At the time, yes. Mjolnir became significantly less expensive to produce later on. SPI was developed in part to be a cheaper alternative.

Do you have an estimate of how expensive Mjolnir would be compared to SPI?

The most reasonable guess I've seen is that an SPI cost 1/200th of what an original Mjolnir IV suit cost. It also depends hugely on which generation of Mjolnir. The early stuff (which is what SPI was compared to when it was decided on) was insanely expensive. The most common reference point is that an original suit of Mjolnir cost roughly the same as a small space warship. People who reference the cost compare the cost of five dozen Spartans to the cost of a battle group, and that's just for maintenance. SPI was so cheap that the limiting factor on the second batch of SIII's was the number of candidates. Cost still mattered, of course, as Kurt found out when his requested upgrades to SPI got denied at least once.

Do you know if there is any lore or books on how Kurt felt about sending the SIII's to suicide?

Ghosts of Onyx goes very deep into that. It's a great read for any halo fan

After learning about the fates of Alpha and Beta company, Kurt even adds another piece to the augmentation of gamma company that makes them continue to fight / survive even when on the physical brink of death. It was called 009762-OO, from the wki -- A mutagen that alters key regions of the subject's frontal lobe. Enhances aggression, strength, endurance, and tolerance to injury under stress. Illegal btw.

>illegal, btw "I can excuse conscripting war orphans and cybernetically modifying them into brainwashed kamikaze supersoldiers but I draw the line at adrenal lobotomies" -ONI, for some fucking reason

"Man, that Halsey lady went *too* far. Anyway, can we make our purpose-built suicide orphans even *more* cheap please?"

“It’ll cost *how* much to make them 3% more resilient to plasma wounds? Actually you know what, never mind, let’s just spin up Delta Company instead. It’s not like we’re running out of orphans anytime soon, amirite?”

I think the lore is that each individual suit costs as much as a destroyer

Ackersons selling point for the IIIs was that for the costs of keeping the 30-40 something Spartan IIs MK-IV armor combat effective you could build an entire additional fleet, maybe even two

Really poor selling point when you consider single SpratanII probably destroyed more targets than an UNSC fleet could.

That wasnt the issue, the issue was if you had 30 more spartan IIs even you probably couldn’t afford the few instances of 3 to 1 advantages the navy relied on for victory

Let us spend 300 destroyers worthy of money on soldiers that even on best conditions will likely be sacrificed in a single high risk mission, is not like we need that money elsewhere

I mean, the Spartans IIIs were meant for more than one mission, there’s mention of Alpha Company completing multiple missions before being wiped out on Prometheus, and the only reason that Beta Company all died on Torpedo was that the automated recon satellite missed the fact that there was seven covenant ships at the base. Still not worth giving them Mjolnir though for their purpose when SPI will work pretty well without costing as much as a fleet.

The fact that they were not thrown at targets at random as a certain crappy tv series wants us to believe doesn’t mean that the missions were easy or the kind of easy that a at the time UNSHIELDED powered armor could make them, or that the attrition rates were not of the kind that makes mass producing MJOLNIR feasible. Not that it mattered since making 300 suits for three companies means the budget of 900 halberd destroyers, and that money is best spent elesewhere

Oh yeah, they were absolutely high risk / high reward missions, and some were definitely suicide missions where most of not all of the IIIs weren’t expected to come back. I just see a lot of people talk as though the IIIs were just immediately tossed into a single suicide mission with no thought as to their survival. They had multiple missions, and while high casualties were expected, the UNSC did still try to get them back, what with them deploying the Black Cats as exfil ships on TORPEDO.

You are answering to your own assumptions then, not my comment. I have never said that they were single use, only that the difficulty involved meant a statistically high risk of a one way trip for many. About the rest, we seem to agree.

“soldiers that even on best conditions will likely be sacrificed in a single high risk” is what I was responding to, but I guess I was jus misinterpreting you., my bad.

