It's great, isn't it? It's both really sad and extremely awesome that we're doing all of this back & forth speculating. I'm a geek and I'm proud to admit it!
I agree w/
Dayton3 on his thinking that there are roughly 35 Vipers per squadron, for four squadrons and a total of 140 Vipers per Battlestar. That gives you a standard operational squadron of roughly 32 vipers - two waves of 16! - w/three on scheduled routine maintenance at almost any given time. To my thinking, it just makes more sense. It also means that
Galactica was seriously under-strength after the Cylon attack on the Colonies w/only 67 Vipers recovered. It would also explain why we only hear about Red and Blue Squadrons once they hit Carillon, as they would have likely organized any surviving pilots in to a grouping of two squadrons.
Nothing personal,
WarMachine. I like a lot of what you've had to say.
I just don't agree w/your thinking on the subject on the number of fighters as there is still plenty of room for even 140 fighters, plus as much as two dozen shuttlecraft in those hangar pods - 70 Vipers and 12 shuttles per pod. That still keeps the number of Vipers at Cimtar to a fairly "low" 700. I will, however, agree w/you (I
think it was you) who figured there were likely more than 1,000 Raiders at Cimtar. Still, with Baltar there to keep President Adar thinking peaceful thoughts, I doubt that things would have played out any differently even if there were only 1,000 Raiders. Remember, the Cylon's were apparently concentrating all their firepower on
Atlantia from the beginning, as
Atlantia was Blowed Up Real Good only a few minutes in to the attack. Those kamikaze attacks were devastating.
I also definitely agree w/
TwoBrainedCylon on the "on the fly writing" comment. You can't always go with dialogue in the series, as they tossed around "star system", "solar system", "galaxy" and "universe" as if they were all interchangeable. They're quite literally not. Thus, you can't really depend on dialogue in later episodes not contradicting what was said in previous episode. Such as the "three basestars that destroyed the presidents fleet" comment, which isn't an accurate - with all due respect - as there were
no basestars attacking the Fleet at Cimtar. It was totally a fighter force, as dialogue between Apollo, Adama and Tigh shows us. We see the look of comprehension dawn on Adama's face after Apollo tells them "no basestars". We then go to the scene w/the three basestars over Caprica.
BTW, I like that little "back story" of why there was possibly a limit on the number of battlestars,
TwoBrainedCylon. Sounds very much like some of the silly decisions that we saw the Council of Twelve making during the course of TOS. Especially during "Saga" where Sire Uri wanted to lay down arms and tell the Cylon's "we won't have guns, so won't be a threat to you!" Deluded fool that he was...
BTW, somewhat off-topic, but was he supposed to have been one of the surviving politicians from the Council? Not necessarily a member of the Council of Twelve, but maybe some sort of representative? He certainly came across as such.
More analysis discussion, please!
