How Elites won the Battle of the Ark (and ended the War) | Halo Battle Breakdown

[Music] halo 3 is in my incredibly biased opinion the greatest video game of all time one of Halo 3's most memorable moments is visiting the Ark for the first time it's like going to an even more desolate and strange and ancient halo ring I always thought it was so cool we also get one of halos most badass lines of dialogue it is an even fight we don't unfortunately get any details about the space battle that occurs over the arc that's what we'll be looking at today and specifically examining how the elites could have defeated the brutes before we get into that though this video was kindly sponsored by fight Raman who reached out to me specifically because they enjoyed my halo videos which i think is pretty cool this is actually the second ad I've done for Veit Raman and they still haven't really told me what they want me to say or when they want this in the video so I'll just be honest I like the noodles because I can make them quickly I think nutritionally it's a step up for most other type of ramen specifically while they are a little lower in calories they are really low in sodium which I appreciate but to be honest for me at this point it's mostly the taste that keeps me coming back and I mostly do these promos because of the free packs they sent me and the money I guess so if you like really tasty ramen and maybe you want to try something a little healthier I think Veit ramen is a great choice I would personally get the variety pack and recommend the soy chicken flavor if you want to support the channel and check with the product there's a link for 10% off down in the description anyway back to halo the battle of the arc essentially ended the human covenant war the prophet of truth and his brute fleet having pierced the Earth's defensive array and uncovered the great portal traveled to the ark hoping to initiate the final stages of the great journey following truth was a combined elite human fleet made up primarily of one covenant assault carrier and nine smaller cruisers the fleet was coordinated by ship master artists of a doom we know very little of the actual battle itself mostly that despite being outnumbered three to one tactile superiority on the part of the elites allowed them to devastate the brute fleet we know that at minimum the elite flagship the shadow of intent managed to survive the battle with no obvious damage there's also a few lines from the level the Ark which provide a bit of context but really are just background noise we know that commander Keyes in the forward unto dawn were part of the battle at least to a limited extent they fired their Mac cannon at several targets some of the longsword bombers went for runs on enemy capital ships and then also on the elite side that the fleet moved within the brute formation such that the brutes are actually worried about hitting their own ships it seemed to be a battle fought at extremely close range and we even hear the shipmaster talk about ramming another ship so besides for those clues which I'll try to contextualize later let's briefly describe some of the key factors that went into the battle and I'll start with a quick summary of covenant battle tactics generally they've actually covered covenant battle strategy in Prior videos but I'll go over some of the quick specifics here and to be honest things are pretty basic in general due to the numerical and technological superiority of the Covenant during their war against humanity the covenants general strategy was one of overwhelming force as anyone who's really looked into halo lore can confirm the standard covenant warship was sometimes dozens of times more powerful than its UNSC counterpart most strategy involved avoiding coordinated Mac garages and preying on unshielded UNSC ships however general battle principles will be flipped on their head here without two distinct elements of technology at play another key distinction of course is the two combatants instead of seeing covenant versus humanity we now have two very intellectually and behaviorally distinct covenant sub factions battling it out so let's start from the most basic point of how the elites won the battle and then go into new unsurprisingly one of the largest factors is simply that elites were much better suited for this battle than the brutes they were more experienced had a better understanding of large capital ship technology and tactics were able to coordinate better and use distinct formations and just generally were better in space combat although brutes had achieved spacefaring status even before joining the Covenant they well nuked themselves back to the Stone Age the elites on the other hand managed to well not do that which I think speaks positively to their at least a behavioral capacity to fight in space in any sort of meaningful way on a basic level as I'm sure most of you understand brutes aren't incredibly aggressive and violent species prone often to pure berserk enrage elites - especially when piloting star fighters could also sometimes seek individual glory paramount to anything else however not to the same degree as brutes let me elaborate well elite society was based on status and hierarchy brute society was even more so and was less purely militaristic than elites and if you're thinking well does that mean they're less of violent no not really more so that they functioned in less of a structured military society instead brute society was pack based and as their species history shows brutes were often incapable of large-scale cooperation elites as a whole on the other hand were incredibly intelligent and honorable were very well suited for naval warfare showing capacity to not only work with other elites but even other covenant alien races framed in another way brutes are such good warriors because of their ferocity and their incredible unmatched physiology of these two features the latter will be no help in a space battle while the former is a potential downside but as I said you probably knew most of that so let's look at how specifically the elites would have taken advantage of their better mentality and experience when facing off against the brutes the biggest game-changer in this battle I think besides for just general tactical know-how is the way that elites will manage they're capital ships shielding there are two elements of shielding that are important here first as some background covenant