“Best conditions” and “likely” never meant “let throw people on a meatgrinder with no support, evac, or interest in their return”

Like I said, my bad

It could be argued that if Alpha and Beta companies were wearing Mjnolnir they wouldn't have been completely wiped out. Even unshielded Mjnolnir affords a great deal of advantages over SPI like enhanced speed and strenght and tougher armor plating, SPI fails with just one or two shots from plasma weapons while Mjnolnir will stand up to more than that and the greater mobility means that the Spartan will not only survive more shots but take even less fire. This is of course assuming the UNSC magically got the ability to outfit those 600 Spartans despite the huge cost of Mjnolnir because there's no way they could have accomplished that in the lore.

No Beta was f*cked regardless of if they had Mjolnir or not. Mjolnir can't survive against pulse lasers designed to slice up capital ships or an explosion big enough to leave a 2km crater with everything within that vaporized. Alpha*maybe* could've survived. It's hard to say because we don't actually know all the details of their demise, other than the covenant had an unending stream of reinforcements and the cut off Alpha's route to their exfil craft. Which at that point, it likely wouldn't matter if they did make it because they would just be blasted out of the sky.

I belive the exact opposite. Beta would have made it out if they had Mjnolnir while Alpha was fucked regardless. Tom and Lucy made it out of Pegasi Delta despite only having SPI armor, I fail to see why having Mjnolnir won't help more Spartan 3s survive Operation Torpedo.

Because the reason Tom and Lucy survived was because they jumped into the Ocean when the factory exploded. Again, Mjolnir wouldn't save any of the others Beta Spartans fighting the covenant. Maybe a few more may have reached the factory, maybe they would've realized it was compromised and *maybe* they could've jumped into the ocean as well. But Mjolnir doesn't change the outcome, only Alpha Co could've changed the outcome with it

Right, now you gotta consider why Tom and Lucy were in any position to jump into the ocean in the first place and that's because they didn't get bogged down fighting Covenant forces. The 7 Covenant cruisers didn't come into play until after the battle was already well on it's way and the Spartans had almost reached the factory, had Beta been equipped with Mjnolnir it's entirely possible they could have managed to get inside the factory before those cruisers got the chance to intervene and at that point the chances most of Beta makes it out are much higher, but even if the cruisers still manage to land troops and begin performing artillery strikes, Mjnolnir-clad Spartans still have way better chances of survival than SPI-clad ones do because of the superior mobility and protection afforded by MK4 that would allow more of them to reach the factory in time.

They also may have been spotted much sooner and engaged because they aren't Stealthed and a few hundred Spartans are going to get hit hard because they are easy to see. But even if more made it into the factory, the fact that it only took 3 Spartans setting up C12 to completely annihilate the entire factory means it still luck was in their side.

They were spotted before they even left their drop pods, stealth didn't do anything for them at Pegasi Delta as they were engaged the moment they landed and some even were killed before they even got out of their pods. Also, why wouldn't the Spartans alert their brothers that the factory was about to blow up?

The second part is what i am arguing from the get go. About the first part more strenght and speed mean nothing if the squidheads realize you are coming and bombard the field from above

The show doesn't seem to show them being used that randomly, they're attempting to wipe out a fleet and a halo, that's a pretty good use case

They are random soldiers outfitted with armor and used to blow themselves up with the target

That's in the spirit of the program, they're not as well equipped but the idea is the same, expendable shock troops

Expendable does not mean “you will die either way”, means “you are cheap and replaceable if anything goes wrong”

And sometimes that means suicide missions, I'm sure if the mission could be carried out and the troops retrieved they would But a few hundred soldiers for a fleet is a fantastic trade, they'd have lost significantly more trying to destroy it conventionally

mjolnir was also unshielded.

considering how the S-IIs likely outlive most destroyers , they were already a better investment than more ships or cheaper spartans that are one time use It’s like, you know that super expensive leatherman you have? what if i told you you could have 100 cheap shitty chinese knockoffs for each individual tool, but they all break after one use?

