Mr. Oragahn

NO! Yevethans are the violent aliens with armblades who build the ships. But there are Force capable creatures that show Luke and co how to make illusions and phase through walls and so on. NO!

Wrong. AVP is heresy, we all know that. But ALIEN 3 is a good movie. It has failures, but it's clearly the deepest and is important to the trilogy. It made the franchise more mature, more highbrow in a way, and added to an excellent space slasher that started a whole genre, and an excellent action movie. A4 is a shameful failure. It had lots of potential, A LOT (see the torching of Ripley clones, Ripley 8's dilemma between humans and xenomorphs, resulting from having Ripley be fusion of what she was and what she feared, then hated, and finally died to destroy). But putting Jeunet and Whedon on it... WTF? How was not that asking for problems?? No. That's impossible. They can't really go down that damn silly route. Why can't they leave it as a mystery, or even add even more mystery to it, in a Lynch way, instead of dumbing it down? I'd rather they leave it alone, if it's to screw it up so much. But what do you want? It's ran by pigs and traders.

That sounds like taking overliterally what is nothing more than a threat.

Wait. I must be mixing things up. What was the name of the secret aliens from the Black Fleet Crisis books?

I read like the first four books of the NJO (good thus far) and Luke is indeed badass. He does have that precog thing, indeed. It's well developed. That goes without counting the powers he got since his thing with the Aing-ti creatures, but I'm not sure other authors have maintained coherency over those powers, since they ranged from large scale realistic illusion (a flotilla) to going through matter. Still, in the NJO, Luke rebuilt a castle owned by Vader with Force levitation. Having touched the dark side twice, once very closely, he also has a wide view of the Force. In the EU, Mace Windu was a bit like that, but Windu was, well... a freak, really.

The Underverse is a weird thing. Somewhere I recall it's supposed to end all life or something, that is the purpose of the Necromongers, I think. Engima: there will be one Prior per Ori crusade ship. The complement of "fighters" seems to be about a few dozens. They're very agile though. In comparison, Necromonger "fighters" are not so good, although their Quasi-Dead pilots seem to be able to survive to exposed vacuum as those fighters are merely anchored to the external hull of the big conquest angry nails with those faces, the things that approach as ice comet (and they do create ice, somehow) and which burn entire worlds. Ori fighters easily enter Earth-like atmospheres, and probably leave them unless they have to wait for the big ship to land. Both fight WWII style. No missiles. Ori fighters can take down Al'keshes when firing at their bow. Al'keshes can take two to four air-to-air missiles as those carried by F-302s before going down. Engines are more fragile. Al'keshes are Goa'uld bombers (although they just have nothing worth of a real bomber, they're only glorified crop dusters with near gigajoule bombs at best), but they're also used to transport troops. They have minimal shielding (atmospheric). Why this information? Because now we can make a comparison to what a Necronmonger ship of the same size, carrier and combat capacity does. And it's not glorious at all, and one got downed by a single rocket fired from the rocket launcher used by Toombs. The Necromongers managed to own New Mecca because the meccan forces didn't seem to know about using missiles. That said, it appears that they were totally caught off guard, as they scrambled fighters while Necronmonger ships were firing at the docks (but that's just one dock, we don't know anything else about the complete defense force of this city, even less of the entire world of Helion Prime, of which New Mecca was the capital city). Probably the most interesting thing on both sides is how they can deploy troops. The Ori have one fighter carry a ring platform. It drops it, and then Ori soldiers can be beamed down by groups of six or seven. The Necromongers use their dropship, slow down above the ground and use some of that dark smoke thing that makes the soldier land nicely. The ship doesn't have to land. Oh, btw, CoR sequels are finally coming! At last.

That's not an opinion. Or such a small one that no focus could either determine if it's positive or negative. .

They could do that, as long as the E-D is close enough to look as big as a planet. Frankly this needs an explanation. The large scale weapons the Covenant use most obviously exploit something that's readily available on a planet and which is not so available in space at all. Matter would be one thing, but you'd need antimatter, and the UNSC don't have shields so they'd be screwed. Gravity weapons, I don't know... perhaps they can open rifts which prove far more deadly in close proximity to a planet. That said the difference of gravity between the surface and low orbit wouldn't really explain the difference either. It's probably some technobabble weapon of doom, ID4 style, or like the Necromongers do: most impressive outside of what they can only use for conventional combat.

N (as in Y/N) would have been shorter.No punctuation either.

