Colonial Fleet Strength And Composition, Pre-cimtar [Archive]

WarMachine

October 4th, 2005, 02:42 PM

COLONIAL FLEET STRENGTH AND COMPOSITION, PRE-CIMTAR

Why did the Colonial Fleet's defenses fail so badly? Why were they so unprepared for the Cylon attack?

The sabotage by Baltar's agents cannot explain the destruction of a fleet that has been in more or less continuous action for at least 100 yahren.

In 'Saga', we only see five battlestars at Cimtar; the implication is that this was either the entire Colonial Fleet or at least the bulk of it.

I find this inadequate and unlikely, along with the 'fanon'("fan-canon") belief that there were only a total of twelve battlestars.

A battlestar is just a ship...albeit a very large one. Because we have to use Earth-analogues, a battlestar is a combined aircraft carrier-heavy cruiser; this has been pointed out frequently. One of the arguments against CBSG is the lack of auxiliary main-force combatants.

The typical assumption is that battlestars must have 'outrider' combat vessels to support them. This is not necessarily the case. A perfectly valid argument would be that the battlestars are the only vessels capable of standing in the "line of battle"(hence the old nautical term "ship of the Line").

The problem with this is that a ship smaller than a battlestar might not be able to survive long enough against a Cylon main-force unit(like a basestar) to make the expenditure of materials and manpower worthwhile.

So, what was the Colonial fleets' status at the time of the ambush?

Here, I am going to speculate...Feel free to disregard this if you like.

A battlestar is roughly 4 times the size of an early-21st century USNavy 'Nimitz'-class carrier. Given that we can safely assume a Colonial population in the range of 12-24 billion(at least 1-2 billion per Colony), and that if they maintained only 1-2 percent of their population under arms for extended periods(the rate for the USA in the 1980s was about 2-3%, counting active duty, reserves and National Guard), the Colonies would have had roughly 40 million people under arms.

The vast majority of those troops would have been infantry and support sevices for the Fleet. There would have been a dedicated ship design to transport large numbers of troops, a minimum of 2-3000 troops per ship, with some type of assault shuttle craft to ferry them into battle; any smaller numbers would be of little use.

Given a fairly constant "optempo"(operations tempo), there would need to be between 50 and 100 battlestar-sized ships "in ordinary"(meaning, 'in service'); this would include a roughly even, one-to-one basis of battlestar-to-assault ship.

However.

We know that Cain was defeated - and the bulk of the 5th Fleet was lost - at the Battle of Molokay; there are apochryphal indications of a spate of heavy fighting around that time period.

As a result, there is likely to have been a receptive undercurrent in Colonial society when Baltar steps up with his peace proposal. For the Colonial Fleet, it would have been one of their low periods: with Fleet strength low, they would likely have had most of their surviving Fleet units in spacedock for repairs, or would have had new keels building.

Given the apparent mood at the time of Cimtar(based on Serina's interrupted newscast), it's likely that the Council of the Twelve may have slowed funding for replacemments as a "sign of good faith" to the Cylons.....Politicians are not noticably sharp in the best of times.

This means that the vast majority of Colonial military forces would have been planetside during the main Cylon attack, and the vast majority of the Fleet would have been in spacedocks or in parking orbits with little more than caretaker crews.

Given the rather lackadaisical response times of the other battlestars at Cimtar(drugged Ambrosia notwithstanding), it's likely that the battlestars in the Colonial Home System would have been equally slow in reacting to a sudden attack.

Additionally, considering the importance of the meeting at Cimtar(where the President and the full Council were present), the five battlestars that we see there are likely a good chunk of Colonial Fleet strength -- say, 30%+/-3%...That would leave only ten battlestars to directly defend the Colonies, and, returning to the slow reaction times at Cimtar, it's probable that very few of them survived; those that did would have only survived by escaping the main Colonial system as quickly as possible, and playing a running game of cat and mouse with the Cylons.

.....

Comments are invited.....

