Halo Humans vs Mass Effect Small Arms Weaponry: Whose is better?

In-universe and in the first game at least. Also, they have two lives. If you put you down with a ton of bullets then they just get back up. And there's over a billion of them, half of which are warriors and ninety percent of which are capable combatants.

The geth are very numerous, but not significantly more advanced than the other races combat wise.

edited 4th Sep '12 7:24:10 AM by CPFMfan

Well, when you bring in the Forerunners, most of what I recall is the whole thing devolving into Halos fire, everyone dies.

Can we count the Leviathans if we're going to count the Forerunners? Because they can literally control every living being in the galaxy from across any distance just by thinking it. They'd evolved to the point that they were basically gods.

Yeah. But just sayin if we're gonna bring the WHOLE universe into it we should bring the WHOLE universe.

How do they do against A.I.s?

edited 4th Sep '12 7:30:26 AM by Jamdat369

Depends on the AI. If they created it and, for some unimaginable reason, made it more powerful than them, not so good. If anyone else did, it's way beneath their notice to be a threat.

edited 4th Sep '12 7:35:10 AM by CPFMfan

Like say Cortana with an array of Super Mac guns. C Ould it survive being hit?

I don't see how any of that would matter when they can instantly control every being in the universe from an obscure location where no one can find them. But no, looking at the specs nothing could survive being hit by a Super Mac, especially not an organic like a Leviathan.

As was said, if we take the abusive precursors of both universes into account it just becomes "Rock Falls Everyone Dies" in favor of whoever activates their ability first.

edited 4th Sep '12 7:50:51 AM by CPFMfan

Does "being" only refer to organic lifeforms?

Presuambly, since they were killed by their own AI.

This. Halo A.I.s are capable of operating machinery without human assistance.

What happened to said AI and what can it do?

edited 4th Sep '12 7:53:08 AM by Jamdat369

The AI killed its masters and created the Reapers... somehow. It's related to the ending of Mass Effect 3, so it's really confusing. I have no idea what it could actually do before that besides control said Reapers, but it's implied that it can literally rewrite the entire universe whenever it wants, like it does at the end of Mass Effect 3 (ugh).

Also: an AI wouldn't matter for much when its creator race had already been mind controlled into nuking themselves by a species that they didn't know existed. It should also be noted that, by Mass Effect 3, even the 'normal' species possess a device that can kill every AI in the galaxy with a push of a button. So if we're comparing the whole universe here...

edited 4th Sep '12 8:05:29 AM by CPFMfan

You know, this whole argument kinda reminds me of the who would win debate between Star Wars (with the Expanded Universe stuff of course) and Warhammer 40000; based on the basic knowledge you get from the main work (the films and tabletop game respectively), you'd think one would curbstomp the other, but when you take supplementary content into consideration, it gets a lot more complicated.

In this case, based on the games, you'd assume Mass Effect would curbstomp Halo, but it turns out the latter actually has starship weapons obscenely more powerful than their small arms, just like Star Wars has an absurd number of planet and/or solar system destroying superweapons lying around everywhere, Jedi who get New Powers as the Plot Demands, and so on.

Well, the Super MACs are actually in game. The first level of Halo 2 even takes place on one, and they do describe it as being able to one-shot any Covenant capital ship, the capship behind it, and the ship behind that.

I have to say though A.I.s are kind of notorious for continuing on after their creator race dies out.

Well you still don't quite get the idea of just how powerful they are, and correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't super MACs only found in orbit of the core UNSC colonies?

Only around Earth and Reach, which was the military stronghold of the colonies.

That is correct, as they're powered by ground-based generators (somehow). They're powerful enough to let the UNSC stand up to the Covvies in space where they're normally hopelessly outmatched, focing the Covvies to carry out ground ops to knock out the generators, and on the ground the UNSC and Covenant are on far more even footing.

edited 4th Sep '12 8:50:06 AM by Balmung

Couldn't the Leviathans merely mind control the humans into just turning the AI off? Either way, the Crucible (the "destroy all AI" button) ensures victory unless we stop this schizo time period and just settle on "Halo vs Mass Effect at this date or over this course of time".

edited 4th Sep '12 9:00:34 AM by CPFMfan

Its nor like A.I.s have an "offswitch" They're intelligent beings. Also how does the Crucible work?

There's also the matter of reaper Indoctrination if we're talking about them, and despite what we see in Mass Effect 3, they usually prefer to operate subtly. Arranging for a UNSC science team to discover a "dead" reaper would net them dozens of servants in relatively high positions, and planting reaper artifacts on them could pave the way to indoctrinating people with real power. Unlike say the Imperium of Man, the UNSC isn't used to dealing with things capable of twisting and corrupting the minds of humans with proximity to them or their technology.

edited 4th Sep '12 9:05:03 AM by Archereon

If we're bringing in the Krogan, pretty much everyone will die. On both sides. The Krogans were insanely hard to stop after the ME people armed them to fight another alien threat. They were out-breeding the whole system FFS.

IIRC, they were even outbreeding the genetically induced infertility they had in ME 2.

If they were deployed for another war, I'm not sure they could be stopped easily.

Spartan laser. Now, I'm on a phone, so I'm going to edit this when I get home, but my preface is "Spartan Laser."

@Marc: Not the Forerunners, who'd just Halo them, or the Leviathans/Reapers, who would just Mind Control and in the latter case also huskify them. Or the Covenant or Turians, or Salarians who could respectively just glass, exterminatus, or sterilize them.

edited 4th Sep '12 9:10:45 AM by Archereon

Ok, this thread is starting totally veer off course. You guys need to decide what exactly is going to be debated: the firearms and infantry tactics of the two universes, or entirety of each universe against one another? I would STRONGLY recommend choosing a particular topic and sticking to it. Keeping it strictly between the UNSC and Systems Alliance and their technologies would be the best option. Otherwise else this arguement is gonna go on forever as we constantly add "but wait! doesn't race/weapons/whatever X do this really awesome thing? It would totally kick Y's ass!"

Once again, not explained. But the "god" of the Mass Effect universe said it would kill all "synthetic" beings. And then it does.

Also that. Halo is screwed no matter how you slice it.

They could probably beat the krogan actually, but not before sustaining a ton of damage, since krogan really like throwing asteroids at other people's planets, which they can do without a fleet.

edited 4th Sep '12 9:12:11 AM by CPFMfan