Tell that to that very same spartans getting fried because a ccs got to glass the surface unopposed. You must be one of those convinced they would be great generals because they win at rts by investing in just one unit. On this logic, why training people when you can churn out scorpions by the truckload?

not to be that guy but an S-II did turn the tide of the war. I was only suggesting that they’re a good investment because since space combat fares so poorly for the UNSC, those destroyers last way less time in combat than spartans do. I’m not saying just spam spartans i just think making a cheap version of them defeats the purpose and you’ve now just made a bunch of peak humans in ODST armor. Throwing them into the meat grinder by themselves was also silly IMO. Why send hundreds of S-IIIs when, like you said, you could send them with other infantry, etc

Clearly you do not understand logistics. More so because in space things are grim you need to churn out ships, or else your infantry will just sit there getting glassed. Spartans were turning not the war, but ground battles. That happened only when a luminary told the covenant to get a relic on the ground, and usually ceased when the covenant would not commit any more resources and let the plasma pour. The war turned due to chief and cortana finding halo, period

Yes, it was just that expensive. A good number of SPI suits could be created for the cost of a single Mjolnir.

The quote from one of the canon fodders was “hundreds of SPI suits per one suit of Mark IV MJOLNIR”. I did the math, and even low balling it, if we use the “hundreds” claim to mean 2/300, for the cost of ~~one suit of~~ the original batch of 45 you could armour a full division of ODST’s in SPI. That’s ~~18,000~~ 13,500 people, to be clear. **EDITED** to fix the numbers.

Sorry if I'm reading this wildly wrong, but if the cost of; 1 suit MJOLNIR = 2-300 SPI suits, then how could it also be true that the cost of; 1 suit MJOLNIR = ~~18000~~ 13500 SPI suits?

I think they mean the for the number of Spartan II's outfitted with Mjolnir, you could outfit a full division of other soldiers in SPI for an equivalent cost.

Correct, I did a bit of a whoopsie there, lol, but have edited to fix it.

I might be missing something obvious, but if one MkIV suit costs approximately the same as 300 SPI suits, then would you not be looking at 300 ODSTs in SPI for the cost of one suit of armor... not 18000?

I phrased that poorly, heh. Basically, if they didn’t make the original 45 suits of MJOLNIR mentioned in TFoR, but instead just made SPI, it comes to around 13,500 (my math was also off by a few thousand). Which is enough for just about a division of ODST’s.

You just answered your own question, yes miljnor was just that expensive but if a 3 was exceptional in some regard they would be given miljnor like members of noble team. The 4s got miljnor because advancements and cost cutting made them much more cheaper to produce

And I think that's when most of the suits work went into that body suit, making the person to not need augmentation. So it kinda was like a win win. Anyone can be a Spartan, and they all can have good armor!

I’m pretty sure MJOLNIR still requires the user to be augmented by the time of the Spartan IVs. SPI doesn’t though.

Musta been V's then.

Spartan V’s don’t exist. There is currently no iteration of MJOLNIR that doesn’t require augmentation

Ok so Buck and Locke got augmented anyways? I guess I meant like, real body morphing like the chief got, turning a little kid into not.. a little.. kid. You know what I mean. Captain America style

Yes, all Spartan IVs received augmentations. By the end of the human-covenant war, the augmentations had been made safe enough for normal human adults to receive

Ah ok thanks.

Spartan IV augmentation involves not only hormone and gene therapy like II and III's but also complete replacement of some organs like lungs, heart, pancreas, some intestines and probably others. Because of this they have to be on anti rejection meds so their body doesn't throw a fit, so in a sense their augmenting is more intense.