Kaith Rustaz

October 4th, 2005, 03:00 PM

WarMachine

October 4th, 2005, 03:28 PM

Considering that we see the loss of the Atlantia at Cimtar, and the Galactica withdrawing, that left 3 Battlestars caught unprepared facing a substantial cylon force. I do not believe that at any time did we see non-battlestars there.

That none of the other 3 survived isn't confirmed AFAIK, only asumed. One or more of them may have been able to also retreat, return home find the colonies destroyed, load up what they could and head off for parts unknown.

Looking at the damage at Pearl Harbor may give some ideas as well to the situation I think.

Hmmmm.....Remember that the Gal recovers "...67 fighers -- 25 of our own" given the circumstances, I think it's likely that none of the other three survived.

Note that this does not include any task forces (battlestars and troopships) that were outside the Colonies at the time of the attack; their dispositions are completely up in the air.

As a result, I don't think you would see very many surviving Colonial troopships; I know from personal experience how long it takes to load up a Tarawa-class, and even doing a fast load-out there is no way that they'd be ready-to-go in a couple of hours...

...That, and those ships would have been super-high-priority targets for the first waves, so their wreckage would likely have been streaking the skies of the Colonies for hours and days after the battle.... :cry:

Tabitha

October 4th, 2005, 03:35 PM

peter noble

October 4th, 2005, 03:42 PM

I really don't know what to say, as far as I know there were only five battlestars. It leads to a lot of speculation about offensive and defensive capability.

The Colonial planetary defence sysytems must have been pretty impenetrable, after all it took sabotage from within to take them down.

I have no doubt that the Colonials were slowly losing the war, that's why they were quick to take the olive branch offered by baltar on behalf of the Cylons.

Kaith Rustaz

October 4th, 2005, 03:50 PM

That is my thoughts too. Cylon plan seemed to be 1-lead main offensive forces away & destroy. 2-destroy defensive forces, 3-destroy civilians. Gonna throw out some random thoughts here...

I believe (and please correct me if I'm wrong) that Cain said something about the whole cylon fleet being between him and the colonies so thats why he headed away into deep space.

Adama believed Cain had died at Molekay (sp). This would indicate some time had passed between the destruction of the 5th Fleet, and Cimtar.

12 BattleStars
Lets assume that the Atlantia was ceremonial only (ala AirForce 1) for a moment, and that the 4 BattleStars accompanying her were the "best" of the fleet. That would leave 8 unaccounted for.
We know Pegasus was leading the 5th fleet.
What if a "fleet" was a pair of battlestars? That would give 6 total fleets, with the Atlantia possibly being the "home fleet" command ship.
Cylon task forces seem to consist of 3 BaseStars, so a 2 ship Colonial task force doesn't seem much of a stretch.
Also, considering the size of a BattleStar, it can safely be assumed that they were designed for long-term independant operations. This belief is reinforced by the fact that the Galactica operated under adverse conditions, participated in heavy combat for prolonged periods of time without benefit of spacedock or fleet-resupply yet continued to be battleworthy throughout the 1st season

The cylons seemed to be losing the war despite destroying Cains fleet. I base that on the lack of desperation on the part of the Quorum in the beginning. The feeling of the humans seemed to be more happy it's about to be over, than war-weary and shellshocked. That became apparent after the holocost.

Sorry if the thoughts ramble a bit.

WarMachine

October 4th, 2005, 04:12 PM

Why assume they ran? They may have had other fleets off doing DMZ patrols. Just because your at peace talks does not mean you just welcome the old enemies in. Remember Ronald Regan "Trust, but verify" and that wouls explain the lack of ships in the series attack. Naturally they would not necessarily NEED Corvettes, Cruisers, Destroyers, and the tending ships, repair ships, Light Assault Carriers, Landing ships ect ect ect... for a presidential function. Most likely the ships we saw in the series attack was what could be spared from their duties. When Adama says the fleet is gone, he may honestly believe it, after all if the Cylons were jamming the other fleets reports, or keeping them from hearing about the colony attacks, then Adama might very well believe it. And they would probably want to keep the other fleets ignorant of the attack. They would enrage the other fleets, making their fight harder. So theres a good probability that there are other types and numbers of ships, just not as many Battlestars.
At least thats the concept I use in my stories, the fight for the colonies just begins after the Galactica leaves. If they ever return, in my stories at least, they will find a ragged series of colonies with battered fleets patrolling them, wondering where the Battlestars went.

tabbi

Here's where we get into the psychology of the Colonial military, and the difference between "Warriors" and "Soldiers"...and yes, it's one of the differences between TOS and GINO 2.0.

