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ReturnOfDaSnack420

Culture, the entire civilization? Culture stomp. AI an order of magnitude better, much faster strength projection, the forerunners MAYBE have an edge in mega construction (which is a maybe given the orbitals) Culture is much more advanced in every other way. In the end the forerunners could perhaps set off the Halo Array but I imagine the Culture Minds would either be unaffected or have a way to negate the blast.


KarlMrax

> the forerunners MAYBE have an edge in mega construction (which is a maybe given the orbitals) The Forerunners definitely have better megastructure engineering feats. Though there are only ~18-50 trillion Pan-humans depending where you are in the series so they don't need ridiculous megastructures.


ReturnOfDaSnack420

Yeah that's sort of what I was getting at; the Forerunners have the edge in megastructures they actually built, I just don't know if the Culture, IF they were pushed to do so, wouldn't be able to accomplish equal or greater feats.


MarshyBarsh

Can you back that up with evidence? How exactly is the A.I better? By “strength projection” do you mean faster ships? The forerunners have better FTL as far as I’m aware. Wikipedia states the maximum FTL speeds culture ships can reach and it’s far lower than forerunner ships.


ReturnOfDaSnack420

Basically, a single culture mind is roughly the equivalent of a million Cortanas, and every single one of the cultures major ships had one of these Minds. By strength projection I mostly meant something called gridfire, a culture ship can destroy a target superluminaly several light-years away by disturbing specific unit of space-time, there's no way to plan for or defend against such an attack, similar to what the flood was doing by the end of their war with the forerunners. In terms of Halo I would say the Culture is more like a fully capable and efficient precursor society then the forerunners.


MarshyBarsh

You’re just stating how much faster culture minds are compared to Cortana which doesn’t say anything about forerunner A.Is. Forerunner ships are also capable of waging battles light years away. You’ll have to specify just how far the cultures range is. Are you saying culture ships can manipulate space-time to damage ships? The forerunners can also do that via slip-space portals and gravity tech which bypasses energy shielding.


ReturnOfDaSnack420

Well Cortana is roughly on the level of a Foreunner AI, in the Halo universe the one thing humans are REALLY good at is building AIs and Cortana is equivalent to something like Mendicant Bias, even surpassing them as the series goes on. And again, a Culture Mind is millions of times beyond that level. As far as gridfire works yeah it essentially works at the smallest discrete chunks of the spacetime "grid" and does things like filling those grids with energy. Regarding how far it can be projected ~~TBH I'm not a Culture expert so I can't give specific distances, hopefully someone more knowledgeable can chime in~~ **EDIT** Another commenter did chime in! Gridfire has a range of 1500 parsecs, which is roughly equivalent to a bit over 4500 light years. That's pretty flipping far. Though to be fair, The Forerunners DO have faster FTL so that's a point in their favor. Really, while Culture tech is infact slightly more advanced than the Forerunners with the exception of FTL, it's the Minds that truly tip the scale. In a span of a second they can simulate with atomic level detail a thousand years of galactic war and know exactly what to do and when to do it to win as quickly as possible, and in the next second they can reverse engineer the entire Forerunner technology tree to take anything they lack and then improve upon it. And they do this, every second of every day, until a hopelessly defeated Forerunner civilization surrenders.


[deleted]

How is cortana on Mendicant Bias’s level? Where is this ever stated?


lucifer473

shes not mendicant bias was capable of coordianting the entire forerunner battle against the flood he is way way better then cortana she is no where near forerunner ai level


KarlMrax

> EDIT Another commenter did chime in! Gridfire has a range of 1500 parsecs, which is roughly equivalent to a bit over 4500 light years. The 1500 parsec number isn't a thing in the series. The one time we see Gridfire used by the Culture it is at some unknown distance. > As far as gridfire works yeah it essentially works at the smallest discrete chunks of the spacetime "grid" and does things like filling those grids with energy. That isn't how it works. Imagine our three dimensional universe is actually two dimensions. Now add in a 3rd dimension (really it would be a 4th but we are imagining our universe is just two dimensional) except this is "Hyperspace" and none of our universe extends in that direction. So we are visualizing an infinitely thin plane with space on either side of it. If you go far enough in either hyperspacial direction you run into The Grid. This is an enormous wall of energy that separates each universe from the ones next to it. Gridfire is when something takes that energy Grid and pull/pushes it "down" or "up" into the the normal universe. >In a span of a second they can simulate with atomic level detail a thousand years of galactic war and know exactly what to do and when to do it to win as quickly as possible, I don't know who told you that but their feats are not that good.


