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Originally Posted by WarMachine
I base most of my own notes around John Larocque's research, specifically the comment from GL that there was never a set limit on the number of battlestars. From that flows all of my speculations on fleet strength and operations.
Given that I have yet to hear anyone trash my thoughts on the Colonies' population and capacity, I think my assumptions are pretty safe.  |
On screen CBG evidence amd some real world extrapolation.
Cylons.
1. Those machines were never seen operating in a vacuum; or that matter in an atmosphere so hostile that Colonials couldn't function without the minimum of gear.
2. Based on (1.) Colonials and Cylons compete for the same real estate.
3. Cylon Basestars are radially symmetric and lack any visible reaction engine. Speculation; the Cylons use some sort of gravity keel and inertia sail propulsion system. This makes no sense as reaction engines are more efficient.
3. The Cylons never show a massing of more than three base stars. Ergo they have LIMITS to their resources.
3. The Cylons used freighters as support ships to launch their raiders at Cimtar. If they had the Basestars, why not use those? The common theory was that the Basestars were used to raid the Colonies while the freighters were used to disguise the raiders that destroyed the Colonial fleet at Cimtar. That makes no sense. If you have sufficient Basestars to service both target sets, you would use your optimum platform.
4. Based on one, two, and three; it was the Cylons who mainchanced their strategy, and were looking for a knockout blow to reverse their fortunes in a losing war.
Colonials
1. Usually were outnumbered three to one in smallcraft furballs and proved more than capable of fighting in such situations on even terms.
2. Battlestars('alligators') though designed to fit two dimensional TV conventions would make sense as platforms for manned rocket fighters.(Note that there are a lot of design faults in the "alligator" as opposed to a real execution of a space fighter carrier, but the bilaterally symmetrical rocket with the launch recovery mechanisms for the fighters on either the port or starboard aspects of the Viper Coop is logical.
3. For practical reasons, the Colonials would have built area defense bodyguard ships for their battlestars. These AEGIS ships would have been purpose designed for CM/CCM warfare
4. For practical reasons , the Colonials would have built;
-ore extraction/fuel refinery ships(TYLIUM and raw materials)
-ammunition ships(missiles, bullets, boron)
-transports(Colonials)
-freighters(food, air, water)
-manufactory ships(to not only repair, but BUILD everthing from paperclips to battlestars)
5. The last item(four) has to be extrapolated from the screen evidence because there is no physical way to build something as big as a battlestar planetside and loft it into orbit(even in pieces). You generate too much heat. You would kill your planet as a life bearing world if you tried it.
Based on the above we have some grounds to speculate numbers and means. Again using on screen evidence;
One-the Colonials took decades to build battlestars, but weeks or months to build Vipers.
Two-industry is industry. It may be more cost efficient for robots rather than men to build cars, but the hours involved per unit are approximately the same to fabricate. A Cylon Basestar had to take at least as many resources and as much time to assemble as a battlestar.
Three-the Cylon gear always appeared to be poorly designed and complex copies of human gear. Examples-Raider versus Viper, Cylon "laser carbine" versus Colonial "blaster" pistol.
Four-if the Cylons were the vast empire, as speculated, with the vast access to numbers and resources; then they would have massed their fleets and rolled over the Colonials in one campaign. Three to one size difference in resource and population base I'll accept, but anything beyond that does not support the history or the demonstrated capabilities of the two opponents.
So.
If the Colonials are maxed out at deploying and supporting twelve fleets-each one based around one battlestar(One fleet per Colony I might add; so we can take the gross planetary product of Earth and use that to simulate one Colonial world) and if we use Gerald O'Neill benchmarks;
-You can build one battlestar and keep it in ordinary.
-You can build one to four AEGIS ships, each about a tenth the size of a battlestar) and keep that in ordinary.
-You can build as many as fifty auxillaries of all types including;
--three to five ore extraction ships; each as big as a battlestar.
--three to five tankers/volatiles/liquid bulk carriers; each as big as a battlestar.
--one to six ammunition/expendables supply ships about half the size of a battlestar
--up to five freighters of various sizes, but averaging about half the size of a battlestar.
--up to twenty military transports, of various sizes but generally designed to carry around a thousand Colonials in addition to their equipment-estimated average size about a quarter of that of a battlestar.
--two asteroid harvesters that would dwarf a battlestar in size(This is the Von Neuman manufactory-estimated size at least a cylinder twenty to forty kilometers long and five to ten kilometers in diameter.).
That would be the military component of a space presence that the Colonials of a single colony should be able to maintain.
Their commercial presence should be ten times that.
Multiply that by twelve.
Now triple that for the Cylons.
During the thousand year war the Colonials may have had to replace their fleet once due to battle losses.
Based on Cylon performance seen, they had to replace their fleet one and a half times at the numbers extrapolated.
Cylon technology is clunker technology as it appears that they use at least twice the resources to build a unit equivalent to a Colonial one in performance. And it takes three times as many units to achieve battlefield equivalence.
For a comparable model in human history compare Japanese versus the American performance
Japan in that example were the Cylons.
Did you know that the Japanese throughout the early Pacific war outnumbered the Americans and their allies after Pearl Harbor three or more to one at sea and in the air-except at the point of tactical contact?
Glen Larsen had writers who wrote from memory.