In GINO, the Colonial military is a "through a glass...darkly" version of the US military machine; where Warriors are very pragmatic about "living to fight another day"(meaning, break and run, and harry the enemy when you have the advantage), Soldiers (like Adama2.0) will dig in their heels and hold until they are overrun and annihilated, or get rescued.

Adama1.0 is saavy enough to know that even if one or two other battlestars survived, and even if they can link up, they are no threat to the Cylons, and they won't be able to retake the Colonies; the Cylons are pursuing the RTF out of spite.(Ref "LL"1.0)

Humanity's onnly chance is to find allies, and no one in their region of space is going to help them.....Hence, the search for Earth...

...Poor bastards..... :...:

Tabitha

October 4th, 2005, 04:17 PM

Well my stories are open format stories, of course stuff that is posted to be stupid is ignored. If you want, Id love to have you maybe help out a bit with ideas and stuff to help me write something worth reading...

tabbi

WarMachine

October 4th, 2005, 05:07 PM

WarMachine

October 4th, 2005, 05:31 PM

That is my thoughts too. Cylon plan seemed to be 1-lead main offensive forces away & destroy. 2-destroy defensive forces, 3-destroy civilians. Gonna throw out some random thoughts here...

<snip>

12 BattleStars
Lets assume that the Atlantia was ceremonial only (ala AirForce 1) for a moment, and that the 4 BattleStars accompanying her were the "best" of the fleet. That would leave 8 unaccounted for.
We know Pegasus was leading the 5th fleet.
<snip>

The cylons seemed to be losing the war despite destroying Cains fleet. I base that on the lack of desperation on the part of the Quorum in the beginning. The feeling of the humans seemed to be more happy it's about to be over, than war-weary and shellshocked. That became apparent after the holocost.

Sorry if the thoughts ramble a bit.

No prob! ;) Outside of Cain's hyperbole and the Atlantia being a strictly ceremonial ship, I can see the logic in your thoughts.

Problem is, a battlestar only carries maybe 72 Vipers, plus a few shuttles; I base this on the launch bays only having 16 launch tubes: 16x2=32, plus probably double that to launch in a second wave(32 Vipers to a Squadron, 16 to a Wing). It could probably carry more in a pinch, but only by sacrificing shuttles.

I agree that the battlestars were designed for long-duration missions, but remember that the Gal(and likely the Peg, previously) only went head-to-head with Cylon basestars once each in the first season, and the Gal didn't take too many hits from what we see.

The Cylon Raiders cause periodic damage, but the only time it is truly serious for the Gal is during FiS. I think that by mid-Season Two, the Gal would be needing a real yard pretty badly.

The point, though, is that there's no reason to assume a boiler-plate organizational structure based on what's on-screen. Also note that the Gal carries very little in the way of combat troops; they have armed landrams (eqv to Earth APCs), and there seem to be SWAT-capable security troops(based on 'Baltar's Escape'), but I think that Galactica was bursting at the seams by that time.

Finally, I have doubts that the Cylons were "losing"; I think it far more likely that it was the Colonials who were losing slowly, but simply hadn't admitted it to themselves.

Remember, the Cylons were running a wonking HUGE empire, and the Humans were getting in the way; that's more of a nuisance than a threat. I think that the Cylons threw the dice at Cimtar, and banked a large chunk of their Fleet on knocking the Colonies out at one stroke...Even if Cimtar turned out to be a disaster for the Cylons, they would have inflicted massive damage and casualties on the Colonies, and likely wouldn't have lost too many assets.

rjandron

October 4th, 2005, 07:37 PM

There is, and will always be, a fair amount of speculation on the nature of the war, and the Colonial military at the time of the fall of the 12 Colonies. I don't believe that this aspect of BSG was ever considered by the original series writers in anything but the most cursory terms. The destruction of the Colonial Fleet at Cimtar is little more than a macguffin to get the story going.

