Thoughts on nuclear technology in my two favorite sci-fi games (Halo and Mass Effect)

[Xpwn3ntial]

Can't speak for the Reapers, but concerning the Forerunners...

These dudes have become so advanced they can manually direct the total energy output of a star without using a Dyson Sphere. Think about that. They have the energy capacity of Dyson Spheres, without needing Dyson Spheres. A fusion reactor is like a box of matches compared to that.

They made space stations that can wipe out all life in the Milky Way and into the local cluster. The weapons on their ships have power settings that range from "glass area the size of Tokyo" to "Death Star." Why use a nuke?

The Covenant? They use plasma fusion reactors and antimatter bombs. They probably use antimatter to generate energy while they're at it. Again, better than nukes.

 

[Kolby Jack]

Well that's certainly an...interesting take on those two scenarios.

As for Halo: it's been implied in a lot of sci-fi stories that nuclear technology is pretty primitive compared to other forms of harvesting energy. It's very likely that they've developed high tech "magic space-science" that's far more advanced and efficient than nuclear reactors. Given how highly advanced the Covvies and Forerunners are compared to Humanity, it's very likely their means of energy production is far more advanced. The Forerunners built giant space station ring-worlds that have the power of releasing an energy pulse capable of wiping out all organic life in the entire galaxy...a nuclear bomb to them would be like a blackcat firecracker. As for the Covvies, they have a reputation for "glassing" entire worlds, so clearly they have their own form of (likely plasma-based) WMD's that burn so hot and are so powerful they convert a planet's surface to glass.

As for ME: sure, why the hell not? It's stated that all the cycles are essentially the same, just slightly different variations in evolution. To say the Protheans had access to nukes really isn't that far of a stretch. Hell, the Krogan nuked their planet into a radioactive hell-hole. On Virmire in ME1, you set up ship's power core to cause a nuclear explosion to destroy Saren's base. On Jack's loyalty mission in ME2, the bomb you use certainly seems to have a massive nuclear explosion. So yeah, nukes are very prevalent in the ME universe, they're just highly frowned upon by Council authorities.

I'm not disputing that the Forerunners had weapons and generators that far surpassed anything a nuke could do, but even with all that, I don't understand why they seem to ignore it altogether. Nukes are "primitive" but in terms of weapons, "primitive" just means easier to build, not necessarily inefficient. When it comes to the material required to make a nuclear bomb, it's pretty gosh darn hard to be more efficient than that, and that's not me saying that, that's just physics. Nukes are imprecise, so they obviously aren't as ubiquitous as guided missiles, mass drivers, or directed energy weapons, but sometimes you just need to make a big boom. In one of the Halo novels, they set off an experimental nuclear weapon (nine fusion warheads contained in I think a "lithium-triteride" shell) called a NOVA bomb somewhere in the space between a planet and its moon, and it not only SHATTERED the moon, it also made most of the up-until-then quite populous planet uninhabitable for basically forever.

So I'm just saying, not only do nukes seem to be rather effective at dispatching "advanced" Forerunner constructs, but they also seem curiously under-utilized for a race that was once at war with several other species for a LOOOOOOONG time before killing themselves and everything else.

 

[TornadoADV]

In terms of Mass Effect, Nuclear weapons are many more times more powerful then the spinal mass drivers on Dreadnoughts. The Citadel Accords basically restricts weapons on their ecological impact on rare garden type planets and not pure destructive power.

As for HALO, gotta remember that the Covenant was basically nothing more then a group of technology scavengers living off the bloated corpse of the long dead Forerunners and that the Forerunners were inherently pretty selective about the types of weapons they used. Seeing themselves as caretakers of the galaxy, it wasn't their MO to use brute force weapons like nuclear warheads.

As for the effect of nuclear weapons in space, it's actually possible to focus a warhead's destructive power into a cone 30% the size of an unrestrained detonation. It may not be like the super-elastic jet of copper from a HEAT shell, but being able to take something of the mega-ton range and shrink it into a space 1/3rd it usually occupies is pretty damn scary.

