system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
[Halo] Was the Halcyon-class a bad design, or did it just arrive right before major technological development?

So I'm something of a Halo lore nut. The Halcyon-class is a pre-Covenant war design, at the time of its manufacture it's the smallest ship to be called a cruiser. It has very good armour and massive structural reinforcement, but it has only 1 MAC and 6 Archer missile pods. Its engines had only 10% of the output of "modern" engines as of 2550ish, which is admittedly a full generation later. Still, a 1000% improvement in reactor output is... Impressive, to say the least. The Navy considered the design to be something of a joke, because of these negative traits.

So, was it just a bad design with poor reactor output, bad armaments and too much armour and reinforcement, or was it developed right before greater reactor output was possible and more armaments were required?

Is it possible that the design preceeding it might have been faster and better-armed? Seems unlikely to me, but thought I'd ask anyway.
gpt
Humanity had a huge technological leap after first contact. They may have been on the edge of some great technology (mjolnir, shields, etc) but reverse engineering and then improving upon covenant and forerunner goo gaws advanced the unsc decades or centuries in a fraction of the time.

The halcyon class was built prior to this, and it was designed to be cost effective while bullying innies in ships that the halcyon laughs at. It's not a bad ship for what it was designed to do, but it wasn't designed to fight a superior (numerically, technologically and tonnage) force like the covenant.