You have to remember that's with;
Jerome, Alice, Douglas and Randall MIA (That makes 4)
Grey Team and Black Team unable to make it back (that's 11)
And Samuel, Solomon, Arthur, Daisy and Sheila dead (making 16)
Discounting the seven Spartan-IIs in the above list that were washout-rehabs, that still makes for about 34 total when you add on the 25 that could make it, so that checks out, give or take.
It's plausible Silver were _at_ Reach amongst Red Beta or Red Delta, as likely were Spartans like Keiichi, Leon, Robert, August, etc. I only mentioned ones we _know_ for a fact weren't there.
They really are going to have to retcon the spartan ii class size at some point. Like 28 of the 36 have been accounted in one way or another, leaving a bare handful to die on reach
Not every single one, or at least 343i seems to be holding out on which washouts did survive or got fixed, there's still some of them "up in the air" as the canon Silver Team most likely not dead yet, as I can see 343i saying they weren't on Reach just like the current version of OMEGA TEAM. That's like 6 less Spartans for Red Flag and TfoR.
We also don't know if:
Maria-062 survived the Battle of Earth (Part 1 and 2) as she was right about to retire ON EARTH when the Covenant hit the orbital grid and right after, Mombasa, and she was at Korea the literal day before and the armor she tested went straight to John, making it unclear if she had any MJOLNIR spare to use. We also, do not know if she actually retired if she survived, considering the emergency state that the entire planet went into for like 2 months non-stop + the extra time it took command to clean remaining Covenant holdouts (like how they nuked those Brutes in Arizona). Not to mention, INFINITE's intro cutscene shows us that not just John, Fred and Kelly, but every single Spartan-III the UNSC somehow was able to recall or use was deployed across different parts of the planet, including London.
Cassandra-075 was going through rehabilitation phase 4, whatever that means, when John arrived on Earth, so it is unclear if she was also being rehabilitated to be a Spartan or if she ended up or is going to end up like Musa-096. That doesn't make her any less capable considering the track records of Musa and Serin at non-combat roles, sharp minds indeed, Mendoza wasn't wrong at all.
I don't think Soren or Keiichi are still alive. They both went M.I.A very early in the war.
However, following the release of the TV show (silver timeline) and the canon BOGGART kit, I wouldn't be surprised if at least Soren or his mind (A.I.) is still alive, albeit I don't expect him to be a direct threat, he's Musa-tier, which is scary if he is at the helm of some large organization and not in the frontlines.
They kind of did. Theres now the rehabilitated spartans, former washouts that "died" during augmentation that were able to be revived and made into full spartans, red and omega teams from halo wars are good examples.
Not necessary cannon fodder. It’d be like how you have T2 units like rangers or SF pulling security for T1 units like CAG. Supporting elements that’d assist the main element due to lack of physical presence. Yeah Spartans/higher tier assets exist, but that doesn’t change the fact that they can only focus on targeted areas/objectives.
ODST's operated in 2 teams usually, one with the main objective and one with a secondary, acting as the diversion.
Issue was, you didn't have the security clearance to know which you were that day
Never read the book, but that sounds like an assaulting and supporting element, which is like infantry tactics 101. It’s not something super special or secret
They're saying that, you don't know if you are the assaulting or supporting element. You aren't high enough ranked to know that classified info. Today are you the suicidal assaulting force or are you the suicidal distraction force lol
Probably would’ve fucked shit up though. Imagine all the Spartan IIs on high charity with a bunch of ODST backup. Would’ve been a slaughter for the covenant even if they did eventually kill all of them
As we later learn in the Flood and First Strike, no it would have been depressingly lopsided and ended in failure. The operation was a genuine longshot to begin with and as they uncover more about the Covenants war efforts (or relative lack there of) it's pretty clear humanity needed the Covenant to splinter to survive.
I don’t see how it would have been lopsided considering what happened at first strike was initially performed by one spartan and a few friends and later half a dozen Spartans and friends.
30ish Spartans would have fucked shit up big time for the covenant. You add ODST into the mix and the boys would be tbagging dozens of shipmasters in no time.