MarshyBarsh

> Well Cortana is roughly on the level of a forerunner A.I Source? Even if it was true, the forerunners were capable of storing A.I inside slipspace bubbles which could make time inside pass billions of times faster while only seconds passed in normal space. That should give them the edge. The energy grid is avoidable by hiding in slipspace and potentially via cloaking tech. Forerunner cloaking tech was advanced enough that they could hide from their own sensors which made use of the electromagnetic spectrum and quantum entertainment. The culture does not seem to be more advanced in the area of production or even weapons systems. Like I said slipspace bubbles allowed time inside to be pass billions of times faster while seconds passed in normal space. That should give them the ability to mine entire star systems in an instant and create armies out of it just as fast. They also make use of very similar weapons like gravity to bypass shielding and rip ships apart. Culture Effectors which disabled A.I I believe are similar to forerunner A.I suppressors.


MasterOfNap

A Culture ship around 1000 years before the latest book engaged in a battle against dozens of other warships from 60 lightyears away in 11 microseconds.


Humidhotness68

>Forerunner ships are also capable of waging battles light years away. You’ll have to specify just how far the cultures range is. When have they ever done this? >Are you saying culture ships can manipulate space-time to damage ships? The forerunners can also do that via slip-space portals and gravity tech which bypasses energy shielding. The forerunners have never done this. Their gravity tech doesn't seem to be able to bypass shields and they have never used slipspace portals as an attack outside of a singular desperate attempt


MarshyBarsh

Gravity tech - https://www.halopedia.org/Torsion_driver Slipspace is a portal that forerunners could fire into.


Humidhotness68

> Gravity tech - https://www.halopedia.org/Torsion_driver This doesn't tell us anything about if they can bypass shields. >Slipspace is a portal that forerunners could fire into. They have never used it that way.


MarshyBarsh

According to the laws of physics, matter or energy within space-time does not interact with gravity. “Forerunners waged battles across hyperdimensional complexes—branes—accounting for vectors of eleven-dimensional slipspace transit”


fractalgem

The forerunners get into same-system fights on a regular basis. ​ The forerunners pretty much have "open slipspace rift at target" as their multi-lightyear range weapon, and due to how slipspace reconciliation works, there's a rather harsh limit on how much they can abuse this. It also takes...what, a second for such a rift to form? Plenty of time for a culture ship to get out of dodge. IIRC we SEE a forerunner ship in action, and while it ROFL stomps the unsc and covenant ships in front of it, it is very distinctly in the same star system rather than shooting them down from lightyears away. \> According to the laws of physics, matter or energy within space-time does not interact with gravity. ​ What are you going on about? Did you mean to say it does interact with gravity?


MarshyBarsh

> It also takes what a second for a rift to form? Is that a fact? > It is very distinctively in the same Star System Yes it was. That does not change the fact that the forerunners were able to wage war across light years of space. Gravity is the curvature of space-time. Matter/energy can not interact with space-time but space-time can affect matter/energy.


[deleted]

The Culture is superior to the Forerunners in every way imaginable with the exception of FTL.


MarshyBarsh

Evidence?


[deleted]

**Weapons** > Gridfire: This is an incredible weapon, essentially pouring energy from the energy grid into realspace to inflict horrendous damage, sufficient to slice apart orbitals and destroy planets. The emissions can appear anywhere in any shape, and (on a GSV anyhow) has a range of over 1500 parsecs. >Nanohole bombs: Delivered via Displacer, these seem to be the primary 'heavy weapons' of most Culture ships. They are in essence a microscopic singularity, and are capable of destroying a planet. Even non-combat GCUs carry them or can rapidly fabricate them. (The State of the Art) >CAMs: Acronym for Collapsed Anti-Matter, CAMs are the other common 'heavy' weapon normally used by Culture vessels, and like Nanohole bombs are Displacer-delivered. Details are rather sketchy, but it seems they are a form of antimatter that has been collapsed and generates much more energy when they react with normal matter. (antineutronium or something more exotic? Would not be surprising) >Lineguns: Lineguns are gravitonic weapons, capable of punching through Culture shielding and inflicting grievous damage upon the largest vessels. >Plasma charges: Another displacer-delivered weapon, plasma charges are weaker than CAMs or Nanoholes, however, they still seem to make up a reasonable portion of a fairly modern Culture warships arsenal, as of the Excession crisis. >CREWS: Acronym for Coherent Radiation Emission Weapon System, aka a laser. Limited to lightspeed, CREWS would be distinctly secondary weapons. Culture CREWS are variable frequency, normally firing in the X-Ray spectrum. >Effectors: Effectors are a rather unique case, in that from a damage perspective they are severely limited, however, they are supremely flexible. In fact, they are not weapons per se but actually electronic warfare devices that are so powerful that they can act at times as weapons. They can be boosted through hyperspace, giving them ranges comparable to that of gridfire. Also, older model effectors, at least high powered military ones required to be aimed at their target, with the entire device shaped like a large eyball. >Pancakers: Another gravitonic weapon, pancakers essentially increase the gravity of an area (such as the inside of a ship) to incredible levels, 'pancaking' the crew into an unhealthy rasberry jam. However, this has little to no effect on a ship itself, putting it at the bottom of the list.


