In Britain, foreign affairs and the payment of benefits are part of the "Department for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs" and the "Department for Work and Pensions".

Now, we seem to have a "Minister of the Colonies" ("Colonial Minister", for short). His ministry, in a parlimentary sense, doesn't have as strong a control over the colonial governings than the Secretary of Defense has on the military. Of course, this is all theory; like Britain, redundant positions may still remain for decades after their usage has ended - we know of the colonies' apparent independence, but this could simply be a leftover.

Moving on, I am confused as to why the defence representative is a Secretary; the military was much more independent of the government, even taking over in places. This is either because Bungie based their UEG on a presidential system whereby all Secretaries are merely Presidential advisors, or we can say that this is also an outdated title that wasn't changed to flow with the "modern world".

I've been away for the last few days and I've been pretty much catching up on everything until now. To reply to both of the points you posted during the past week:

Humans and Tier 2 - I agree for the most part. I would figure their "advancement" to Tier 2 would at first be much like how the Bestiarum describes most of the Covenant species as having "adopted" Tier 2 when they were incorporated into the Covenant. However, in regards to whether humans merely use Forerunner technology or are actually capable of understanding it, there is something to be said about how humans in the Halo universe have shown to be innovative, as opposed to the Covenant who were described as "imitative". In practice, humans would pick apart and analyze any alien tech they found, whereas the Covenant only had a very limited understanding of the technology despite having studied it. Because of the Covenant's dogmatic approach to research and development, I can see humanity becoming a Tier-2 civilization much faster.

UEG and parliamentary system - Yes, that would seem apparent, especially now that we know there's a president as well. Interesting to think how their election processes would be arranged when there were billions of citizens in hundreds of colonies, some of which were months away. That is, if the colonies have any say on the matter to begin with.

According to the "David Agnoli" article, there is a "Minister for the Colonies" within the UEG. Would you say that this is evidence of a parliamentary system? Take note that the title has existed on Earth in the 20th century (this is particularly important, as there is a real-world example of the same thing). Much more striking is that such a title existed in the author's home nation.

"By the mid-26th century, they would have been rated as a Tier 3 race, though it is possible they may have advanced to a higher Tier 2 after the Human-Covenant War by means of weapons research and development." - introductory paragraph to "Human".

I was wondering - is there a clear border between a race being at a Tier-2 stage of development and simply having Tier-2 assets? I'm finding the Halopedian logic somewhat flawed, and will give in-universe and real-life examples below.

The Sangheili, for instance, appear to have been a Tier-3 civilization before their war with the San 'Shyuum. When in the Covenant, they used the San 'Shyuum's advanced technology, but had to knowledge of how to replicate it, themselves. In fact, this lack of knowledge meant that their civilization was on the verge of collapse after 2552, as everyone who actually knew how their vessels worked were now dead.

Now here's a real-world example. All non-human simians are at a Tier-7 level of technology, but are capable of using digital cameras - Tier-5 technology applied to a Tier-6 device. By Halopedia's logic, the cavemen living near Kilimanjaro are comparable to 20th century humanity. Now for a human example that, I feel, compares to the Covenant. The Sentinelese are an Indian peoples who fit all the trademarks of a Tier-7 society; however, because they are Indian, by our logic they should be a Tier-5 community (and just like the Covenant, India is only at Tier-5 because it relied on other peoples' technology to speed-up its development).

Therefore, I feel the need to make a specific border between having the capability of undertanding, designing and manufacturing objects related to a particular tier, and just using someone else's technology to get by in life.

I agree with your retrieval observation; I had completely forgotten that Huragok had this important role. I was under the impression that the "incompetent that lose the Ascendent Justice" was Thel, and that he was held responsible for its loss. His fleet did fail to protect it, after all (Based on the small size of the battlegroup detected by Cortana, it appears that the larger fleet evacuated). As the development of new technology is only authorized by the Prophets, the appearence of a Covenant AI onboard would make the Ascendent Justice even more important; I had earlier believed this vessel to simply be an experimental craft (use of AI, large support crew, few combatants), though your artefact retrieval note would suggest otherwise.

I did consider the idea of ignoring the adjunct content from The Flood. We could do that, though doing so would mean we'd also have to ignore most of the other relevant content from that particular short story - it's hard to just ignore the parts with the Ascendant Justice when it's featured so prominently.

And yeah, the Ascendant Justice is indeed mentioned in the epilogue. I never assumed Truth was referring to Thel - losing the Ascendant Justice would hardly be worth mentioning at all, considering was responsible for losing a "sacred ring". Instead, he was probably referring to the Sangheili John fought on the bridge and then ejected - I presume this was the Shipmaster of the Ascendant Justice.

I think your last explanation is the most convenient solution; given the fact the Covenant are capable of superluminal communication, the Fleet of Particular Justice could've just signaled High Charity once they arrived at Soell and let them know they'd found a sacred ring, and asked for reinforcements. We don't know how much time passed between the Covenant ships and the Autumn arriving at Soell - it could've been days. The Ascendant Justice and some other ships would then be sent in, arriving well before the ring was destroyed, thus explaining the inconsistency.

As for the nature of the Ascendant Justice, it's always seemed to me it was more than just a regular fleet flagship. Wasn't it stated it had very little actual combatant crew, but unusually many Huragok on board? Then there's also the fact it had a Covenant AI, which is highly unusual. All this does suggest it was indeed part of a scouting detachment, likely involved with artifact retrieval.

Just noticed; there's a slight problem with your solution. The Ascendant Justice is again mentioned in the epilogue to Halo: First Strike. By the tone of voice and words used, it would appear that the vessel was important to High Charity's defence forces if not the flagship, itself (they are very concerned that this vessel in particular was lost, and don't seem to even bother mentioning that the Truth and Reconciliation was lost under Thel's leadership to humans and its Prophet killed).