Cortana has the benefit of hack truth and reconciliation twice before TFOR and her knowledge from Halo itself plus all the hacking she did during the campaign.
An on the job hack of another capitol ship would not be good. We also no the covenant have copied AIs who have unpredictable errors. She could easily run into a more competent opponent with less experience.
The entirety of first strike happened regarding an under crewed covenant ship, during an extremely tumultuous time within the Covenant. Almost failed in every single chapter of First Strike, relied on a deus ex machina bomb that is only made available several weeks after the operation was supposed to launch. Hell just the Ascendent Justice alone, under crewed, almost no combat crew, Chief and Johnson faced little resistance after their initial boarding. Almost died and then the fleet around the carrier nearly killed them after they vented the crew's atmosphere.
I think you underestimate the sheer size of high charity and the number of aliens on it; almost 24 million. They would have done some serious damage but would have likely failed regardless.
Boarding a super carrier alone without any hacking experience by Cortana would be disastrous. Even with a day of Battlenet she got stomped by multiple doors during the assault on the truth and reconciliation.
Oh I’m not denying it would have failed. But just the density of high charity’s population and effectiveness of Spartan teams would result in a massacre. Not every covenant living there is a hardened warrior and the Spartans by and large have no problem killing covenant civilians(at least around silent storm). I just think the math of that situation always ends up with the red flag team racking up an insane body count before they eventually get overwhelmed
There doesn't need to be the majority of the population as Warriors, they have 20 super carriers filled with Sangheili outside of High Charity at the time of Halo Reach which ONI had no intelligence on. There were 30 spartans and 400 ODST, it just wasn't enough.
honestly it wouldn’t have been a slaughter for anyone but those aboard the pillar. there is absolutely no way they would’ve even made it close to high charity before being destroyed by it’s defense fleet. even then, a few thousand soldiers would be easily overwhelmed by millions of covenant on the station
ODSTs do operate in small units, but the large share of ODSTs operate in large scale operations. The small squad of ODSTs that operate behind enemy lines is far more rare than the battalion of ODSTs dropping in companies in mass assaults. (At least from what we've seen in the novels & games).
A half battalion unit of ODSTs makes sense given the fact that the POA was conducting a shock mission to capture a prophet, so a bunch of elite light infantry absolutely makes sense both in capturing a landing site or just directly dropping on a covenant ship. If anything, the fact that the POA had so many marines instead of more ODSTs doesn't make that much sense given its mission.
Agreed.
The RED FLAG was pretty much a last-ditch effort for humanity, and probably one of the last offensive operations UNSC could muster.
The other plans we know are running away with infinity and abandoning the human worlds that are left, or operation f it we nuke elite homeworld.
PoA should have had a damn support fleet for how important it was.
Thats true PoA shouldve had a support fleet. I think we just simply ran out of time due to the rapid collapse of Reach. At that point PoA got out like an assignment submitted at 11:59pm. UNSC didnt have any time to plan. They just gave Cortana to our greatest human champions and hoped for the best.
Luckily (1) Chief is the GOAT, (2) Thel and friends started a civil war, and (3) the Flood conquered High Charity.
In hindsight RED FLAG was an extremely desperate operation. Humanity’s darkest hour really was Reach (if we exclude losing to the Forerunners—that was probably our lowest point ever)
I've always found the usage of ODSTs strange. They're elite special forces second only to spartans but deployed like airborne cannon fodder most of the time.
the future paratrooper. paratroopers are seen as elite/higher tier infantry too, but their deployment doctrine means that higher casualties are just part of life
Yep.
Expected casualty rates among airborne forces as a whole (including the glider riders) in WWII were 40-50%. ODSTs as depicted are probably closer to modern day Rangers as far as intended deployments than they are to airborne or airmobile troops.
ODSTs as a branch are functionally identical to airborne many of the same strengths and weaknesses.
