I think there are many flaws with Covenant ship design. So much so that they'd be better off with simply taking armor, armaments, crew integration, maneuvering, power, shielding, and slipspace data. Human ships, with the exception of absurdly large passage ways everywhere, are built with practicality in mind. No curved surfaces or angular and curved spaces. Very conservative and efficient. The UNSC has great designs that would only get better with advanced technologies.

Basically, I misremembered and thought that you were talking about the large interior spaces in Covenant warships, among other things.

: In any case, the Covenant can undoubtebly
: afford all the space in the world aboard their vessels. Not only do they
: have a seemingly endless surplus of resources and material to allow for
: it, but it's also a necessity with such large species in their ranks like
: the Sangheili, Jiralhanae, Huragok, and Mgalekgolo.

: Aboard UNSC ships I think the opposite needs to apply. The UEG likely doesn't
: have a fraction of the raw materials the Covenant can acquire and refine
: for shipbuilding. To cut down on costs, labor, and to ration materials to
: make as many hulls as possible, their guts need to be more like a modern
: CVN than a cruise liner. The only spaces that need large passageways are
: where you'd need to transfer munitions, material, and supplies.

Oh, no no no no. Speaking as a former mechanic who has had to move heavy machinery from one side of a processing plant to the other, you want those wide open spaces so you have room to work and transport replacement machinery. The more bottlenecks wider than a forklift by a scant few centimeters you have, the slower repairs and maintenance will go.

Picture the Pillar of Autumn's hallways. Now imagine a forklift or a Cyclops moving through them. They're actually kind of undersized.

As for materials constraints... I almost wonder if the hard limit on the number of ships the UNSC could field during the war was the production of Slipspace drives. You could train hundreds of thousands of crewmen and build two ships from the materials that go into a Marathon Cruiser, but neither is getting nowhere without an FTL engine.

: Imagine how harder it would have been for the Covenant to board Pillar of
: Autumn and harass her Marine detachment if the bulkheads were designed
: with average sized Humans in mind.

She was built pre-war, so I doubt that the McLees Shipyards ever considered a boarding attempt by 8-foot-tall xenosaurians.

That said, I daresay that the Pillar of Autumn was designed in such a way as to make boarding attempts tricky to pull off, regardless of the aggressors' physiology. The large hallways were sectioned off with blast doors that could sequester fires, hull breaches, and boarding parties. Narrow corridors let small repair crews and fireteams bypass the blast doors, and forced the invaders into a bottleneck.

This wasn't used in-game because... um... those corridors are boring to fight through?

: As for the Longswords, her design came pre-war when these birds were likely
: used for long-range intercepts, patrols, and bombing missions. Basic
: accommodations would keep crews sharp, motivated, and ready to perform
: their duties. I know that the B-2 Spirit stealth bomber, similar in size
: and mission to the Longsword, has similar features. Spirits include a
: head, a bunk, and an oven to prepare small meals. Generally the B-2 will
: fly from their bases in the Midwest directly to their assigned area of
: operations like Afghanistan, Diego Garcia, Guam, Iraq, South Korea,
: Taiwan, etc.

It kind of raises the question of what the Longsword's primary role is. I could imagine a Longsword variant for fighting warships where the cockpit (And the weak, slow, pulsing meatsacks inside) are replaced by an armored autopilot. The Longsword saves on weight, can accelerate faster without breaking something critical in the meat-machines, and you can launch waves upon waves of them into the open maw of a Covenant point-defense system without sacrificing a trained pilot.

: Oh, no doubt about that. I'm just saying that he seems to take over the stick
: when any other Spartan would have probably let Cortana take over the
: controls.

The only time I can think of where the Chief put himself in the pilot seat in lieu of Cortana is in Halo 4, when he flew the Broadsword. She piloted the Lich earlier, and demonstrated quite clearly that she was in no condition to drive.