What happened to the Halo rings being hollow?

I should preface this post by saying I’m not complaining here. This is a genuine lore question.

> The Covenant did a thorough seismic scan. My analysis shows that Halo is honeycombed with deep tunnels… which circle the whole ring.

The hexagonal walls on the edges of Zeta Halo’s fractured islands look pretty cool, in my opinion. I like how they resemble artificial versions of the actual salt pillars found on many of Earth’s coastlines. With that being said, however, why do they encompass the entirety of the ring’s metal frame? These installations are supposed to be hollow. The idea of Halos housing millions of tunnels that turn the interior of the rings into labyrinths is so cool to me, and I was really hoping that we’d someday get to see this expanded upon in a future game (CE barely scratched the surface of this idea’s potential). Outpost Discovery added even more depth to the ring, showing us a deep look inside of how the Sentinels travel across the installations. I hope there’s an explanation for the design change in Infinite. Maybe once the ring ‘heals’ itself, it begins to automatically carve tunnels into the metal? I honestly have no clue, although that would be pretty cool too.

Why can’t there be both though?

the rings are at least 22 km thick, the pillars are only there to support the land masses. There is plenty of room for the network of tunnels still.

I don’t think anything we’ve seen in screenshots contradicts the fact that big tunnel networks could still exist. Some screenshots even show the hexagons creating overhangs which, to me implies the ability for tunnels to exist for sure.

> 2533274866989456;3:
> the rings are at least 22 km thick, the pillars are only there to support the land masses. There is plenty of room for the network of tunnels still.

Holy crap, I knew they were thick but that’s just thiccc.