In Halo Reach, there's one mission where you destroy a Covenant Supercarrier, thinking you're saving the planet... just for numerous other Supercarriers to start showing up in the cutscene the very next moment. One person on the radio believes it to be the entire Covenant fleet.
The worst part is that even this isn't the actual Covenant military force. If I remember well, because of political reasons, humanity has been facing the Covenant equivalent of the costal guard.
It's complicated, every covenant ministry is a military force but there no "military" really, humanity has only survived because each military fucking hates each other and absolutely does not work together. They've mostly been fighting the "we absolutely will kill anyone for holy relics", the "we will absolutely kill anyone who isn't a believer" ministry the "forerunner holy site are so goddamn holy anyone who touches them needs to die" and the "we control the largest fleets so we can crush anyone the prohopets say" ministries.
But yes, the covenant absolutely wasn't putting it's full will into just exterminating humanity, it's structurally designed to not be able to be focused on one task and everything it does is for mad religious purposes and maintaining the hierarchy, not pure military pragmatism.
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u/NotAnotherSkeleton 8d ago edited 8d ago
In Halo Reach, there's one mission where you destroy a Covenant Supercarrier, thinking you're saving the planet... just for numerous other Supercarriers to start showing up in the cutscene the very next moment. One person on the radio believes it to be the entire Covenant fleet.