Warship Build Special — Covenant Fleet

Last week, I posted the first half of my Holiday Season 2021 Special for this blog — six ships in two weeks, based on the Halo universe. This week I bring you the second half, representing the Covenant Fleet.

Like last time, the ships are divided into three general types — light, medium, and heavy. Should you be interested, my inspiration for doing this comes from the wargame FTL: Warfleets from One Page Rules. I find this approach excellent for categorizing my builds and giving a theme to the different fleets.

Compared to the industrial practicality of the UNSC, the Covenant has smooth, almost organic ship designs. This is more evident in the lobular shapes of the larger cruisers, but all Covenant vessels have shades of this.

Made from salvaged technology from the mysterious Forerunners, venerated by the Covenant as gods, these vessels are more advanced and lethal than their human counterparts. They sport energy shields for greater endurance, plasma weapons that can melt even the most durable armor plating, very precise FTL drives, and are generally vast in size. Unable to compare to such technology, the UNSC suffered terrible losses during the war, managing to do little more than hold the tide for years. If Halo was never found and the lies beneath the Covenant faith laid bare, humanity could have very well been wiped out.

Among the smaller ships fielded by the Covenant is the Storm Cutter. These vessels are really small, barely 300 meters long. Nevertheless, they are very well armed, sporting incredible speed. Serving as scouts and escorts of larger vessels, these small ships were commonly found during fleet engagements.

But the workhorse of most Covenant fleets was the Heavy Corvette. An ancient design, these ships were much larger than their UNSC counterparts, being more akin in size to human cruisers than anything else. However, their weaponry was much lighter than their massive bulk could imply. Although they could function as escorts and impromptu battleships, the heavy corvettes were mostly used to spearhead planetary invasions.

Equipped with drop pod launchers and a gravity lift, they were found wherever the Covenant thought necessary to drop ground troops, offering air support afterward. Although the main stance regarding human worlds was to glass them from orbit, sometimes such ground engagements were necessary. Here, humanity was able to turn the tables. In space, the UNSC was usually defeated. On the ground, the better doctrine and training of human troops were able to win the day on several important engagements.

If the Storm Cutter was the scout, and the Heavy Corvette the escort and troop transport, the Battlecruiser was the ship of the line.

Massive vessels, larger than any human counterpart, the battlecruisers were the muscle of Covenant fleets. Armed with batteries of plasma guns, sporting powerful shields, and light craft carrying capabilities, these vessels were powerhouses in themselves. When deployed in numbers they were outright murderous, laying waste to human fleets and even entire planets.

And here you have it, three ships for the Covenant, and three for the UNSC.

One thing you may notice is that both fleets use very different color schemes. Although based on their videogame inspirations, it was also on purpose. I intend to have these vessels be easily identified by their faction on a single glance and easily distinguished from each other by their profile. I think it’s the game designer in me but I think it does give these builds that extra edge of personality.

I have ideas for more fleets. Banished, Insurrectionist and Created are dancing in my mind, and I have already made a few attempts for ships for those factions. Let me know if you would like to see them. And tell me if you would want me to tackle more settings and which ships or vehicles you would want me to make.

More importantly, let me know what you thought of these builds and if you tried to make them yourself. As always I love to see how others craft my builds in real life. It means a lot.

Next week we’ll return to our usual Battletech themes.