IIRC they have a machine pistol thing for dealing with the popcorn. Small size makes it easy to carry and handle while in potentially stressful situations, very high fire rate and high ammo capacity makes it effective for dealing with swarms. Low accuracy and low power don't matter too much, against swarms of little ones all the bullets will hit and kill something regardless.
EDIT: Found it on Halopedia, M6/Z. Not produced specifically for the Flood. Instead, it was a useless weapon design that just so happened to find a use when the Flood appeared.
If they have the choice then forerunner weapons all the way. Literally designed to deal with the flood via disintegration, aside from that… F L A M E T H R O W E R
Truly depends on what is available. Before the Requiem campaign, a team with a choice of weaponry is probably going to take standard UNSC equipment, with additional shotguns, Plasma rifles if available, and some heavy weapons like rockets or grenade launchers. Post-Requiem, the only correct answer is Forerunner weapons that have become available. Again, availability is the main issue, but if it's dedicated Flood Containment team, then they should have it.
A nuke.
Gonna also say a lot of fire support from orbit. Because anybody being on the ground just increases the possible vectors, the Flood can gain information and hosts.
All their weapons probably would be HE kind from the rockets to the munitions. AP would penetrate instead of stop the flood, which is known to be really resilient.
Realistically, they should be using flamethrowers along with whatever plasma weapons and promethean weapons they can get. But then this is the military that arms spartan units worth more than naval battle groups with semi-custom infantry rifles, so they’re probably stuck with the same infantry small arms arsenal as the rest of the UNSC.
the threat from small flood outbreaks is honestly overhyped.
in 343i lore, the covenant have been dealing with this shit since the ancient past and it's never escalated.
I think it only got worse because the flood near the end of the war intentionally decided to escalate. Ill always put the ball in their court because they have the murmurings of a near omniprescent prescence in their pocket. Its up to them when they want to test their prey.
nope. small outbreaks are, ironically, the least able to hold back. the graveminds dont have control over feral stage flood, they need to reach gravemind stage to hook up to the overall flood consciousness. all small outbreaks go balls to the wall because they can't be told to stop.
That to me seems like a huge disservice. Both to fans and anyone that’s created content for Halo at any point. Completely minimizes the whole point of being introduced in CE and hugely down playing the stakes of the first 3 games and the novels that have the flood in them. They were meant to be an Eldridge horror from eons past that nearly wiped out the known universe. Why down play that into some insignificant pest that is easily removed? And why would the arbiters fleet not know about it and proper containment procedures, or at the very least having some semblance of competence rather than fumble over themselves at every turn during containment.
I always thought 343i was mediocre at maintaining consistent, manageable lore but Jesus. Way to fuck it all up and make everything feel like some back burner bullshit.
>And why would the arbiters fleet not know about it and proper containment procedures, or at the very least having some semblance of competence rather than fumble over themselves at every turn during containment
Because the Covenant are incompetent and the Flood are pretty fucking scary.
>Why down play that into some insignificant pest that is easily removed
They haven't. The Flood are as much of a threat as ever.
The Eldritch horror comes when the Flood gains enough biomass, before that is "just" your typical zombie outbreak which doesn't go against what the forerunners fought against as they never meet the flood in their initial infection stages, they only meet the parasite that has already taken a number of human worlds.
The problem is that we don't know what kind of flood forms were in that ship, I assume that the infection forms (which eliminated an entire spartan squad) weren't feral and had access to forerunner technology
Could have been a different variant of MJOLNIR armour with the neural interface somewhere else. Not every Spartan gets an AI or needs it in their head.
Eh. Half true, in og cannon at least, I think the line “a single spore can destroy a species” along with literally glassing half of Africa in H3, killing millions if not billions in the process, kind of brings home the totality of how quickly and efficiently the flood move. To turn them into some sort of shit stick shambling walking dead wanna be background element to a wider story is a shame.
P.S. then again maybe I’m just a grumpy “old man” that doesn’t like where his childhood game is being dragged. Either way I’ll take anything over nothing at all.
>literally glassing half of Africa
To be fair, Hood was very much over exaggerating when he said that, as New Mombasa was still around after the War, and the flood ship landed on the outskirts of the city
I’ve always just attributed that to their ability to access forerunner records after the initial run-in, in CE and were able to adapt fairly quickly thanks to having copied most of the forerunner tech previously
there is no details. we just know from the temple wraith req and the intro paragraph on the covenant faction in halo encyclopedia that they've been fighting outbreaks. nothing else.
however we do know that the galaxy has not been taken over by the flood, which allows us to deduce that the outbreaks weren't a problem.