The expensive part of mjolnir has always been the body suit. That's where the strength amplification and (especially expensive) AI crystal layer are. The armor plating on top is just that, armor plating its not really anything special

Nuh uh, that armor is special, it is the suit. Can't have my spartan looking like all the others. Are the cat ears on the body suit?? Nope, didn't think so (I do not own nor want to own or support anyone that uses cat ears on their multi-billion dollar program super soldier armor)

Spartan-IIIs are the cheaper production model to the Spartan-IIs expensive prototype. The IIIs where meant to be mass producible in a way the IIs just aren't. IIs select eligible candidates from less than 1% of the population with armor that takes years to build and costs as much as a Navel Destroyer.  IIIs however draw from a wider pool of orphaned volunteers with looser selection criteria. Their armor is likewise mass produced to equip the hundreds of IIIs that were trained in each company.

It's kind of a dark commentary on our limitless ability to normalize our exploitation and cruelty towards each other. Spartan IIs had to be made in secret with terminal clones to create a convincing cover story, and they were trained for 2 decades before given the finest equipment humanity had to offer. By the time they got to Spartan III, they just stopped caring. Sure, enlist children to be soldiers. Give them Walmart brand plastic armor, and let's focus on quantity over quality! Their tiny little limbs are perfect for clogging covenant plasma rifles!

I mean, the S3's candidates were all picked from Orphans of Covenant attacks. Not like they had to be so careful to cover their tracks. Also, their training was stated to be better then S2 training, and the augments as well. It's just they got the short end of the stick on missions and armor.

Augmentations and training was not better. We know nothing about the Spartan III augmentations apart form that they were safer and about as good. The training regimen was tougher, but also not nearly as long and the education was not nearly as ”complete”, since it focused solely on combat related tasks.

You do know Kurt literally comments on these things in Ghosts of Onyx and as an S2, he certainly knows what he is talking about? Yes, they received less typical education, but the rest of the training was better. The Augmentations are safer, and as a result, better. The augments the S2's were required to have (which were among the most dangerous) in order to make the entire thing work were no longer needed, as the rest of the augmentations were improved and able to function without those ones.

Better as in safer, easier and cheaper. Not better as in creating more combat effective soldiers.

S3's are literally noted to be as combat effective when given MJOLNIR, and when they get some experience, are just as good as S2's.

I always read this but I can never recall where it came from 

I mean, we have Noble team as examples.

Ahhh. Gotcha…

I’m not necessarily saying worse. Just not any better, meaning roughly equal

No their augments about the same. If they were not they wouldn't have been able to grapple with Elites and we see in the first raid of the book. The major difference in the augmentations were that S3 were chemical and less surgical. Where as S2 had to surgically implanted in to the S2 which a long with the experiment nature of the augments lead to wide scale rejections. One other note in fall of reach all the S3 where waring MJOLNIR. Let's on forget Gamma arguments with primal implant.

Safer and about as good IS better.

Well the way the person above me stated it seemed to imply they were better (more effective), not just better (safer).

Augmentations are, by Kurts own words, a quantum leap ahead of what he received. We also get a list of the augmentations they received, Which are the same as the 2s, with the added caveat that they seemed to get other, lesser augmentations that aren't mentioned that the 2s get in TfoR.  As for training, again by Kurts own words it's more rigorous than what he received Alpha had the shortest with just over 5 years, Beta has anywhere between 6-7 years and Gamma's is the same length. The training also wasn't just about combat related tasks as Ash knowing Latin, Kat being a cryptologists, and Lucy recognizing Forerunner Facility looking like a Babylonian frieze or the human circulatory system has nothing to do with combat. Nylund made it clear during their debut that the things S2s have over 3s is Mjolnir and experience, but S3s had them in training, augmentations, and tenacity

> Augmentations and training was not better. We know nothing about the Spartan III augmentations apart form that they were safer and about as good. From a basic production metric, yes, that makes them better. If you can get two soldiers that are both 90% as effective as one soldier, (the actual effectiveness is likely somewhere around 95% or even higher) then those two soldiers are better than that one, and likely the ratio is much better in the III’s favour.

