Examining an irrational mind is a pretty fruitless task, but I need to ask what the Ur-Didact’s plan was with his Promethean Knights.
Silentium showed us that the Forerunner situation at the end of the war with the Flood was far more dire than had been presented previously. The galaxy was effectively lost, with only scattered fleets remaining within. The Flood fleets seemed to number in the millions, and could use the Precusor Star Roads to quite literally destroy planets.
So, what exactly could the new composed Prometheans and humans do, if anything? We saw in the terminals that a single Knight is capable of destroying a Flood infested ship, but that couldn’t possibly happen every time a ship was boarded, and the action also costs the Knight its “life”. In order for the plan to be viable, the Ur-Didact would need millions, or possibly billions, of Knights (numbers he would be able to get) and would have to have powerful fleets, capable of delivering them to the enemy. That in itself would create problems, given the delays that are a direct result of moving large vessels through Slipspace, and the fact that the Flood also are able to infect that dimension.
There would also have been the danger that Promethean Knights would be susceptible to the Logic Plague, the aforementioned Star Roads, and the sheer number of Combat Forms and fleets the Gravemind(s) had available to throw at the Ur-Didact’s new forces.
With all this in mind, how could this plan possibly hope to succeed?
They couldn’t, at least in my opinion. The Flood will always have superior numbers and the introduction of the Precursor artifacts wreaking the Forerunner offenses and defenses sealed the deal. Given time, I have no doubts the Logic Plague would’ve influenced the Prometheans as well.
In regards to the logic plague, perhaps it does not affect Composed AI. Just a thought.
Other than that, perhaps it was always a bad plan, but he never saw that because of Flood madness. The Gravemind probably put the rather Floodish “convert sentients into [insert unnatural state here]” concept into his head. Like you said, “irrational mind”. He was insane at that point.
> In regards to the logic plague, perhaps it does not affect Composed AI. Just a thought.
Perhaps. This is a question I really would like answered in the future. Does the plague affect all AI, or only ones who can be considered ‘smart’? And how did Offensive Bias avoid falling to it?
> In regards to the logic plague, perhaps it does not affect Composed AI. Just a thought.
>
> Other than that, perhaps it was always a bad plan, but he never saw that because of Flood madness. The Gravemind probably put the rather Floodish “convert sentients into [insert unnatural state here]” concept into his head. Like you said, “irrational mind”. He was insane at that point.
That’s why I said given time they might’ve found a way. Theoretically, maybe it would’ve infected Watchers and Crawlers, mutate and then work its way to the Knights.
The logic plague cant affect the Promethean Knights because they arent true AI. There is no higher thought process for the plague to infect, and therefore the Prometheans would be, in essence, immune to it.
We dont know for sure if a Promethean Knight can ever actually be killed. It would seem sort of asinine as a strategy to sacrifice one of your extremely limited number of soldiers to destroy a single enemy craft when the enemy is potentially endless in number. We dont know how the Prometheans were able to destroy the infected ship(s) in the terminal, but even if the Promethean had to sacrifice its body to cause the explosion I doubt the essence inside the body was destroyed.
I found myself asking this same question after finishing Silentium though. What was the UrDidacts end game? The Promethean Knights couldnt have destroyed the Star Roads or any other Precursor technology, so even if he could destroy the organic matter of the Flood, he still loses. It doesnt really make a whole lot of sense, and even in such a corrupted state of mind im sure the UrDidact could have seen that.
Sort of lends itself to support my conspiracy theory imo, but who knows. Now that the Forerunner Saga is over and done with, we can only hope to get these dots connected in the next game.
Other than the Didact’s irrational actions, the only way that Knigths would make any sort of sense is if they can be revived in a safe area once they fall in combat.
Although they is only ever one of an ‘individual’ knight, but an unlimited number of replacment bodies. The important part of the Promethean being the ‘soul’.
It would make sense why Gek would be concerned at the loss of a soul as that would represent a true loss of a promethean and it would make them superior to mass sentinel in both terms of quality and true losses.
So in theory at least the Knights would make sense, an army immune to infection(and possibly logic plague), that can defeat the flood without swelling flood ranks from losses, and is essentially immortal. Prometheans could have worked earlier in the war, but as the war drew to a close and star roads became a factor and the infection had already reached a critical mass.
It never had any hope of success, but the Didact was already losing his mind at that point. Hell, the Gravemind ate him up and spit up him back out, but kept his sanity with him. It’s obvious even in the Terminals that the Didact isn’t thinking clearly.
