By VinceHoffman
Aug 21, 2016
Artillery has been an important part of ground warfare since the siege engines of antiquity. While game play constraints seem to have prevented its inclusion in Halo Reach and Halo CE through to Halo 5, mobile artillery figures heavily in the game play of Halo Wars and the upcoming HW2. These four vehicles were created for the the Halo Wars 1 & 2 universe. Unfortunately Ensemble Studio's very cool looking Fox cannon concept was cut from Halo Wars, likely due to the inclusion of the Cobra and Rhino mobile artillery units in the same game. Too much of a good thing I suspect.
The SP42 Cobra does double duty. It is a line-of-sight anti-armor unit, the only one of the four capable of engaging enemy armor on the fly. However the pair of 30mm light rail guns the Cobra makes use of while moving are much less effective than the 105mm rail gun it employs when locked down in artillery mode. This much larger bore weapon makes mince meat of enemy armor.
The Kodiak is the newest of the lot and appears to essentially be the Fox Cannon revived. We don't know a lot about the vehicle yet as the full Halo Wars 2 game doesn't deliver until February 2017. Those whom have played the HW2 Beta will have noted that Kodiak appears to wield a really large bore conventional cannon which is effective against all enemy types.
The Fox Cannon utilized a 175mm cannon to fire high explosive rounds up to 50 km using satellite targeting for terminal guidance. Pinpoint targeting combined with a firing rate of 5 rounds per minute would have made the Fox Cannon one formidable weapon had it made the game.
The M145D Rhino looks like a huge MBT. However the recoil of its sole weapon, the huge experimental 320mm Zeus artillery cannon, requires the vehicle to deploy stabilizers in lock-down mode prior to firing. The prototype Zeus cannon is reverse engineered from salvaged Covenant weapon technology and is the first of its type.
Each of the models seen here were ground-up rebuilds of an official MB Halo set with the exception of the Fox Cannon- which was a scratch-built custom. They were built over a period of several years with the Kodiak being the most recent. If this work is new to you and you like what you see here, check out the link to my project gallery. There you will find individual vehicle build posts with more detailed pics and descriptions.
The SP42 Cobra does double duty. It is a line-of-sight anti-armor unit, the only one of the four capable of engaging enemy armor on the fly. However the pair of 30mm light rail guns the Cobra makes use of while moving are much less effective than the 105mm rail gun it employs when locked down in artillery mode. This much larger bore weapon makes mince meat of enemy armor.
The Kodiak is the newest of the lot and appears to essentially be the Fox Cannon revived. We don't know a lot about the vehicle yet as the full Halo Wars 2 game doesn't deliver until February 2017. Those whom have played the HW2 Beta will have noted that Kodiak appears to wield a really large bore conventional cannon which is effective against all enemy types.
The Fox Cannon utilized a 175mm cannon to fire high explosive rounds up to 50 km using satellite targeting for terminal guidance. Pinpoint targeting combined with a firing rate of 5 rounds per minute would have made the Fox Cannon one formidable weapon had it made the game.
The M145D Rhino looks like a huge MBT. However the recoil of its sole weapon, the huge experimental 320mm Zeus artillery cannon, requires the vehicle to deploy stabilizers in lock-down mode prior to firing. The prototype Zeus cannon is reverse engineered from salvaged Covenant weapon technology and is the first of its type.
Each of the models seen here were ground-up rebuilds of an official MB Halo set with the exception of the Fox Cannon- which was a scratch-built custom. They were built over a period of several years with the Kodiak being the most recent. If this work is new to you and you like what you see here, check out the link to my project gallery. There you will find individual vehicle build posts with more detailed pics and descriptions.