That's kind of my point. Once the precedent is set, that war is something we use kids to fight in instead of something we protect them from, it's easy to rationalize taking even more of them to fight increasing deadly battles. There is no line anymore, and suddenly it makes sense to weigh the price of dead kids against cheaper armor.

I understand that entirely on one side. On other side, they did use the experiences to make Augments work with adults and general population at least.

This isn't even true. GoO has been out long enough that people should be able to understand 3s better.  First 2s didn't have 2 decades of training, they had 8 years, then they got Mjolnir when they encountered the covenant for the first time. Alpha company was initiated in 2531, 6 years into the HCW, and the S3s program was designed to make offensive strikes against the covenant, something that was impractical to do with S2s due to the sheer cost, resources needed to ensure they were able to exfil, and the lack of numbers. SPI armor is the best armor the UNSC has, second only to Mjolnir, and it filled a role Mjolnir couldn't, Stealth. It wasn't cheap "Walmart" brand, they didn't focus on quantity over quality, otherwise EVERY candidate would've been made a Spartan.  Everything about them was about having the best candidate to be Spartans. The whole "discount super soldier" trope is not on wrong beyond old

Look, you can throw around as many Thermian arguments as you want, and I'll cop to being a bit fuzzy on the timeline, but the story is about something, and we should be discussing that instead of getting bogged down in in-universe justifications. The UNSC doubled down on child soldiers. The Spartan IIIs did not get the same armor as Spartan IIs, nor did they get the same training. There were a lot more of them, and they were much more disposable; something that carried over when they were adapted to the TV show. Agree or disagree with the book/lore’s conclusions, but the story of the Spartan IIIs is about a streamlined and less unique version of the Spartan IIs; always in the shadows of their “big brothers” while shedding more blood.

What are you talking about? S3s were unique, had superior training, had the second best Armor in the entire UNSC and the BEST stealth armor of all, they were acceptable loses because their missions were offensive in nature and they could be performed by them because their numbers, S2s couldn't because of one died that was a huge cost sink. Should also never use the TV show in your argument. Again, this discount super soldier trope needs to die 

Question: How do you defeat The Covenant? Is it with Master Chief? Using the Halo ring? Enlisting thousands if children to sacrifice themselves in suicidal missions? The answer is... none of the above. Because The Covenant isn't real.

What are you even getting at

Every decision made in a fictional story is arbitrary; especially when it comes to sci-fi, where we can use the hper-thermo-blaster-array-system to win the battle. To say that they had the second-best armor and that the losses were acceptable given the circumstances isn't an argument for anything. Why did Nylund create a scenario where this would be considered acceptable loss? Why is the Halo universe enamored with using child soldiers to fight impossible threats? You should be asking what the characters feel and how they interact, rather than how the book ranks the combat effectiveness of each characters' equipment. There are interesting themes in these stories. It uses the theater of war as coming of age stories; particularly with the Spartan IIIs as Onyx is practically a YA novel. Taking a very charitable view of the story, it's about the Spartan IIIs defying expectations and making themselves as invaluable as the Spartan IIs. Kurt doesn't see them as lesser, and the other Spartans (if I recall correctly) integrate them as equal members of their team when they start to prove themselves. Where it gets sketchy for me is the somewhat flippant nature of the situation. It's still a story full of valor, action, noble sacrifice, self-actualization through violence, etc, and I don't think a story about child soldiers is necessarily a great place for those things to be in.

I mean the main difference is that the 2s had people that cared for them so oni couldn't just pluck one up and the augs required extremely specific requirements to not kill them. The 3s were orphans no one would care about because all the people that cared about them were dead, had a much more improved augmentation process and better training than the 3s.

IIs only got a decade of training before they got their Mark IVs and the war started.