 

[MagunBFP]

I'm not disputing that the Forerunners had weapons and generators that far surpassed anything a nuke could do, but even with all that, I don't understand why they seem to ignore it altogether. Nukes are "primitive" but in terms of weapons, "primitive" just means easier to build, not necessarily inefficient. When it comes to the material required to make a nuclear bomb, it's pretty gosh darn hard to be more efficient than that, and that's not me saying that, that's just physics. Nukes are imprecise, so they obviously aren't as ubiquitous as guided missiles, mass drivers, or directed energy weapons, but sometimes you just need to make a big boom. In one of the Halo novels, they set off an experimental nuclear weapon (nine fusion warheads contained in I think a "lithium-triteride" shell) called a NOVA bomb somewhere in the space between a planet and its moon, and it not only SHATTERED the moon, it also made most of the up-until-then quite populous planet uninhabitable for basically forever.

So I'm just saying, not only do nukes seem to be rather effective at dispatching "advanced" Forerunner constructs, but they also seem curiously under-utilized for a race that was once at war with several other species for a LOOOOOOONG time before killing themselves and everything else.

With the Forerunners it seems fairly straight forward, a nuke is a one shot weapon. So far all of the weaponry and most of the tech encountered has been energy based, one of the great things about building an energy weapon that can fire "nuke equivalents" is that you only have to recharge and you're good for another shot, as long as your ship can produce the energy you can keep firing, whereas with bombs you only get as many as you can carry. There's also the speed of deployment, an energy weapon will fire through space very quickly, but a physical missile takes a lot long to get to the target.

To draw a similar parallel to the primitive nuke vs the advanced Forerunner weapons, you'd pretty much be looking at throwing a rock at someone's head vs shooting a gun. A rock is very simple to use, you pick it up and throw it, if you hit someone in the head they will be injured. Rocks are plentiful and always easy to find, if you want to extend the range all you need is either a stronger arm or with advanced guidance technology you could use a slingshot. With that in mind guns are faster, more effective and can be targeted... while not bringing a knife to a gun fight is assumed knowledge I would advise against bringing primitive weapons to an advanced weapons fight as well

 

[Zetatrain]

And their ships manage to glass entire planets without too much difficulty, which puts their energy generation a few magnitudes higher again (probably the energy of stage 5 on the link, but spread out better)

That's actually not true. In Halo Reach you learn that the Covenant never had the capability to glass an entire planet from the 10th data log that you collect:

SNIP

http://halo.wikia.com/wiki/Data_pads

This is another example of Halo: Reach conflicting with information from the novels that came before it.

It's been mentioned several times in the novels that Covenant could and had glassed entire planets. In "First Strike", Master Chief returns to Reach to discover that nearly the entire surface had been glassed with the exception of a small section, because the Covenant was searching for Forerunner artifacts in that location. It also seems that novels which were released after Reach are ignoring that data entry since I have seen mentions of planets that have been completely glasses in the "Kilo-Five" trilogy.

According to that data log, the covenant saying that they could "glass" a planet was simply an attempt at scaring humans into surrendering to them, and that it would in fact take an entire covenant fleet over 30 years to glass a planet like Earth.

Very unlikely

While I can see the Prophet of Truth making that statement to invoke fear into the humans for its own sake, it would make no sense for him to make that statement to get a surrender out of humanity. The Prophets (Truth, Mercy, and Regret)want humanity completely exterminated, because they see humanity's very existence as a threat to the integrity of the Covenant (look up "Contact Harvest"). Also, as far as I know, the Covenant never once offered surrender as an option to humanity as a way to end the war.

 

[MagunBFP]

According to that data log, the covenant saying that they could "glass" a planet was simply an attempt at scaring humans into surrendering to them, and that it would in fact take an entire covenant fleet over 30 years to glass a planet like Earth.

