No Human Mechs., werid why no human mechs in Halo.

We already acknowledged that and thought it was stupid (a robot that punches stuff!?). But having bought the game, I see its role is a more realistic building demolisher. The legs might give more maneuverability over rubble. Its legs also wouldn't be as likely to break as they are deployed after most of the enemy force is wiped out.

Granted a battering ram or cobra railgun would work as well if not better. Then you consider the carpet bomb, MAC bombardment (as unrealistic as it may be), scorpions, grizzlies, C4 charges, etc and wonder if it would be worth the time to develop this.

Not really. The magnetic acceleration could be slowed for the orbital bombardment, allowing gravity to accelerate them instead, giving a lower area of effect. Either that, or the rounds are smaller, but it would still give a nuclear effect. You must also take into consideration that this was 2531, and the power in the UNSC's weapons were much weaker than that of ships in 2552. A good example of this would be Cairo Station's super MAC.

MAC and nuclear explosion?
correct me if I'm wrong but I think the MAC only get it's punch through accelaration an mass but no nuclear explosion. This one is the Shiva

Well a 200 ton projectile, (Say it's a light version of the correct MAC slugs), hitting the planet at an final velocity of say 98.1m/s . Although it would most likely have a final velocity of a value greater than 98.1m/s. But for the purposes of this I'm using that value, to show how much energy is released. E_k=1/2mv², where E_k is kinetic energy, m is mass and v is velocity. So that is 1/2(2.0x10⁵x98.1²)=1.92x10¹³j of energy hitting at the impact of one MAC slug impact or 19.2 Gigajoules per impact, which is around a 4.5 kilotons of TNT at impact, about a 1/3 of the supposed energy output of 'Little Boy' which was the first use of a nuclear weapon in wartime operations, which was rated at 12.5 Kilotons. More information about the Hiroshima weapon can be found Here. As you can see the damage would be much greater than any battlefield in Halo wars, and that's just from one MAC shell hitting the crust of the planet, of course radiation wouldn't be a problem, but the shock wave alone would be more than 5 PSI around the blast site.


Edit: I think I might have made a calculation error somewhere, so my standard form may well be out, in which case a large amount of energy will be gained or lost.

This post has been edited by Dark_Angle on Mar 23 2009, 12:43 PM

Is there any notification of special shells/slugs for bombardement, maybe?

that would be one hell of an explosion, another example of the game designers just trying to make it look like a decent game