Versus Match Halo Vs Star Trek ground troop: Force Sub

[Battlegrinder]

Two franchises, two armies, two battles.....but what happens if they switched sides? Would they do better? Worse? Would they still win? That's the question.

All sides possess the same knowledge of their enemy that the original force possessed. Both sides will have 24 hours to operate freely, afterwards the enemy will delploy and both forces must operate under the restriction of a possible enemy attack. After 72 hours more hours, both enemies will launch a night assault, but may launch light harassing raids or ambush enemy patrols

For the UNSC, a force of ~50 marines broken down into 5 squads will take over for Starfleet in the defense of AR-588. Starfleet was opposed by an unhelpfully vague number of Jem'Hadar, for the purposes of debate we will assume they were outnumbered by 3 to 1, the traditional figure cited for odds needed for an attacker to overwhelm a defending force of 3 to 1. The dominion minefield laid at the former Starfleet position will remain in place, unless the UNSC is able to clear it. The UNSC marines will have thier normal equipment as well any other equipment typically available to the UNSC for such situations, such as stationary gun turrets, mines, etc, however the local terrain prevents the operation of vehicles.


For Starfleet, they will taking on the defense of Alpha Base (which I'll have to do a bit more writing on, as courtesy of some light gun game I've never heard of, there are now two version of that battle).

Starfleet's forces consist of 200 infantry and their equipment, a handful of light Argo-type buggies, and a few hoppers, along with prefabricated structures and other field equipment. They will not retain the UNSC's salvaged point defense autocannons or the computer control systems for those cannons, but a wrecked federation starship will be located nearby so that they can salvage it for materials if they wish to. The dozen or so banshees captured by UNSC forces will be available to starfleet as well, along with the shade turrets.

The Covenant force consists of 200 infantry loaded about 6 spirit dropships (mostly grunts and jackals, with a few elites), several hunters, a captured federation hopper and it's cooperative pilot, and 30 cloaked elites aboard that hopper. The covenant plan will follow the same steps as in the book:
1. Have the pilot convince the federation to allow the hopper to land. Once landed, the elites deploy.
2. Most of the elites will remain on the pad and attempt to secure the area so the spirts can land there, a small group of 5 or 6 will rush to the command center and attempt to eliminate local command and control*.
3. The spirits will attempt to land inside the base, drop off the troops, and then from there destroy the defenders and seize the facility. The dropships will be retained to hover at low altitude and provide fire support.
3A. If the spirits cannot deploy inside because the commandos were overrun, they will land elsewhere on the plateau and advance on foot, still retaining the spirits as CAS.



Both UNSC and UFP must hold their position, with the winner being the one that manages to do so, if both sides succeed then which side had the easier time of is the winner.




*This is a slight departure from the plan in the book, where the elites split off a team to go hunt for master chief, but as he's not there retasking them for headhunting fits their mission profile well enough.

 

[Battlegrinder]

Ok, so for my view on how this unfolds:



The UNSC will probably not be able to clear the houdini mines. The UNSC as an organization probably has the capability to do so, but that capability is not distributed down to platoon level. However, that doesn't really hurt them here, Starfleet was there for 5 months suffering constant attacks and walking through the minefield the entire time, and suffered less than one death per day. The mines are an insidious psychological weapon, but a very bad area denial weapon.

Speaking of area denial weapons, the UNSC's first order of business will be setting a minefield of thier own, along with emplacement thier heavy weapons. They'll probably set up both to cover the chokepoint they have to defend ("an obstacle not covered by fire is no obstacle at all") with additional mines at any other point of entry.

The UNSC will have a web of sensors set up in the area around their base to track incoming enemies, and will have sandbag barriers set up to reinforce their positions initially. Given enough time, they may set up some actual concrete fortifications using some sort of rapidly setting concrete material (I know they have it, I just can't recall the name), and possibly some barbed wire.

So, the incoming Jem Hadar will have to navigate through the pass toward the UNSC position, possibly encountering additional mines or traps along the way (Jem Hadar tricorders will probably blunt the worst of these, once they hit the first minefield and start moving more cautiously). The UNSC may also have some forward positions inside the pass to lay down the odd bit of sniper fire as well, but that's not likely.

The Jem Hadar will then have to make their way through a narrow chokepoint that's mined and under fire from multiple machine guns, and possibly augmented with barbed wire, and I think at this point they'll likely fail outright, that's simply too much fire for infantry to just push through without armored support, which the Jem Hadar do not have.

But, presuming they push through and some of them make it, they'll have to contend with dug in infantry armed with automatic weapons and explosives, who likely laid another set of mines, this time claymores, right in front of thier position. This is again an extremely unfavorable situation, and should they breach the UNSC trenches, the ensuing melee will not favor them them. Jem Hadar are not superhumanly strong or tough, and many of the ones that make it this far will be wounded. They do have those polarm melee weapons, but their effectiveness will be heavily bunted by the fact UNSC soldiers have armor, which may or may not work all that well vs energy weapons but will certainly stop a blade, so the jem hadar will have to clear a trenching while outnumbered and wounded. Not happening.

