It's garbage

Ultimately the only worlds at risk in a war between UNSC and ME races are those close enough to a relay to be detected in a timely manner. Such as, presumably, the colony attacked by Batarians and Refuge. The ME races will never be able to successfully conduct an invasion of UNSC space; putting aside the speed and size limits of ME FTL, sending any ship out to an uncharted system is potentially fatal for ME ships, since there's no way of knowing if the system will have a gas giant with a suitale atmosphere for a static charge dump, without which they might as well be dead in the water.

They will have to spend time pre-scouting every system in an expanding, spherical search pattern and advancing ME drives to be able to hold more static build-up or simply reach higher speeds in order to reach out-of-range systems, each of which would take decades assuming a blank cheque for both. The only way to circumvent this would be to start activating relays in the general direction of where they think human space is and hope for the best; clearly that is unfesible, and even if they ignored that, along with the reasons why they put a ban on opening relays in the first place, they would never find anything that way. The Shanxi relay is the first one the UNSC encountered and it is clear that there are no others in their space.

This means that in the case of ME invasion, the UNSC will have at least a few decades to prepare, more than time enough for them to reverse engenieer Covenant Slipspace tech, to say nothing of all the Forerunner artifacts they are sitting on now. This will make long distance counter-attacks into ME space, which they will have had ample time to map out, fesible and allow them to draw Council forces away from the borders. Even if they didn't wait to develop this tech, so long as Refuge isn't found, or doesn't fall to an enemy attack, they can smiply use it as a staging point for standard ME-style relay focused warfare. If the war then goes on long enough for them to figure out Covenant Slipspace tech, they can also destroy or disable any relay they use to enter a system, likely in a stealthed prowler, once they have mapped out it's location; thus systematically dismantling ME infrasctructure one system at a time, witout even needing to fire a shot. Not even the Reapers could do that, since they too need the relays to travel.

Dead fic?

Significant advantages on both sides. Partly true. Mass Effect is more or less about smaller size and higher speed. Halo is all about larger sizes, high durability and overwhelming force.

However, fact of the matter is, Mass Effect's most powerful ships (Dreadnaughts) are as powerful as UNSC Frigates. UNSC ships are built to withstand MACs and most still don't use shields, so in a ship to ship fight, Mass Effect ships would need to use numbers to their advantage just to take down single ships. Where as UNSC would only need 1 or 2 MAC shot to down their ships easily, with Kinetic Barriers.

It’s a damn shame this doc died, it looked like it was going somewhere

hey i went on my friend delbay's computer and he finna be hella mad lol seeya
"send it" -emilx 2k19

well this story sucks the unsc is supposed to tech stomp the council races. you tried to male a good story and ducked it up because your view is that of a autistic blind mole walking through freeway tradfic in L.A.

Nova bombs mean never having to say 'sorry.' Just draw a line, then blow a moon somewhere to amplify the consequences of crossing that line. MAD, especially if they can't find worlds off the relays, is a nice cold war solution.

Destroy the mass relays and the Citadel is effed. Blow every relay that makes their multi-species civilization functional. Now you have a bunch of separate species to fight, species that may or may not remain at peace with each other, instead of a monolith. They already started the war by taking human slaves. Tolerating the Batrians is an act of war.

A fine story, enjoyed the alternative take on first contact. Garrus sections and the political parts were especially enjoyable. While this story is rapidly cooling in the cold ground, I hold out hope you will revisit it. 7/10

A professional team of highly skilled hackers ... PUTIN!

I love this story. Even though I don't like the current state of the UNSC's military, it's very realistic of the it's state of powers.

interesting

I wonder how expensive NOVA bombs are. If they're not that expensive, I could see the UNSC manufacturing plenty of them and prepping to use them in a total war scenario with the Council. It'd be a victory to. I mean we all saw what one NOVA did to a planet it was quite a distance away from. I wonder if that's the denial plan adapted to face CC is? Make plenty of them and have suicide prowlers/something similar to them seek out all Council planets and N bomb the. Heck, some just would use them on fleets. Seems like a legit strategy. Real question is, how badly would that screw over the Galaxy.

BADASS FRIGGING STORY!... It's all i really can say right now, im a huge fan of the Halo saga and Mass Effect trilogy and this is just one of the best things ive ever read with a crossover between them. Simply amazing keep it up man.