Very unlikely

While I can see the Prophet of Truth making that statement to invoke fear into the humans for its own sake, it would make no sense for him to make that statement to get a surrender out of humanity. The Prophets want humanity completely exterminated as they are waging a genocidal campaign against humanity. Also, as far as I know, the Covenant never once offered surrender as an option to humanity as a way to end the war.

According to a couple of the books the only way the Prophets would accept an end to the war would be if every single Human was dead, it's a religious war and according to the Prophets humanity is simply heretics and defilers the are effectively "demons" and you don't make peace with demons you destroy them.

 

[Zetatrain]

According to that data log, the covenant saying that they could "glass" a planet was simply an attempt at scaring humans into surrendering to them, and that it would in fact take an entire covenant fleet over 30 years to glass a planet like Earth.

Very unlikely

While I can see the Prophet of Truth making that statement to invoke fear into the humans for its own sake, it would make no sense for him to make that statement to get a surrender out of humanity. The Prophets want humanity completely exterminated as they are waging a genocidal campaign against humanity. Also, as far as I know, the Covenant never once offered surrender as an option to humanity as a way to end the war.

According to a couple of the books the only way the Prophets would accept an end to the war would be if every single Human was dead, it's a religious war and according to the Prophets humanity is simply heretics and defilers the are effectively "demons" and you don't make peace with demons you destroy them.

Yep, that is pretty much the gist of it.

As for the OP

I had always assumed that the Forerunners had unlocked nuclear technology eons ago that they just simply don't use it because they have better options that make nuclear technology seem obsolete.

As for the Covenant, they never really discovered the technology behind all their ships and weapons (which is basically all Forerunner Tech). While Prophets and elites (to a much lesser degree) were able to grasp some understanding of the Forerunner Tech they possessed, much of it is a mystery to them as they mainly relied on the Hurogaks/Engineers to maintain and duplicate the tech. The Hurogaks were a race created by the Forerunners with the sole purpose of maintaining their tech. Think of them as the Keepers (from Mass Effect) of the Halo universe.

 

[Griphphin]

I'm not well-versed on the Mass Effect universe, though I am a fan.

As for Halo, I'd say that when it came to making the forerunner into their own "thing" as a race, game devs didn't want something as conventional as nuclear weapons. A lot about the Forerunners strives to be unique and in its own way almost godlike, from their doors, platforms, and other structures that seem to function without propulsion as if willed by otherwordly beings, to their giant cathedral-like building design. In general, the UNSC uses human-weapons (physical projectiles and nucks, etc.), the Covenant has a hard-on for plasma, and the Forerunners operate on a less-than-physical level, with light bridges/guns and an emphasis on some form of data as a concept.

I'd say a good, canon-based line of reasoning would be that nuclear technology is crude and inefficient when you have the technological means that the Forerunners did. Maybe they used it when it was cutting-edge or otherwise useful as humans do, but methinks that there are better ways to make things go down when you're a race lauded as having top-class tech in a sci-fi universe.

 

[Griphphin]

Very unlikely

While I can see the Prophet of Truth making that statement to invoke fear into the humans for its own sake, it would make no sense for him to make that statement to get a surrender out of humanity. The Prophets (Truth, Mercy, and Regret)want humanity completely exterminated, because they see humanity's very existence as a threat to the integrity of the Covenant (look up "Contact Harvest"). Also, as far as I know, the Covenant never once offered surrender as an option to humanity as a way to end the war.

I can see the Prophet making that statement as a way to instill superiority in the Covenant forces. The thought that your side could absolutely annihilate the homeworld of your enemy sounds good for morale.

 

[zumbledum]

well nukes do work in space but without the oxygen rich atmosphere to fuel the fire so to speak there a lot less devastating than in atmosphere.

