The Covenant vs. The Dominion

Lord of the Chips

Ok I know I'm probably starting a huge flame war posting this here in the Star Trek portion of this site, so if anyone knows a better place to post this, thanks. And can you delete threads?

Ok. The Covenant from the Halo series somehow meet the Dominion from the Star Trek series. The Covenant ideology demands that they incorporate this new race and the Dominion's Founders want to bring order to the Covenant, so conflict is inevitable.

I'm not talking about Covenant vs. The Borg or the Federation or Species 8472, they either don't know or don't care or are staying neutral.

Who wins?

Now, keep in mind I haven't watched DS9 in forever, and I've only played Halo: Combat Evolved, the first one, so I may be misstating or misquoting something along the way. Please correct me if I am.

Let's take a look at the basic facts.

In "Sacrifice of Angels" (maybe wrong episode), it was stated that 2800 Dominion ships were about to enter the wormhole. The way they said this made it sound casual, as if that was a small armada of their entire fleet. And it would make sense, since the Dominion has been around thousands of years and has thrived on a campaign of conquest, that it would have a sizeable amount of warships.

I don't know much about the Covenant fleet, but I do know from looking over Halo 2 transcripts that 15 vessels entering orbit was not the same size as the armada that devastated Reach, which was "fifty times this size" according to Lord Hood. That would suggest to me that they also possess a large warfleet and it would make sense because like the Dominion they've been around for thousands of years and have prospered on the conquest of other worlds.

We've set up the sizes of the fleets. Each probably has thousands of ships, with maybe the Dominion's being a little bigger. (I distinctly remember Weyoun stating something like "The Dominion has not surrendered for its 10,000 years" despite saying it's been around for only 2000...) But what about firepower, technology? Phasers vs. plasma and ship vs. ship?

I don't know anything about that, sadly, so I'll leave this subject for debate up to other users even more nerdy than me. :P

Now let's look at ground units and tactics. It's been shown in Halo that the Covenant, specifically the Elites, DO take their battles to the ground and when they do, they dominate. Wraiths, Ghosts, Banshees, Scarabs — I've seen 'em all and they look PRETTY impressive. It's also said that Jackals have acute sense and make excellent snipers and assassins. And Hunters and Brutes — do I need to say anything more?

This lends the next question: DOES the Dominion have a standing army or is it all dedicated to space forces? We have the Jem'Hadar, who are shown to be pretty strong when combat is required on the ground, but only on a small scale and nowhere near the level of the Covenant. DO they possess any sort of mobile weapon platforms, maneuverable fighter ships, or any of the things the Covenant do employ? And are the Jem'Hadar as strong as the Elites and vice versa? And that's not even mentioning the Hunters and the Brutes...

One could look at it like this: The Covenant holds the advantage on the ground but in space the Dominion makes up for it with overwhelming numbers.

Anyway I've reached the end of my lecture as I'm thinking of it lol.

Discuss.

Blazer

Covenant are pussies...didn't I whip their asses in Halo 1/2/3.

Cookie_Monster

Series 7 on at the moment. Really shows how **** the Dominion are, despite 2000+years their ships still die at the drop of a hat. A runabout was albe to destroy one FFS

norrie rugger

Cookie_Monster wrote: »

Series 7 on at the moment. Really shows how **** the Dominion are, despite 2000+years their ships still die at the drop of a hat. A runabout was albe to destroy one FFS

2000+ years f conflic against weaker enemies always made me think that they had not been driven to improve.
They had numbers as their advantage

The Feds, Klingons and Romulans has 200 years of open/cold war to keep their weapons/ship research moving on. None of them could match the dominion for mumbers as none were allowed to grow too large without another taking them down.

Lord of the Chips

norrie rugger wrote: »

2000+ years f conflic against weaker enemies always made me think that they had not been driven to improve.
They had numbers as their advantage

The Feds, Klingons and Romulans has 200 years of open/cold war to keep their weapons/ship research moving on. None of them could match the dominion for mumbers as none were allowed to grow too large without another taking them down.

Thank you, norrie rugger, for making that point.

Does anyone have anything to add?

helimachoptor

The mother of all invention is necessity, if the options are annihilation or victory over and enemy you'll build the ships/weapons etc to come out on top therefore i go for the Dominion.

norrie rugger

helimachoptor wrote: »

The mother of all invention is necessity, if the options are annihilation or victory over and enemy you'll build the ships/weapons etc to come out on top therefore i go for the Dominion.

Only if you are not already stronger than your opponent.
The alpha quad powers were always developing, to get ahead of the other

Cookie_Monster

norrie rugger wrote: »

2000+ years f conflic against weaker enemies always made me think that they had not been driven to improve.
They had numbers as their advantage.

what makes you think it was 2k years against only weak enemies?

norrie rugger

Cookie_Monster wrote: »

what makes you think it was 2k years against only weak enemies?

Just based on the fact that their ships were no more advanced than alpha quad ships

Lord of the Chips

Just found out something new. It turns out the Dominion built a total of 18,890 ships and lost 9,720 of them in the war leaving only 9,170. So now the question is does the Covenant fleet have more ships than that?

helimachoptor

Where did you get that stat?

Lord of the Chips

Sorry I'm getting back so late. I'll link the place where I found it.