That having been said, there is a great deal of room for speculation left for fans who want a deeper explanation. But a lot of it rests on assumptions.

The biggest assumption is that Saga of a Star World does, in fact, show the entire fleet at Cimtar. We see five Battlestars in the show--does this mean that only five were there, or that there were no smaller picket ships preceding the fleet? Canon is canon, but remember that the source of the canonical material was likely driven by financial or artistic, rather than teleological, motives.

Why show five battlestars? Because that way, you only have to do five travelling matte passes on the Dykstraflex rather than six, which means you come in on budget for the shot.

The next biggest assumption is that warfighting in the BSG universe in any way resembles that on Earth. In BSG, we have energy weapons systems, complex starships which tend to ignore our laws of physics, emotional AIs, and a genocidal interstellar war that has raged for a millennia. None of these have any parallel on our world.

WM, you touched on this point in your comment on the difference between Warriors and Soldiers. Warriors are shown in some episodes as being a special class. They are quite different and apart from the Galactica crew and certainly higher in status than the "blackshirt" Council Security troops. Warriors are almost a separate caste from the rest of the Fleet personnel. One imperfect anaology is that the Warriors were like the Samurai class of Tokugawa Japan.

If you have a military predicated upon a special class, that class has to more than carry its weight in combat, or you have to have a lot of cheap cannon fodder to feed the war machine without using up the special class. If the Warriors are just that good, then the rest of the military structure will orient itself towards the support of the Warriors. This means that the fleet's purpose is not to fight, but to deliver Warriors to the battle area and provide support for them while they do the fighting. So, why have ships other than battlestars, Vipers, and the odd replenishment vessel?

The third biggest assumption is that the Colonies were at the pinnacle of their technology at the time of the battle of Cimtar. If we accept the notion that the Galactica is 500 yahrens old--and even with life extension upgrades, that still makes her a very old starship--how long does it take to build a new battlestar given that it is apparently cost-effective to try to keep a half-millennia-old starship as part of the core fleet? Could the Colonies have lost the capacity to build new Battlestars as a result of the pressures of fighting a war for Millennia? Could it take so long and so many resources to build a battlestar that building new ones would starve a Colonial world?

Just how nasty was that 1000 yahren war anyhow?

Kaith Rustaz

October 4th, 2005, 08:50 PM

Excellent points there, and the comparison of Warriors to Samurai may be a good one.
- They seem to be a special class.
- There seems to be some code of honor in effect. (Apollo giving his "word as a Warrior")
- They are separate from the rest of the military. (Crew wears blue or black, brown is reserved for CW)
- The "nobility" shown by Adama and in his Pattonesque way, Cain seem similar to romantasized views of Samurai lords (Think Last Samurai)

It's not Lucas's pseudo-samurai vision, but I can see some good resemblances.

WarMachine

October 4th, 2005, 11:26 PM

rjandron -

You bring up several excellent points here; my comparison of Warriors to Soldiers was a bit rushed, as I was at work, and trying to go home.

While it's an interesting take, I think that the Samurai analogy goes a bit too far; maybe more like European knights, who are an elevated group, but have well-known flaws.

I think that the Council Guards are wannabe's, people who couldn't cut it as Warriors(they either washed out, or never had the guts to try); they know it, and so do the Warriors -- who never let them forget it.

The differences within the Gal's crew are more superficial, I think. Most of the "blue-suits" - the 'Command Officers' - seem to be at least Viper or Shuttle rated, and most seem to have been in-service for a long time(specifically, Tigh, Omega and Tolen; Athena was a Command Officer and was already Shuttle-rated in 'Saga').

The Warriors flying Vipers I see as more akin to helicopter pilots - they fly very demanding aircraft that can land almost anywhere, and tend to be right up on the action; they are a cut above the rest.

