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And what would become of a Star Destroyer if a Cruiser could get above it and activate the Cleansing Beam?

Link to this file: (file removed) This story is officially dead. Don't expect any more. Planet U: One of the unique planets known to be a “vessel planetâ€: these planets' surfaces are barren, and life gets more and more plentiful as you reach the hollow core. Their unusual shape, combined with their mysterious abundance of energy crystals makes them an amazing subject for research. While little is still known of these vessel planets, there is a team known as the Rock Raiders who dedicate themselves to exploring these strange worlds. Their last visit to Planet U left them stranded- witness to a civilization in ruin, where the remaining clans fighting over the crystal caches of the world: the very key to their survival- and the Raiders’. Although they managed to escape the planet, it wasn’t long before a return voyage was planned. However, Planet U has seen a lot of changes recently. After the Rock Raiders team discovered it as a rich source for energy crystals, word managed to spread quickly, and as they prepared for their return trip they were to be followed by many other teams just waiting to get their hands on the planet’s crystal bounty. And while the Raiders now have to face massive amounts of competition, no situation could be as horrible as that faced by the planet's natives, with what caches they could rummage together after the last invasion being hunted by new groups of explorers. Luckily for them, they’ll soon be given the chance to fight back… Author's comments are in red.

This isn't hunting. This is ridding the world of an annoying meme.

This is good. I like that cannon thing especially.

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After extensive analysis and consideration, I have drawn up the following in an attempt to compare the military power of two standard ships from both universes. I think all would agree, including Halopedia, that the Covenant ship-of-the-line, the mainstay warship most commonly utilized and present within the Covneant navy, is the CSS-class Battlecruiser. The counter part for the Impeial Navy (and I choose the Empire here over the Rebel Alliance et al because the presented hypothetical dealt with Coruscant and it is also the government with the most capable military) would be the Imperial-class Star Destroyer. The pairing is appropriate because each is approximately the same size; the Star Destroyer exactly a mile long and the Battlecruiser only slightly longer. I would first note that the complement of a Covenant CSS-class Battlecruiser (referred hereafter as Covenant battlecruiser) is listed as having "several" pulse laser turrets and plasma torpedo launchers. I take the usage of several to be less than many but more than a handful so probably no more than 10 but certainly no more than 15 or 20. A decent armament, especially where the UNSC is concerned. An Imperial I-class Star Destroyer (henceforward, Star Destroyer) has a more varied complement, but a number of 60 heavy turbolaser cannons and 6 heavy turbolaser turrets (it's heaviest weaponry). It certainly seems to out-gun a battlecruiser in terms of numbers but that's without consideration of the power of each weapon. While there is quite a bit of literature on the power of Star Wars lasers, the same cannot be said for the Halo universe so I am forced here to use admittedly less than perfect means to compare. However, I think once we've delved in you will see that an extensive analysis of Covenant weaponry is unneeded. Let us begin. If you visit the page dedicated to MAC cannons and their rounds, there are footnotes relating to the power of the rounds themselves, 1.17 Teratons for the standard MAC defense platform. This is a huge amount of power which I'm going to dismiss because it is extremely unrealistic even given the context of the canon. I will quote a point given by user Quakeomaniac to demonstrate this: "Here's why 1.17 teratons is completely...unrealistic: the covenant supercruiser of FoR took 3 MAC hits to its shield, and it didn't fail. That would be equal to 1.17*3=3.51 teratons of kinetic energy dissipated. The largest nuclear weapon ever detonated was the Tsar Bomba in 1961, at 50 megatons. Thus, the supercruiser's shield should have absorbed over 70000 times the energy of the world's most powerful nuclear weapon, which itself had a power output of 1.4% of the sun." Point being, it seems unlikely that the realistic technological capacity of the Covenant allows them to produce shields that could withstand even 1% of a star's output. Please read the discussion if you would so choose. Because of this, I will not be able to use MAC rounds as a comparative tool, which is unfortunate given that one round from a Super MAC canon can drop the shields of a battlecruiser. Let us then analyze another source, specifically the Deliver Hope trailer for Halo: Reach. In it, a Spartan throws a Fury tactical nuclear weapon into the primary hanger bay via the gravity lift. When the bomb detonates, the battlecruiser's shields collapse and the ship is destroyed. From what I can see in the trailer (as I haven't played the game), the ship appears to intact and its shields not damaged. There is no ground or orbital fire directed toward it and its shields are not shimmering (prior to the explosion). I would conclude from this that the ship was generally in good shape. When the device explodes, the primary explosion can be seen emitting directly above the hanger bay. I would suspect tha the shield generator was not located in that region and thus the shields collapsing was in a large part due to the energy output at that specific location. Notice that the shields covering other areas of the ship do not collapse. Some nearby do shimmer and wave but they hold. It seems that the blast from the bomb "punched a hole" through the shields directly above the hanger. I am assuming that Covenant shields prevent matter and energy from passing through from both sides though, so that the shields operated as they normally would from outside fire in this instance. Considering that the shields of the battlecruiser were most likely at or near full, an energy output of 63 terajoules (TJ), the yield of the nuclear device used, is sufficient to collapse the shields of a Covenant battlecruiser at the impact site. As mentioned before, extensive analysis of Star Wars weapons have been done and it has been concluded that a light turbolaser cannon commonly deployed by a Star Destroyer has a lower energy yield of 250 TJ. I had Addict run the same calculations done on the site and his results concurred with the original findings. Therefore, I am confident in this representation of turbolaser power. Given that this value is for light turbolaser cannons, one would be safe to assume that the power outputted by heavy turbolaser cannons is far greater than 250 TJ. The point is this: because 63 TJ is sufficient to temporarily collapse the shields of a Covenant battlecruiser, a light turbolaser cannon would therefore be able to do comparable if not significantly more damage to the battlecruiser's shields. From this analysis we can see that an Imperial Star Destroyer is far more than a match for a Covenat battlecruiser. Extrapolating these results we could postulate that the higher class Imperial warships (Super-class and above) would have no problem dealing with even Covenant carriers and supercarriers. It stands to reason then that the Imperial military would win quite handedly in any military engagement or war. (This is all I can do for tonight. I mean to go back to the discussion MAC thread and use the findings there to see if I can use MAC round yields as an even better comparison tool, as I think it is more useful than a bomb inside a cruiser, not that it should be discounted.)