The Leviathan - UNSC Marathon Class Heavy Cruiser

[SuperWookie]

Just make it a pulse lock-on. You'll have so many Archer missiles that the chance of shooting down your nuke would be pretty slim.

Yeah true, I just thought it would be pretty sick to raise a massive missile out of the nuke bay and launch it off at people. My friend did some testing yesterday with warheads and it turns out they're pretty weak so we won't be going with it regardless.

 

[Laltonel]

I like this monster, gives me some motivation back for working on the gargantuan ship that I have been working on.

 

[SuperWookie]

More progress:



Also a big thanks to RabidBat for doing a ton of wedging throughout the ship :D

 

[deathsoul097]

I know its a lot late, but i thought the Marathon, and UNSC ships in general were a much lighter gray?

But other than that, HOLY BEJEEBUS. This is glorious. What is the ratio for the sloped armour blocks, because if it's 1/4, 1/8 1/12 etc, the new slabs could make the armour really smooth.

Also, when this is completed i demand you team up with Skylord and shoot the opening on the original Halo in starmade.

 

[BrotherLazarus]

Is that scale demonstration ship a Luna class Imperial cruiser, by chance?

 

[SuperWookie]

I know its a lot late, but i thought the Marathon, and UNSC ships in general were a much lighter gray?

But other than that, HOLY BEJEEBUS. This is glorious. What is the ratio for the sloped armour blocks, because if it's 1/4, 1/8 1/12 etc, the new slabs could make the armour really smooth.

Also, when this is completed i demand you team up with Skylord and shoot the opening on the original Halo in starmade.

Yeah they're normally grey, I just wanted to make it black :D. There's several different angles all over the ship. We'll see how it looks with the new wedges, however it would mean me having to pretty much restart if I went with them.
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Is that scale demonstration ship a Luna class Imperial cruiser, by chance?

I took a lot of inspiration from Warhammer ships when I made it so it looks similar .

 

[Zyrr]

You ought to do the Thanatos class destroyer after this.

Though I've been told it's now called the "Halberd" class. Thanks, 343.

 

[SuperWookie]

You ought to do the Thanatos class destroyer after this.

Though I've been told it's now called the "Halberd" class. Thanks, 343.

Its already been done, though I'm not sure if its 1:1 - http://starmadedock.net/content/unsc-dd-366-destroyer.1335/updates
Who knows maybe I'll get bored sometime and make my own version with the new wedges :D

 

[Zyrr]

You should, that one is also a little shorter than 1:1

 

[Reilly Reese]

Also, when this is completed i demand you team up with Skylord and shoot the opening on the original Halo in starmade.

The Pillar of Autumn was a Halcyon Class Light Cruiser.

This is a Marathon Class Heavy Cruiser the successor of sorts to the Halcyon however it wasn't in service for very long and was replaced by the Keyes Class Cruiser seen in Halo 4 which has a much closer resemblance to the Halcyon.

 

[Spartan4845]

Keyes Class? I'm not familiar with that one.

 

[Reilly Reese]

Keyes Class? I'm not familiar with that one.

The beginning cinematic of the Halo 4 campaign has them escorting the Infinity.

 

[SuperWookie]

The beginning cinematic of the Halo 4 campaign has them escorting the Infinity.

 

[Zyrr]

It's called the Pillar of Autumn class in SotP. It's basically a Halcyon's stupid good hull with the Marathon's tech suite and top tier MACs.

If I recall correctly they also got a shield refit, not 100% on that though

 

[Colt556]

In short you should ignore it like you should ignore everything halo related that's come out of 343. They literally just copy-pasted the PoA from Reach and added some very very minor cosmetic details and went "look, it's a new ship!" ignoring the fact that the Halcyon class was a pretty bad design hence why the UNSC basically skipped right into Marathons.

 

[Zyrr]

It wasn't really bad, it was just outdated. Considering the PoA survived not one but TWO direct fucking hits from the supercruiser, which has carrier one-hit energy projectors, illustrates just how unbelievably strong the hulls of that class was.

The main problem was that it was retardedly expensive. The honeycomb design was such a moneysucker not even all of the Halcyons got it, and that was when the UNSC was in its peak. The Marathon was conceived as a replacement cruiser that was more economic and could be fielded in somewhat larger numbers.

The other problem was just that it was really old. By the time Reach fell the PoA was 40-some years old, and pre-refit its reactors and virtually every weapon system were just... bad. By that time's standards, and probably during the time it was built too. But its survivability was legendary.