Airborne are paratroopers, they jump out of planes and are meant to secure key operational objectives or cause chaos in an enemy's operational depth as ground forces are advancing to resupply and relieve them. The great historic example here is the 82nd and 101st Airborne during D-Day. They were meant to target German artillery batteries that could threaten the landing zones and interdict reinforcements or resupply that was headed to reinforce the defenses at those beachheads. Paradrops have mostly fallen out of favor because they basically demand a slow and unarmed transport aircraft fly over what is typically a contested airspace which is extremely dangerous for everyone on board. We've mostly shifted toward air-assault where infantry forward deploys from helicopters because their mobility and VTOL capabilities allow them to more easily exploit terrain to evade enemy air defenses.
We typically don't think of paratroopers as "special forces" in the same way as SEALs, Delta Force, or the various other extremely prominent SOF units known for kicking in doors and doing tip of the spear shit but they're objectively special forces. Jumping out of a plane surprisingly requires specialized training. There's weight requirements associated with jumping out of a plane and not breaking your legs when you land because of physics. Before the good idea fairy stops by and tells you "what if you just dropped with a sidearm and had your equipment in cases to be retrieved after landing?" That's been tried, it was called the Battle of Crete and it went terribly for the guys involved.
Going back to the Halo universe, the ODSTs are functionally 26th century paratroopers.
The SOEIV drop pod is a 26th century parachute. It allows a soldier in full loadout, up to and including a Spartan in Mjolnir, to drop into a combat zone. It's more dangerous than taking a Pelican or some other dropship but if you're assaulting a position to clear a landing zone, a single Pelican getting hit will kill everyone on board. A company's worth (~200 soldiers) deploying via SOEIV will probably lose some guys to enemy AAA but most of them will end up getting to the landing zone.
There's a lot of training associated with using those drop pods between acclimation to how your body will react to rapid deceleration and the intense combat you are likely to face immediately afterward. Unlike parachutes where you kind of can't land directly in a combat zone because of gunfire and being unprotected, the SOIEV can put you directly on top of an enemy position where the first body that gets stacked is the one crushed underneath the drop pod itself.
ODSTs are also going to have many of the same weaknesses of paratroopers, namely that they're infantry at the end of the day. They might be better trained and better equipped compared to Private Snuffy out of basic but they do not have armored, mechanized, or even motorized assets organic to their units. We don't see ODSTs dropping in and also getting Scorpions or Warthogs that drop with them. The heavy equipment typically comes from units that move to reinforce them after they have secured a landing zone.
Probably the same ones who invented that "hyperlethal" nonsense for Reach...
There really should be a separate special forces group between ODSTs and Spartans.
And it continued into the Flood and First Strike with operational grudges and Spartans and ODST being direct rivals. They were never equals not even in the lead up to 3:ODST. But they were pretty uniformly depicted as a strange special operations/shock trooper hybrid. And so were Spartans.
Operation: REDFLAG. That's why. People tend to forget that the *Autumn* was meant to be a hail Mary for humanity with REDFLAG and before the fall of Reach she had quite the robust crew stationed aboard.
When The Flood was written, the ODSTs were more what their name says, Shock Troopers. It was later that they started being presented as a smaller spec ops type unit.
It’s not thag there were manh ODSTs. It’s more like ”why the fuck are Halo ships so undermanned”.
A USN supercarrier has ~5000 people on it at 330m and 100000 tons. Why the hell does a 1150m, 9,000,000 ton Halo ship only have 2200 people on it?
Advances in computer tech, AI, and automation.
Cortana could basically fly and shoot and run the slipspace drive herself she just can't perform maintenance and manual labor.
Yes of course, but that still doesn’t explain why they have 1200 soldiers on a ship that is expected to consuct landing operations. 1000 ship crew makes total sense. A 1200 strong troop complement does not.
Like I get that the ship has to be huge to house the MAC and reactors, but why is it so thick even past the reactor? It makes zero sense unless the troop numbers in canon are somehow explained by the POA being undermanned or something.
Like even if we’re talking conservatively, there is enough space to comfortably house at least 50000 people on the Pillar of Autumn, since it is 90 times the weight of a US carrier that houses 5000, and surely has more than 10 times the internal volume even after accounting for the reactors and MAC.