Neutron weaponry on the whole in sci fi usually refers to a device that kills organic life but doesnt cause physical damage. more of an emission device than a nuke but as its a made up weapon ...

and as for reapers and other mass extinction fans they always have to play the stupid card or the game would just be over, the reapers dont need to enter the solar system to throw a meteor at the planet

 

[RJ 17]

and it not only SHATTERED the moon, it also made most of the up-until-then quite populous planet uninhabitable for basically forever.

And that's the other reason that nukes are "primitive". And coincidentally, that's also a good argument against your "neutron purge = nuclear bombardment" theory seeing as how Eden Prime is described as a lush, beautiful paradise. I doubt it'd be such a beautiful paradise full of life if a mere 50K years ago the entire frickin' planet was wiped clean in a MASSIVE nuclear strike.

From a conquering standpoint, nukes are terribly inefficient because if you nuke a planet to rubble, the radiation will prevent you from being able to re-colonize said planet for yourself. The Halo rings, for instance, didn't seem to have that side effect. Life could start up again, it just wiped the slate clean on every planet in the galaxy, ensuring that the Flood would eventually starve itself out while other organic life had to start the process of evolution all over again. It stands to reason that while the Forerunners were building their empire, their advanced technology likely allowed them WMD's without the radiation side-effect brought on by nuclear weapons.

And for pretty much the same reason, from a self-defense standpoint, using nukes is the same as sacrificing a planet. You wipe out the enemy, but you punch yourself in the gut at the same time. Against an enemy as persistent as the Flood, it's likely you'd be doing much more damage to yourself than to your enemy. All it takes is a single Flood spore to hitch a ride onto something and all hell can break loose wherever it lands. In the long-run, you're still hoping to be alive by the time you defeat your enemy. Suppose you do manage to win the war...what good is it going to do if you've irradiated countless planets that were once inhabitable?

I'm just saying that if your race has the technology to build giant space rings capable of wiping out all organic life in the entire galaxy (and it only needs 7 of the damn things to do it), your technology has advanced far beyond making a big explosion. To say that they didn't know how to split an atom just seems a bit silly to me. I'd wager the Forerunners used nuclear technology in their own primitive past, but as they advanced they developed weapons that could have the same effectiveness but without all the negative consequences.

 

[TheCommanders]

Secondly, I believe the reason the reapers would bother to destroy our nukes is because they have methods of delivery that more conventional weapons (for the time) do not. Kinetic impactors are much more dangerous as they release more energy, but to use one you have to have a functional gun mounted on something that can aim it. To use a nuclear bomb, all you need is a detonator and some way to get it in proximity of the target. What it comes down to is, once the reapers had eliminated the top of the line defenses of earth, i.e., their space ships and antiaircraft guns, the next biggest threat to them would be someone sneaking up close with a nuke and detonating it.

Interestingly, part of the "Miracle at Palaven" codex entry shows combined turian and krogan forces doing exactly that, so I think you might be on to something. I had always thought that a pretty tried and true strategy when it came to enemy forces that were larger (speaking of physical size), but fewer in number the best tactic wouldn't be to engage them directly, and clearly it worked (for a while).

Spoiler: spoilered for length

The turian and krogan counterattack on Palaven combined deception, courage, and tenacity. First, the turians leaked a false battle plan that drew on the same tactics they used at beginning of the assault on Palaven. Then the dreadnought Indomitable faked a problem with its drive core, coming out of FTL near Palaven's moon, Menae. Three other dreadnoughts and their attendant fleets deployed to assist Indomitable, a tempting target that drew the Reaper capital ships away from Palaven. Turian troop transports then entered Palaven's atmosphere to release shuttles, gliders, and individual soldier capsules.
The Reapers did not understand the seriousness of the threat at first--those that detected the landing crafts sent husks and Collector swarms to intercept them, but little more. This allowed krogan commandos to link up with Palaven's resistance and hand off their payloads--warp bombs and fission weapons.