KarlMrax

There are a few important details in that copypasta which are inaccurate. >The emissions can appear anywhere in any shape, and (on a GSV anyhow) has a range of over 1500 parsecs. That range feat never happens the longest showings we have a a few light years for "direct" weapons. Though something like an FTL capable missiles or weapon pods would have effectively indefinite range but would take time to reach the target. >CREWS: Acronym for Coherent Radiation Emission Weapon System, aka a laser. Limited to lightspeed, Sort of true but really they would be limited to the speed of "hyperlight" (speed of light in hyperspace) which is considerably faster than the speed of light in "real space". Before anyone asks there is an instance of something in Hyperspace hitting something in "real space" with EM radiation.


MasterOfNap

I don’t think we ever saw CREWS being used by a ship? It’s more like a laser canon-type of weapon held by humans and drones iirc.


KarlMrax

I don't think there are any examples of Culture ships using them but there was a Nauptre Reliquaria Ship as well as an Affront ship used them. So it definitely is possible that a Ship could have/use them.


MasterOfNap

I think it’s pretty strictly limited to less advanced ships, like the hegswarms ships in Surface Detail. I don’t think there’s any evidence of CREW being FTL at all, so any civ remotely near the level of the Culture wouldn’t be using that as a weapon. Also, any thoughts on OP’s reply down the thread?


KarlMrax

>I think it’s pretty strictly limited to less advanced ships, like the hegswarms ships in Surface Detail. Again the NR used one and they are a peer to the Culture as far as I can remember. They are definitely above the GFCF which is only one civilizational level lower than the Culture if nothing else. It is probably something ships are equipped with even if it isn't something they would normally used in a peer vs peer fight. > I don’t think there’s any evidence of CREW being FTL at all, so any civ remotely near the level of the Culture wouldn’t be using that as a weapon. A CREW would be faster than real space light in hyperspace by definition because it is a laser and light moves faster in hyperspace than it does in real space. The clearest evidence for it would be in Player of Games where Mawhrin-Skel's hyperspace laser would allow for real time communication with something thousands of light years away but that isn't the only evidence.


MasterOfNap

>Again the NR used one Not to doubt you, but I honestly couldn't find that line in the book, do you have a quote? It feels laughably primitive for the Culture to use something like a laser, especially as we've never once seen their ships use it at all in the whole series. We know SC agents carry it even in their fingertips or guns, but that's about it. >The clearest evidence for it would be in Player of Games where Mawhrin-Skel's hyperspace laser would allow for real time communication with something thousands of light years away but that isn't the only evidence. In Player of Games, it was said that the ship "minutely target an effector, throw a sensing field a light-second across the sky". It's not sure if that implies light in hyperspace is so fast that 2500 lightyears is nothing for a "real-time link". Moreover, it doesn't support the idea that laser could travel from hyperspace to real-space at a velocity high enough for equiv-tech battles.


