Ibeechu wrote:You brought up a big hole in the timeline that I've wondered about sometimes, and that is, how did the Forerunners have time to build the rings if the Flood was nagging them. I've tended to assume that the time between first finding the flood nd building the rings wasn't that long. They were really advanced and could probably do such a feat in a small amount of time. And they discovered the spores when they were mining in gas giant, right? So they must have been able to contain them somehow without the Halos. Colossus' gas canisters...
Ok, I'm back again.
About an estimate for the timeline...I also always thought it must've happened fairly quickly. At least comparatively so leastways.
I say comparatively because logically, Forerunner society as seen in Halo would've just about had to have been around for at least 2000 years prior to the outbreak. It could've even been at nearly the same state for that long. And there's no telling how long it may have taken them to reach such a state of advancement. Sure they probably had some sort of "hand up" by the
Precursors, whatever they were, but still.
Human society as we know it has been around for at least 10,000 years in reality and in the Halo universe with no where near that level of advancement.
SO...to the point.
While a "short" amount of time to the Forerunner could've been up to 250-300 earth years(from 1st contact to activation), I still have my doubts that they could've constructed both the Ark and the Rings in that amount of time. As I mentioned before, it's been demonstrated that the Ark could build a Ringworld installation from scratch in only a few standard months, but how long did it take to design and complete the Ark?
...ah wait a moment.... I'm about to drastically contradict myself, sorry.
Well that would make it a lot more plausible...
The only limit to the time then would be the design phase, and that would be fairly easy left up to an advanced A.I. given a set of specs.
Anyways, I suppose I should explain myself. Some of you have obviously already considered this though.
It just occurred to me that the Ark likely wouldn't have necessarily been itself complete at the time the Ringworlds were being constructed.
All that would've really been necessary at the time would've been to design and construct the mechanism by which the Ringworld installations could be "mass produced".
Once they were cranking out rings by the 7, they could've taken as much time as they needed(or that the Flood would allow) to build the rest of the facilities and landscapes that make up the rest of the Ark.
That would make the only significant construction time the Ark's
"forge", let's call it for now.
So...without doing any math...
Thousands of fast, accurate, probably massive slipspace vessels hauling ungodly amounts of raw materials to the build site where they were all processed and assembled. The materials processing/construction could've very well been entirely automated and itself very rapid...though perhaps not as fast as the construction as the Ringworlds to come. Oh and not to mention, the could've started construction in an astroid belt or some other celestial body rich in materials, shearing off even more of the construction time of the "forge"
Uhmmm....100-150 years?
But as anyone reading could see...
That is a
lot of "ifs".
It's all pretty much still open to interpretation.
Supposing Bungie does already have all this thought out I'd bet a few$ that I'm wrong somehow on at least half of that...
Still...food for thought.
Oh, wait yeah, as for where the flood was initially discovered. I really do not know. Either I had never heard that it was discovered at the gas facility seen in Halo2 or I'd just completely forgot...