Considering just how garbage (no offense) the Marathon ended up being it's pretty reasonable to think that the UNSC would look at the PoA, a ship that went toe-to-toe with an extremely powerful Covenant capital ship and won, and think, "Hey, wow, maybe we should refit a bunch of our old Halcyons to this standard, and maybe build one or two more like it."

In fact, if you consult the wiki or SotP, that's the exact reason to give. And it's pretty logical, too; it's what I would do in their situation.

 

[jstenholt]

In short you should ignore it like you should ignore everything halo related that's come out of 343. They literally just copy-pasted the PoA from Reach and added some very very minor cosmetic details and went "look, it's a new ship!" ignoring the fact that the Halcyon class was a pretty bad design hence why the UNSC basically skipped right into Marathons.

You are so unbelievably wrong; thankfully Zyrr pointed out all the reasons why before I did, so now I don't have to. And 343 have done some pretty cool stuff, and even if you don't personally like some of their additions to Halo canon, you should at least respect that they tried to add a new spin to an aging series, rather than churning out variations of Bungie's work every two years for a quick buck. Plus the Infinity is easily one of the coolest looking things in all of sci-fi, IMHO.

But yeah, this is fast becoming my favorite and most closely watched thread on this site. Really looking forward to seeing how this develops. Amazing detail so far.

 

[Colt556]

It wasn't really bad, it was just outdated. Considering the PoA survived not one but TWO direct fucking hits from the supercruiser, which has carrier one-hit energy projectors, illustrates just how unbelievably strong the hulls of that class was.

The main problem was that it was retardedly expensive. The honeycomb design was such a moneysucker not even all of the Halcyons got it, and that was when the UNSC was in its peak. The Marathon was conceived as a replacement cruiser that was more economic and could be fielded in somewhat larger numbers.

The other problem was just that it was really old. By the time Reach fell the PoA was 40-some years old, and pre-refit its reactors and virtually every weapon system were just... bad. By that time's standards, and probably during the time it was built too. But its survivability was legendary.

Considering just how garbage (no offense) the Marathon ended up being it's pretty reasonable to think that the UNSC would look at the PoA, a ship that went toe-to-toe with an extremely powerful Covenant capital ship and won, and think, "Hey, wow, maybe we should refit a bunch of our old Halcyons to this standard, and maybe build one or two more like it."

In fact, if you consult the wiki or SotP, that's the exact reason to give. And it's pretty logical, too; it's what I would do in their situation.

Literally the only positive aspect of the Halcyon class was, as you said, it's durability. However again, as you said, it was too expensive. That makes it a bad design. Just look at real life, an Iowa class battleship, a 70 year old ship, is significantly more durable than any modern warship. But it's expensive and poorly optimized for modern combat environment. The same applied to the Halcyon. You get less and pay more. Sure they were durable but what good is having an unsinkable ship if it can't sink the enemy. And as the Autumn proved, what good is having a durable ship that CAN sink the enemy if they're so obscenely expensive you can't field enough of them to make a difference. Wars aren't won by small amounts of good ships, they're won by large amounts of mediocre ships. Every war in history proves this time and time again. So going back to the Halcyon class makes absolutely no sense, ESPECIALLY when you realize humanity just lost 99% of it's colonies and population and resources in a nearly 30 year war of near genocidal proportions. They are in absolutely no position to sink money into a project that replaces marathons with super expensive and ultimately pointless ships.

When your race is almost driven to extinction and you have to rebuild the last thing you do is replace your economically viable navy with a giant black hole of money. Simply being too expensive alone can be all that separates a good ship from a bad ship since, as I said, the strongest ship in the galaxy isn't worth jack all if you can't afford to produce them in sufficient numbers.

You are so unbelievably wrong; thankfully Zyrr pointed out all the reasons why before I did, so now I don't have to. And 343 have done some pretty cool stuff, and even if you don't personally like some of their additions to Halo canon, you should at least respect that they tried to add a new spin to an aging series, rather than churning out variations of Bungie's work every two years for a quick buck. Plus the Infinity is easily one of the coolest looking things in all of sci-fi, IMHO.

But yeah, this is fast becoming my favorite and most closely watched thread on this site. Really looking forward to seeing how this develops. Amazing detail so far.

343's done nothing positive for the franchise. Their storylines are laughably bad and downright insulting to any long-term fans of Halo. I, for one, really liked Halo's lore. But everything put out by 343 has been so disgustingly bad and spits in the face of everything Bungie did.

