^Lol. Considering you often find plotholes in things pretty fast, I was wondering when you'd show up to post.

Quote Originally Posted by Warsaw View Post
Yes, as a matter of fact, you are supposed to go by other sci-fi, because Halo is inferior to a good majority of them in logical progression of technobabble. Real life history and science also make a pretty good bar-line.

In response to your enumerated queries:

1.) Sabres are still much bigger than a Spartan. Were they experimental? Yes. Were Spartans experimental? Yes. Did they work as advertised? 100% you betcha, even better than the Covenant versions if you go by the books. Concept = proven.

2.) All of them? All human ships capable of interstellar travel have them...how do you think they got the energy to tear a hole from normal space to slipspace?

3.) They were still fish in a barrel and while human ships are not as good at slipspace travel, they have no problem entering combat fresh out of the rift if they need to. Covenant have better slipspace, humans have better energy production. The only reason the Covenant got Reach was because those ships were able to disgorge troops before getting blasted to tiny pieces.
You should never compare Sci-Fi's when trying to find plotholes in one. It just doesn't make any sense. That's like comparing an FPS to a 3PS. Sure, they're both shooters, but they have a number of differences that you simply can't compare, not to mention the subject matter of both could be completely different. You should also reserve your opinions to opinionated subjects. Finding plotholes is not an opinionated subject.

1.) Yes, but Sabre's were experimental none-of-the-less. They were full-proofed by the time the Covenant attacked Reach and who's to say that the UNSC wasn't working on ships that could possibly utilize this same tech. Unfortunately, the Covenant showed up on Reach and caused that research to be buried. ONI probably had most of the data on those ships and the other tech involved, but it's apparent that AFTER THE FALL OF REACH they lacked the resources/time to create them. Keep in mind, Halo 2 happened half a year after Halo 1. Most giant technological advancements need 5 years to develop or adapt. Considering human starships in Halo still had crew members disappearing from slipspace jumps, slipspace jumps were often guestimations as to where the plotting would actually warp them in, and that slipspace jumps took months at a time to go from point A to B, I'd say something as revolutionary/design changing as integrating a physics and power altering energy shield would take more than several months.
2.) Their Fusion engines have been noted to be barely efficient for what's required to keep all systems running. The Improved-Fusion engines only existed on certain ships like the In Amber Clad and Pillar of Autumn. I'm also not certain where you're finding that human ships were superior power-wise to Covenant ships. Source?
3.) If they arrive on time at all. A battle starts now and the rest of the Fleet shows up a month later? Cool, thanks for the delayed entry man! By the way, 200,000 have just died because our technology sucks. OH WELL! The Covenant OWNED UNSC ships in space combat. It's been said so many times in this series.

And they could still do the whole "not enough time" thing...if they remove the Splaser, Sabres, and crush the trilogies into a much shorter time frame. I am willing to bend on shields, since they are pure BS-tech. However, considering that we were capable of building weapons-grade lasers as of 2007 (when Halo 3 came out), it blows my mind that the only laser we have in 2552 is some shoulder-fired pea-shooter. Common sense says that we'd have greatly refined the mechanism 545 years later. My point is that they didn't execute their lack-of-time motif properly. The holes in the fiction say to me "we had time and we abused it" rather than "we didn't have enough time."
Is that what your entire argument is about? Hell, just stop it then. I'm arguing in canon because it's where these arguments about plotholes take place. Whether or not the humanity in the Halo universe is shitty until 2500 is beside the point.