: Capital ship is an often strained term in scifi and is even applied to fleet
: escorts. An FF or a DD is really only getting the upper hand on a Covenant
: battlecruiser if their actions is extremely swift and violent, such as the
: Keyes Loop.

When was the last time you saw a Covenant Frigate or Corvette called a capital ship?

If the term is up for interpretation, I'll go with the traditional one of capital ships being the primary, most important ships of a navy. We're talking about ships of the line, battleships, aircraft carriers, maybe some kinds of cruisers.

If the guy writing the fluff thought that capital ships included everything down to corvettes and picket ships, and didn't intend for the Strident to solo assault carriers, why didn't he say that the Strident-class could go toe to toe with "Smaller Covenant warships"?

: Anyone who doesn't fear Covenant warships by specs alone is a damned fool.

Then 343i has had a lot of fools writing for them.

: That being said, I think a lot of naval officers in the post-war years are
: beginning to see a lot of those advantages in Covenant ship design now as
: a drawback and even as a failure to stand the test of time and a changing
: galaxy. In Shadow of Intent , a CRS nearly bested a CAS, a warship some
: 15 times its size, by exploiting its logistical and personnel
: incapacities, as well as environmental factors.

Said logistical and personnel incapacities existed because the Shadow of Intent was battle-damaged by the Schism, undercrewed, and sent out on a long mission without support. Furthermore, the Prelate lured Rtas into territory with a unique hazard that he was familiar with.

If a lone warship is sent out on an aimless mission in the middle of a civil war, and the powers that be don't bother to staff her with more than a fraction of her intended crew, she is not going to be combat effective. And when she runs up against a wily little snake who knows what he's doing, you don't blame the resulting disaster on poor ship design. You blame the people who sent her out like that in the first place.

That said, I think I enjoyed the scene. For the first time since the Nylund novels, someone acknowledged that Covenant warships have point defense lasers.

: Don't get too down on point defense systems being underestimated. It's a
: scifi staple that integrated air defense networks are knocked out due to
: the shock that an enemy fighter could ever penetrate their engagement
: area.

And then Halo becomes indistinguishable from Star Wars which becomes indistinguishable from Battlestar Galactica which...

I'm tired of seeing science fiction media remake the same five minutes of footage for space combat over and over and over again. Halo has the opportunity to do something unique, and it's almost criminal how the opportunity has been squandered.