Design pattern

A design pattern is a set of instructions which details how to create a particular piece of machinery or equipment. Before its dissolution, the Covenant used design patterns as templates from which to create starships, vehicles and weapons, by feeding the instructions into the nanomachines that typically construct their equipment. Equipment produced with a particular design pattern is often referred to by that pattern, as if it were a designation. For example, the Indulgence of Conviction is known as a.

Many design patterns were developed using analysis of Forerunner devices. However, modification of such patterns was heavily restricted and scrutinised by San'Shyuum bureaucrats, as any design pattern based off of Forerunner technology was considered to be the work of the Covenant's gods. As a result, following the downfall of the Covenant, the sudden lack of such strict oversight allowed for many advancements to be made in weapon and vehicle design.

Occasionally, design patterns are known to "mutate", which causes them to produce a different product than what was intended. Almost without exception, mutations of design patterns are simply deleted, and the product is recycled. Nevertheless, in some extremely rare cases, so-called "stable mutations" can occur, where the mutated product is still useful and so the design pattern is put into more common usage. The is one such example; its design pattern was originally a stable mutation of the Elefen and Ket design patterns.

Known design patterns
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Pulse lasers



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Cruisers




Miscellaneous

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Trivia

 * It is possible that the notion of a design pattern is derived from the Forerunner design seed technology which served a similar purpose: encoding instructions for the mass replication of machinery.

Appearances

 * Halo: Warfleet