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What do you think of the Halo universe?

 
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Do you think the Halo universe is underdeveloped technologically?
Yes
50%
 50%  [ 2 ]
No
50%
 50%  [ 2 ]
Total Votes : 4

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Ubu
Egg


Joined: 20 Jun 2008
Posts: 3

PostPosted: Fri Jun 20, 2008 3:43 am    Post subject: What do you think of the Halo universe? Reply with quote

I must admit that I’m a big Halo fan, played the games and read the books. I find it to be an interesting sort of colleague of science fiction culture, taking from books such as Larry Niven’s Ring World, Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers, John Steakley’s Armor, and games like Blizzard’s Star Craft.

I won’t say that the Halo creators outright ripped these guys off (I think you guys covered the rip off vs. homage in an earlier podcast) though it is probably easier to blend a back story from other sources if you are primarily devoted to designing an FPS.
All that aside, I’d like to know other people’s opinions on the Halo universe. What do you think about the level of technology for 2552?

A few things it has are:
Faster than light travel Via Shaw-Fujikawa Translight Engine (“Slipspace” travel)
AI both Smart and Dumb
Numerous extra solar colonies
Human augmentation
Powered armor (with force field like shields)

My opinion? I think the level of technology is underdeveloped for 540 years in the future (with possibly the exception of the armor). Being an FPS there are a great deal of fire arms involved but they seem subpar for human ingenuity, seeing as they only have the capabilities or today’s modern rifle with a digital ammo counter. Halo 3 did see the advent of destructive man portable laser technology (not that there was any ship based) but that was about as colorful as it got.

I am a fan of the MAC gun as a means of ship to ship battle as well as planetary defense, but it begs the question age old nuclear arms question, wouldn’t a nuclear warhead do more damage than throwing what is essentially just a big rock?

I did notice that there doesn’t seem to be a single robot in sight! Could it possibly be because of the advent AI? The AI robots can’t take over if there aren’t any robots! Rolling Eyes

PS: Big fan of the podcast and your comics, keep up the stellar work!
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Entity325
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Joined: 07 May 2008
Posts: 57

PostPosted: Fri Jun 20, 2008 11:56 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

no robots? What are 343 Guilty Spark and 2401 Penitent Tangent, then? Bowling balls?

Really, though, for a game which supposedly takes place in the 35th century, there's a lot of present-day or "two hours in the future" schitzo-tech. On the one hand, we've got FTL travel, seven-foot-tall cyborg soldiers, and combat battlesuits that cost as much as an entire starship to build. On the other hand, every single human weapon in the game(at least, the wieldable ones) still use gunpowder to propel a projectile at supersonic speeds, and some of the projectiles are listed as "Tungsten slug." The sniper bullets are "fin-guided," the Osprey is basically a re-styled version of a personal VTOL craft currently in-development, and the Warthog... OK, it doesn't use a gasoline internal combustion engine, but Hydrogen Fuel Cell vehicles are available now, and will be about as well understood in a couple of decades as gasoline engines are now.

In fact, all the 35th-century Sci-Fi tech belongs to the aliens, and even they stole it from Vorlons.

That said, Halo 3 is still one of my favorite LAN party games. Two rooms of 4 guys each shouting insults and obscenities at each other. Good fun. Need to get a couple more Xboxes to the next party.
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Ubu
Egg


Joined: 20 Jun 2008
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PostPosted: Fri Jun 20, 2008 3:22 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Well as far as the robot comment goes, I meant no robots constructed on Earth or any of her Colonies(I guess I should have clarified and mentioned human technology). Contact Harvest talked about automated farm machinery and the like, but that was about it.

Guilty 343 spark? The first time I saw that guy in the Library I dumped a full clip in him in, 5 minutes later I did it again in hopes he'd stop talking!
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spambot
Egg


Joined: 20 Jun 2008
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Location: WA

PostPosted: Fri Jun 20, 2008 8:18 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I haven't read the books, or played Marathon, so I'm not sure how much they go into the tech in those.
As for the games themselves, they keep most things outside of the main story fairly vague.

As it was discussed in a previous episode of the PW1999 podcast, I'd have to agree with, whoever it was that said it, the point that kinetic weapons can do a lot more damage in a practical way than energy based weapons.
Look at the alien tech in Halo. Most of their guns are disposable when the batteries run out. That doesn't seem very efficient to me, but maybe they're at the Kodak disposable camera phase of warfare.
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Entity325
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PostPosted: Fri Jun 20, 2008 9:14 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Oh, I have no objections to kinetic weapons. With exception of the Beam Rifle, all of the weapons with any degree of precision are Human-made. My objection is that the pistol, shotgun, shiper rifle, etc... are still using gunpowder. You know, that black powdery stuff, known for burning violently, found in fireworks, explosives, and most notably, ammunition for guns of all shapes and sizes.

