How is the UEG not bankrupt from the human covenant war? The reason I ask this is because how are they able to afford new warships despite losing so many
Colonies you would think that they would cut back on warship production but just upgrade their old ships and just focus on the economy.
Because 343i has a terrible writing team. There is absolutely NO WAY that the UNSC/UEG should be in any shape to be doing the types of operations and interstellar diplomacy/big stick waving only four years after a one sided campaign of genocide that wiped out every colony and the vast majority of mankind’s military save for what was stationed around Earth. You DON’T rebound from that, the Infinity (no matter how much they want to retcon it’s existence in) should not exist, the UNSC/UEG/ONI should not be in any position to say ‘we are the giants now’ and go stomping around the galaxy like we own the place.
Humanity did NOT win the Human-Covenant War. We LOST the war, our military was broken and our homeworld occupied by the Covenant. Had Truth not been so focused on finding the Ark and firing the Halo Array the Covenant would have glassed Earth and everyone would be dead. We survived because Truth went mad with power and made a series of very large, very poor mistakes (starting with removing the Elites from their positions within the Covenant and promoting the Brutes) that caused him and the Covenant to lose. Had he been a little more focused, we’d all be dead save for a handful of prisoners needed to activate the Array and then EVERYONE not on the Ark would have died.
There is absolutely no possible way, and it speaks to how poorly 343i has been run since they took over, that the story should have been allowed to be restarted the way it was in Halo 4.
Best argument I can make for explaining this is that the UNSC was able to capitalise on the resources of all their colonies while liquidating a lot of the Covenant technology they were able to get their hands on. Chances are they probably militarised their economy as well.
It helps that they acquired a treasure trove of Forerunner technology in the form of Onyx along with Engineers who are incredibly effective at innovating and managing all forms of tech.
This particular aspect of both Spartan Ops and the Kilo-5 trilogy is what really annoyed me more then anything else.
To put it simply, 343 and Karen Traviss hand-waived the last 30 years and all the logical problems that would transpire from having your industrial heartland, economic infrastructure and population base ripped out from under you because they wanted the UNSC to be on even footing with the Covenant postwar, even though that did not fit with the setting at all. I remember Halo Evolutions and other novels detailing specifically that in addition to having most of their agricultural worlds destroyed, the UNSC was already raiding the pensions pots of UNSC personnel to fund the war. It would be really nice if part of the novels actually dealt with one or both of these issues by perhaps establishing that the UNSC has established some kind of lend-lease policy with the Sangheili, perhaps trading refugees for arable land on Covenant worlds in need of manual labour, but we never anything like this because 343 seemingly did not want to portray the UNSC as being in a position of weakness post war. (Like that’s a bad thing from a story perspective)
The one good thing I would say is that much like the New Republic in Star Wars, when a new narrative seemingly goes out of its way to paint a particular faction or group in a particular light, sometimes its fun disproving that notion when you consider it to be based or a flimsy or downright stupid pretence. In terms of the UNSC supposedly being the new ‘giants of the galaxy’ post war, my argument to this is that this idea is never backed up by hard statistical facts. Pre-war we know the UNSC Navy supposedly numbered around 2000 capital ships, yet despite the UNSC now supposedly controlling a snazzy new fleet of cutting edge warships we only ever see this fleet being deployed alongside Infinity and numbering about 50+ ships. A powerful force yes, but hardly up to the UNSC’s pre war Naval strength. What’s more if you read the Halo Fleet Guide it’s makes it clear the that the UNSC cut all kinds of corner in the construction of these ships. Reading between the lines in Kilo-5, it’s also made clear that post-war the UNSC doesn’t even have the military capacities to keeps its own colonies from declaring independence, let alone court total war with the Covenant’s various successor states.
To put it simply, the UNSC only appeared strong by 2557 because the Covenant was politically fragmented. All it would have taken was a single capable leader such as the Arbiter, Atriox or Jul to unite all those disparate forces and I think the UNSC could have been subdued in less then a year. They number only a few dozen colonies and a few hundred ships at this point. The Covenant united by comparison would consist of thousands of inhabited star systems and potentially millions of warships.
That’s not a conflict the UNSC could ever have won its its current position, which is why ONI’s plan to poison the Sangheili crops then colonise their homeworld and colonies was quite frankly beyond stupid.
Yeah, Id imagine if we stuck a little closer to common sense when writing, we would have a “Halo Wars 2 Sprit of Fire” type situation were all the ships are super old, and battle worn but functional, and where they always must use brains over bronze full of stealth missions to have a chance at survival.
there is one industry type that is booming during war …
Now think what kind of products all arms manufacturers make. If anything was in great shape after the war it is the War industry.
I am sure since the “mainWar” is over that spending will be reduced but the galaxy still wasnt safe you got still risk of insurection , and various covenant groups. There are Halo around the Galaxy that pose a existential threat and so on.
Also i guess a lot of the “new” weaponsystems where for sure partially developed during the Hum-Cov war and i guess many ship parts could be recyceled in the newer ones.
If i would be humanity i would have all the reasons to create a galaxy dominating military so this never happens again.
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> there is one industry type that is booming during war …
> Now think what kind of products all arms manufacturers make. If anything was in great shape after the war it is the War industry.
> I am sure since the “mainWar” is over that spending will be reduced but the galaxy still wasnt safe you got still risk of insurection , and various covenant groups. There are Halo around the Galaxy that pose a existential threat and so on.
> Also i guess a lot of the “new” weaponsystems where for sure partially developed during the Hum-Cov war and i guess many ship parts could be recyceled in the newer ones.
>
> If i would be humanity i would have all the reasons to create a galaxy dominating military so this never happens again.
That’s not how economics or economic recovery works.
If your using the USA post world war 2 as an example, that’s because the USA’s mainland and its economic infrastructure survived WW2 largely unscathed. During and after the war the US exported war materials via lend-lease and billions of dollars worth of exports during the rebuilding of Europe after the war.
This does not apply the UNSC as their economic heartlands at Reach and Earth we’re practically wiped out. Even if they had the ability to manufacture new goods in mass, whose goes to buy them who would not have been buying them before?
Look at the Western European Allies after WW2. Britain, France and the Low Countries were as much the victors in this war as the USA, but having so much of their economic infrastructure destroyed and having to purchase on credit so much from the USA during and after the war left us utterly bankrupt and a result the French and British Empire’s after the war began to disband.
That’s exactly what should be happening the UNSC with its industrial infrastructure and population base being so drastically reduced. Just being on a ‘survival high’ doesn’t magically increase your taxable population, replace key personnel and facilities that have been glassed to ash or restore 600 Outer Colonies with economic infrastructure and populations that can provide you with the raw materials you’ll need to rebuild.
To quote your own post on ‘If I We’re Humanity’, how are you going to reimburse millions of UNSC veterans financially when we know the UNSC used their pension savings to build new Destroyers?
Thats a serious post war problem the UNSC is going to be facing, and probably the least pressing of the UNSC’s concerns post war when you also add the loss of key agricultural and manufacturing worlds, and the surviving colonies actually declaring independence from Earth because the UNSC lacks the military strength to stop them from doing this.
possibly loans, definetly taking direct government control of factories and dockyards and using older easy to produce ships that they know work, and using older guns like the ma5b, shotgun, and rocket launcher, which are a good hundred years old in use. most of their debt is probably because of the spartans. I remember reading that one suit is worth small cruiser or something like that