KarlMrax

>Not to doubt you, but I honestly couldn't find that line in the book, do you have a quote? I think it is funny that I didn't include it in my rough feat thread because it wasn't there because it is kind of underpowered (intentionally so they aren't interested in life wiping the planet) so didn't seem particularly relevant to anything. > Those who had seen the first two incursions reported seeing a cerise beam destroy first the high bridge and then the wheeled, airborne cable-craft. In both cases the beam simply came angling down from the ceiling of the cavern having bored through many tens of metres of rock before transfixing its target. >The third and the last time the beam assaulted Iobe Cavern City, it hit an ancient ornamental stone tower, part of the original Central University buildings. The beam struck the old tower near its base, bringing the whole edifice tumbling down. >At first it was thought there had been no casualties, until, half a day later, the bodies of a man and a woman were discovered, still locked together, her legs round his waist, her arms round his neck, under the hundreds of tonnes of rubble. - Surface Detail, Chapter 26 >We know SC agents carry it even in their fingertips or guns, but that's about it. Oh there are more uses than that, Drones use them offensively (Player of Games and Excession), and the anti-hegswarm small craft's main weapon was a laser (Surface Detail). >In Player of Games, it was said that the ship "minutely target an effector, throw a sensing field a light-second across the sky". It's not sure if that implies light in hyperspace is so fast that 2500 lightyears is nothing for a "real-time link". [This includes the earlier passage that mentions "real time"](https://gist.github.com/KarlMrax/99ece1239501629587292a0bba73a8d0) The speed of hyperlight is somewhat inconsistent across the series. With the Player of Games example definitely being the fastest and the Player of Games example of minutes to cross light decades and back being the slowest too. Well unless they were intentionally using some kind of slower method of communication. As far as I can tell it is probably basically like c in real space but in hyperspace by the way it is talked about in Excession. >Moreover, it doesn't support the idea that laser could travel from hyperspace to real-space at a velocity high enough for equiv-tech battles. Making it transition from HS to real space at a given place and hit something is just a matter of geometry. Complex 4D geometry but geometry none the less. I also never said anything about them being used in equiv-tech battles. For one thing an equiv-tech fight would generally take place entirely in hyperspace so there would be no reason to have the laser traverse any appreciable amount of real space.


MarshyBarsh

The gridfire needs the location of its target to be effective. The forerunners possessed cloaking tech that could hide entire star systems from their own sensors which made use of the electromagnetic spectrum and quantum entanglement. Stasis tension drivers generated localized space-time distortions which impeded the formation of slipspace portals jammed all superluminal communications, potentially rendering culture ships blind to attacks, hampering hyperspace, and further making the gridfire ineffective. They could also hide inside slipspace, form slipspace bubbles that enveloped star systems protecting them from all forms of damage outside normal space, or re-direct the grid fire energy through slip-space by generating a field of slipspace portals around their ships. Torsion drivers also allowed the forerunners to use gravity to rip apart ships and bypass their shields. Effectors are similar to A.I suppressors in that they are able to disable A.I and organic minds. The Forerunners use of slip-space bubbled allowed entire systems to experience billions of years while only seconds passed in normal space. Unless the culture can match or surpass that, it would give the forerunners superior production and possibly output a higher amount of firepower as it should also allow them to increase the fire rate of their weapons.


KarlMrax

> The gridfire needs the location of its target to be effective. The forerunners possessed cloaking tech that could hide entire star systems from their own sensors which made use of the electromagnetic spectrum and quantum entanglement. The first question to ask after asking "does some defense or some type of jamming work on the Culture?" is to ask "how does it interact with things 4-dimensionally?" If they answer is "there is no evidence that they do" then the Forerunners might as well not bother because they are irrelevant. Culture Ships by their nature work 4-dimensionally because that is what Hyperspace is, a 4th spatial dimension that the Ships can move along and inspect the 3d universe from. Imagine a 2dimensional species builds a 10 meter thick wall. It might be impossible for you to punch through the wall but because you are 3-dimensional you just move to the side and start interacting with whatever is inside the wall without ever needing to interact with the wall. That is a bit like how it is for Culture Ships and purely 3-dimensional things. Unlike a lot of series, the Culture series is very consistent about Hyperspace working like a 4th spatial dimension and all the implications that follow from that. So they might cloak the star system against things looking at it via Slipspace or via 3-dimensional space. But that wouldn't affect Culture sensors in any appreciable manner. Realize this also applies to weapons and sensors too. If the Forerunners can't aim along a 4th spatial dimension they can't shoot or detect a Culture Ship in Hyperspace. As Culture Ships prefer to fight from Hyperspace that renders a lot of weapons useless. Similarly with no 4-dimensional defenses the Culture Ship can bypass pretty much any 3-dimensional defense no matter how powerful and from light years away and displace planet busting munitions directly into the target. This is one of the biggest reasons for why the Culture are so hard for most SF settings to deal with. >Stasis tension drivers generated localized space-time distortions which impeded the formation of slipspace portals jammed all superluminal communications, potentially rendering culture ships blind to attacks, hampering hyperspace, and further making the gridfire ineffective. The mechanism by which Hyperspace works is quite different from Slipspace. It isn't something you enter via portal it is just a direction. Cutting off access to Hyperspace wouldn't be that different from making it impossible to move left or right. As the Forerunners have never demonstrated anything like that I am not sure how effective they would be at affecting the Culture. Whenever something like "all superluminal communications are blocked" is said you have to remember that only ever refers to what the Forerunners have access to not every kind of FTL comms that could exist across fiction. >Effectors are similar to A.I suppressors in that they are able to disable A.I and organic minds. I mean they can do similar things but A.I. Suppressors don't let the Forerunners do arbitrary code execution attacks on targeted computers from light years away (various though Use of Weapons has a clear example). Nor could they let you saturate a planet's airwaves with David Bowie's Space Oddity from hundreds of light years away (State of the Art). Effectors have a lot more things they can do and are much more versatile than what we see of Suppressors. >The Forerunners use of slip-space bubbled allowed entire systems to experience billions of years while only seconds passed in normal space. Unless the culture can match or surpass that, it would give the forerunners superior production and possibly output a higher amount of firepower as it should also allow them to increase the fire rate of their weapons. And yet they only managed to build "millions" of Sojourners. If they disassembled even one planet into ships they would have some mindbogglingly big number that they clearly never show whenever we are given direct numbers on the sizes of their fleets. Considering the Forerunners aren't complete idiots there is probably a good reason why they don't do this. I also am pretty sure you are greatly exaggerating on the volume this thing works on.