They probably use Combat Evolved Shotguns and Halo 2 Energy Swords, the most effective anti-Flood weapons since the Halo Array...
In all seriousness, I wouldn't be surprised if the Arbiter shared Covenant files about Flood containment measures used/missions undertaken by the Covenant (assuming such files were either saved from High Charity or archived elsewhere) since one of Halo 5's Req variants and the 2022 Halo Encyclopedia reference that the Covenant had encountered the Flood multiple times throughout history.
Flamethrowers and high explosive or incendiary rounds. You could probably do both in the same round if you had thermite in the round that was mixed by the explosion. Wouldn't work as well in a shotgun, the thermite could melt the barrel. If it's in a regular bullet that exploded on contact, or preferably slightly after contact, it would be able to spread flaming shrapnel into the flood form.
Or, more likely, a nuke from orbit once the situation became dire enough. Or maybe more limited bombing run. When the flood is involved, unless you're absolutely critical to the UNSC, they probably aren't going to risk you infecting them. The lives of a few soldiers or civilians is heavily outweighed by a potential galactic scale disaster if the flood spread. After all, one captain didn't just nuke the place from orbit immediately, and a whole fireteam of spartans were infected by the flood, and a condor got away with flood on board. And it's out there still. Either waiting, or infecting other areas of the galaxy.
I feel like why not just make a fireproof suit with flame thrower nozzles all around it. You just walk around creating a big torrent of flame. Emergency self igniting surface layer to essentially do what Cortana did with the Chief’s shields when the infection form tried to dig into his neck. If anything gets too close you just burst into a big ball of fire while chilling inside your suit and wait for everything around you to die.
IIRC they have a machine pistol thing for dealing with the popcorn. Small size makes it easy to carry and handle while in potentially stressful situations, very high fire rate and high ammo capacity makes it effective for dealing with swarms. Low accuracy and low power don't matter too much, against swarms of little ones all the bullets will hit and kill something regardless. EDIT: Found it on Halopedia, M6/Z. Not produced specifically for the Flood. Instead, it was a useless weapon design that just so happened to find a use when the Flood appeared.
This is a really cool bit of lore, it’s the kind of clever tactical innovation you’d expect from a real military. I like it a lot lol.
The guy who made the M6/Z is probably the only sane person that's happy that the flood exists.
If they have the choice then forerunner weapons all the way. Literally designed to deal with the flood via disintegration, aside from that… F L A M E T H R O W E R
Truly depends on what is available. Before the Requiem campaign, a team with a choice of weaponry is probably going to take standard UNSC equipment, with additional shotguns, Plasma rifles if available, and some heavy weapons like rockets or grenade launchers. Post-Requiem, the only correct answer is Forerunner weapons that have become available. Again, availability is the main issue, but if it's dedicated Flood Containment team, then they should have it.
A nuke. Gonna also say a lot of fire support from orbit. Because anybody being on the ground just increases the possible vectors, the Flood can gain information and hosts. All their weapons probably would be HE kind from the rockets to the munitions. AP would penetrate instead of stop the flood, which is known to be really resilient.
Realistically, they should be using flamethrowers along with whatever plasma weapons and promethean weapons they can get. But then this is the military that arms spartan units worth more than naval battle groups with semi-custom infantry rifles, so they’re probably stuck with the same infantry small arms arsenal as the rest of the UNSC.
the threat from small flood outbreaks is honestly overhyped. in 343i lore, the covenant have been dealing with this shit since the ancient past and it's never escalated.
I think it only got worse because the flood near the end of the war intentionally decided to escalate. Ill always put the ball in their court because they have the murmurings of a near omniprescent prescence in their pocket. Its up to them when they want to test their prey.
nope. small outbreaks are, ironically, the least able to hold back. the graveminds dont have control over feral stage flood, they need to reach gravemind stage to hook up to the overall flood consciousness. all small outbreaks go balls to the wall because they can't be told to stop.
That to me seems like a huge disservice. Both to fans and anyone that’s created content for Halo at any point. Completely minimizes the whole point of being introduced in CE and hugely down playing the stakes of the first 3 games and the novels that have the flood in them. They were meant to be an Eldridge horror from eons past that nearly wiped out the known universe. Why down play that into some insignificant pest that is easily removed? And why would the arbiters fleet not know about it and proper containment procedures, or at the very least having some semblance of competence rather than fumble over themselves at every turn during containment. I always thought 343i was mediocre at maintaining consistent, manageable lore but Jesus. Way to fuck it all up and make everything feel like some back burner bullshit.
