The thing with a lot of people claiming that Spartans are smarter than Space Marines may be true, but you're not counting the fact that Space Marines tend to be between eighty to a hundred years old when they become Space Marines. There's no way a Spartan could take a Space Marine in a fair fight. It'd be like comparing a veteran soldier to someone who's only just gotten out of basic training.
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Spartan448 said:
I'm not sure you can really compare Space Marines and Terran Marines with any entity other than the Spartan - IIs, or more specifically, the orgional Spartan Blue Team, led by Master Cheif in the book "Fall of Reach"
Lets compare:
Space Marines: Heavy armor vs Spartan-II : Energy Sheilds for added protection against PROJECTILE rounds. S-IIs win that one, as the Imperium and other Space Marine bodies use mainly Bolters, which are projectile weapons. I don't think the Imperium actually uses energy weapons anyway.
Space Marines: Heavy Projectile Weapons, Swords...? vs Spartan-II: A wide array, of light, medium, and heavy projectile weapons, a sniper rifle that can practically penetrate Cruiser Battleplate at 2000 yards, not to mention all the other stuff... And the fact that more likely than not, Imperium swords would bounce off or break after hitting MJOLNIR armor. The knives used in Reach are a special type of knife called the "Predator" knife. It is specifically designed to be able to pierce things harder than MJOLNIR. Spartans win again.
Space Marines: Quite a few armies vs Spartan-IIs: A few. Less than 100. Okay, right now, there's probably 5 left counting all the ones found at the end of the novel First Strike, but we've got the one guy who seems to absorb all the luck in the universe, so we've got that.
I think that about covers it, Spartans win 2 of 3 matchups.
Wrong, the Imperial guard use laser rifles that generally pump out 118MJ per shot and Space Marines use plasma weaponry and melta weaponry. 40K plasma weapons make the Covenant plasma weapons look like fire crackers in comparison and their melta weapons are essentially microwave lasers that would turn Spartans and Halo-verse starship armour to slag.
Ceramite armour is also pretty heavy, those 118MJ lasgun rounds barely make the paint run. From what I recall, Covenant plasma weaponry puts out about 300-400KJ bolts.
Space Marine melee weapons are brutal, they wouldn't find any challenge from Halo-verse armour, chainswords are used to cut through starship bulkheads and power weapons are essentially weapons with a disintegration field that renders any armour pretty much useless.