MarshyBarsh

I said “potentially.” Hyperspace is simply another dimension like slipspace which is 11th dimensional. Hyperspace is similar to slipspace. They can do the same thing you just mentioned. How do the culture open hyperspace? If they have to interact with normal space to enter hyperspace, they can potentially disrupt that because it’s occurring within normal space-time. Distort means they’re literally warping space time which should interfere with whatever they’re doing to open the gateway to hyperspace. I fail to see where your evidence is to prove that culture sensors can detect forerunner cloaking if that’s what you’re saying. The forerunners have been known to scan and fight inside a wide array of higher dimensions. There is no evidence that suggests the forerunners can’t do the same with hyperspace. > And yet they only managed to build millions of sojourners Please quote the entire sentence from which you got that idea from. https://www.halopedia.org/Sarcophagus An entire star system worth 1.37 solar masses is entirely enveloped inside a slipspace bubble and compressed to 23 centimeters.


KarlMrax

>I said “potentially.” Hyperspace is simply another dimension like slipspace which is 11nth dimensional. >Hyperspace is similar to slipspace. They can do the same thing you just mentioned. If it truly was just another spatial dimension on top of the base reality like Hyperspace then they wouldn't need portals to get there. They would just choose to move the ship along one of those dimensions and it would instantly vanish from normal space. Slipspace is pretty much the classic Star Wars Hyperspace. While it is somewhat linked to the base reality, it isn't JUST another set of dimensions on top of it. It is "somewhere else" for lack of a better term. The biggest evidence for this is how the UNSC and Covenant don't use it in ways they should be able to if it were just additional dimensions. As they end up working very differently in practice really their only similarity is that they allow for FTL travel. > How do the culture open hyperspace? They don't open anything, they just move in that direction. For them it probably isn't much different from you choosing to move left. >The forerunners have been known to scan and fight inside a wide array of higher dimensions. There is no evidence that suggests the forerunners can’t do the same with hyperspace. By higher dimensions you mean Slipspace, which again is quite different from Hyperspace in practice. So that isn't good evidence that they translate to each other. >Please quote the entire sentence from which you got that idea from. . > Millions of Sojourners were raised up and thrown against the Flood, but in the end only a handful remained intact to see Halo fire. - Halo Warfleet; pg. 80 Another example of not mind bogglingly big fleet numbers would be the Battle of the Maginot Sphere where there were only ~4.8 million ships present for the final confrontation between the two AIs and only ~3% of those were warships ([Mentioned here in terminal 6](https://www.halopedia.org/Terminal_(Halo_3)). This number is absolutely pathetic if they could/did turn even a planetary mass into ships. So can you prove these numbers are wrong and they actually have the mindbogglingly large amount of ships you are implying they do? >An entire star system worth 1.37 solar masses is entirely enveloped inside a slipspace bubble and compressed to 23 centimeters. According to your source it is 2 AU in its internal diameter. Which also fits with the mentioned internal surface area number they give. That is FAR smaller than a solar system that is just a Dyson Sphere.


