c0ld vengeance wrote on Tuesday, 11/5/2002 - 6:12 am:

: Reclaimer wrote on Monday, 11/4/2002 - 11:17 pm:
:
: : egm.gamers.com or egmmag.com
:
: Dammit, cant find this picture of the Brute, can anybody
: help?
:
: c0ld

Oh! They have the internet on computers now! - Homer J Simpson

Reclaimer wrote on Saturday, 11/2/2002 - 2:29 am:

: As I look through the Halo 2 feature in my EGM magazine
: again I still stare at the Brute in awe. It looks so
: powerful and mighty and ,well, violent. But as I stare at
: its "utility belt" I see what EGM has speculatively labeled
: as "Ka-boomsticks", a new type of Covenant grenade. They
: are basically a long metal cylinder with a little bit of
: glass protruding out and they don't appear to have any kind
: of trigger mechanism but an open hole instead, so I don't
: think they are grenades. What I think they are is power
: cores for the Covenant weapons. I hope its what they are
: and that we could use them. I mean, I find it hard to
: believe that the Covenant would just throw a weapon away
: after its core was empty.

-------

Covenant weapons must be powered by batteries. When you are holding one, the ammo count picture is a battery and when it's out of ammo it says "battery depleted". It says in the manual they are powered by some kind of power core that we do not know how to replace or recharge, which sounds like a battery. So the Covenant must have spare batteries or charging machines, even though we've never seen any yet.

This post by David Marsh on the Halo story page at http://halo.bungie.org/ further prooves this theory by providing an explanation of how the could work from the electricity in a battery.

"It's very hard to store plasma by itself, because of the tremendous power levels it takes to create a magnetic bottle so that it doesn't come into contact with any of the gun, thereby vaporizing it. Therefore, it wouldn't be practical for the guns to work by storing plasma and releasing it when needed.

I was pondering this, and when I saw the front of a plasma gun yesterday, it all came together. There are two colored metal plates on the two prongs of both guns, blue for the rifle and green for the pistol. They reminded me very much of electrodes, and I thought that it would be much more efficient to have a battery in the gun rather than plasma. For any uninformed readers, plasma is ionized gas; that is, gas that has had many electrons knocked out of the atoms within it, at least one electron per atom. Heat is a measure of kinetic energy, or of the movement of particles, mass of particles and number of particles combined. When you rip electrons from an atom, you create at least twice the number of particles, so the temperature increases dramatically, which is why plasma is so deadly. One of the easiest ways to make plasma is to run a large current of electricity through a gas, and use the surrounding gas as ammunition. Maybe the guns run a large amount of electricity through the air and turn it to plasma, then shoot it forward via a magnet behind the electrodes. If the plasma guns that the covenant use do in fact run electricity between the electrodes, it would explain much of the gun's behaviors, such as overheating. If the gun stored plasma and released it, it would not heat up the gun, but maybe actually cool it down. However, a current of electricity between two electrodes makes the electrodes very hot. Therefore, it seems that the plasma guns actually run off of electricity, not plasma."

I know what your saying and I would want some of those huge battles too, and I've read in my EGM magizine that the people at Bungie showed them this huge battle between humans and Covenant, including snipers. I, however, do not want it so that you can't escape or fall back as in the scenario you describe. I mean you wouldn't be able to survive with a few humans against a huge Covenant army. But, hopefully the online play will give us an absolutely huge battle that won't end. I would love an everlasting battle.

P.S.
What are RL?

Earendil wrote on Tuesday, 11/5/2002 - 2:58 pm:

: Halo was great, don't get me wrong. and just about anyone
: that had anything to complain about I'd go out and harshly
: talk it over with them, or threaten their family.
:
: but I have one of my own complaints that I have never seen
: voiced or talked about. I understand the reason for it's
: absence, but now that Halo 2 is coming, want to bring it up
: :)
:
: I want bigger out door maps. go back and watch the old
: Halo preview movies. it shows large outdoor landscapes that
: don't seem to end. now play Halo, it's not, you're either in
: tunnels (as large as they may be) or canyons, never wide
: open spaces (islands don't count).
:
: now I know the reasons for this, raw power to render that
: much stuff on screen at one time. also you have to have
: boundaries. also load time would be an issue.
:
: But still, given the right amount of time, and the xBox's
: "awesome and untapped power" I think Bungie should be able
: to do this.
:
: I want to see a distant battle in my scope, a large
: distant battle, then hop in my jeep and burn it across miles
: of terrain trying to clear covies (and maybe hit a few) and
: come into a wide open area where my humans are trying to
: hold off an actuall covie assault, not a 1 tank 2 ghost POS
: army.
:
: yes I'm also asking for bigger battles, which you could
: say were not in Halo because it was guerrilla warfare, it
: wouldn't be practical to fight an all out open war. but
: still, it'd be fun.
:
: it'd also give you that feeling, imagine saving a few
: humans from a small covie force at their base, and be
: talking to one of the humans. then the human yells out
: something and points, you turn to see a fairly large covie
: army coming over the distant ridge, tanks, ghosts, and
: eliets come bounding over in force, "oh shit" runs through
: your brain as 4 banshees come swooping down in front of the
: oncoming army.
:
: I'm sure Bungie could do it better then that (or else I
: should be designing games...). in Halo (assuming you weren't
: pinned down) you could always run away, I hated that. I want
: a stand to the death battle at least once :)
:
: I also want to see a fair sized human army with RL and
: snipers *chuckle* :)
:
: ok, I'm done.
: Earendil
:
:
: ps
: I'm not saying I want the whole game to be like this, hell
: no. I just want to see it once or twice for one simple
: reason, it'd be hella fun :)