Forerunners vs. Ancients

[Crazy Tom]

Well the forruner empire had hudnreds if not thousands of ships in its prime, and they were good tactiticians, certainly better than the Ancinets by an order of magnitude since they had AIs, which would be more powerful than a Human AI form Halo, which says a lot.

[bradly08]

Another thing to consider is who has the faster ships, and the better shields. strength wise id say the forerunners would win but the problem is that we know very little about the forerunners.

[Crazy Tom]

Another thing to consider is who has the faster ships, and the better shields. strength wise id say the forerunners would win but the problem is that we know very little about the forerunners.

Their shps probably weren't as fast as the ancient ships could be, bu we don't know wheter the Ancients equiped their ships with intergalactic drives prior to the Wraith war.

In any case, SG hyperdrives are ussualy a tad faster than anything else, so the Ancients have the gate network and faster ships in their side.

The forruners on the toehr can create immensly powerfull weaons and sptupendously powerful shields. And they could use advanced AIs to coordinate their ships far more efectively.

[Stewart5]

It was either Contact Harvest or The Cole Protocol, but I think it was Contact Harvest. If 1 Forerunner ship could take out Elite ships with ease, what could a fleet of them do? Still, if all else fails they could just fall back to Onyx and then use the Halo rings.

Onxy or the Arkr. Either or.

And the Ancients could do the same via the gate network and a Dakara device. They each have a galaxy-wide superweapon at their disposal.

I don't remember seeing a gate on the Ark, and it was at the very edge of the know galaxy. That's why it was the ark; the one place sentient life could go and be out of range of the halo rings, excluding Onyx, that the canon added after H3

Another thing to consider is who has the faster ships, and the better shields. strength wise id say the forerunners would win but the problem is that we know very little about the forerunners.

Drones. Ignore. Shields.
Ancient's beat Forerunner ships, Forerunner run away and WMD them away.

[RubberJesus]

Drones. Ignore. Shields.
Ancient's beat Forerunner ships, Forerunner run away and WMD them away.

Drones don't pierce all shields ori and asgard shields woud have to be resistant because the antarctic platform could only hold off one ori ship and we faced asuran ships armed with drones without sustaining major damage. I think in BAMSR you can see drones impacting someones shields but I'm not sure who's.

[Crazy Tom]

Drones. Ignore. Shields.
Ancient's beat Forerunner ships, Forerunner run away and WMD them away.

Even presuming they do, that ships took half a dozen MAC rounds... half a dozen, one ton projectiles acelerated to super/hypersonic speed.

Those drones are gonna ping off the hull like bullets off a tank.

[RubberJesus]

From reading what people have posted about the Forerunner's ship capabilities I'd say it would be tough, perhaps putting the Forerunners neck and neck with the Ancients if each Ancient ship was powered off of a ZPM and had high quantities of Drones, that is if it's considered cannon to the Halo franchise.
The two races would be pretty evenly matched, so it may come down to each races tactics.

If one vessel is all the Forerunners had, against a whole mess of Auroras and a couple of fully powered City Ships then I think the Ancients would win.
It may come down to who gets to activate their galactic wide WMDs, but the Forerunners would have the edge as the Ancient Genesis device will only effect planets that have Stargates, wheres the Forerunner's Halos can wipe an entire galaxy clear.
Using the WMDs would for the most part mean the total annihilation of each species, unless the Stargates were able to cover every area the Forerunners occupied.

Do we know if the Forerunners were good tacticians?
Not being able to fight off the flood, or find a medical cure for the infection and giving in by using Halo may show them to be bad in this respect, where as the Ancients fought the Wraith, an intelligent, resourceful foe, with living technology for a hundred years and if there was only a handful of Wraith, perhaps a couple of Queens left over, who knew how to grow ships and clone they can survive.
The Ancients only downfall against the Wraith was their lack of numbers and inability to locate all threats.
I guess the two scenarios are fairly similar.

I can't decide really.

I think forerunner powersources are much better than zpms because it takes 3 zpms to fully power Atlantis but High Carity which is way larger than Atlantis can be fully powered by the forerunner ships engines. Also the war between the flood and the forerunners lasted 300 years and the forerunners lost because the gravemind was able to turn one of the forerunner A.I.'s that commanded a fleet of forerunner ships.

[Stewart5]

Even presuming they do, that ships took half a dozen MAC rounds... half a dozen, one ton projectiles acelerated to super/hypersonic speed.

Those drones are gonna ping off the hull like bullets off a tank.