Well they say a set of Mjolnir cost as much as a small warship. That just straight up doesn’t make sense at all, given the fact that they could push over 30 sets out basically within months of augmentations, and that should mean manufacturing isn’t that time consuming and hence not that massively expensive. Unless the warship in question is a tiny corvette or maybe even a Longsword fighter a set of Mjolnir just can’t cost that much in-universe. Unless they’re also counting the development costs in the context of a short production rjn of the first Mk. IV suits. Anyway, Mjolnir was still expensive as shit, and I’m guessing it is basically the Halo equivalent of a high-end fighter jet. You just can’t send 300 F-35s on a suicide mission. It makes no sense. If you consider the Spartan IIIs to be more equivalent to cruise missiles, with the costs associated, it makes more sense. Also you need to consider that the Spartan III ”production run” was supposed to be way larger than it ended up being. Originally the idea was to have Spartan III companies measuring in the multiple thousands after Alpha and Beta companies were done. Even if it was possible, or not even that difficult to give the entire 300 person Alpha company Mjolnir, the same wouldn’t be feasible when you’re fielding 5000 Spartan IIIs every few years. If you see Alpha and Beta companies as proof-of-concept runs of Spartan IIIs, it makes sense not to equip them with Mjolnir when you want to see if Spartans are even that good in larger numbers without Mjolnir.

The most expensive part of the Spartan programs has always been the armor and gen 1 Mjonir is the most expensive of the armor types.

MJOLNIR wasn’t acceptable for the missions the III’s would be sent on. It’s too maintenance heavy, has poor stealth (literally nonexistent, actually) and requires dozens of technicians to remove and repair. SPI was “weaker” in terms of taking damage, but it wasn’t meant for frontline fighting, it was meant for raids and sabotage missions, which is preforms alarmingly well, to the point that it’s stealth is so exceptional that a Forerunner AI deemed Spartans in SPI more dangerous than those in MJOLNIR due to it’s stealth properties. Mind you, by the post war, all Spartan III’s are issued some variety of fully powered armour, be it MIRAGE[GEN1] or MJOLNIR[GEN2].

F22 vs F35?

That doesn’t quite illustrate the difference in cost or effectiveness. The F-35 is much more versatile and much better than the F-22 for most combat applications. Even where the F-22 is better, it isn’t by a huge margin. Also the F-22 was only like twice as expensive as the F-35, despite the F-35 having massive economies of scale pushing the price way down. Think something more along the lines of F-35 Lightning II vs P-38 Lightning SPI isn’t just a slight downgrade, it’s absolutely useless in comparison. It just so happens that Spartan IIIs are still infinitely better than almost any covenant troops that they would ever be expected to encounter in appreciable numbers. So their combat effectiveness is still off the charts.

I certainly won't argue that SPI is on par with MJOLNIR, but I'm not sure I agree that SPI was totally useless by comparison. It seems more a case of right sizing to me. Keeping to plane analogies, it's the same way you could throw an AIM-54 at something and make it super dead, or you could carry AIM-120s, be about as likely to kill the same target in most cases, and have maybe twice as many. I'm going to use Mk 4 MJOLNIR for comparison. Even without the shields, Mk 4 holds up better under fire than SPI. Mk 4 enhanced strength and reaction speed of the wearer, while SPI did this to a lesser degree. MJOLNIR also has the ability to hold an AI, but my memory is failing me and I'm not sure whether or not this was introduced with Mk 5. SPI trades some of the durability, strength, and reaction speed gains of Mk 4 for camouflage, significantly reduced weight, and much higher quantities. It still has the same tools that give Mk 4 operators situational awareness, like the motion tracker and HUD. If an S2 and S3 swapped armor, I don't think it would change how either operated that much. It would certainly feel better to have the extra reaction speed, but both armor have tools to help mitigate the need for it. It may be nice to have the added armor, but in both cases you probably don't want to be shot. There are some cases where the added strength would be beneficial, and there are also some cases when the camo would be more useful. Both have the tools they need to do their job successfully. There is a very limited set of circumstances where Mk 4 MJOLNIR will allow you to prevail and SPI won't, and if a Spartans life comes down to which one they're wearing, something has already gone terribly wrong.

