The Battle Of Earth | Halo Lore | Battle Analysis

[@Nobody.exe50]

i can hear the rain of that odst game

[@yeenmachine206]

Last I checked, humanity was very well aware of the Covenant heading to earth. It's just that the fleet was much smaller than it was supposed to be

[@TheTartanFox]

operation first strike took out 80-90% of the fleet of i remember

[@ArtyKibbles2190]

@@TheTartanFoxthat was separate fleet, the fleet that attacked earth war Regrets fleet who didn’t expect a human world to be there much less the human home world because they believed Reach could’ve been the human home world from how hard we fought for it

[@sundoga4961]

I would note that while a situation can be exasperating, a problem getting worse due to changes is said to be exacerbating. Otherwise, excellent coverage of the battle!

[@themc.kennyshow6585]

Touché

[@themc.kennyshow6585]

I remember Eckharts Ladder doing a video on this years ago. "How unsc could have beaten the covenant at earth" etc. and my views were similar to his: -pull the fleet back to the ODPs -All frigates push forward a bit, still inside ODP kill range, but to destroy covie fighters and boarding craft. Have the cruisers get in their MAC range if need be too. -Protect ODPs = win the battle. Seriously. Earth had 300 ODPs in orbit. Even if half a dozen are in the the right area to attack the covenant, the UNSC should have won easy. ODPs have said to be able to destroy 3 covie ships (cruisers) in 1 shot. So 2 or 3 shots should destroy a simple CAS carrier.

[@eliflores9819]

It's really such a shame we BARELY get any clear glimpses at one of the MOST important battles of the entire war. ******* TLDR: Huge damage on both sides, but the sheer inequality between UNSC & Covenant weaponry & armor helped them. Lots of Ticks but only a few made it. Obviously most of Regret's Fleet was still destroyed. Eck is wrong about the UNSC's point-defense & oversimplied way too much in his analysis. Admittedly, the portrayal of MACs is sadly pretty inconsistent & since we never see the direct ship-to-ship combat of this battle, the best I can do is assume how it went. I won't argue that there wasn't at least SOME plot armor, but I still tried my best to explain why things probably went the way they did. ******* I also saw Eckhart'ss' breakdown but honestly, it had some major problems. Like he made it sound like the UNSC completely ignored the boarding craft which isn't the case. After calculating from Halopedia, Reget's fleet could field a total of 300 Ticks with ((though not shown)) 544 Seraphs & potentially even 384 Space Banshees to escort them. Plus, Reget's Fleet wouldn't have just sat there waiting, they would've absolutely been pounding the UNSC Fleet from range with countless Plasma Canons, Torpedos, & Plasma Lances. Again, it really sucks we don't see anything outside of the Cario's Battlecluster, but out of those 300 Ticks, we maybe see only a little more than a dozen actually make it to the ODPs. Eck claims that the UNSC had good point-defense, but that's flat out wrong. The ODPs themselves have none, the Marathons barely have any --- only the Frigates had good PD; but even then, we see how easily the Covenant destroys Frigates. ((((IN MY OPINION: I believe many Ticks also targeted the closet surrounding clusters with a special focus on neutralizing the Frigates who could do the most damage. Sadly, I have nothing to work off of in inferring Longsword numbers since the Frigates carry none. Marathons refit to serve as Carriers can allegedly carry 24, but there's no telling how many of these wouldl've been there. Even then, the lore tells us that UNSC pilots especially feared Brute Seraphs due to their pack mentality = very effective teamwork.)))) IMPORTANTLY: we see & hear exactly why Lord Hood kept the UNSC Fleet back, he was cautious of surprise (& likely much larger) Covie reinforcements from literally any possible direction. ALSO, something non-military people don't often think about: No military can commit 100% of itself at once. You never know how long a battle will be, how many losses you'll suffer, or if your supply lines will remain open. Plus, regardless of whether you're just 1 Marine, 1 Cruiser, or even Master Cheif himself, every warrior suffers fatigue sooner or later. For all these reasons, it's likely that not 100% of the UNSC Fleet (including ODPs) was committed. I personally estimate only a half dozen to a dozen ODP clusters participated in this early battle. BUT you gotta remember that space is HUGMONGUS. That said, I do admit it sucks that the power of MACs is so inconsistent BUT we do know Covie shields are stupid strong, even on the relatively small battlecruisers. Combine that with the simply fact that most ODPs were blocked by Earth, other ODPs, or UNSC Ships --- PLUS the fact that getting a completely direct hit on a very curvy-shaped ship is incredibly hard (thereby your MAC strike won't deliver its full potential power) --- & you can kind see how Regret's Fleet seemingly did the impossible. Even then, ONLY Regret's Flagship actually made it past with an unknown (but very few) number of Battlecruisers fighting in space until dawn the next day. Were these survivors fighting the whole time? Probably not, but regardless lived long enough for Truth's reinforcements to arrive.

[@JVCK_UK]

It's mad that all we had left was a handful of frigates, all the marathon cruisers and destroyers were wiped out quick time 😂

[@richardched6085]

Quite a bit more survived than one would think. While the Home Fleet was "smashed", many ships and even Orbital Defense Platforms survived, but the latter were now effectively useless as the Covenant punched a hole in Earth's defense grid that they could enter and leave at their leisure. At least 2 Marathon Heavy Cruisers were used to transport Misriah weapons produced on Mars to Earth to rearm local defenses. Hood only had a handful of Charon Frigates (at least 7, 3 seen ingame) at his immediate disposal for the attack on the Keyship. Other vessels were either unavailable or otherwise occupied with other engagements on or near Earth.