NO! Dont even bother. dont bother. We dont need no stinkin' shields.

Not true. AI's grew very rare near the end of the war. In the book Fall of Reach the entire UNSC is impressed with Captain Keys after preforming a maneuver known now as the Key's Loop. What made this so astounding is that his destroyer had absolutely no on-board AI systems. Even Cortana was impressed after reading about the battle because of all the guess work and quick calculations that must have gone into it.

All ships DID have computers, but an AI is different. AI is known as Artificial Intelligence, or a being that can think for itself. While the UNSC didnt have true AI, they did have smart and dumb AI's. Smart AI's could think and do as they please with out much limitation, but they werent sentient and only had enough capacity for around 7 years of use at which point they would go rampant because they literally thunk themselves to death. Dumb AI's could make free choices and the same rapid fire calculations but they we're narrow with usually only one or two main functions.

If I had to guess id say about 1/3rd to half of UNSC ships had any AI at all. Perhaps 3-5 main capital ships had a smart AI and only one that we know of had more then one AI. Thats the Pillar of Autumn.

Oh and valiantofficer look on page 31

Not true at all. All AI are sentient as in "I think, therefore I am.", including dumb AI (although they are a little limited when it comes to thinking outside the box.)

Cortana is the UNSC's most brilliant AI. Take the mind of Dr. Catherine Halsey, and put it in the form of a smart AI, and you have Cortana, a 20-year-old know it all. (I know she's not really 20, but that's how she acts.) Dr. Halsey herself said Cortana is her, just without a bunch of societal limitations, like tact and ass-kissing. I fairly certain Cortana could respond to your post with a bunch of scathing insults about your intelligence.

If you say Cortana isn't sentient, you don't know the meaning of sentient.

I believe in fall of reach it said humans had small shield ships that could protect small ships with a weak shield. Also the Hood class battlecruiser was being upgraded with shield tech and pulse lasers.

And everyone keeps saying that they couldn't reverse engineer it that fast and they didn't capture a covenant ship. Oni has pulse lasers, the Hood class was getting pulse lasers. There are just some parts that aren't explained.

Also mabybe you are looking at the personnel and ship shields the wrong way, maybe seems the UNSC know they are better on land they made the personnel shield, as I imagine it would be harder with those space restrictions.

I am pro shields but as a high tier research vessel(for small ships) and maybe the hood class with a weak one without a vessel *but this was coming after the end of the war.

Also just one thing, don't the shields in Halo have 100% mitigation?

I don't think so. I read Fall of Reach, Halo, First Strike, and Ghosts of Onyx a few times, and I don't remember any mention of shields on any ships.

As far as pulse weaponry on ONI Prowlers, since ONI is responsible for attempted reverse-engineering any and all Covernant technology and weaponry. With that in mind, it would make sense that ONI ships reap the benefits first.

But I agree with Scorpion on that last bit. If it's possible to alter artifacts, I think we should look into throwing in some Forerunner relics, maybe a Monitor or a Forerunner AI, like Mendicant Bias.

No UNSC AI is sentient, only the forerunners where able to make sentient AI's. Even though cortana seemed sentient she still had a basic line of code to follow and had an average operational life span. However if we look at some of the lesser AI's (not the best) that the forerunners made, like 343 guilty spark for instance, we see that they can last hundreds of thousands of years even in a rampant state.

While Cortana can make her own choices and such like that she still cant entirely turn on her makers, that was the problem with mendicant bias. He was too smart and in the end was tricked into helping the flood instead of destroying it.

Too bad the SOASE hard AI isn't that smart  

Uh. Cortana would kick the asses of the devs with about 1 tenth of 1 percent of her processor power, and do that while hacking the Department of Defense because of the boredom.

Hmm want me to make a profile for you and then give you the username and password

Drop the ficken Sheilded UNSC ship idea...

Sentient means smarts/ personality/ feelings. Cortana is sentient.

She is NOT, however, a sentient being

An example of a Sentient being, would be a human, or an Elite. Even MC. The only Sentient Being AI, would be something like a Forerunner Moniter. Im not so sure about the sentiniles tho.

Cortana is most definitely sentient. On more than one occasion, she's accessed files that were "classified", "restricted", or just "Don't look", for the purpose of furthering her understanding of the world, her mission, and John. She looked over his file and immediately decided that if her loyalty was torn between the UNSC and the Chief, she'd stick with John.

That action, in and of itself, proves sentience. "Smart" A.I.s are not "programmed" so to speak. "Dumb" A.I.s are. "Smart" A.I.s are formed from tissue of the human brain, a complex organ that even the UNSC scientists didn't fully understand., with the tacked on command code that could kill the A.I. In actuality, the UNSC don't really have much of a clue on "Smart" A.I.s and their limitations. They just know that when an A.I. starts jacking with things they shouldn't and begin harming humans, they shut them down.

The pulse laser is their weakest? Aren't the plasma torps? I mean apparently a Halcyon can only resist 1-2 lasers, where at the end of the first level of halo we saw the Autumn taking like 8 torps.

And at the end of Cairo station (halo 2)we saw a Marathon get badly damaged/destroyed by a pulse laser (granted it could have been hit by 50 before that-we didn't see.)

Are pulse lasers a standard size or do different ships have different sized projectors? Or maybe there are different variants (like MACs)


Who says you need to have an idea? Imitate?


Well for all we know they scaled it up from infantry big time or they got it some other way. We have to face that there are some gaps in the story like with the pulse laser, just go with what we know (and that is that the Hood class was getting sheilds)

We don't know how powerful they were ect.

I am pro shields (not voted though)but weak and a very high level of research and not on all vessels, as well as being slow regeneration.


Stronger =/= more advanced- look at MACs, they are fairly simple, yet they own archers which are more advanced (they need propellants, guidance, sensors ect)