In simultaneous strikes across the globe, Reaper ships began to explode. Turian resistance members had managed to smuggle the bombs inside when the Reaper processing ships, troop transports, and even destroyers and capital ships had opened their structures to indoctrinated turian leaders.

Large swaths of territory fell back into turian and krogan control. News of the victory gave a much-needed boost to the morale of the turian resistance and the galactic public.

But the action was not without sacrifice. Turian insurgents gave their lives to ensure the explosives detonated, and the processing centers they destroyed were full of civilians who died just as surely as if they had been harvested. Of the dead, General Minin Resvirix said, "Whatever they were in life, their deaths had no equal. They are worthy of joining the spirit of Palaven itself."

That's exactly the codex entry that led me to this train of thought.

I suspected as much. Also, reading my post again... one of those sentences kind of got away from me... heh. I obviously started intending to say one thing, then forgot and said something else. I should really proofread these things...

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

[
With the Forerunners it seems fairly straight forward, a nuke is a one shot weapon. So far all of the weaponry and most of the tech encountered has been energy based, one of the great things about building an energy weapon that can fire "nuke equivalents" is that you only have to recharge and you're good for another shot, as long as your ship can produce the energy you can keep firing, whereas with bombs you only get as many as you can carry. There's also the speed of deployment, an energy weapon will fire through space very quickly, but a physical missile takes a lot long to get to the target.

This isn't entirely true - the Covenants weapon systems are plasma based which means they actually require some kind of matter in order to fire. Even with infinite supplies of energy (an impossibility), they would require a reaction mass of some sort in addition to tremendous amounts of energy.

 

[Zantos]

Haven't played either of those games, but here's some Science we can fan-wank.

Atomic-powered technology relies upon heavy elements. If you look at stellar nucleosynthesis, you'll see that solar fusion stops with iron. So where to the heavier elements (like Uranium) come from? Well... supernovae, primarily.

So, in order to have atomic tech, you need to evolve and develop in a region of space that had sufficient supernovae in the past yet still retained the ability to develop life-sustaining planetary systems. It could be that humanity has the nuke simply due to growing up in the right neighborhood.

"But, Minion? What about fusion bombs?" Good question. But if you look at our current hydrogen bomb technology, you'll find that we use atomic bombs as a triggering device to start hydrogen-isotope fusion. Again, the tech (as we know it) relies upon ready access to sufficient trans-ferrous elements.

So far as the effectiveness of nukes in space, well... they're not as great as sci-fi would lead us to believe. Most of an nuke's effect comes from the shock wave. In space, there simply isn't any medium for the shock wave to propagate. And given the already high EMR flux outside of a planetary magnetosphere, the radiation effect of a nuke really isn't effective against the shielding you have to have in deep space anyway.

So, you're talking about direct hits or very near misses to make nukes worthwhile. But nukes, being made of matter, travel at a relatively (ba dum chh) slow speeds and can be easily intercepted and destroyed by directed energy weaponry.

TL;DR: Humans are lucky to have uranium, but nukes aren't much use in space anyway.

Well said, but I think you're wrong about the effectiveness of nukes in space. Keep in mind, nukes are not conventional explosives, which are caused by chemical reactions. In atmosphere, they have similar, if dramatically greater, effects to chemical explosives, but where chemical explosives rely on unstable bonds rapidly breaking down, nuclear energy comes from the direct conversion of matter TO energy. It may not sound like a difference maker, but in actuality this means that while atmosphere greatly increases the kinetic effects of a nuclear explosion, it greatly REDUCES the radiation effects. A nuclear reaction is pure energy; atmosphere does nothing but contain it. So in space, a nuclear explosion would not cause shockwaves, but the amount of energy generated would still be equivalent to that of a small star and would still be spread over a huge area rapidly, and almost NONE of it would be "spent" as heat until it made contact with something. Using a nuke in space would essentially microwave any ships even remotely "near" (which in space is pretty far) to it, only instead of sparks and a little melting, you get absolute destruction because it's exponentially more energy than a simple microwave.