Read any fiction, dude. They bounce off shields. MAC rounds thear thro Covie ships like paper if they hit them with their sheilds down. (See. Fall of Reach, First Strike, Cole Protocol). So if the drones get throught the shields, then the hull is gone, and u got a lotta dead Forerunners

[Crazy Tom]

Read any fiction, dude. They bounce off shields. MAC rounds thear thro Covie ships like paper if they hit them with their sheilds down. (See. Fall of Reach, First Strike, Cole Protocol). So if the drones get throught the shields, then the hull is gone, and u got a lotta dead Forerunners

Those werte Covenent ships.

But were talking about the Forruners, the masters of metarials science (as demonstrted by the Halos and the Ark, if they could build planets and have those materials withstand the stresses involved, I can only wonder what their hulls are made of.

Also, in Halo 3 half a dozen rounds hit an unshielded Forruner ship- no apperent damage.

[Giantevilhead]

Ancient ships are a lot faster and it is possible that they can make ship mounted versions of the Dakara device. They did say that the Replicator disruptors were very similar to the Dakara weapon and the Asgard were able to make large versions of those quite easily.

[Stewart5]

Those werte Covenent ships.

But were talking about the Forruners, the masters of metarials science (as demonstrted by the Halos and the Ark, if they could build planets and have those materials withstand the stresses involved, I can only wonder what their hulls are made of.

Also, in Halo 3 half a dozen rounds hit an unshielded Forruner ship- no apperent damage.

It doesn't say whether it is or it isn't. And u don't even see for sure where those rounds go, because there is a whole covenant fleet running interference around the dreadnought.

As for the halo rings, the inconsistancies are huge. They go around blowing bits out of them and the ark, yet they can have the tolerance to actually exist etc. So u can't judge on that.

[s09119]

Drones don't pierce all shields ori and asgard shields woud have to be resistant because the antarctic platform could only hold off one ori ship and we faced asuran ships armed with drones without sustaining major damage. I think in BAMSR you can see drones impacting someones shields but I'm not sure who's.

1. In "The Road Not Taken," they say that they "fended off" a single Ori cruiser that attacked Earth, using up the last of their drones in the process. It was never stated that Ori shields can withstand drones, just that destroying/chasing off/etc. that ship drained the outpost of its weaponry. Though if you think about it, the Ori have never retreated, and if the drones proved ineffective, why would they just leave? The only logical conclusion is that the drones were successful in destroying the mothership, proving that Ori shields are, in fact, susceptible to them.

2. The weapons the Asurans used against the Daedalus in "Lifeline" were not drones; size-wise, they were as large as the 304's bridge, which we know... is not the size of a single drone. Those were energy weapons just like the ones they used in BAMSR. As far as we know, Asgard shields are no better against drones than anything else.

3. Also in BAMSR, I have no recollection of drones hitting shields as you claim. Screenshot it and post it if you want to use that argument.

The point is, as far as we know, no race has been able to develop a way to stop drones, and they are the single most-effective weapon in the known universe. And given the sheer number of them the Ancients had scattered around their old bases... chances are their fleet would be able to overwhelm the Forerunner defenses with them.

[Crazy Tom]

It doesn't say whether it is or it isn't. And u don't even see for sure where those rounds go, because there is a whole covenant fleet running interference around the dreadnought.

As for the halo rings, the inconsistancies are huge. They go around blowing bits out of them and the ark, yet they can have the tolerance to actually exist etc. So u can't judge on that.

You can see the rounds impacting the dreadnaught. Search the video.

The rings are over twice the diameter of the Earth, they spin at a constant rate to provide artificial gravity, once, say, you blow up a very large fusion reactor, and maybe weaken a part of that structure, the stress from the spining means it will tear itself apart.

The ship is less than 10 kilometers long, you know about ants being able to take 50 times their weight? Same principle aplies, the bigger somethign gets, the bigger structural stress, that's why a human sised ant would not be able to carry 50 times own weight. That's why we see halo intalations being blown up all the time.

[Rise Of The Phoenix]

I think forerunner powersources are much better than zpms because it takes 3 zpms to fully power Atlantis but High Carity which is way larger than Atlantis can be fully powered by the forerunner ships engines. Also the war between the flood and the forerunners lasted 300 years and the forerunners lost because the gravemind was able to turn one of the forerunner A.I.'s that commanded a fleet of forerunner ships.

Oh right, I haven't played Halo 1 and 2 in quite a long time (which I did complete BTW), well pretty much since the xbox 360 came out which I think was a few years ago.
I guess I shouldn't have started commenting in this thread without knowing all of the facts.

[Giantevilhead]

The point is, as far as we know, no race has been able to develop a way to stop drones, and they are the single most-effective weapon in the known universe. And given the sheer number of them the Ancients had scattered around their old bases... chances are their fleet would be able to overwhelm the Forerunner defenses with them.

Puddle Jumper shields can deflect drones. In part 2 of "The Return," the team's puddle jumper got hit by a drone and it bounced off the shields.