Those dumb Covenant, picking over Forerunner artefacts for five thousand years, and they didn't even get close to figuring out as much about Forerunner technology as we have in the past twenty-five years. Hell, the Huragok got stupid standing in the same room as them for too long, because the Covenant Engineers not as AWESOME as the ones that were handed over to us when we found the Onyx Shield World!

I can't believe that those hingeheads made it into orbit on their own... wait, they did?

And man, it's amazing how easy it is to upgrade spaceship components to Covenant/Forerunner specifications. No worries about backwards compatibility, power draw or any of that engineering crap. And hey, there are no mysteries in Slipspace. All you have to do to go faster is install a more powerful Slipspace engine, like dropping the engine from a Caparo T1 into an old Model A.

Oh yeah, we're just a race of Mary Sues, aren't we? Humanity, F$#k yeah!

: I'm trying to figure out how much of that was Forerunner
: and how much was reverse-engineered Covie tech.

: Basically, is there any technology that we've seen from the Covenant which
: humanity isn't now also capable of creating?

Teleporting.
Grav lifts.
Plasma weaponry.
Twenty-seven kilometer long carriers.

Wouldn't be surprised if the vast majority of their technology outperformed UNSC equivalents.