: Personally, I wouldn't trust Covenant tech or even materials any farther than
: I could throw them (and I don't have a lot of arm strength), until they're
: understood down to a sub-microscopic level. Who knows what kind of
: tracking devices might be in them, or what kind of tracking devices the
: Covenant might have that can home in on those materials?

The Covenant already have Luminaries. If the UNSC hasn't figured out that the Covenant can track humans through several layers of armored plating or tell the difference between cargo ships carrying loads of refugees and that same model of cargo ship carrying decoys, they aren't paying attention.

The risk of tracking devices on the weapons themselves is a good reason to not bring them home, but it's not much of a danger in battle. Especially not in urban warfare, when forces are intermingled.

I suppose it's possible for a tracking signal on the weapons to broadcast their lot number, which would tell listeners that weapons from previous battles are showing up to the fight. There's no reason for the Covenant not to do that, but there's also no reason for them not to lock the weapons down so they can only be used by Covenant races, ala District 9.

: Who knows when they'll start producing massive amounts of radiation
: (because it seems like most Covenant tech does at one point or another)?

It's the twenty-sixth century. The UNSC medical corps has a pill for that.

: I got the impression from Spartan Ops that really the UNSC didn't understand
: what they did with the Infinity that well, especially if you count out Dr.
: Halsey.

Yeah, it's nice to see 343i walk back some of the wank from the Kilo-5 Trilogy,

: That was definitely one of the driving forces, but I wouldn't nail down ST:
: TOS as being "issues fiction dressed as sci-fi". Anyone remember
: "Catspaw"?

I don't know TOS episodes by their title.
*Googles*

Oh, right, that one.

: hahah, you're a genre hipster :p
: I'm mostly kidding of course, you like what you like for your own reasons,
: and that's fine

Pfft. Just because I like my music so far underground that the only recordings available are seismograph bootlegs from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, doesn't make me a hipster.

Heh. I'll cop to some a lot of hipster-like traits, but my recent bitching has more to do with how boring Halo's recent story has been to me. I don't want novelty for novelty's sake, I just think that abandoning the safe territory trodden by Star Wars/Trek could lead to better storytelling.