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Talk:Glassing: Difference between revisions
→Trivia Section, the Data Pads and the Concept of Glassing
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::::The only thing I can say, is that it seems bizarre that the Covenant would hold up so high a threat and feat in the destruction of humanity if their methods were something they truly could not follow up on. SOMEBODY in the Covenant fleet has to have noticed, it's right in their face, and yet they always treat it as though the job were a full glassing(such as in ''The Return''). Kinda hard to miss what you were personally involved in, but that's all I have to say. [[User:Tuckerscreator|<span style="color:#6600cc;">'''''Tuckerscreator'''''</span>]]<sup>([[User talk:Tuckerscreator|<font color="#008000">stalk</font>]])</sup> 10:40, 27 October 2010 (EDT) | ::::The only thing I can say, is that it seems bizarre that the Covenant would hold up so high a threat and feat in the destruction of humanity if their methods were something they truly could not follow up on. SOMEBODY in the Covenant fleet has to have noticed, it's right in their face, and yet they always treat it as though the job were a full glassing(such as in ''The Return''). Kinda hard to miss what you were personally involved in, but that's all I have to say. [[User:Tuckerscreator|<span style="color:#6600cc;">'''''Tuckerscreator'''''</span>]]<sup>([[User talk:Tuckerscreator|<font color="#008000">stalk</font>]])</sup> 10:40, 27 October 2010 (EDT) | ||
:::::Maybe it's just zealous rhetoric, mostly for the scare, and it's possible the Covenant themselves consider it "full" if every human on the planet is dead. Even without completely covering the planet in plasma, there's going to be some serious environmental damage on a global scale. --[[User:Jugus|<font color="MidnightBlue"><b>Jugus</b></font>]] <small>([[User talk:Jugus|<font color="Gray">Talk</font>]] | [[Special:Contributions/Jugus|<font color="Gray">Contribs</font>]])</small> 11:07, 27 October 2010 (EDT) | |||
::::That is indeed true, and something that needs to be taken into account. However, the power of their weapons would have to be increased drastically for it to make any meaningful difference. We have no idea how many ships the UNSC had at the time, but it's probably more than one thousand. Either way, it's considerably more than what the Covenant had in most of their glassing operations; I would assume it was rare they had over a hundred ships present at a time. In a hypothetical, and unlikely, scenario where a thousand Covenant ships were to glass an Earth-sized planet, even if they had double the firepower they have in space combat, it would still take 15 years to glass the planet, and if it had deep oceans, considerably more. For them to be able to perform the task in a matter of days or even weeks, the firepower unleashed in glassing would have to be dozens of times greater than in direct space combat. | |||
::::If we look back to some other recent depictions of glassing, there's a noticeable pattern. It started with Halo Wars, where Harvest, a planet thought to have been glassed completely, still retains a breathable atmosphere and intact buildings and such. Even more obvious is The Return in Evolutions, where it is made clear that the Covenant don't always perform glassing on a planetary scale. Only in rare cases, Kholo in this case, the Hierarchs order an "absolute annihilation" of a planet. However, even here, it is nowhere near as absolute as we've thought before, as evidenced by how after the war, the planet still has a breathable atmosphere, intact structures and even wooden boats remaining. Had the devastation been as complete as depicted in the first novels, this would not be possible. | |||
::::In the end, considering some of the recent treatments of the concept, this wasn't that big a revelation. It's simply the final link in the chain, the developers' way of re-defining the concept of glassing and delivering the new definition to us without outright saying "this is a retcon". Instead, they have the AIs of the Assembly explain what the moniker "glassing" really means and why it was adopted in the first place. --[[User:Jugus|<font color="MidnightBlue"><b>Jugus</b></font>]] <small>([[User talk:Jugus|<font color="Gray">Talk</font>]] | [[Special:Contributions/Jugus|<font color="Gray">Contribs</font>]])</small> 11:07, 27 October 2010 (EDT) | |||