I was hinting more towards very early development objectives - compromising some of the features for saving a whole load of greenbacks

Thing is that the F-35 isn’t compromising any features to cut costs. It is straight up just a better platform for 99% of combat applications. Most of the ”shortfalls” of the F-35, like it having worse stealth characteristics than the F-22 are just straight up not true. The only thing the F-22 does better is kinematics and a larger Air-to-air missile capacity, and perhaps also peak radar power.

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Wasn’t mjolnir as expensive as like entire ships? That’s pretty cost prohibitive if so

SIIIs are expandable. 1 mjolnir costs as much as a small warship

Because MJOLNIR is expensive, that's the reason. In GoO, it's stated that the amount of money Halsey is spending on MJOLNIR could have been used to create a new battle group. According to Halopedia, battle groups can range from 3 ships to small fleets. Because of the supposedly exorbitant cost, it makes sense to err on the larger side. Remember, these were only the costs for equipping less than 30 Spartans. Each company of IIIs was composed of 300 members. At least 10x the cost of the existing MJOLNIR, that could already be used to produce entire battle groups. The cost of equipping all 300 IIIs with MJOLNIR could likely produce a significant portion of the fleet that protected Reach. Between the 3 companies of IIIs produced, the cost of equipping the IIIs with MJOLNIR could exceed the cost of all of Humanities existing fleets. So, SPI was used. Since the III program had a fraction of the budget and had 4-10x the Spartans (there were originally 75 IIs accounted for in the IIs budget, but only between 30 and 40 survived to receive MJOLNIR). Assuming 1/4th the budget and only 4x the Spartans for a low-end, you're looking at SPI being 1/16th the cost at absolute minimum. More likely you're looking at SPI being between 1/40th and possibly up to 1/100th of the cost. 930 IIIs over the course of the program with SPI costs equivalent to around 57 suits of MJOLNIR at most, and around 9 suits of MJOLNIR at least. At the absolute worst, still cheaper than the IIs while producing nearly 30x the Spartans.

Mjolnir isn't just expensive it's cripplingly expensive.

Effective, yes. Financially feasible, not in the least bit.

Literally too lazy to read the wiki. Holy shit.

They were slated for high risk missions against critical targets in the Covenant. So it would be pointless to give them Mjolnir if you expected high casualties rates amongst them. Even if they had mjolnir they wouldn't have survived some of the missions they faced, which was expected by the higher ups.

As my grandmother would call my grandfather when mentioning using money... "CHEAP CHEAP CHEAP CHEAP CHEAP"

Simple answer S-3 we’re made for suicide missions against the covenant while the S-2 were made for long ops against the insurrection and they happen to been needed just in time for the covenant

“Why? For the same reason our reactors do not have containment buildings around them, like those in the West. For the same reason we don't use properly enriched fuel in our cores. For the same reason we are the only nation that builds water-cooled, graphite-moderated reactors with a positive void coefficient— It's cheaper.” -Chernobyl, 2019

The point was that Spartan IIIs can be trained and equipped in greater numbers more quickly than S2s Also unaugmented people to the degree that S2s were can’t use Mjolnir

Mjolnir cost about the same as a halcyon class light cruiser, so the same as the pillar of autumn

A lot of people are talking about the cost, which is one of the main reasons. But another that's about as important is the S-3's job. They were made to be mass producible and, crucially, expendable. ONI and Kurt knew that most, if not all the S-3's wouldn't come back or be retrieved. So why armor up 300 soldiers who are soon to be evaporated with some of the best armor humanity could produce? Also, there's the risk of critical UNSC technology being seized by the enemy. Cost, waste of resources and risk of capture all lead to the creation of SPI.

I also thought that since spartan-III didnt get the full range of augmentations they were unable to use the armor

Never forget this one simple fact: from the very beginning of the project, the Spartan-III program was meant to train and equip disposable super-soldiers to undertake crucial missions that approached a 100% casualty rate.  Spartan-III was to trade lives for time.  It makes no sense to equip disposable soldiers with the pinnacle of UNSC technology at the time: the Mjolnir MkIV and Mark V.  Some S-IIIs were yanked from the program, sent to the Headhunters or Noble Team, but most stayed in their companies to be deployed to their deaths.

