Ship of the Week: Colonial Battlestar

[Deepcrush]

Fair enough.

So would we dare design our own BSG Battlestars for oBSG and nBSG?

[Mikey]

Fair enough.

So would we dare design our own BSG Battlestars for oBSG and nBSG?

I'm down... like I said, though, we'll just have to pin down an approximation of space requirements for BSG-verse FTL engines and other tech. And supplies - does a Viper's full fuel load mean 800 gallons of liquid "X," or a marble-sized pellet?

[Deepcrush]

Guess that depends on if we're talking oBSG or nBSG.

[Mikey]

Guess that depends on if we're talking oBSG or nBSG.

Well, it was your idea... which, then? (so long as it's not BSG '80 - in that case, I'm out.)

[Deepcrush]

BSG80 does not exist... there is only oBSG and nBSG.

[Graham Kennedy]

So very tempted to edit everyone's posts to remove even the mention of The-Series-Which-Shalt-Not-Be-Named-And-Does-Not-Exist...

[Mikey]

What's worse... people asked for it.

[Sonic Glitch]

What's worse... people asked for it.

Well they got what they deserved then eh?

[Captain Seafort]

Yes, a thousand Cylon fighters ambushed the Battlestars. But we've pointed out already the weak AA ability of the Battlestars.

Exactly - so why would it be any different with a single Basestar against a single Battlestar, when the odds would be much more heavily in the Cylons favour?

Can't say I've ever seen them shown to be so large. Though I also haven't ever look to measure them.

The internal arrangement of the Eastern Alliance destroyer in "Greetings from Earth" means that it's wingspan can't be much less than 50 metres. When it leaves the Galactica's landing bay in Baltar's Escape, its wingspan can be seen to be about half the width of the bay. From there it's a simple matter to calculate that the Galactica is about a kilometre wide and two and a half kilometres long.

[Mikey]

What's worse... people asked for it.

Well they got what they deserved then eh?

Half-and-half. People started a letter campaign (rarely heard-of at the time) to ask ABC for more BSG; what they got was a gutted, cut-rate version which was designed to be produced cheaply enough to make ABC not have reservations about doing it.

At least Boxey was gone.

[Captain Seafort]

Adama asks if any of the other ships could launch their Vipers, to which he receives a report that they didn't. Yet Rigel reports that out of the 67 Vipers returning to Galactica, 25 fighters belonged to Galactica. Obviously, the other battlestars launched some of their Vipers, but in few numbers and not in time. Additionally, there might have been patrols from other battlestars that were deployed at the time, but returned to the main fight.

So, according to this dialoge, Galactica was WAY undermanned.

Don't forget that fighters were still trickling back to the Colonies from the fleet when that report was made. It was an update, not a final tally.

The addition of two damaged squadrons from Pegasus COULD have brought that number up to about 150. I concede my arguement....but we still don't know what the STANDARD capacity of fighters are.

My point is that Battlestars appear to have a standard flight group of two squadrons, and a squadron has a standard strength of 75 ships. Tigh couldn't have known what the exact strength of the Basestar's fighter group was at that exact time, so his statement must have been based on a standard group at full strength.

[Mikey]

Hmm... 610m... I'm not seeing that fitting 20 Nimitz in each pod...

It's doubtful that 610m is the correct length. That number appeared in an article or two about the production, but was constantly contradicted by evidence of the ship being at least twice that length.

[Captain Seafort]

Wait....I just remembered this site, which seems to have pretty good info

http://www.tecr.com/galactica/index.html

I've seen that site before, and I'm not impressed. He's shows very little working, mixes canon with his own stuff, decides solium is hydrogen based on nothing remotely resembling evidence, assumes that the Basestars' weapons are the equal of the Ravishol pulsar, and has this little gem on sidearms:

a Colonial Blaster would have a power output of approximately 315 kilowatts...Cylon Blaster Rifles were able to vaporize a similar mass as the Colonial hand gun, and probably had an output of roughly 1.5 megawatts.

Same effects...almost five times the firepower. Really?

[Deepcrush]

Exactly - so why would it be any different with a single Basestar against a single Battlestar, when the odds would be much more heavily in the Cylons favour?

Because Vipers and their pilots have been shown to be far superior to Cylons. Even when outnumbered two to one.

The internal arrangement of the Eastern Alliance destroyer in "Greetings from Earth" means that it's wingspan can't be much less than 50 metres. When it leaves the Galactica's landing bay in Baltar's Escape, its wingspan can be seen to be about half the width of the bay. From there it's a simple matter to calculate that the Galactica is about a kilometre wide and two and a half kilometres long.

Again, I can't say I've measured either the destroyer or landing bay.

[Captain Seafort]

Because Vipers and their pilots have been shown to be far superior to Cylons. Even when outnumbered two to one.

And yet when they outnumber the Cylons three to two they're shit? There would have been 400-odd Vipers deployed at Cimtar, even assuming the numbers Athena reported were proportional to those deployed. In practice they were probably weighted in favour of Galactica's own fighters, as they launched first and would therefore need to return to refuel first, and they would have been more predisposed to break of the action to return home, while the others would have naturally fallen back to defend their own home Battlestars rather than taking off across the stars to Galactica.