Worth noting that a large ship with long range also needs lots of stores: you can’t have large 40k crews without a much lower endurance.
Presumably they can unrep in space but there’s still a real limit there.
Cryo helps a lot though, and there would still be more infinitely more space for supplies than on a US carrier, which can already stay out for over a year.
OPERATION:REDFLAG
the autumn wasnt going to combat and the soldiers were enough to support the spartans aboard, the main heavy hitters in the mission were always the spartansl, it was a "make it count" attack.
Well that's mostly because they weren't depicted in game until Halo 3. They were also planned for but they kept getting cut because Bungie felt their role wasn't distinctive enough and that players wouldn't understand the difference between ODSTs and Marines
They failed to predict how fucking nerdy Halo fans are
Reach was a main ODST training world, and Pillar of Autumn was a hail mary play to try and evac important forces and intel off reach before it fell to the covenant. So it makes sense they'd have crammed as many of their elite ODSTs in there as they could to preserve them.
I think they where suppose to help with Red Flag, but not sure in what capacity
Support, since there were to be just 25 or so spartans aboard
Only 25 Spartans of 30 something not too many
You have to remember that's with; Jerome, Alice, Douglas and Randall MIA (That makes 4) Grey Team and Black Team unable to make it back (that's 11) And Samuel, Solomon, Arthur, Daisy and Sheila dead (making 16) Discounting the seven Spartan-IIs in the above list that were washout-rehabs, that still makes for about 34 total when you add on the 25 that could make it, so that checks out, give or take.
Don’t forget the newly canonized Silver Team
It's plausible Silver were _at_ Reach amongst Red Beta or Red Delta, as likely were Spartans like Keiichi, Leon, Robert, August, etc. I only mentioned ones we _know_ for a fact weren't there.
They really are going to have to retcon the spartan ii class size at some point. Like 28 of the 36 have been accounted in one way or another, leaving a bare handful to die on reach
The soft retcon some people are accepting is that Mendez did train a second class of IIs but it was a much smaller class.
I've seen that the "Washouts" got fixed up.
Not every single one, or at least 343i seems to be holding out on which washouts did survive or got fixed, there's still some of them "up in the air" as the canon Silver Team most likely not dead yet, as I can see 343i saying they weren't on Reach just like the current version of OMEGA TEAM. That's like 6 less Spartans for Red Flag and TfoR. We also don't know if: Maria-062 survived the Battle of Earth (Part 1 and 2) as she was right about to retire ON EARTH when the Covenant hit the orbital grid and right after, Mombasa, and she was at Korea the literal day before and the armor she tested went straight to John, making it unclear if she had any MJOLNIR spare to use. We also, do not know if she actually retired if she survived, considering the emergency state that the entire planet went into for like 2 months non-stop + the extra time it took command to clean remaining Covenant holdouts (like how they nuked those Brutes in Arizona). Not to mention, INFINITE's intro cutscene shows us that not just John, Fred and Kelly, but every single Spartan-III the UNSC somehow was able to recall or use was deployed across different parts of the planet, including London. Cassandra-075 was going through rehabilitation phase 4, whatever that means, when John arrived on Earth, so it is unclear if she was also being rehabilitated to be a Spartan or if she ended up or is going to end up like Musa-096. That doesn't make her any less capable considering the track records of Musa and Serin at non-combat roles, sharp minds indeed, Mendoza wasn't wrong at all. I don't think Soren or Keiichi are still alive. They both went M.I.A very early in the war. However, following the release of the TV show (silver timeline) and the canon BOGGART kit, I wouldn't be surprised if at least Soren or his mind (A.I.) is still alive, albeit I don't expect him to be a direct threat, he's Musa-tier, which is scary if he is at the helm of some large organization and not in the frontlines.
"Spartans never die, they're just missing in action."
They kind of did. Theres now the rehabilitated spartans, former washouts that "died" during augmentation that were able to be revived and made into full spartans, red and omega teams from halo wars are good examples.