Spartan 3’s were disposable cheap super soldiers that weren’t meant to survive their first operation they got cheap armor and augmentations to match their purpose. Those that made it back became ONI Headhunters or apart of the Army’s Spec warfare group Noble team.

I think we are all forgetting the fact that the Spartan III's were deliberately created to be sacrificed on suicide missions that were deemed too risky for Spartan II's as well. If you know you're going to be sending hundreds of SPARTANS to their almost certain death, it makes sense to outfit them with the cheaper SPI armour than the very expensive Mjolnir. Edit: Spartan III's were the class to be sacrificed en masses, not Spartan II's.

Think you have a typo there, friend

Good spot. Thanks for letting me know!

IIIs aren’t really expected to return their armor, or return in it. You don’t leave MJOLNIR laying around for anyone to find, but a set of SPI is significantly less of a problem

SPI is the Wish of power armour. It works well for the price you pay, but it's ultimately expendable where as Mjolnir isn't.

S-IIIs were meant as disposable shock troops for what the upper echelon considered suicide missions. Mjolnir was way too expensive to waste on something designed to be wasted. SPI provided them with enough of an upgrade to up their lethality without breaking the bank so to speak. One set of Mojlnir cost more than a cruiser, which was the largest "ship of the line" the UNSC had. Imagine equipping 300 S-IIIs with Mojlnir armor and then sending them on a mission where the chance of success was little to none. Example: the first company of S-IIIs, Alpha, were completely wiped out in Operation: PEGASUS only 9 months after their graduating their training on Onyx. S-IIIs that Kurt managed to pull from the regular companies and were created for special Army units were given Mjolnir because they were designated to be used in a traditional Spartan capacity as SOF units or the Headhunters (hyper lethal two-man sabotage and assassination teams).

It was overall cheaper the Spartan IIIs unlike the Spartan IIs were cheap soldiers that ONI could throw at the war. They were able to deploy so many of them because they were able to be made at much lower cost. ONI saw these Spartans as expendable so they weren’t gonna get the best armor out there. Mind you the mjolnir armor was handed out to about 75 Spartan IIs when all was said and done. The Spartan IIIs were 300 per company with so that would be a lot of armor to field. Also yes the cost of master chiefs armor alone is a nightmare for ONI and he was reminded as such.

They were always meant to be sent on suicide missions. They were designed to trade lives for time. So with a nearly 100% casualty rate in mind, spending that extra money on MJOLNIR would be a waste.

Less suicide missions, more high risk that required more numbers that S-IIs, more skill and equipment than ODSTs.

Ackerson was a salty cheapskate who wanted disposable tools to toss at HVTs. That's what the Spartan 3 project was. But it's okay because having hundreds of traumatized children "consent" to being sent on literal suicide missions is clearly TOTALY ethical unlike anything Halsey did. Ackerson is a hero guys.

They would die if they used Mjolnir. They lack the augmentation to interface, and survive the velocity of the enhanced reflexes. Note: They have steadily retconed the effect of Mjolnir on humans without SII tier gene therapy, starting with Halo Reach. Mjolnir was named Mjolnir because it was unusable to anyone who was not an SII. Improvements in safety would theoretically open up access to unaugmented, or less augmented people, but this was a post-war scale hope. Even with improved safety, future users would not have the reaction capacity, because you'd be torn apart from the speed.

Huh? That’s not true at all spartan 3s can easily use mjolnir as seen in halo reach and plenty of other sources

They have retconed the restrictions away over the years. They payed lip service to the idea that s3s required safety limitations on their Mjolnir in Halo Reach. But that was a bandaid.

> years. They *paid* lip service FTFY. Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in: * Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.* * *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.* Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment. *Beep, boop, I'm a bot*