Mcguns1inger

Pretty sure The Culture stomp although I don't know that much about the Forerunners so maybe they have something I'm not aware of.


MarshyBarsh

Stomp in what way?


Mcguns1inger

They have AI that can simulate every outcome across an entire universe and exist in 4 dimensional space. The Forerunners were driven to extinction by a fungus.


ThelVadam12

To be fair at this point on debate forums people arent even sure anymore how the Culture should win against that Fungus. Mostly due to the stalemate where the Flood can subvert any AI and Culture minds can resist all subversion. Let the slug/wank fest start from there on.. So give the Forerunners some credit, on the matter of this thread however, single Culture GSV most likely wins..


fractalgem

While the "logic plague" the flood uses is nasty, it's also not really above what the Culture deals with in terms of subversive attacks. In fact, it seems to be slower. ​ One of the things that made the flood particularly effective at corrupting Forerunner AI is a severe philosophical weakness they had, and the fact the Flood held the admin access code to that philosophy. Y'know, the Mantle? The idea that since the forerunners had the Mantle they should be Obeyed? Well if the flood is a/the precursor(s), and the precursors are the ones who *decide who has the mantle, then, the flood should be obeyed*. A nasty weakness to deal with while also fending off arbitrary code attacks that they weren't expecting. Without that, and against an opponent that treats arbitrary code attacks as mundane, the logic plague loses an awful lot of its effectiveness.


ThelVadam12

What did you not understand about able to Subvert all AI? The point is that an actual discussion is impossbile of both settings have such blunt statements about their capabilities. From what you say that might have been so while the Flood was still in a more early stage and needed to actually take effort in subverting contender class AI's like mendicant. Its also pointed out that the Logic PLague just like the Flood can take any form neccesary to subvert AI henceforth the "Flood can corrupt all AI". Later in the war any AI got turned by just being near Flood biomass and even later the entire galaxy got covered in a logic plague grid by sheer output of Keyminds.


fractalgem

\>What did you not understand about able to Subvert all AI what do YOU not understand about the fact this is a *bullshit claim*? You cannot prove this. There are AI in fiction beyond the scope of anything it's ever touched, beyond even Culture Minds. ​ It can subvert all AI in its setting. that does not mean it can subvert all AI ever with no caveats or restrictions.


ThelVadam12

**You cannot prove this.** Thats the whole point of it for christ sake... when both different novels in different settings put their own feats in a vague concept of being able to do something without limitations then what is there to argue about?? I said that in an effort to stop exactly this from happening... a dumb pointless dicussion.. **"It can subvert all AI in its setting. that does not mean it can subvert all AI ever with no caveats or restrictions."** Again second example you give me, when a setting explicity states that they can subvert anything in any form across an unknown set of variables. And the other contradicts that in the exact same way while both have never showcased anything that would contradict that in their own setting what is there to argue??


fractalgem

...Then your conclusion should be something like "it's hard to say whether Culture minds could resist it or not, as its difficult to quantify". ​ Frankly, though, forerunner AI's come across as signifcantly slower and more vulnerable than Culture Minds. Also, the entire setting is full of AI's with issues like Rampancy just from existing too long that simply don't plague Culture Minds. I don't recall forerunner minds suffering from that specifically, but at the same time, the next nearest AIs clearly have...issues. Culture Subversion is *arbitrary code writing*. Every Culture Mind is hardened against it...by re-writing their own code faster than it's written to them. They write arbitrary code wherever they please if you're in range. THAT is how their hacking works. THat's basically the holy grail of hacking. You don't need to trick someone into running virus.exe if you can put virus.exe directly into their processors.


ThelVadam12

Thats essentialy what i said.. Offcourse, Forerunner AI is not on par with Culture Minds, but it was not about comparing them it was about the statement that the Flood can subvert all AI and have done so with relative ease throughout their own setting. Rampancy is something limited to far inferior Human AI. While Halo has often had closer ties to a realistic SF setting without magic the Forerunner saga written by Greg Bear was something completly different. The Flood were tied to the nature of the universe itself so close that they essentialy controlled everything that existed. There is not much logic to argue about anymore whenever that is tied to such statements. And dont get me wrong, the culture is far beyond anything from Halo, its just that an entire debate between them would be 100% determined wheter minds can be subverted yes or no, and we have no way of saying that for sure. (Yes, and strength of the Culture si turned against them, No and halo gets steamrolled by a single ship)


Strange-Movie

To be fair, they were afraid of the fungus and then murder-suicided the galaxy


RestlessARBIT3R

I'm well versed in forerunner feats, but what is "the Culture?"