In their own way, though, I think you would have seen that Colonial Infantry had the same attitude as the Viper pilots; veteran infantry, no matter the culture, all share certain characteristics - and a certain elitism or 'standoffishness' - that "outsiders" usually find offensive.

In re Colonial culture, it's obvious that they have a rather feudal/theocratic structure to them; Baltar is a 'Count', and Adama - even though he is a serving military officer - is both a political and a religious leader, at least among Capricans.

At the same time, I don't think that the Colonies had lost the ability to construct battlestars; at Cimtar, four battlestars were destroyed by fightercraft alone(granted, a LOT of fighters). So their loss rate would dictate that the Colonies had to be able to construct replacements.

Battlestars are huge, though; construction times could run well into multiple yahren, even if they are stripped-down designs.....Which is yet another argument in favor of fewer ship types -- find a design that works, and stick to it:

*Battlestars are general-duty combat vessels, and form the bulk of the Fleet

*There would be a specialized troop-carrier that would 'triple'-up as a fast "armoured supply vessel" and a 'shake-n-bake' Viper carrier to esort convoys

*There might be 3 or 4 other highly specialized designs like fuel(Tylium) transporters, mobile spacedocks(for battlefield repair), courier/scout vessels, etc but no more than that...This allows rapid planning and execution of build schedules, large-scale interchangability of parts, and the ability to store major components in advance.

As far as reaching the upper limti of their tech, I don't think so. My personal belief is that the Colonials' ancestors terra-formed multiple planets in their home system to make the colonies viable for the Twelve Tribes.

Finally, while technology may be very different, war doesn't change that much; you simple face different challenges caused by the environment......

Kaith Rustaz

October 5th, 2005, 03:54 PM

Did some digging, don't have time to 'pretty' it up. I went through the books I have, and did some googling. Here's my raw notes. :)

====
BattleStars:

Galactica
Atlantia - Destroyed at Cimtar
Solaria - Destroyed at Cimtar
??
??
2 fleet battlecruisers destroyed (pg 32) Is this a typo and was meant to say BattleStar not Cruiser?

Pacifica - Detroyed prior to Cimtar
Pegasus - Survived destruction of 5th fleet.

Adama in novelization "thinks" 5 BattleStars in the Colonial Fleet. (pg 13)

2 fleet battlecruisers destroyed (pg 32)
Refueling stations mentioned (pg44)
Defensive system mentioned, Sagitara had most sophisticated. (pg53)

John Larocque maintains an excellent resource at http://www.kobol.com/archives/batlstar.html
It states that the 5 Battlestars at Cimtar were: Galactica, Atlantia, Acropolis, Triton & Pacifica.

Mentioned in other episodes are Columbia, Rycon, Cerberus, Bellerophon, Olympia, Valiant, Promotheus, Argo and Poseidon

Juggling these around we get 17:
Galactica, Atlantia, Acropolis, Triton, Pacifica, Columbia, Rycon, Cerberus, Bellerophon, Olympia, Valiant, Promotheus, Argo, Poseidon, Solaria, Pacifica, Pegasus.

Larson himself states that the 12 Battlestar limit wasn't official.

WarMachine

October 5th, 2005, 05:43 PM

Did some digging, don't have time to 'pretty' it up. I went through the books I have, and did some googling. Here's my raw notes. :)

<snip>

John Larocque maintains an excellent resource at http://www.kobol.com/archives/batlstar.html
It states that the 5 Battlestars at Cimtar were: Galactica, Atlantia, Acropolis, Triton & Pacifica.

<snip>

Larson himself states that the 12 Battlestar limit wasn't official.

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. ;)

Damocles

October 6th, 2005, 07:54 AM

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.

WarMachine

October 6th, 2005, 10:29 AM

Damocles,

I have no trouble with the vast majority of your points; as far as fleet auxiliaries, I think we're seeing some of them in the Celestra, and in the mining ship[s].

I still am willing to doubt a series of Colonial AEGIS-types hulls; the 'gators don't seem to need them, especially when operating in groups(the Cimtar attack was a special case). The cold, hard facts are that the AEGIS-type hulls are out there to absorb damage as they die, in order to protect the carriers; the USN/RN can dance around the subject all they like, but that's what they're there for.

