[nerd]
Wall_of_text:begin
Just a quick dip in the 'vs' pool.
Halo wouldn't stand a chance. I love Halo and all, but Star Wars is backed by more than 25000 years of galactic civilization. Not to mention a galactic population in the hundreds of quadrillions, if not higher (Consider, Coruscant, the capital of the galaxy, has a planetary population of more than a trillion. And that's conservative. The Yuuzhan Vong war, the most destructive war in galactic history, had a death toll of more than 300 trillion.) That's 25000 years of technology and science to back up the current Empire. Covenant? Barely 3000 years by the Halo franchise. The United Earth Government? 400 years maybe?
Let's compare. Covenant weaponry is plasma based. Plasma torpedoes are the apex of that for the starships. They're thermal weapons, intended (this is based on accounts from books and visuals from the games) not to explode on contact so much as vaporize and burn into the structure of the ship. This works on magnetic fields surrounding the bolts, and allowing them to be maneuvered and contained, else they simply form a pretty nebula.
The UNSC uses kinetic and explosive based weaponry, like nuclear warheads and linear cannons. We all understand how those work, I won't waste pixels.
Starships in the Star Wars galaxy utilize shields of two types: particle, and ray. Particle shields deflect physical matter like meteors, missiles, etc, while ray shields deflect, or rather, absorb, electromagnetic waves like stellar radiation and lasers. Now how shields work is fairly unknown. Not too much is ever said about them, save that once a shield is burned out or overloaded, it collapses in sections, and must be recharged. They've been noted to ripple or warp under impacts, and they can be angled as well. This implies they're of a 'hard' shield variety, where they are semi-solid or even solid and need to be constructed rather than 'soft' shields that rely on magnetics. This would give them a very strong resistance to physical matter, but a weakness to radiation or charged particles. Planetary shields have been documented to withstand bombardment from turbolasers, tens of thousands of them, for weeks. (See the next section for the craziness of that statement.) Against UNSC type weapons like MAC guns and the like, they'd stand incredible resistance. Against Covenant plasma weaponry, they'd be a bit more weak.
Then again, star wars shields are pretty nuts. In A New Hope, the beam from the Death Star can be seen being absorbed by the planetary shield of Alderaan, which actually resists it for a brief span of time before failing. Even shields on capital class ships, like Star Destroyers or Mon Calamari dreadnoughts, are very resistant. Ship to ship battles (slugfests, as Han once called them) could last for hours as the ships tried to break through each other's shields as redundancies and additional shield systems bolstered the defenses. Capital ship combat usually entails the exchange of teratons of energy on both sides before ships are destroyed. So the chances of Covenant or UNSC ordinance being able to even penetrate the shields to hit the armor of Star wars ships is quite slim.
Star wars weapons now. Proton torpedos, the ubiquitous torps used by everyone and their uncle in Star Wars range from tiny starfighter weapons to immense dozens of meters long capital ship torps. They can range from tiny kiloton models carried by starfighters, to the gigaton+ plus models carried by the thousands in capital ships. The lasers, turbolasers in capital ships, are particle beam technology, not the standard laser tech that they're assumed to be. Large scale cannons, like turbolasers, discharge gigatons of energy per shot, and most large ships carry turbolasers, often quad turbolasers or dual turbolaser turrets that number in the hundreds. The Executor Class Super Star Destroyer had more than a thousand. Ion cannons are essentially directed electromagnetic bolts that deal no physical damage, but, as the name suggests, ionizes all electronics of the target effectively 'shutting them up'.
For defenses in halo, UNSC ships rely on armor for defense, the apex of which is Titanium-A. This is a form of titanium constructed to be lightweight yet dense, with a very high resistance to heat. Yet, in the books and games, this form of armor, even up to ten meters of it, is often boiled away in seconds by Covenant plasma torpedoes. Titanium-A is also clearly not rated to survive high end nuclear blasts, considering CASTLE base, a heavily fortified base on Reach was only rated to survive a detonation of 80 megatons. Considering the average yield of a turbolaser or capital proton torpedo is in the gigatons, the chances of the UNSC's armor plating surviving any hits is negligible.
This can give a good read on covenant ship shield capabilities. Since we know that Covenant ships are vulnerable to their own plasma torpedos, and plasma torpedos can sometimes take a few hits to destroy UNSC frigates and a dozen or more to destroy UNSC carriers and battleships, it is clear that Star Wars missiles and turbolasers, capable of probably destroying UNSC vehicles in single hits, would easily breach Covenant shields and destroy the ships.
On the ground, Star Wars still has a marked advantage. Personal shields are very common in Star Wars, whereas only Sangheili, Jiralhanae and SPARTANs have personal shield technology in Halo. Combined with the fact that standard issue weapons in Star Wars like blaster rifles can burn very large holes in individuals in single shots, and disruptor rifles can vaporize targets, and flechette launchers can tear targets to pieces, it can be said that the forces are at the very least evenly matched, but most probably a substantial advantage would be on the Star Wars side. Coupled with the fact that powered armor is also not uncommon among militaries, Star Wars has a significant infantry advantage. Vehicle wise, the scales are still tipped to Star Wars. Ground vehicles carry heavy laser cannons working on the same principles as starship lasers, and they often carry scaled down proton torpedoes or concussion missiles. Most vehicles have shields as well, or at the very least heavy armor (in the case of the AT-AT). Aerial vehicles are of a similar caliber as starfighters, save that they are suited to aerial flight. Most have shields as well. Compared to the lightly armored Covenant and UNSC vehicles, many of which can be destroyed by primitive sabot rounds and bullets, the advantage is once again clearly in Star Wars' court.
Power generation in star wars far outstrips Halo. The reactors in Star Destroyers equal the output of a medium sequence star, and these are standard generators. Planetary generators can power cities that house trillions, and can exceed the capabilities of a star. The hypermatter reactors of the Death Star, were thousands of times more powerful than a main sequence star, and that's a conservative estimate. The UNSC still relies on fusion power, and the Covenant power generation technology is negligible compared to creating and harnessing the power of a star.
Well, that about covers it.
Wall_of_text:end
[/nerd]
Cadalancea
"He who lives by the sword shall die by my knife. That's prophecy, if you like."
