In the level “Midnight”, Cortana notes that the nuke wouldn’t do any good to stop the Didact unless that pesky shield of his was down. Why is that? The shield appeared to cover only a small portion of the Composer. It would have destroyed the rest of the Mantle’s Approach, making the Composer utterly useless to the Didact as he floats and sputters around in space, his ship destroyed. Using the nuke to destroy Mantle’s Approach, but not the Composer, would still theoretically have been effective, right?
The Composer doesn’t need the rest of the ship to work. Unless the Composer itself is destroyed, it would continue Composing.
> The Composer doesn’t need the rest of the ship to work. Unless the Composer itself is destroyed, it would continue Composing.
How do you know that? I believe you are simply assuming.
The nuclear explosion would create such a force that it would destroy the ship, send its pieces in many different directions, and either cause that shield of the Didact’s to fail, or send it flying off in space, along with the Composer itself. The thing is useless to the Didact if he has no means of transporting, steadying, and aiming it.
> > The Composer doesn’t need the rest of the ship to work. Unless the Composer itself is destroyed, it would continue Composing.
>
> How do you know that? I believe you are simply assuming.
>
> The nuclear explosion would create such a force that it would destroy the ship, send its pieces in many different directions, and either cause that shield of the Didact’s to fail, or send it flying off in space, along with the Composer itself. The thing is useless to the Didact if he has no means of transporting it.
I know because it Composed a group of scientists who were studying it on Ivanoff station.
The shield was most likely being generated from the inside, otherwise it would have been a lot easier to deactivate. While the nuke is powerful, Forerunner shielding is also powerful. While we don’t know specifics, it is very possible that it would have stayed up. After all, the harldight bridge did so. Either way, better safe than sorry.
> > > The Composer doesn’t need the rest of the ship to work. Unless the Composer itself is destroyed, it would continue Composing.
> >
> > How do you know that? I believe you are simply assuming.
> >
> > The nuclear explosion would create such a force that it would destroy the ship, send its pieces in many different directions, and either cause that shield of the Didact’s to fail, or send it flying off in space, along with the Composer itself. The thing is useless to the Didact if he has no means of transporting it.
>
> I know because it Composed a group of scientists who were studying it on Ivanoff station.
>
> The shield was most likely being generated from the inside, otherwise it would have been a lot easier to deactivate. While the nuke is powerful, Forerunner shielding is also powerful. While we don’t know specifics, it is very possible that it would have stayed up. After all, the harldight bridge did so. Either way, better safe than sorry.
I assumed you meant it still would have went about digitizing the population of New Phoenix - not that the Composer in general doesn’t need the ship to function. That much is illustrated in Halo: Primordium.
In this case, the Didact still would have lost control of the device and been sent careening off into space. The shielding could possibly have sustained the force, but the laws of physics still would have applied to it, and the force or the debris would have been the end of that.
Additionally, UNSC Infinity was standing by to pick off what remained after the explosion.
Better safe than sorry indeed. But it seems like sometimes these people just forget fundamental things like physics in order to make the plot more epic.
> I assumed you meant it still would have went about digitizing the population of New Phoenix - not that the Composer in general doesn’t need the ship to function. That much is illustrated in Halo: Primordium.
>
> In this case, the Didact still would have lost control of the device and been sent careening off into space. The shielding could possibly have sustained the force, but the laws of physics still would have applied to it, and the force or the debris would have been the end of that.
>
> Additionally, UNSC Infinity was standing by to pick off what remained after the explosion.
>
> Better safe than sorry indeed. But it seems like sometimes these people just forget fundamental things like physics in order to make the plot more epic.
I did. The only real thing that was essential to the Composer outside of the shields was the means of transport of the Compose souls, which disabling wouldn’t really help. We don’t know for sure that it would continue, but logic tells us it would.
Not necessarily. The Didact’s ship had multiple, at least 3, artifacts on board; we find an artifact of the same type in Spartan Ops which teleports Glassman and Thorne as well as serves as a slipspace anchor. If the Didact had one such device inside the shield, which would be smart of him to do, it wouldn’t have moved. If the shield survived the blast from the nuke, the same nuke which can destroy entire cities among other things, Infinity wouldn’t really be much effect against it.
Considering it took the Infinity months to move the Composer to Ivanoff from Installation 03, or that planet, it may have a way of anchoring itself in space, much like the artifact.
So then it all comes down to whether or not the Composer was able to anchor itself to Earth. I have to admit, that actually seems very likely. To get a clear, continuous shot from orbit, you’d have to be steady. Anchoring seems like a likely way.
I was under the impression that the composer wasn’t as strong as the ship and could be destroyed more easily, and that it let off an even more powerful wave when destroyed which is what took care of the ship. Not that I have any evidence mind you.