>>123630830Even if the Irkens won every single battle while suffering no loses, its not possible for them to ever beat the Combine. They would, at best, be an annoyance. Losing planets is something the combine only notices when they do their taxes. The Irkens could literally take over a whole universe and the Combine would still consider them a minor threat, so long as they stayed in their home universe.
Meanwhile, the Combine have some WORRYINGLY advanced tech. Apparently, they can just generate an energy field that blocks the specific chemical reaction necessary for conception to occur, which is why there are no children in HL2: its not that everyone is sterile, its that even in a lab you can't make a sperm and an egg become a zygote.
This is an extremely worrisome technology, because they can apply it planet-wide, and they could easily pick any number of other chemical reactions and just kill every cell in every person at the same time, effectively pressing a button that kills all the humans pretty much instantly.
Presumably, given a chance to study Irken biology, they could apply the same tech to them.