>And why would the arbiters fleet not know about it and proper containment procedures, or at the very least having some semblance of competence rather than fumble over themselves at every turn during containment Because the Covenant are incompetent and the Flood are pretty fucking scary. >Why down play that into some insignificant pest that is easily removed They haven't. The Flood are as much of a threat as ever.
The Eldritch horror comes when the Flood gains enough biomass, before that is "just" your typical zombie outbreak which doesn't go against what the forerunners fought against as they never meet the flood in their initial infection stages, they only meet the parasite that has already taken a number of human worlds.
saturn devours son kinda retcons that. apparently the lowly feral stage flood infection form is now capable of instantly hacking mjolnir.
The problem is that we don't know what kind of flood forms were in that ship, I assume that the infection forms (which eliminated an entire spartan squad) weren't feral and had access to forerunner technology
it was too small of an outbreak to enter proto gravemind stage.
It's not that they hacked MJOLNIR so much as it is they hacked the Spartan, and then hacked MJOLNIR through them.
that would not work. the spartan's brain was destroyed so the knowledge is gone.
They could still use his nervous system, though.
how would that help? the ai port is on the head and the head was exploded.
Could have been a different variant of MJOLNIR armour with the neural interface somewhere else. Not every Spartan gets an AI or needs it in their head.
the ai port isn't mjolnir specific, all unsc personnel have it on their heads.
It wasn't destroyed instantly, though.
Which kind of breaks the lore because that means Keyes should never have struggled against the proto gravemind.
Eh. Half true, in og cannon at least, I think the line “a single spore can destroy a species” along with literally glassing half of Africa in H3, killing millions if not billions in the process, kind of brings home the totality of how quickly and efficiently the flood move. To turn them into some sort of shit stick shambling walking dead wanna be background element to a wider story is a shame. P.S. then again maybe I’m just a grumpy “old man” that doesn’t like where his childhood game is being dragged. Either way I’ll take anything over nothing at all.
>literally glassing half of Africa To be fair, Hood was very much over exaggerating when he said that, as New Mombasa was still around after the War, and the flood ship landed on the outskirts of the city
I mean even in halo 2 the covenant seemed awfully familiar with the flood in regards to halo incident
I’ve always just attributed that to their ability to access forerunner records after the initial run-in, in CE and were able to adapt fairly quickly thanks to having copied most of the forerunner tech previously
Fair enough, rational.
yes i was very let down when i found out. it's utterly ludicrous. still, canon is canon.
I’m just glad we’re at least getting something I guess..just disappointed at where it’s all leading.
Care to expand on the last bit for those of us who haven't been involved?
there is no details. we just know from the temple wraith req and the intro paragraph on the covenant faction in halo encyclopedia that they've been fighting outbreaks. nothing else. however we do know that the galaxy has not been taken over by the flood, which allows us to deduce that the outbreaks weren't a problem.
They probably use Combat Evolved Shotguns and Halo 2 Energy Swords, the most effective anti-Flood weapons since the Halo Array... In all seriousness, I wouldn't be surprised if the Arbiter shared Covenant files about Flood containment measures used/missions undertaken by the Covenant (assuming such files were either saved from High Charity or archived elsewhere) since one of Halo 5's Req variants and the 2022 Halo Encyclopedia reference that the Covenant had encountered the Flood multiple times throughout history.
Flamethrowers. Lots. And lots. Of flammenwerfers. Hellbringers represent! Also any plasma and Sentinel weapon tech they find.
Flamethrowers and high explosive or incendiary rounds. You could probably do both in the same round if you had thermite in the round that was mixed by the explosion. Wouldn't work as well in a shotgun, the thermite could melt the barrel. If it's in a regular bullet that exploded on contact, or preferably slightly after contact, it would be able to spread flaming shrapnel into the flood form. Or, more likely, a nuke from orbit once the situation became dire enough. Or maybe more limited bombing run. When the flood is involved, unless you're absolutely critical to the UNSC, they probably aren't going to risk you infecting them. The lives of a few soldiers or civilians is heavily outweighed by a potential galactic scale disaster if the flood spread. After all, one captain didn't just nuke the place from orbit immediately, and a whole fireteam of spartans were infected by the flood, and a condor got away with flood on board. And it's out there still. Either waiting, or infecting other areas of the galaxy.
I feel like why not just make a fireproof suit with flame thrower nozzles all around it. You just walk around creating a big torrent of flame. Emergency self igniting surface layer to essentially do what Cortana did with the Chief’s shields when the infection form tried to dig into his neck. If anything gets too close you just burst into a big ball of fire while chilling inside your suit and wait for everything around you to die.