However, it could simply be that the Ascenant Justice really WAS with High Charity's defence forces, but was simply already at Installation 04 by the time it's mentioned.

This is an awkward situation. We have three ways of solving such problems

1. The most frequently-used version is accepted as canon (ie. working out gender);
2. The most recent version is accepted as canon (the previous version was written long ago and has since been contradicted by other publications)
3. The most significant version is used.

Using these three, we can see that the concept of the Ascendant Justice being a scout ship is supported by two of the rules; it has been used in the 2003 Halo: First Strike, the 2010 reprint of the novel intended to fix such errors, and is supported by the Halo Graphic Novel, which establishes the flagship as the Seeker of Truth.

However, the reprint of Halo: The Flood, released shortly beforehand, brings the Ascendant Justice into a wider significance; it has its own story rather than just brief titbits here and there.

My theory is that the team working on Halo: The Flood were unaware of the mentions in First Strike and, being in a different group, couldn't simply read First Strike and make the correction.

SOOO.... as we have two recent, official sources saying opposing things, should we remove any direct mention of its fleet of origin and make reference to this contradiction in the notes section?

I have the reprint, and the line you mentioned is still in there. The ancillary content in the reissue of The Flood, however, integrates the Ascendant Justice as part of the Fleet of Particular Justice; the Prophet of Stewardship article contains a fairly comprehensive summary of how the Ascendant Justice is made relevant to the events before the destruction of Installation 04.

I guess one way to work around this discrepancy is to interpret "these warships" as referring to the Covenant ships other than the Ascendant Justice, even though it was originally meant to be part of the scouting party instead of Particular Justice.

Do you have or know anyone who has a copy of the Halo: First Strike reprint? I'm wondering if the Ascendant Justice's status as a ship independent of the Fleet of Particular Justice is still available. According to the source that I inserted a year or two ago:

Halo: First Strike, page 68, ("This visitor was so important that these warships were only the advance scouting party. More ships were on their way. Hundreds of them.")

If this is still present, how would it affect the article?

Has "Covenant Hegemony" been used with capitals on "hegemony"? If there's no capitals, I'd assume it's just a descriptor since the Covenant is, by definition, a hegemony. Even if it's capitalized, it's likely to be an alternate or contextual name just like "Covenant Empire", and all the more reason we should use the most common title.

I also agree on the country comparison - we moved all human country articles to their common names, so I don't see why the same shouldn't be done with the Covenant, especially when it seems most likely that the entity's proper name is simply "The Covenant" and the "hegemony" or "empire" parts are sometimes - if very rarely - used to highlight the structure of the faction.

I tried to comment on the talk page but it was to laggy and Firefox doesn't like that :p Anyway, I wanted to point out that "Covenant Hegemony" is used several times, too. Could this be considered an official name or simply an alternative name used by humans?

Regardless, it seems that "The Covenant" is at least the commonplace term for their empire, like how the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is simplified as either United Kingdom or Great Britain.

I agree, he was probably referring to it as it was in a later development either as or just before being renamed Forward Unto Dawn. The K on the HC couldn't be a typo as it was never used before and so there would be nothing to be mistaken with. Nevertheless we should certainly make sure that the changes in its development between corvette and H3-era frigate to illustrate the changes something can make as it develops.

You're right, it doesn't really matter since it's not canon. Nevertheless, I felt it necessary to point out the fact Hannaford's blog calls it a frigate. Since he's the artist, he would know what he was designing. Also, the ship's overall shape is pretty close to the In Amber Clad which was established to be a frigate in Halo 2. Would they really design a different type of ship to be that similar to another? I'm guessing it could've originally been a corvette, perhaps in an early version of the script, but by the time that concept image was made, it seems they knew it was going to be a frigate.

I'd like to point out that, being a non-canon entity, it is not necessary to update it with current canon material. Based on the quality of the image the ship's design was thought out to past the initial concept stage (brief discussions on its role and some preliminary sketches). From my observations the ship was designed as a corvette that would serve a significant role in Halo 3 (its HCS is 201, the same as the Forward Unto Dawn). I believe that the 'Halo 1-esque warthog run and crash into the cargo bay' concept was a late addition (judging by the small dimensions) that prompted a radical redesign away from the corvette (similar in design to Halo 2's In Amber Clad, though appearing more 'squashed') and into the lightly-armoured and bottom-heavy frigate we see in the finished Halo 3.

Yeah - As I said, we merged them because they all happened in the Tsavo region. The pre-"The Storm" levels are an indirectly-related series of engagements. The real "opening" was when the forces within the town first met.

While it's true that the events from Sierra 117 to Tsavo Highway aren't really part of the operation in Voi, they were all closely linked - all happened during the same day and everything that happened since the opening of Crow's Nest was simply preparation for the assault on Voi.

Then again, I wouldn't have anything against having "Battle of Crow's Nest" and "Battle of the Tsavo Highway" as separate articles, even though they were merged with the Battle of Voi some time ago. Still, I don't really have a problem with the way it is now either. Besides, the events from Sierra 117 to Tsavo Highway are currently under the "Opening actions" section of the article; it doesn't directly claim them to be a part of the Battle of Voi itself.

The problem is that the events from Sierra 117 to Tsavo Highway aren't related to Voi. Voi was a UNSC counter-strike operation, while the area 14km away was about the rendezvous and later evacuation of Crow's Nest. They were merged together as articles only because they happened in the Tsavo region.

Says it on the page; the short story "Petra" from the First Strike reprint. It does sort of make sense they would call it that, since the actions in Voi were the most crucial to the battle. I think some real-world battles have also been named after a major city even if some of the action technically took place outside it.