The science isn't completely concrete on this, mind you, as shooting nukes into space is frowned upon and getting a nuke far enough away from Earth to really test it is pretty hard to do. But yea, contrary to how it may seem, atmosphere disperses energy so it doesn't go nearly as far. Space... doesn't.

I think you're drastically overestimating the radiative power of the warhead. Even if you assume that what would be blast energy is converted into radiative energy (which I don't think it is) two thirds is still radiated as heat. The rest is various types of nuclear energy. Now if you're talking about an actual ME/Halo style starship, that's a massive chunk of metal designed to shield it's crew from heat and nuclear emissions from things like stars. The thing is that when protecting against stars it has to be able to do it over a prolonged period. It has to shield against what is still a much smaller radiative source for an instant. You throw out a lot of energy, but it's designed to shield from so much more. Moreso if the FTL produces radiation that has to be accounted for.

Though realistically I think it's more to do with the perception of nuclear technologies. There was a thread not long ago about how fiction does not appreciate the horrific effects of nuclear technologies. Sci-fi space science is a magic get out of it card if they can say "They have better weapons that aren't related to horrific real life events".

 

[TeaCeremony]

In Halo and ME3 i didnt understand why they didnt use nuclear weapons myself. Given the Krogans and Turians and every other civ i would of thought there would be uranium stockpiles or at least uranium to be mined, from there its just a matter of enrichment and deployment.

Its not even that complicated, just get your ratios right in terms of U-238, Plutonium, Misc elements (to enhance the fission) and a stable delivery device and you have a weapon that can wipe out worlds. Dont forget that in space you can detonate a nuke and it will convert into pure electro-magnetic power which means radiation which can kill living tissue extremely easily.

People seem to think that nukes create giant fireballs when in fact the fire itself is the atmosphere burning from the sheer energy released from the reaction (fission) of the uranium. The famous mushroom cloud isnt even unique its merely a result of the path of least resistance being towards the sky (less particles to collide and lose energy with) before it bottoms out in terms of energy and creates the cap of the mushroom.

If you remember MW3 where they detonate the nuke (or MW2 totally forgot) it takes out the entirety of the Eastern Side of America with the EMP (a type of electromagnetic radiation). So we know the blast radius of these things is huge, however (this also includes Halo) the people in charge likely wanted to use nukes as a last resort. Meaning they knew should nukes come to pass the enemy would be destroyed... and so would they. Generations of people would live with mutations which would likely kill them, crops wont grow, animals die etc etc. Look at ME3 for example, the Krogans still havent found a way to fix their planet and the female Krogan explicitly refers to an area as the last hope of the planet, so they are still suffering from a nuclear war 300 years ago.

So the weapons themselves likely were considered viable... but only as a last resort i.e when the final fleet fails and theres no hope left.

 

[MagunBFP]

This isn't entirely true - the Covenants weapon systems are plasma based which means they actually require some kind of matter in order to fire. Even with infinite supplies of energy (an impossibility), they would require a reaction mass of some sort in addition to tremendous amounts of energy.

The OP was originally posting about Forerunners and their weaponry is energy based. You're right about not having infinite supplies of energy, but it's a lot easier to carry a whole bunch of "batteries" or build reactors to generate power (I hear anti-matter is an excellent fuel source, high energy, low space requirements) then it is to carry all the nukes.

As for the Covenant, their shipboard plasma weapons are capable of glassing a planet, without leaving behind toxic radiation making them significantly cleaner and more efficient then nukes. Using Nukes as weapons against other ships in space, you'd effectively only be getting half of the weapons effect given that the shields around ships are all supposed to shield from radiation as well as energy/physical impacts, even if there is a limit to how much radiation they can block a significant amount of radiation would be stopped seriously reducing the effectiveness of the bombs/missiles.

