I was trying to find out how long it would take the Covenant to glass a planet from orbit. I understand they also glassed planets from sub-orbit but that takes exponentially longer. Anybody have any canon data?
I would say it depends on the size of the fleet.
I have no idea how long it would take for one ship, but I heard a theory that the Covenant might only glass settlements and the surrounding area because there is just so much surface on a planet that a fleet would be wasted glassing it and it would take years to cover the entirety of every landmass as well as the seas.
That said, I also get the impression that the whole point of glassing was to completely purge what the covenant view as a -Yoink!- from any given world, wanting to make the whole surface unlivable.
EDIT:
Looking at the short story/motion comic The Return, the surface of Kholo doesn’t look to be entirely glass.
Maybe in wartime they only destroy settlements for the sake of efficiency, still making a religious statement (like carving the glyph for ‘faith’ into the surface) but they’d purge the entire surface if they had the resources to spare.
The whole planet I think they said was weeks months or even years,I could’ve sworn I read that in one of the books
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> The whole planet I think they said was weeks months or even years,I could’ve sworn I read that in one of the books
Thanks for the clarification! Much appreciated!
I think it depends on the size of the planet and the number of ships you have.
One thing that it’s important to note is that they don’t individually target every single part of the planet - they rely on the massive AoE from the cleansing beam to do the best they can to get the largest area, by overlapping areas on the edge of a particular ship’s AoE. They tend to complete the effect by carving a massive rune into the surface of the planet, too, and this is often done in-person with the beam being directly controlled by the fleet’s commanding officer.
it depends on the size of the fleet and the size of the planet but I’m sure it was pretty rapid maybe a week at the most, because certain parts of reach and other planets were so inhabited that there is no point in glassing them.
The Covenant’s weapons are highly variable, and the same weapon can slowly cut its way through a city’s underground in search of Forerunner structures (such as the CCS’s glassing beams uncovering the Portal in Halo 3), and can turn an acre of city or even cliffs into a literal puddle (again, a CCS’s glassing beam in Mortal Dictata).
Master Chief observed Jericho 7 being glassed by a mere 36 ships in an hour (at the beginning of the novel Fall of Reach). Unfortunately, we don’t know how thorough this glassing was (given that Meridian in Halo 5 was roasted pretty good, and it was considered a “rushed job”).
Let’s refer back to the Data Pads from Reach. This is second half with the relative information in it.
> A single Covenant capital ship (CCS-class) is capable of ‘glassing’ approximately one acre of a planet’s surface after an average of fifteen seconds of sustained fire. Understandably this action takes considerably less time when applied to open desert, and considerably longer when applied to deep ocean (> 1.8 km) [^]
> [^] Earth, one of the smaller planets inhabited by our creators, has one hundred and thirty billion acres of surface area. Thus, assuming the Covenant possesses a number of ships equal to that of the UNSC, and assuming that all of those ships are capable of generating and discharging the required power non-stop for the duration of the process, it would necessitate the combined efforts of their ships in toto for a minimum of 30.3801 years to ‘glass’ the entire surface of Earth. Myriad other variables which were not applied to this equation suggest this number would be far greater.
“Glassing a planet can take a great deal of time, dependent upon both the tonnage and class of the vessels involved and how many ships are within the fleet. It could take as little as two days[8] or as much as two weeks[9] or longer to complete the process. While partial glassing can be accomplished in a matter of days, covering the entire surface area to the last centimeter would take a prohibitive amount of time. The Assembly believed that, were the Covenant to commit thousands of ships to the task, it would have taken them around thirty years to completely glass Earth alone; Earth’s relatively small size, along with a myriad of other factors, would likely cause the thorough glassing of larger planets to take even longer.”
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> Let’s refer back to the Data Pads from Reach. This is second half with the relative information in it.
>
>
> > A single Covenant capital ship (CCS-class) is capable of ‘glassing’ approximately one acre of a planet’s surface after an average of fifteen seconds of sustained fire. Understandably this action takes considerably less time when applied to open desert, and considerably longer when applied to deep ocean (> 1.8 km) [^][^] Earth, one of the smaller planets inhabited by our creators, has one hundred and thirty billion acres of surface area. Thus, assuming the Covenant possesses a number of ships equal to that of the UNSC, and assuming that all of those ships are capable of generating and discharging the required power non-stop for the duration of the process, it would necessitate the combined efforts of their ships in toto for a minimum of 30.3801 years to ‘glass’ the entire surface of Earth. Myriad other variables which were not applied to this equation suggest this number would be far greater.
That datapad is from the beginning of a the war and the calculation given was for CCS Battlecruisers to turn an entire planet into a molten puddle with their glassing beams. But the Covenant didn’t use only the glassing beams, doing most of the job with their Plasma Cannons, allowing them to melt more of the planet’s surface at a time, but not as thoroughly. Take the planet Reach as an example, the glassing beams cut a grid into the planet, which I assume was for some sort of mapping system, and the plasma cannons took care of the rest.
And again, Master Chief observed Jericho 7 being glassed by 36 ships in an hour. This may have been a rushed job like Meridian, but it shows that it doesn’t take the Covenant anywhere near 30 years to make a planet resemble a giant glassy pearl.
I believe the “Assembly” responsible for the datapad suggesting 30 years for thousands of ships is just evidence that they canonically had no idea what the Covenant was capable of.
I don’t think Covenant has ever directly glassed the whole surface area of a planet. Why do you ask though? You aren’t planning anything are you?
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> I don’t think Covenant has ever directly glassed the whole surface area of a planet. Why do you ask though? You aren’t planning anything are you?
No, I’m not planning anything at all! Pay no attention to my Kig-Yar friends or that battle cruiser parked behind us. By the way, could you give me directions to Earth?
I have no idea because Glassed planets have bad records.