Ugh, reading the wrong dimension out of Halopedia. My point stands though.

: On the gripping hand, the Galactic Empire was a galaxy-spanning polity, with
: all the resources and production capability that implies.

Seems ridiculous on its face, given that we see no advanced ability to actually manufacture those ships. The Forerunner have hard light and Constructors. Things like the Death Stars and their most massive ships we're talking about orders of material larger than you'll find in a given system. But then again the "Star Wars is massive" trend continues to its ridiculous population and settlement stats. Wookiepeedia apparently gives a stat of 50 million inhabited systems. But perhaps this is more wrong with me, and stuff being all beyond comprehension given our current technical development (although then I'd say if you can do all that wondrous tech society would probably be unrecognizable to us as well, and then you get into the whole limits of sci-fi conversation.)

: There were "army hiding canopies" that hid the presence of Covenant
: troops from orbiting satellites. Whatever the Covenant were using on
: Reach, it went far beyond the performance we've seen from their active
: camouflage.

: I think that the Long Night of Solace and her fleet were loaded to the gills
: with Forerunner artefacts, which also explains where that teleportation
: technology comes from. The camouflage was probably Dazzler technology. The
: relics that created the dazzling effect initially hid the Long Night of
: Solace as it entered Reach's atmosphere, and then they were transferred to
: the teleportation spires to create the army hiding canopy. That's why LNoS
: only appeared after at least one of the spires was taken out.

: The scheme with the dazzlers and the army hiding canopies is overkill against
: UNSC forces, but I always thought that the LNoS was meant to hide from
: other Covenant forces. I think that the whole fleet was assembled by one
: of the Hierarchs to steal artefacts out from under the noses of the other
: two.

An interesting bit of head-canon. Fleet Battles and the like seems like the only thing that even remotely touches on that, though. Though I wouldn't put it past a Hierarch then you have to wonder how they are able to field that large a force without everyone else knowing. Just goes to show you we still sorely need more information about the exact political setup of the Covenant and its jurisdictions (said no one else besides me, probably.)