The Prometheans were a mistake, a grave mistake. A hopeless plan to fight a hopeless war. The Prometheans were never depicted as being the “correct” choice of action anyway, and their creation in terms of the story doesn’t serve as an alternative to Halo, but to show the degraded moral compass of the forerunners, what the Flood/Precursors turned them into, or at least turned Didact into.
They’re merely a mistake born of desperation, not a truly viable plan.
The Didact was aware that only the halo’s could destroy the staroads. We don’t know the offensive capabilities of the shield worlds but perhaps they had something of the like.
The didact was pretty much insane at that point. The gravemind addled his mind and made him think of nothing but war and revenge strength. He had abandoned the original concepts of the mantle and now thought that it was never for the noble, but the strong. Those who took it by whatever means necessary.
He wasn’t really considering whether it would truly work, just that he would do anything other than have the rings fired.
> I suppose a better question to ask is, had his plans been enacted earlier and assuming the Librarian couldn’t come after him, could it have worked?
If they were used in tandem with the older halos (since they fire a beam it seems as opposed to an area pulse) its possible they could have been effectively used to help evactuations/protect halos while they charged, since their immune to any ‘friendly fire’ side effects.
Of course, this assumes composed beings are immune to the logic plague, the didact wanted to work in tandem with the halos, the librarian didn’t stop him, this happening sooner, and there being some way to produce sufficient numbers.
I suppose slipspace would also be an issue preventing this force from being too mobile.
It maybe could have worked, but it requires a lot of changes and assumptions to do so. Halo-like weaponry is required for any successful victory in the conflict though, no matter how powerful a fighting force was assembled.
Honestly what really defeated the forerunners was politics and hubris. The tools for victory exist, just they weren’t prepared.
> The Gravemind probably put the rather Floodish <mark>“convert sentients into [insert unnatural state here]”</mark> concept into his head. Like you said, “irrational mind”. He was insane at that point.
Yeah, I always thought that part rather ironic. Silly Didact.
Nah they would never win. That’s like trying to beat the flood with brute strength. It’s just not possible. The flood will always outnumber them and overwhelm them in the end. The didact was insane.
Besides, have you played the third mission in halo 4 on legendary? The mighty knights can’t even stand up to the jackals. And don’t get me started on how easily the elites destroy the knights on that mission. And the flood completely trashes the covenant lol.
The Didacts Shield worlds appear to have been untouched throughout the entire war and even up until now. These would produce massive fleets that could do some real damage but even then I dont know if that would be enough to stop the the flood infected fleets and the A.I controlling these ships would be suceptible to the logic plauge as well.
This however makes the plan look at least a little more realistic and worth trying.
> Shield worlds.
>
> The Didacts Shield worlds appear to have been untouched throughout the entire war and even up until now. These would produce massive fleets that could do some real damage but even then I dont know if that would be enough to stop the the flood infected fleets and the A.I controlling these ships would be suceptible to the logic plauge as well.
>
> This however makes the plan look at least a little more realistic and worth trying.
The star roads would just come and crush them. They were largely untouched likely because they were largely unused.
Since the flood seemed to be changing slipspace, I think drawing attention to the ones that work as ‘slipspace havens’ would probably end badly.
Before Silentium’s revelation of the star roads and such I could see it maybe being a possibility.
> Nah they would never win. That’s like trying to beat the flood with brute strength. It’s just not possible. The flood will always outnumber them and overwhelm them in the end. The didact was insane.
>
> Besides, have you played the third mission in halo 4 on legendary? The mighty knights can’t even stand up to the jackals. And don’t get me started on how easily the elites destroy the knights on that mission. And the flood completely trashes the covenant lol.
Gameplay != Cannon. Also, the prometheans still tend to deadlock things or win when I play.
Well, from what I understand, maybe they wouldn’t be vulnerable to the Logic Plague because they’re a composed being rather than an artificial intelligence. They wouldn’t be vulnerable to Flood Infection either because they’re not organic. I doubt they feel any emotions either. They feel no fear. I suppose they’re the better parts of a Forerunner Warrior and AI controlled combat unit.
But like most people have mentioned, I still don’t understand how the Didact would have won the war with them. Maybe he hoped he would have the numbers after he composed the Humans of Omega Halo.
Yeesh, its crazy that so many of you cant seem to figure out that the logic plague cannot affect Promethean Knights because they have no intelligence for the plague to corrupt. While in the combat chasis, they show no signs of advanced intellect, and are more in line with combat robots than any artificial intelligence that we’ve seen. They may be created from the composed minds of intelligent creatures, but that intelligence is not housed within the construct itself.