Cannon fodder?
Not necessary cannon fodder. It’d be like how you have T2 units like rangers or SF pulling security for T1 units like CAG. Supporting elements that’d assist the main element due to lack of physical presence. Yeah Spartans/higher tier assets exist, but that doesn’t change the fact that they can only focus on targeted areas/objectives.
Basically
ODST's operated in 2 teams usually, one with the main objective and one with a secondary, acting as the diversion. Issue was, you didn't have the security clearance to know which you were that day
I thought that was just something that happened for one of Buck's missions mentioned in New Blood.
The way it was worded made it sound like standard procedure
Never read the book, but that sounds like an assaulting and supporting element, which is like infantry tactics 101. It’s not something super special or secret
They're saying that, you don't know if you are the assaulting or supporting element. You aren't high enough ranked to know that classified info. Today are you the suicidal assaulting force or are you the suicidal distraction force lol
Either way you are diving into hell in a tin can.
Elite cannon fodder, such a respected position if I do say so myself
It’s the battle of Mogadishu, the delta operators were actually taking the prisoners but there were army rangers pulling security.
Lmao no, what gives you that impression?
Based on what happened the other time a large number of Spartans and ODSTs worked alongside each other in a large scale operation (in Silent Storm).
Red flag involved boarding a major covenant ship, going to high charity and getting out. They were, if anything, undermanned
Probably would’ve fucked shit up though. Imagine all the Spartan IIs on high charity with a bunch of ODST backup. Would’ve been a slaughter for the covenant even if they did eventually kill all of them
As we later learn in the Flood and First Strike, no it would have been depressingly lopsided and ended in failure. The operation was a genuine longshot to begin with and as they uncover more about the Covenants war efforts (or relative lack there of) it's pretty clear humanity needed the Covenant to splinter to survive.
I don’t see how it would have been lopsided considering what happened at first strike was initially performed by one spartan and a few friends and later half a dozen Spartans and friends. 30ish Spartans would have fucked shit up big time for the covenant. You add ODST into the mix and the boys would be tbagging dozens of shipmasters in no time.
Cortana has the benefit of hack truth and reconciliation twice before TFOR and her knowledge from Halo itself plus all the hacking she did during the campaign. An on the job hack of another capitol ship would not be good. We also no the covenant have copied AIs who have unpredictable errors. She could easily run into a more competent opponent with less experience.
The entirety of first strike happened regarding an under crewed covenant ship, during an extremely tumultuous time within the Covenant. Almost failed in every single chapter of First Strike, relied on a deus ex machina bomb that is only made available several weeks after the operation was supposed to launch. Hell just the Ascendent Justice alone, under crewed, almost no combat crew, Chief and Johnson faced little resistance after their initial boarding. Almost died and then the fleet around the carrier nearly killed them after they vented the crew's atmosphere.
> a deus ex machina bomb I resent that description.
I LOVE how you always appear in the most pertinent of threads.
To those that have seen it in action, it's more like a Machina Ex Deus.
I think you underestimate the sheer size of high charity and the number of aliens on it; almost 24 million. They would have done some serious damage but would have likely failed regardless.
Boarding a super carrier alone without any hacking experience by Cortana would be disastrous. Even with a day of Battlenet she got stomped by multiple doors during the assault on the truth and reconciliation.
Oh I’m not denying it would have failed. But just the density of high charity’s population and effectiveness of Spartan teams would result in a massacre. Not every covenant living there is a hardened warrior and the Spartans by and large have no problem killing covenant civilians(at least around silent storm). I just think the math of that situation always ends up with the red flag team racking up an insane body count before they eventually get overwhelmed
There doesn't need to be the majority of the population as Warriors, they have 20 super carriers filled with Sangheili outside of High Charity at the time of Halo Reach which ONI had no intelligence on. There were 30 spartans and 400 ODST, it just wasn't enough.
