Covenant vs The Republic

[Scolopendra]

The Culture wins due to a single GSV getting bored and interfering in the fanboy war.

[The Romulan Republic]

The Borg.

Yeah, I went there...

Well the Borg, at least in Voyager, suffer from sever incompetency. They have a few cool tricks (regeneration, adapting shields and weapons, assimilation, collective consciousness), but they behave in an absurd manner. They even let armed borders from a hostile civilization walk around on their ships unchallenged, because they don't view them as a threat. And they had to go to Voyager's doctor to design a bio-weapon. Of course, this has all been discussed thousands of times in thousands of debates. But its worth repeating that the Borg do not possess much in the way of military competence, even by the low standards of the Star Trek universe.

As for the OP and poll, I don't know much about the Covenant. I've never played Halo, and Wikipedia gives little information on their tech. Certainly not much in the way of hard numbers.

However, I do know a bit about the Galactic Republic:

About 1000 Sectors (I think, not sure of the source for that).

Millions of worlds (exact numbers vary, but its in the millions). This is a number from the Imperial era, so it might be a bit smaller in Republic times, but I'd expect it to be well within an order of magnitude, at least.

1 trillion inhabitants on Coruscant alone.

Thousands of huge starships (some kilometers long), each with the Gigaton-level firepower or greater.

Pan-galactic travel in hours or days.

10,000 Jedi (not sure if that includes younglings and padawans, just full knights and above, etc.)


I'll leave it to those who more about the Covenant to decide who would win, but I expect some solid numbers if they want to claim the ability to beat the Republic. Also, I should point out that I am referring to the Old Republic, not the New Republic in the examples above.

[Scolopendra]

I'll leave it to those who more about the Covenant to decide who would win, but I expect some solid numbers if they want to claim the ability to beat the Republic. Also, I should point out that I am referring to the Old Republic, not the New Republic in the examples above.

If you want numbers, then the Lensmen win. Hands down.

If you want competency and numbers, then the aforementioned GSV, with the capability to mass produce Rapid Offensive Units capable of displacing munitions inside the vessels of entire fleets on millisecond attack runs wins.

[Gauntleted Fist]

The Culture wins due to a single GSV getting bored and interfering in the fanboy war.

...GSV?

(It's probably something glaringly obvious that I should have heard about, right?)

[Scolopendra]

The Culture wins due to a single GSV getting bored and interfering in the fanboy war.

...GSV?

(It's probably something glaringly obvious that I should have heard about, right?)

General Systems Vehicle. In short, let's just say that it's a starship that's also a factory that's also a tiny inhabitable planet, capable of ludicrous speeds with an energy density of dear god my balls and a reaction time of sweet sunny Jesus crackers.

Meanwhile, the Old Republic is having starship battles at ranges that make the Battle of Trafalgar's look like long-range artillery exchanges.

[Gauntleted Fist]

General Systems Vehicle. In short, let's just say that it's a starship that's also a factory that's also a tiny inhabitable planet, capable of ludicrous speeds with an energy density of dear god my balls and a reaction time of sweet sunny Jesus crackers.

A Mary-Sue of starships, then?

[Scolopendra]

Pretty much. My point is that SF-universe-battles are for fanboys, and as such, whoever wanks hardest wins. In modern scifi, the GSV wins. Nothing's quite topped Doc Smith, though, who has hundreds of galaxies get it in the first exchanges in some books.

Oh, and using planets with no inertia to squish things.

[Weylara]

Weak science aside (don't get me wrong, I'm a Halo fan) the Covenant would win. Morale, technology, territory, they have it all.

[Weylara]

Then again, so does the Republic.

Why did you ask this question?

[Hoyteca]

The Covenant might win against the Borg. Possibly against the Galactic Federation, though the Galactic Federation does have Samus Aran, who actually replenishes health and missile/power bomb ammo by slaying foes and looting their bodies. Not sure how that works. It would be a hard fight.

No way the Covenant could win against The Republic/Empire. The Republic/Empire already has a massive military force with weaponry on par (at least) with the Conenant's. Since the Republic/Empire relies mostly on clones (with the occassional Jedi), they can easily produce more soldiers than the Covenant could destroy. Plus, there's the whole Elite thing. Halfway through Halo 2, the Covenant gets this great idea to attack the Elites, thereby removing a significant portion of their (prior to this betrayal) special forces. So, post betrayal, the Republic/Empire would also have the Elites on their sides. You'd think that everyone would have learned their lessons from World War II. But no. The Covenant just had to have their own little Operation Barbarosa or whatever it was called.

Against the Space Pirates, hmmm. Without phazon being a factor, they might win. With phazon being a factor, they'd lose. Plus, unlike the Covenant apparently, the Space Pirates have the ability to not just repurpose existing technology, friendly or enemy, but to also reproduce and even improve it, with the exception being Samus's morph ball ability. Plus, there's Ridley, who could easily wipe out a significant portion of the Covenant's troops before dying. And when he dies, the pirates simply rebuild him.

The Covenant does kinda suck in comparison with other sci-fi factions. The only reason they're such a huge threat to everyone is because of a weapon that's technically not even theirs and they never even used it.