Zhylaw has ONE better power, the speed thing. On all other fronts, Priors just WTFpwn him. What can kill a Prior is surprise. But try to get through a prepared Prior and you're in for a rough ride and quite some disappointment... and perhaps a couple ribcages pointing out from your chest I don't recall any connection to be gained merely by becoming the next Marshal. It's stated Zhylaw got his talent as he returned from the Underverse, being... different. All Riddick has aside from his shadow-hitman-fu is the Furian blast (you don't see it in the theater version), and it's not exactly very useful at all, especially since it leaves Riddick unconscious. The Ori soldiers are like the Jaffa, in that they carry energy lances that do the same degree of damage, without the high ends of weapon staves. They have two pincer blades at the tip of the weapon, which I suppose could serve as an average wounding weapon if the whole thing was handled like a partisan. They know some basic tactics like flanking, they take cover, and that's about it. They are simple humans (contrary to Jaffa), so they're quite very average. They're also given very little training at all since they're conscripts (while Jaffa are trained and survive for the next battle).

I think we can shorten this post a little bit more. Try STW. Better, purge your signature and put STW in your sig instead.

Had they been called the Upstreamers... Chuck Norris, hands down. UP, I mean. Hands up. No, wait...

... I am the only one who sees a ghost? It's not very frightening, and it's a bit... gay. And Obama wins, because he needs a real victory at least once in his life.

It depends. Perhaps when the real original content of your post will represent more than 95% of the entire surface it heretically consumes on my screen instead of 5%. Other than that... has there been any quantification of value from the games? I have the first one and installed... versions... of the extensions (boring extensions btw). I didn't spot anything remotely looking like a bone. I mean, everything is about game mechanics. It's terribly pointless: systems have one star with silly colours and planets and other asteroid fields that don't orbit. Save that each planet is its own system... oh and teraton explosions against planet don't damage the texture... the surface I mean. Plus each admiral ship is about 2000 km long on the average. So that makes the windows...

With about the same chances as a mosquito screaming towards a 20 tons truck it's about to splatter against. If you want to call that a fight. Let's just say that Chewie isn't good at epic volleyball.

Aaw... poor Casper. I guess the paycheck is good enough to turn an eye. So they catch him and throw his protoplasmic arse into the big container, which is full of sadistic pedophile ghosts and other millennia old perverted demons. Poor Casper, really.

Can't settle on any good enough colour scheme so atm I'm using the Paradox style. I'm getting used to the burning orange bars. The advantage is that the background is mostly gray and the fonts are easy to read without killing me eyes. All the others styles are literally bludgeoning my eye globes with photons. That's gross.

Lawl, so there's a new edition of TFoR? Now with the firepower numbers brought down again (although imho it was necessary) that contest is largely within the E-D's abilities to win, perhaps by far. You know, the funny thing with canon is that as I get it, cutscenes take it over gameplay. Which has allowed me to formulate the most amusing argument that the superfast Flood transformations from Halo 3 never made it into a cutscene, and were directly contradicted by all cutscenes from the former two games.

I can't recall any particular large fleet. It depends really what is meant by at its height. Plus moving them around by relying on the Guild could really prove problematic for such a large scale war. And what you deem to be canon from Duneverse. The newer books focus more on the action (the authors clearly not imbued with the same mystical vision as Herbert senior). Besides certain types of weapons completely disappear for entire generations, only to return while entirely phasing out the current one. It depends what kind of battles are going to take place as well. On the ground, with the Sardaukars (the good ones, not the degenerated version Paul kicks on Arrakis), it could be tough. There are, after all, possibilities to mix shields and lasguns to create devastating nuclear effects, or use nukes - their use is forbidden, so if they lift it, it could really be WMD galore : the Sardaukars most likely have the gear to operate on a polluted world. Besides, you have the burners, devices which aren't big really, which can be set to act as big flashbang nukes or literally crack a planet apart. Are we sure both sides really want to duke it out? Oh... well, Emmerich isn't bad at all. He can pull a good movie if he does movies like he did in the 80s, and imho he can do that. But I agree, that's just Hollywood: they just make money, they take no risks at all. It's almost like it's films made by bankers. That's tiring.