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

This isn't entirely true - the Covenants weapon systems are plasma based which means they actually require some kind of matter in order to fire. Even with infinite supplies of energy (an impossibility), they would require a reaction mass of some sort in addition to tremendous amounts of energy.

The OP was originally posting about Forerunners and their weaponry is energy based. You're right about not having infinite supplies of energy, but it's a lot easier to carry a whole bunch of "batteries" or build reactors to generate power (I hear anti-matter is an excellent fuel source, high energy, low space requirements) then it is to carry all the nukes.

As for the Covenant, their shipboard plasma weapons are capable of glassing a planet, without leaving behind toxic radiation making them significantly cleaner and more efficient then nukes. Using Nukes as weapons against other ships in space, you'd effectively only be getting half of the weapons effect given that the shields around ships are all supposed to shield from radiation as well as energy/physical impacts, even if there is a limit to how much radiation they can block a significant amount of radiation would be stopped seriously reducing the effectiveness of the bombs/missiles.

Two points: first, you seem to continue overlooking the fact that plamsa weapons have, by their nature, a material component. Some matter must be rendered plasma before it can be directed to a destructive end. The process of excitign the matter and then directing it is the process that requires energy and, at the destructive powers claimed by the games, it would have to be a staggering amount for even a trivial Plasma torpedo.

Second, the covenant never had the reasonable capacity to glass an entire planet - a bit of flavor text implies trying to do this to a planet the size of earth would take the entire covenant fleet 30 or so hyears to complete.

Luckily, however, you don't need to actually glass an entire planet to more or less kill anyone on the surface.

 

[MagunBFP]

Two points: first, you seem to continue overlooking the fact that plamsa weapons have, by their nature, a material component. Some matter must be rendered plasma before it can be directed to a destructive end. The process of excitign the matter and then directing it is the process that requires energy and, at the destructive powers claimed by the games, it would have to be a staggering amount for even a trivial Plasma torpedo.

Second, the covenant never had the reasonable capacity to glass an entire planet - a bit of flavor text implies trying to do this to a planet the size of earth would take the entire covenant fleet 30 or so hyears to complete.

Luckily, however, you don't need to actually glass an entire planet to more or less kill anyone on the surface.

I'm not overlooking it I'm assuming a relative scale is involved in Covenant weaponry, the Plasma Pistol, Rifle and Repeater all fire plasma bolts, scaling this up in power we have slightly larger weapons (and no limit on the number of shots) on the Banshee and Ghost and Shade Turrets, even further up in power and scale (along with no limit on shots) we have the Wraiths. Given the potential size increase for just the weapon batteries on a Covenant Cruiser, it logically follows that power is increased while still requiring either small (relatively) or negligible physical components. Unfortunately any plasma weaponry is based squarely in the realms of fantasy physics, so given that we're just told it's "plasma" we're also told that humanity doesn't know how to produce it allowing for a leeway in how it's generated.

Secondly and I quote...

Three dozen Covenant ships - big ones, destroyers and cruisers - winked into view in the system. They were sleek, looking more like sharks than starcraft. Their lateral lines brightened with plasma - then discharged and rained fire down upon Jericho VII.

The Chief watch for an hour and didn't move a muscle.

The planet's lakes, rivers, and oceans vaporized. By tomorrow, the atmosphere would boil away, too. Fields and forests were glassy smooth and glowing red-hot in patches.

Where there had once been paradise, only hell remained

- Eric Nylund -- The Fall of Reach

It seems to imply that 36 of the larger class ships was sufficiently to at least strip the atmosphere and all life from a planet in less then twenty four hours. Given the frequency that Halo refers to the glassing of a planet, it seems that glassing refers more to planetary plasma bombardment reducing it to a barren rock, then literally turning a planets surface to glass. This would take considerable less power and resources.