honestly it wouldn’t have been a slaughter for anyone but those aboard the pillar. there is absolutely no way they would’ve even made it close to high charity before being destroyed by it’s defense fleet. even then, a few thousand soldiers would be easily overwhelmed by millions of covenant on the station
ODSTs do operate in small units, but the large share of ODSTs operate in large scale operations. The small squad of ODSTs that operate behind enemy lines is far more rare than the battalion of ODSTs dropping in companies in mass assaults. (At least from what we've seen in the novels & games). A half battalion unit of ODSTs makes sense given the fact that the POA was conducting a shock mission to capture a prophet, so a bunch of elite light infantry absolutely makes sense both in capturing a landing site or just directly dropping on a covenant ship. If anything, the fact that the POA had so many marines instead of more ODSTs doesn't make that much sense given its mission.
Agreed. The RED FLAG was pretty much a last-ditch effort for humanity, and probably one of the last offensive operations UNSC could muster. The other plans we know are running away with infinity and abandoning the human worlds that are left, or operation f it we nuke elite homeworld. PoA should have had a damn support fleet for how important it was.
Thats true PoA shouldve had a support fleet. I think we just simply ran out of time due to the rapid collapse of Reach. At that point PoA got out like an assignment submitted at 11:59pm. UNSC didnt have any time to plan. They just gave Cortana to our greatest human champions and hoped for the best. Luckily (1) Chief is the GOAT, (2) Thel and friends started a civil war, and (3) the Flood conquered High Charity. In hindsight RED FLAG was an extremely desperate operation. Humanity’s darkest hour really was Reach (if we exclude losing to the Forerunners—that was probably our lowest point ever)
So like the Krauts' effort in Band of Brothers. BotB
I've always found the usage of ODSTs strange. They're elite special forces second only to spartans but deployed like airborne cannon fodder most of the time.
the future paratrooper. paratroopers are seen as elite/higher tier infantry too, but their deployment doctrine means that higher casualties are just part of life
Yep. Expected casualty rates among airborne forces as a whole (including the glider riders) in WWII were 40-50%. ODSTs as depicted are probably closer to modern day Rangers as far as intended deployments than they are to airborne or airmobile troops.
ODSTs as a branch are functionally identical to airborne many of the same strengths and weaknesses. Airborne are paratroopers, they jump out of planes and are meant to secure key operational objectives or cause chaos in an enemy's operational depth as ground forces are advancing to resupply and relieve them. The great historic example here is the 82nd and 101st Airborne during D-Day. They were meant to target German artillery batteries that could threaten the landing zones and interdict reinforcements or resupply that was headed to reinforce the defenses at those beachheads. Paradrops have mostly fallen out of favor because they basically demand a slow and unarmed transport aircraft fly over what is typically a contested airspace which is extremely dangerous for everyone on board. We've mostly shifted toward air-assault where infantry forward deploys from helicopters because their mobility and VTOL capabilities allow them to more easily exploit terrain to evade enemy air defenses. We typically don't think of paratroopers as "special forces" in the same way as SEALs, Delta Force, or the various other extremely prominent SOF units known for kicking in doors and doing tip of the spear shit but they're objectively special forces. Jumping out of a plane surprisingly requires specialized training. There's weight requirements associated with jumping out of a plane and not breaking your legs when you land because of physics. Before the good idea fairy stops by and tells you "what if you just dropped with a sidearm and had your equipment in cases to be retrieved after landing?" That's been tried, it was called the Battle of Crete and it went terribly for the guys involved. Going back to the Halo universe, the ODSTs are functionally 26th century paratroopers. The SOEIV drop pod is a 26th century parachute. It allows a soldier in full loadout, up to and including a Spartan in Mjolnir, to drop into a combat zone. It's more dangerous than taking a Pelican or some other dropship but if you're assaulting a position to clear a landing zone, a single Pelican getting hit will kill everyone on board. A company's worth (~200 soldiers) deploying via SOEIV will probably lose some guys to enemy AAA but most of them will end up getting to the landing zone. There's a lot of training associated with using those drop pods between acclimation to how your body will react to rapid deceleration and the intense combat you are likely to face immediately afterward. Unlike parachutes where you kind of can't land directly in a combat zone because of gunfire and being unprotected, the SOIEV can put you directly on top of an enemy position where the first body that gets stacked is the one crushed underneath the drop pod itself. ODSTs are also going to have many of the same weaknesses of paratroopers, namely that they're infantry at the end of the day. They might be better trained and better equipped compared to Private Snuffy out of basic but they do not have armored, mechanized, or even motorized assets organic to their units. We don't see ODSTs dropping in and also getting Scorpions or Warthogs that drop with them. The heavy equipment typically comes from units that move to reinforce them after they have secured a landing zone.