The one big advantage the Jem Hadar have is their shroud ability. It probablly won't allow them to pull off a surprise attack, as the UNSC sensors will pick them up on the approach (Jem Hadar do not shroud themselves all the time), but it might help a few of them get through the minefield and machine guns. Casualties will still be very heavy, but dodging blind fire from machine guns is still easier than dodging aimed fire. However, it is possible the shroud will be ineffective. The shroud hides jem hadar from visual detection (which means it will fool UNSC motion trackers), but thdy can still be detected by tricorders IIRC, so it's possible the jem hadar may still show up on thermal or something. If they do, the UNSC will still be able to see them.

And of course the UNSC approach to invisible enemies is "fire away and hope for a hit" vs the starfleet method of "stare and try to spot the invisible target", as opposed to, say, firing blind on widebeam mode.


So, easy UNSC win, possibly one or two casualties from the mines.




Now, for starfleet.

As mentioned, Starfleet troops struggle with enemies they cannot see. They start with 30 such enemies storming out of a hopper inside thier base*, and unlike Jem Hadar, cloaked elites do not need to decloak in order to fire. Cloaked elites do show up on thermal imaging, so tricorders should be able to detect them, but a tricorder is not a gunsight, and given that Jem Hadar also show up on tricorders but Starfleet troops still can't hit them, whatever fancy gadgets are built into a phaser rifle don't seem to include targeting sensors.

Worse, elites are shielded (though ones equipped with active camo generally have weaker shields) and are much stronger and tougher than humans, so wide beam stun, if anyone thinks to try it, will have limited impact (though a stun shot should force the elites shields to flare, outlining them visually for a second trooper will a phaser on kill).

This gives the elites a strong chance to hold the landing pads, though it's possible (but IMO unlikely) for them to be forced out of position and eliminated. Also, this is not pro-UNSC bias, the UNSC was having a hard time dealing with the elites as well, they just got lucky and improvised a counter, one starfleet can't replicate.

The elite headhunter team has near certain odds of success. Multiple cloaked elites can overrun a building in short order, and it's going to be very hard to stop them. This actually won't help the Covenant all that much, as unlike the UNSC, starflert ships don't come with some nice big point defense guns you can just rip off and set up elsewhere, so it's unlikely the federation would have been able to deploy any real air defenses. But if they did manage it, they won't be able to use them anyway.

The Covenant assault was timed to land very shortly after the landing pad was taken, minutes at most, and it's not likely starfleet will have rallied enough to retake the pads in such little time. Unlike the UNSC at AR-558 (or themselves at AR-558 for that matter), starfleet doesn't have the benefit of knowing this was coming, so they have to get people up out of bed, get their weapons, etc before they respond in force, and they're one the clock here. So it's very likely the Covenant will be able to land.

It is possible that ground fire disables one or more of the spirits, but improbable. They're landing at night, against a disorganized enemy who's already under fire from the ground, and the spirit's own guns have a shotgun like spread effect, which means they can blanket a fair like wide area in order to surprise ground fire. Additionally, a disabled spirit is not an annihilated spirit, it will just crash and many of it's passengers will survive.

At this point, starfleet is going to have a very hard time pushing back. The remaining starfleet infantry (call it 150 or so, the elites holding the pads probably did a lot of damage) are facing about 180 or so troops from the spirit, assuming they managed to knock one or two of them down, plus maybe 20 or so remaining cloaked elites. They're outnumbered by a fair margin, and while grunts aren't the best troops, the jackals and elites are, and both of them have personal shields that phasers will struggle with, in particular they'll have a hard time dropping a shielded target before the shielded trooper drops them. The Covenant also have limited air support. But the main factor is that the Covenant troops are organized with intact leadership, and the federation troops are not. Good soldiers without good coordination and control will struggle against bad troops with good leadership, and the Covenant forces here are not bad.

It is possible starfleet rallies and holds the base regardless, but I don't think it is likely.


*Regarding the Covenant's Trojan horse maneuver, it's highly likely starfleet will fail for it just as the UNSC did.
1. This sort of ploy is wildly out of character for the Covenant, who would normally rather die than use UNSC equipment. So both the UNSC and Starfleet would have no reason to suspect a trap.
2. Starfleet does have the sensor tech to scan the hopper, but because it's a captured hopper a cooperative pilot, the Covenant, who know what starfleet sensor can do, should be able to rig up a counter. In the course of a wider war it's unlikely the Covenant would be able to do this all the time, but it's easily doable as a one-time ruse.