shields were not only sturdy but also fast for charging specific covenant tactics were focused on multiple ships working together in tandem and utilizing complementary weapons that's important because when a covenant capital ship loses its shield you need to be able to take advantage of that quickly I think the elites will be more knowledgeable of this weakness and will be much better at coordinating multiple ships and different types of weapons one common strategy would be to use something like energy projectors to do a lot of the damage against the shielding or at least parts of the shield well then coordinating second torpedo stripes before the defenses could be reset another meta aspect to this battle will be how each ship manages its weapons covenant capital ships actually have to open small parts of their shield to fire most weapons this is something that I can see brutes being extremely careless about especially if in any sort of aggressive or berserker rage and something that the much more calculating elites will be able to take advantage of improperly managed shielding means that even a single CCS class cruiser could take down one of the larger carriers because there's so much care involved in not over exposing your unshielded hull it's more than that though there's actually a lot of nuance to covenant weaponry for example during Halo first strike in a quite memorable scene we see Cortana explain that covenant projectile technology is susceptible to magnetic interference which can essentially cause not only ship-based guiding mechanisms to fail but also a dissolution of the actual containment fields essentially rendering the projectiles harmless we know weapons like energy projectiles generate massive magnetic pulses so perhaps something like that could be used by the more knowledgeable elites we also see Cortana use the heat generated by a violent atmospheric entry to stop torpedoes from hitting their target so there's a lot of options for somebody who understands the systems at play here interestingly during that scenario as well the on board covenant AI actually tried to scrub this information from the ship's system me to believe that in the case of covenant ship in fighting as was the case in Cortana's scenario there are some opportunities for exploitation the biggest issue for the Brutes I think will be their inability to adapt to a different scenario the Covenant tactic of overwhelming UNSC ships with numbers and much better technology will not really work here although the Brutes do have numbers over the elites the technology is equal well elites will be much better capable of adapting to non-standard battle scenarios and different enemy tech I also doubt that it's the real intelligent brutes even leading this fleet the profits at this point most likely would have been on the ark as would most of the high ranking brutes preparing for the great journey so this is not a great scenario for the brutes who are remaining in space but let's look at specifics how would the elites have won so the Brutes attack with a staggered line but as we see in the cutscene the battle almost immediately devolves into a complete mess with brute CAS cruisers doing well I don't really know the elite ships will most likely minimize brute number advantages by moving to the middle of the formation where only some of the brute ships will be able to use their weapons without the threat of hitting their allies I think ship master of a doom will take advantage of brute psychology and probably take out a few of the large capital ships first whether through as I mentioned something like critical shots fired and temporarily down shields or taking advantage of careless brute weapon firing the brutes who are commanding the remaining ships are probably not the brightest and if trained ready only to fight humans this will be a problem for them regardless I think step one is taking out the carriers through sheer overwhelming firepower I see something like Wolfpack tactics working here with the ship master spending enough firepower to take one shield down then the smaller ships basically outputting the hull damage in the form of missiles and whatnot after that brute psychology actually helps out here the transmissions from the level of the arc reveal that the brutes are being too aggressive with their smaller ships and the ship master has lines basically saying that enemy was foolish to go to his broadside that he's gutted them and as I mentioned on one occasion that he rams them so sort of to summarize I guess besides for the psychological and behavioral aspects that I discussed earlier I think the key tactic used by the shipmaster probably would have been to get within the brute lines so that fewer ships can be effective thus neutralizing the numerical advantage then using both brute carelessness and coordinated weapon fire to take down the big ships then setting the much more powerful CAS carrier and the remaining fleet on the remaining CCS classes of the brutes I really think the main issue here is that the Prophet just totally discounted the importance of protecting the ark from space I mean he's down on the construct within his dreadnought and basically sends a message out but I don't think he was really concerned another aspect is that the UNSC forces and the pelican drop ships did seem to pull some of the fighters with them and the remaining longswords as well as the frigate itself well it remained in battle probably did provide a little bit of extra help but that's just - I'm curious to hear what you guys think how did the elites win this battle what did the Brutes do wrong and is it believable that a force one-third the size of its opponents could actually win let me know down in the comments that's all I have for you guys though today until next time have a great day it may the force be with you [Music]

Channel: EckhartsLadder

Views: 1,097,393

Keywords: halo 3, halo lore, space battle, halo explained, halo space battle, halo battle breakdown, how elites won the battle of the ark, elites vs brutes, battle of the ark, installation 00, halo 3 battle, the ark, eckhartsladder halo, battle breakdown, eckharts ladder, human covenant war, human covenant, war, halo war, halo 3 cutscenes, battle of earth, unsc home fleet, rtas vadum, shipmaster, halo what if, lore explained, halo lore explained, battle

Id: 9goFRUWRvX8

Length: 13min 6sec (786 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 24 2019