Also, the Infinity's just a big uninspired tube. It only looks decent because of microsoft demanding 343 put 80% of their development budget into graphics. The Marathon looks significantly better than the Infinitube. Which is why it's nice to see someone doing justice to it. Actually.. all the UNSC's ships prior to 343 looked good. They were generic and blocky but in a good way. All of 343s designs are just giant blobs of gray with no character of their own.

 

[Reilly Reese]

Literally the only positive aspect of the Halcyon class was, as you said, it's durability. However again, as you said, it was too expensive. That makes it a bad design. Just look at real life, an Iowa class battleship, a 70 year old ship, is significantly more durable than any modern warship. But it's expensive and poorly optimized for modern combat environment. The same applied to the Halcyon. You get less and pay more. Sure they were durable but what good is having an unsinkable ship if it can't sink the enemy. And as the Autumn proved, what good is having a durable ship that CAN sink the enemy if they're so obscenely expensive you can't field enough of them to make a difference. Wars aren't won by small amounts of good ships, they're won by large amounts of mediocre ships. Every war in history proves this time and time again. So going back to the Halcyon class makes absolutely no sense, ESPECIALLY when you realize humanity just lost 99% of it's colonies and population and resources in a nearly 30 year war of near genocidal proportions. They are in absolutely no position to sink money into a project that replaces marathons with super expensive and ultimately pointless ships.

When your race is almost driven to extinction and you have to rebuild the last thing you do is replace your economically viable navy with a giant black hole of money. Simply being too expensive alone can be all that separates a good ship from a bad ship since, as I said, the strongest ship in the galaxy isn't worth jack all if you can't afford to produce them in sufficient numbers.



343's done nothing positive for the franchise. Their storylines are laughably bad and downright insulting to any long-term fans of Halo. I, for one, really liked Halo's lore. But everything put out by 343 has been so disgustingly bad and spits in the face of everything Bungie did.

Also, the Infinity's just a big uninspired tube. It only looks decent because of microsoft demanding 343 put 80% of their development budget into graphics. The Marathon looks significantly better than the Infinitube. Which is why it's nice to see someone doing justice to it. Actually.. all the UNSC's ships prior to 343 looked good. They were generic and blocky but in a good way. All of 343s designs are just giant blobs of gray with no character of their own.

Well the Marathon's were just as expensive pretty much. They were bigger and iirc had a lot of technical problems and needed lots of maintenance. They were built at a time where anything would be better than nothing. Also the Keyes class as far as we know is really only visually similar to the Halcyons and it's smaller size makes them easier to produce since your conyard can also be smaller.

 

[Zyrr]

You're talking like they lost all of their colonies and the systems they were located on were utterly annihilated; this is purely false. They were invaded by Covenant forces, and in the case of a particularly difficult or important planet, the major centers of civilian or military activity were glassed. Taking back their colonies would be a simple task. The real problem was the massive loss of life, but considering most of them were colonies as opposed to major shipyards or military bases, in the long run that isn't much of a hit in regards to what we're talking about.

What you said about the Iowa class is well and truly false, mostly because the time difference between it and current day compared to the time difference between the PoA and 2557 is a lot less, and the 70 years between 1940 and 2010 saw far, far, FAR more technological advance than 2510 and 2550 did. It's comparing apples to oranges.

In regards to what you said about building a fleet of technologically advanced and expensive ships; yeah, I can agree on that, for the most part. Without going into too much economic mumbo-jumbo, while it's not very likely its still within the realm of possibility that they would be built. Essentially, if the new Halo trilogy had taken place about 10-15 years later, it would be far less sketchy.

About the Infinity being a giant tube; lol. Are you trying to imply that ANY UNSC ships from Bungie's games ever looked all that good? You must be joking, surely. The Halcyon is a box, the Marathon is a box with a bite taken out of it, and the Paris/Charon/etc style of frigate is a tube with two boxes on the side. They're some of the least inspired ships in Sci-Fi. They never looked all that good.

Don't get me wrong; I fucking despise 343 and "Halo" 4 & 5 with all of my being. Their lore additions are pretty much straight trash, and the games were liquefied shite. But they did get some of the stuff right.

Well the Marathon's were just as expensive pretty much. They were bigger and iirc had a lot of technical problems and needed lots of maintenance. They were built at a time where anything would be better than nothing. Also the Keyes class as far as we know is really only visually similar to the Halcyons and it's smaller size makes them easier to produce since your conyard can also be smaller.

It's referred to as the Autumn-class, and it's actually 300 meters longer than a Halcyon. The Marathons were also a little cheaper, but not by much.

http://halo.wikia.com/wiki/Autumn-class_heavy_cruiser
http://halo.wikia.com/wiki/Marathon-class_heavy_cruiser