: That said, the inability to recharge the weapons does place a restriction on
: their deployment, but I figure that the plasma pistol's power and hard
: counter to shields warrants issuing captured plasma pistols as a squad
: support weapon, or perhaps one to each fireteam if stockpiles of captured
: weapons are sufficiently large.

: I want to know in what ways MJOLNIR is improved over Covenant technology,
: because I can actually envision a few scenarios where that is the case. I
: imagine that Covenant technology is powerful, but poorly optimized and
: poorly programmed compared to UNSC technology. The Prophets may be good at
: what they do, they may live for hundreds of years and have centuries more
: experience than their Human counterparts, but there's no way they'd be
: able to match Smart AIs.

: We know that plasma torpedo launchers can be turned into miniature energy
: projectors by an AI like Cortana. What could an AI do with a shield
: system?

From the 3rd Halo 1 Anniversary Terminal, the Covenant have AIs of a sort, and in the novels a Covenant ship intelligence was referred to as an Oracle, but I think the implication was that they may have been composed Forerunners or composed ancient humans. The discussion between the one trapped on the Truth and Reconciliation interrogated by Guilty Spark seems to know its a slave of the Covenant and seems eager for the day the Covenant release the Flood and kill themselves off because than this trapped Oracle will be "free". Not sure what their ability to control aspects of their ship was though.