system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
[Halo] How the hell did the Home Fleet with 200 S-MAC guns fail to destroy the Fleet of Sacred Consecration during the First Battle for Earth?

You are talking 100+ ships vs 15 (13 cruisers + 2 CAS carriers), now, lets say for a moment that the 100 ships ain't that good, the SMAC's alone should have torn the entire enemy fleet to shreds, an SMAC can put a round straight through 3 covenant capital ships.

During the fall of reach, there were 20 SMAC's, and they managed to destroy a third of the Covenant fleet (which numbered 314) and they only got to fire a few times before their ground control station went boom.

Why did it require the master chief to destroy one, and why did the other one manage to get to the surface? those ships should have been obliterated the moment they got into the kill-zone.
gpt
I believe the storyline of the first mission is that they aren't in the killzone, they're staying outside of effective range and launching boarders. If most of those SMAC stations were destroyed without firing a shot, it would explain how Regret's carrier made it past.