Nothing fancy. Riddick has powers which are actually less interesting than Zhylaw's. Zhylaw could impress the plebe by surprising a Prior and killing him in front of many people. If there's only one Prior, it's quite a good gamble and it can work. But he'll have to be less cocky and go for the kill immediately. I'm sure that seeing what the Prior can do will be a good motivator. Besides, the Ori soldiers have weapons which are less efficient. Their gauntlet guns are a tad better, but not more powerful at all, and worn by a few. The Necromongers have semi auto rifles with some awesome concussive power (think of the Goa'uld hand device's blast). The Necromongers, all of them, have a high tolerance to pain, and this would be decisive in close battles. Besides they have that weird grenade on a stick thing. I'm not sure how efficient it's supposed to be, as it appears to be more symbolic than anything else, since I can't figure a single efficient tactical use for that thing if it has to be planted to work. So on the ground, between grunts, I easily give it to the Necromongers. That's why the real issue is the Prior's tricks. If he does his things on some territory, far from the Necromongers, then people will definitely be more inclined to join the Ori. All things compared, the Necromongers are just not really appealing at all. The advantage in killing the Prior - who can be killed by any grunt btw assuming you surprise him - is that there will be no one to control the toilet ship. That said, since there's a fleet of them, there has to be several Priors. Which means the Necromongers are fucked and they better start their Pyrrhic victory thing from the beginning, by incinerating the planet.

Ignoring the fact that in truth, the Necromongers would have been WTFed by the Ori fleet, the fact remains that the Priors have shown "good" abilities that rank higher than the bleak-BS-promise from the Necromongers. Start with Priors growing crops and bringing back to life swathes of people. If a demonstration of aggressive force is required, the Prior also takes it. His vast panoply of TK powers and mind pain are again well above anything shown by a Necromonger. That said, Zhylaw's fancy supespeed trick can actually surprise a Prior, but he'll have to be careful.

Hello guys! Several ships had been weakened and it seems that some of them were sacrificed to protect others. They seem to do it differently. Sometimes you get the impression that they used raw firepower, sometimes it's some silly geometric figures which make fuck sense. They also tend to use large fleets to do so. They also have some kind of plasma weapon which, based on some of my observations, would be rated at a couple of petawatts, based on the incident of one of such beams vaporizing a section of a river as it passed over. A pity that what happened didn't look like anything worth of that kind of firepower. They probably were most likely pulling some technobabble weapons of rare rarity, surely. Depends on how they approach their target. If they like to fight at close range, there's little reason for them to warp out at long range and do the rest on sublight motion. Not to say that Covenant ships may be good at linear accelerations (mass lightening involved btw?), but UFP ships have some of the highest maneuverabilities in SF. On a similar note, Covenant plasma torpedoes burn hulls (TFoR has such nice details), and some of the pictures and videos (cutscenes) we've seen of Covenant glassings (predating material from the game which cutscenes were showing the Covie ships drawing silly containment patterns - the containment is my suggestion btw), we could already see that the explosions stretched tendrils of flames in the most odd ways. Of course it fits like if fits means totally borked in light of what UNSC ships could take. Ships which always remained threatened to a degree by the very standard weapons they used, either MACs or megaton nukes, would have as many chances of winning as a snowball in Hell. Covenant ships, notably the largest, could only be threatened by a thousand UNSC ships. There's just that much of a difference. Besides, I've heard that this abortion of common sense that the Encyclopedia was claims now that Covenant ships use antimatter. With an universe that keeps rewriting itself after each new product, and likes to toss silly figures... That's over 10 km/s². I remember the Spirit of Fire having trouble escaping a few gees of sudden artificial gravity inside that small hollowed out planet in Halo Wars. It's the same game where they make a nonsensical slingshot around the artificial small star. A maneuver with limited interest since the star was immobile relative to the shell-world. It's also an universe with ships that weigh less than air. I'd even have to ask a bloke who goes by the nickname of l33telboi at SFJN and SBC about that stupid maneuver pulled by some UNSC warship around some planet, he has analyzed it. And Archer missiles are small yield, even perhaps chemically powered. How the fuck can they get to 0.1c in very short time, or even ever get there to boot? It's quite an outlier, no? The brickish gracefulness of that ship... it made 0 sense as to why it just couldn't avoid it. Nor why they had to sit so close to each other. It's even more stupid as the movie shows that the ships can even move around faster than that, notably when the E-E leaves that planet before going to warp: if such a ship can rotate that fast, there's no reason it couldn't apply the same change of momentum in a forward motion with even more efficiency (since after all rotating with thrusters on your back is not as practical as simply pushing forward). And therefore, if the E-E could do that, why couldn't the Scimitar? Isn't it possible that the Scimitar had been hurt badly? Yup, it did take damage after a while. Would those be relative speeds? If the Covenant ship was already approaching at 0.05c...