Following this in First Strike when the Master Chief and friends return to Reach it's said that the planet had been glassed except for one small location. This takes place about 3 weeks after Halo, so either the entire planet of Reach (except the one small section) has been burned to glass in that time, or glassing is bombarding the surface and wiping out life. Either way while a nuclear bombardment would also wipe out all life on a planet it would be no where near as precise as the plasma bombardment.

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

I'm not overlooking it I'm assuming a relative scale is involved in Covenant weaponry, the Plasma Pistol, Rifle and Repeater all fire plasma bolts, scaling this up in power we have slightly larger weapons (and no limit on the number of shots) on the Banshee and Ghost and Shade Turrets, even further up in power and scale (along with no limit on shots) we have the Wraiths. Given the potential size increase for just the weapon batteries on a Covenant Cruiser, it logically follows that power is increased while still requiring either small (relatively) or negligible physical components. Unfortunately any plasma weaponry is based squarely in the realms of fantasy physics, so given that we're just told it's "plasma" we're also told that humanity doesn't know how to produce it allowing for a leeway in how it's generated.

We know how plasma is generated - matter is simply heated until electrons are stripped from the nucleus. They actually never cover why humanity doesn't have such weaponry given they have all the pre-requisiite technology required. They have energy sources of staggering energy density (evidenced by the capacity for interstellar travel) and have long perfected the use of magnetic systems as a means of projectile acceleration (the MAC guns). From that all that truly would remain is building a containment system for said plasma.

Given the length of the war, one would simply assume this technological gap would easily have been overcome and yet the only significant development in military technology in a war that lasted decades and where the stakes appeared to be the survival of the species itself was related to personal protective armor. This is especially odd considering the fluff outright asserts that when it came to a slugging match on the ground, Humanity was easily capable of holding their own.

It seems to imply that 36 of the larger class ships was sufficiently to at least strip the atmosphere and all life from a planet in less then twenty four hours.

Largely eradicating human life on a planet using 36 ships? Easily possible. Dumping sufficient energy onto an earth sized rock sufficient to "strip the atmosphere" and heat all sources of water such that they "boil away" and vitrify all surface rock? Not even remotely possible.

This is a common problem of Sci-Fi: they have no idea how poorly things scale and how just plain old big something like a planet is.

The reason I say it is impossible is relatively simple: human ships in the Halo universe, while outmatched by covenant examples, are not mere canon fodder incapable of landing a damaging blow. In spite of a lack of shields and lacking in firepower in comparison, the fluff indicates that the advantage is far less than what you might imagine. For every ton of spacecraft the covenant bring to a fight, humanity needs for to make it a fair fight.

Given we have observed a relatively small UNSC ship slug it out at point blank range with a substantially larger covenant ship (the space battle section of Halo Reach) we can determine with relative ease that their capacity to deliver damage isn't even sufficient to instantaneously destroy a frigate a mere few hundred feet in length, how do you expect them to effectively heat the surface of a planet by hundreds of degrees in a twenty-four hour period.

Just to give you an idea, the Earth receives an average of ~ 100 watts of energy per square foot. To make it simple, if you assume twelve hours of sun, that works out to a staggering 7,228,353,600,000,000,000 joules in a day. This is equivalent to ~ 1700 megatons of TNT. Or, to put it another way, equivalent energy to 50,000 nuclear weapons sufficient to cause Hiroshima levels of damage.

In order to vitrify Reach (which we never observe in the game - we see lots of fires and such but no evidence of vitrification), which is roughly equivalent in size and composition to the earth, it would take several orders of magnitude more destructive power than the above - the equivalent of millions if not billions of Hiroshima bombs.

What the Covenant ships are provably capable of both in books and games when it comes to the actual observed ability to deliver damage simple does not even remotely match the destructive power implied by the claim that they can "glass" a planet. The explanation of this is relatively simple though: if your goal is simply effective eradication of human life, you require far less firepower. People tend to cluster in groups meaning one only requires a significant application of firepower to a relatively small fraction of a planet's surface to achieve.