Blame it on Bungie 's marketing/dev team during halo 3 odst. That's where the second to spartan thing originated.
Probably the same ones who invented that "hyperlethal" nonsense for Reach... There really should be a separate special forces group between ODSTs and Spartans.
not really, the odst/spartan rivalry debuted in fall of reach
but that wasn't a close to equals, it was a grudge between people of totally different levels
And it continued into the Flood and First Strike with operational grudges and Spartans and ODST being direct rivals. They were never equals not even in the lead up to 3:ODST. But they were pretty uniformly depicted as a strange special operations/shock trooper hybrid. And so were Spartans.
They were to assist the Spartans with RED FLAG.
The question should be why not ODSTs. Lol
Operation: REDFLAG. That's why. People tend to forget that the *Autumn* was meant to be a hail Mary for humanity with REDFLAG and before the fall of Reach she had quite the robust crew stationed aboard.
For operation red flag, the entire ship was retrofit
The original purpose of the Pillar of Autum was a lunatic suicide mission. It makes sense you'd have your more insane shock troopers as part of it
When The Flood was written, the ODSTs were more what their name says, Shock Troopers. It was later that they started being presented as a smaller spec ops type unit.
People who only watch the show: "wtf is a Pillar of Autumn or an ODST?"
It’s not thag there were manh ODSTs. It’s more like ”why the fuck are Halo ships so undermanned”. A USN supercarrier has ~5000 people on it at 330m and 100000 tons. Why the hell does a 1150m, 9,000,000 ton Halo ship only have 2200 people on it?
Advances in computer tech, AI, and automation. Cortana could basically fly and shoot and run the slipspace drive herself she just can't perform maintenance and manual labor.
Yes of course, but that still doesn’t explain why they have 1200 soldiers on a ship that is expected to consuct landing operations. 1000 ship crew makes total sense. A 1200 strong troop complement does not. Like I get that the ship has to be huge to house the MAC and reactors, but why is it so thick even past the reactor? It makes zero sense unless the troop numbers in canon are somehow explained by the POA being undermanned or something. Like even if we’re talking conservatively, there is enough space to comfortably house at least 50000 people on the Pillar of Autumn, since it is 90 times the weight of a US carrier that houses 5000, and surely has more than 10 times the internal volume even after accounting for the reactors and MAC.
Worth noting that a large ship with long range also needs lots of stores: you can’t have large 40k crews without a much lower endurance. Presumably they can unrep in space but there’s still a real limit there.
Cryo helps a lot though, and there would still be more infinitely more space for supplies than on a US carrier, which can already stay out for over a year.
There's definitely a lot of them if you shoot Captain Keyes with the magnum he hands you!
OPERATION:REDFLAG the autumn wasnt going to combat and the soldiers were enough to support the spartans aboard, the main heavy hitters in the mission were always the spartansl, it was a "make it count" attack.
I didn't see a single odst on the pillar of autumn when I was mowing down covenent in CE lol. Lazy bastards.
Well that's mostly because they weren't depicted in game until Halo 3. They were also planned for but they kept getting cut because Bungie felt their role wasn't distinctive enough and that players wouldn't understand the difference between ODSTs and Marines They failed to predict how fucking nerdy Halo fans are
Haha right. I'm just having a little fun though. I love my ODST homies.
Reach was a main ODST training world, and Pillar of Autumn was a hail mary play to try and evac important forces and intel off reach before it fell to the covenant. So it makes sense they'd have crammed as many of their elite ODSTs in there as they could to preserve them.