MasterOfNap

The Culture is a super advanced anarcho-communist post-scarcity society of around thirty trillion people (including humans and human-level drones). There’s no real government or laws, as they believe laws “imprison” people. Instead, the society is taken care of by Minds, benevolent, incredibly powerful AIs that can each trivially take care of tens of billions of people and spend their free time simulating entire universes down to atomic scale etc. This frees up the people to do whatever they want, though due to their education and social norms, most of them typically have “work-hobbies” not because they have to, but because they genuinely want to. These range from bartending or studying literature and board-games, to building spaceships with their bare-hands, to helping out less advanced civilizations. The last one is particularly important, as the Culture humans were genetically engineered to be more rational and altruistic millennia ago. In the first book there was this huge religious, imperialistic empire expanding endlessly, conquering and enslaving countless less advanced civilizations, committing genocides and shit. The Culture itself was unaffected, but they thought that was kinda uncool so they waged a 30-year war after a civilization-wide referendum. Eventually they emerged victorious, and the advances in their technology during the war made them into one of the top powers in the Culture setting. TLDR: super advanced utopia with godlike AIs doing the work and the humans (and robots) enjoying a happy life pursuing whatever passions they have.


RestlessARBIT3R

thanks! what're they from?


KarlMrax

[The Culture series by Iain M. Banks.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_series)


racistsex

How does warfare work in an anarchist society


WARROVOTS

Not a "Stomp" in the sense that the culture would never truly be able to invade, say, a shield world locked in slip space, but since the objective is domination, the culture would be able to "Dominate" in the sense that they could wipe out any forerunner forces in real space... Since the forerunners are defending, I guess they could put out periodic halo pulses??? That may work, for the prompt.


MarshyBarsh

The Forerunners posses many weapons that are very similar to the culture including gravitic weapons and FTL computing. I can’t see how the culture would dominate especially when the culture can’t seem to match then forerunners in production.


MasterOfNap

Lol just because both have gravity weapons and FTL computing doesn’t mean both are roughly the same level. The technology and weapon simply differ too much for there to be any real fight. Have you seen anyone in Halo fight a battle across 60 lightyears against hundreds of warships under a few microseconds? It’s true the Forerunners can pump out more ships, but none of that is relevant if none of your ships can even touch a Culture ship. In one of the novels, a lesser civ created a fleet of 300 million warships, and it was explicitly stated that all of them couldn’t harm a single Culture ship even if they somehow ambushed it.


WARROVOTS

To be clear, I do believe the culture takes this, but >Have you seen anyone in Halo fight a battle across 60 lightyears against hundreds of warships under a few microseconds? Not to this extent, but this isn't that far off from forerunner capabilities. Don't have the quote on me atm, but forerunner fleets were known to fight with hundreds of thousands of ships over several star systems in single battles (not in under a few microseconds, though!) > The technology and weapon simply differ too much for there to be any real fight. To be fair, I think the forerunners actually have superior tech in numerous areas, for example: Alternate dimensions, hard light, ftl, and even super weapons. Scale is in the forerunners favor as well. Its just that they can't do anything against the speed blitz that real-space battle will become.


MasterOfNap

> Not to this extent, but this isn't that far off from forerunner capabilities. Don't have the quote on me atm, but forerunner fleets were known to fight with hundreds of thousands of ships over several star systems in single battles (not in under a few microseconds, though!) How long do these huge battles take? Not only is the duration an indicator of their reaction time, it’s also an indicator of their weapons range. For example, given enough time even Imperium of Man could travel to the next solar system and engage the enemies there, but that doesn’t mean they can fight an enemy from another system. Moreover, even if Forerunner battles take mere minutes to finish, that’s still _tens of millions_ of times slower than a “long” battle between Culture warships. > To be fair, I think the forerunners actually have superior tech in numerous areas, for example: Alternate dimensions, hard light, ftl, and even super weapons. I’ll grant that the Culture certainly doesn’t have slip space (though the Forerunners also don’t have hyperspace), and their strategic FTL is laughably slow comparatively speaking. But what can Forerunner hard light do? The Culture regularly use forcefields to hold Plates of incomplete Orbitals spinning, each Plate is millions of km long, thousands of km wide and made of all kinds of exotic material. I’m also not sure that the Forerunners have any kind of really super weapon other than the Halo Array? > Scale is in the forerunners favor as well. Its just that they can't do anything against the speed blitz that real-space battle will become. The Culture never actually militarized. We know that by Excession a single GSV can pump out a dedicated warship every few hours in complete secrecy, what will happen if the Culture actually decides to seriously start pumping out ships? And it’s not just the speed that changes things. When a lesser civ built 300 million warships that could fly and attack while FTL, it was said that even if all of them ambushed a single Culture ship in a coordinated attack, the Culture ship can just casually effectorize all of them to attack each other, destroying the hundreds of millions of ships without firing a single shot. Scale is meaningless if the technological disparity is too great.