In present-day, that is. If they're still using gunpowder 1500 years from now, something's gone wrong in the physics and chemestry RnD departments.

Additionally, the shotgun is a pump-action, where even today we've got shotguns that can crank out several rounds per second. I'll give them that one, as it's a balance issue.

There's no Metalstorm weaponry, which was in development two years ago. The fact that I've heard nothing about it in recent history hints that either it was a lot more worthless than anybody actually dreamed, or they're getting close enough to field-use that the whole department's been labeled "Top secret," and they can't make any new press releases. Antigravity tech is solely owned by the Covenant and Forerunner forces, despite the fact that we are making progress in such fields today, albeit not much.

Most notable is the Active Camoflauge invisibility tech, also owned solely by the Covenant forces, and with a limited time duration. Mathematicians and materials engineers are currently producing items with single-wavelength true invisibility, and are expected to announce models which work with visible wavelengths within seven years.

Ultimately, nearly every technology Humanity has which exists more than "twenty minutes into the future" is stolen from the Covenant, who themselves stole everything from the Forerunners.(post-mortem, of course.) The human tech for the game makes sense in a setting closer to the end of the 22nd century than the middle of the 35th. If not even sooner.
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Kyle Voltti
Egg


Joined: 12 May 2008
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PostPosted: Sat Jun 21, 2008 9:43 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

whyfor do you assume that the gunpowder they use is the same as the gun powder we use? because the gunpowder we use today isn't the same as the gun powder we used a few hundred years ago.

Additionally there's only so far you can go with gun technology. The nature of the metal of the gun limits how powerful the propellant can be in the gun.
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Entity325
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PostPosted: Sun Jun 22, 2008 12:31 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

so you alter the design of the gun.

Something like a hand-held railgun or a coilgun would make sense to me in the setting, even if they don't seem feasable to us now. Guns powered by exploding gunpowder not quite so much.

admittedly, something powerful enough to give a Spartan II wearing MJOLNIR MkV armor recoil problems is a good deal more powerful than anything we presently have...
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spambot
Egg


Joined: 20 Jun 2008
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Location: WA

PostPosted: Sun Jun 22, 2008 12:33 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Maybe part of the problem with the tech seeming underwhelming is they didn't explain how they work. Perhaps it does work on one of these other systems. I honestly have no idea.
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Kyle Voltti
Egg


Joined: 12 May 2008
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PostPosted: Sun Jun 22, 2008 9:15 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Entity325 wrote:
so you alter the design of the gun.

Something like a hand-held railgun or a coilgun would make sense to me in the setting, even if they don't seem feasable to us now. Guns powered by exploding gunpowder not quite so much.

admittedly, something powerful enough to give a Spartan II wearing MJOLNIR MkV armor recoil problems is a good deal more powerful than anything we presently have...


Still, the practicality of coil or rail weapons is limited in a personal weapon design. Even if you could make something that was reasonably portable there's no indication that you could make something in a personal weapon that would be significantly better than a standard gunpowder weapon as there's only so fast you can accelerate a projectile in a foot or so.

Additionally with coil and rail weapons you now have two logistical considerations for munitions supplies. You have to supply the ammo and the power source for the guns.

So while rail and coil guns might become the norm in vehicular weapons it's not unreasonable to think that they would be discarded in personal weapon systems as being limited.

I guess what I’m trying to get at is that while it’s easy to say “oh we have ray guns” that a lack of those weapons should not be seen as an indication of limited technology. There are more factors to take into consideration when determining the effectiveness of a weapon system then it just sounding high tech.

TTFN
Kyle Voltti
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AaronLee
Egg


Joined: 27 May 2008
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PostPosted: Wed Jun 25, 2008 11:31 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Well I suppose one can bring up the "In the year 2000...we'll have <insert completely impractical or unbelievable thing here>!" What I've noticed of science fiction is we tend to grossly underestimate the time it takes to advance technologically without major epochs, look at Macross, where we thoguht we'd have variable fighters by, what, a decade from now? (Don't get me wrong, I love macross.)

edit: hee, little grammar error there.
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Entity325
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PostPosted: Thu Jun 26, 2008 10:55 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

to be fair, in Macross they had the advantage of reverse-engineering alien technology, which does tend to speed things up a bit.

I'm still amused at the clunky monitors in Blade Runner.

That movie was bad, by the way. Watched it for a political science class. It actually prompted me to go back and watch Ghost in the Shell, which was much better even if it did have more gratuitous nudity, and presented effectively the same questions.(what is "human" in an age where robots are sentient?)
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Random Person
Egg


Joined: 06 Jul 2008
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PostPosted: Sun Jul 06, 2008 11:57 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Halo takes place in the 2500s not the 3500s. 26th century not 35th.
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