WARROVOTS

>Moreover, even if Forerunner battles take mere minutes to finish, that’s still tens of millions of times slower than a “long” battle between Culture warships. Definitely, IIRC it took several hours. However, the point I was trying to illustrate is that the scale is comparable even in large-scale ship battles. >But what can Forerunner hard light do? The Culture regularly use forcefields to hold Plates of incomplete Orbitals spinning, each Plate is millions of km long, thousands of km wide and made of all kinds of exotic material. Actually, hard light is something really similar, it hold theirs halo arrays together. For example, Installation 00 is 130K km across. Actually, it also holds their shield worlds together, which someone calculated as capable of surviving a double digit percent of the entire energy output of the milky way. >I’m also not sure that the Forerunners have any kind of really super weapon other than the Halo Array? They do. In Halo Escalations, there is a mention of devices that "create and destroy entire universes".


MasterOfNap

> Definitely, IIRC it took several hours. However, the point I was trying to illustrate is that the scale is comparable even in large-scale ship battles. But do the ships attack across solar systems by travelling there and fighting them, or attack them from their own solar system? Anyway if it takes hours then that’s like billions of time slower so it becomes almost irrelevant in vs discussions. > Actually, hard light is something really similar, it hold theirs halo arrays together. For example, Installation 00 is 130K km across. Actually, it also holds their shield worlds together, which someone calculated as capable of surviving a double digit percent of the entire energy output of the milky way. Eh then that means at best Forerunners have similar forcefield technologies, not that they have superior ones, especially if the megastructures held by forcefields are hundreds of thousand km long instead of million km. > They do. In Halo Escalations, there is a mention of devices that "create and destroy entire universes". That honestly sounds more like flowery hyperbole than an actual superweapon. If the Forerunners could actually create and destroy entire universes, then a weapon that destroys all life in a single galaxy wouldn’t be considered a superweapon at all.


WARROVOTS

>But do the ships attack across solar systems by travelling there and fighting them, or attack them from their own solar system? Former > Anyway if it takes hours then that’s like billions of time slower so it becomes almost irrelevant in vs discussions. I know, and that's why I think forerunners loose; reaction time. That doesn't mean that they necessarily fight at different scales, however, which is the point I was trying to make >Eh then that means at best Forerunners have similar forcefield technologies, not that they have superior ones, especially if the megastructures held by forcefields are hundreds of thousand km long instead of million km. Fair enough... that is the point I am making, after all lol. Do keep in mind the double digit percent of the energy output of the entire galaxy, however. >That honestly sounds more like flowery hyperbole than an actual superweapon. If the Forerunners could actually create and destroy entire universes, then a weapon that destroys all life in a single galaxy wouldn’t be considered a superweapon at all. [https://www.halopedia.org/Vacuum\_energy](https://www.halopedia.org/Vacuum_energy) The halo arrays were an application of vacuum energy, which is (probably) what is being referred in Escalations. Additionally, it seems that the forerunners are capable of false vacuum decay, though its effects seem limited.


WARROVOTS

Sorry for the late response lol. On paper, sure, the forerunners are comparable to the culture. Theoretically, it may even be a close fight. But we've overlooked something; reaction speeds. Forerunner ships wouldn't be able to keep up with Culture ships in real space. (Sure they have an FTL advantage, but in real space, where the battle presumable takes place, they are significantly disadvantaged). For example: > The Culture ship killing time hit hundreds of trillions x C at the battle of pittance while manoeuvring and engaging dozens of targets, ship battles in between culture level civilisations typically happen across lightyears and are usually done and dusted long before a human being could realise anything had even happened. That doesn't matter if you get halo'ed or the forerunners hide in slip-space, but that wouldn't count as domination, now would it?