I don't see a lot of that attitude among the TOS Colonial military, at least as they are portrayed.

That said, the lack of AEGIS-type designs among the Cylons is a head-scratcher...

I have always assumed that the Cylons were overstreched in their war with the Colonials, but I doubt that they were in as bad shape as they Colonials seemed to think; and while you are correct that the Cylons should have been able to outproduce and roll over the Colonials, I think that you're spot-on that the Cylons seem to have an imperative not to waste resources unnecessarily.

As to Cylon naval tactics, I think that they used the fighters in concert with the tankers so that they could deploy the baseships with additional Raider units to the Colonies; again, assuming that the Cylons gambled a large chunk of their fleet reserves on the "Cimtar Gambit", they were likely using the bulk of their fleet elsewhere, to keep an eye on subject populations.

Also, I would characterize the Cylons as more akin to the Soviets than the Japanese...

And TOS had good writers because they had people in TV in those days who could actually write...

Damocles

October 6th, 2005, 12:15 PM

I still am willing to doubt a series of Colonial AEGIS-types hulls; the 'gators don't seem to need them, especially when operating in groups(the Cimtar attack was a special case). The cold, hard facts are that the AEGIS-type hulls are out there to absorb damage as they die, in order to protect the carriers; the USN/RN can dance around the subject all they like, but that's what they're there for.

I don't see a lot of that attitude among the TOS Colonial military, at least as they are portrayed.

That said, the lack of AEGIS-type designs among the Cylons is a head-scratcher...

<snip>

Also, I would characterize the Cylons as more akin to the Soviets than the Japanese...

And TOS had good writers because they had people in TV in those days who could actually write...

1. I argue that the Colonials build bodyguard ships for precisely that reason, to divert and act as banzai jammers and missile sponges.

2. The Russians probably were the cultural model for your average Cylon, but militarily they, the Cylons, always struck me as Japanese in behavior-stiicking to a rigid plan; then becoming disrupted if things went wrong. Say what you like about the gross incompetence and inefficiency of the Russian economy in general and their military specifically, but the Russian battlefield leadership has been historically GOOD and imaginative. Its mainly their junior officers and soldiery that skunked on the battlefield.

3. Good writers are hard to find, but they are out in the world. When I think of the talent wasting in the wilderness out there that you can find if you GOOGLE.....

Trust me, you can find people to write new "Tales of the Alligator" that would blow the current competition out of space.

The market would carry it and you could sell it. We see that it is possible with an inferior product. Why not try for the objective with better?

WarMachine

October 6th, 2005, 12:31 PM

3. Good writers are hard to find, but they are out in the world. When I think of the talent wasting in the wilderness out there that you can find if you GOOGLE.....

Trust me, you can find people to write new "Tales of the Alligator" that would blow the current competition out of space.

The market would carry it and you could sell it. We see that it is possible with an inferior product. Why not try for the objective with better?

Ahhhhh......You're assuming that quality is the goal in network TV, these days.

It isn't. :(

The goal is marketability at the cheapest price possible; if the story blows goats, that's okay, as long as the actors/actresses are lookers/famous, and your budget stays fairly cheap.

Just from what I've seen on this list in the c.1.5 weeks I've been here, we could do our own TOS-era series on our own -- the only thing in the way is getting us photogenic types into place long enough to shoot scenes.

We have excellent writers here, along with technical specialists and general idea people; we have individuals fully capable of doctoring FX, and a good chunk of the membership already owns uniforms and props.

Of course, anything we do will either need the blessing of GL or whoever holds the TOS IPs inorder to make any money from it, or we'd have to make our won, at our expense, and release it for free on the 'net. :...:

:...: Sigh :...:

Kaith Rustaz

October 6th, 2005, 12:35 PM

Nothing wrong with doing a full length fan-film. :)

Damocles

October 6th, 2005, 01:16 PM

Nothing wrong with doing a full length fan-film. :)

The big kicker is the CGI and the copyright issues.

As I understand the art now, we are about a decade away from actually morphing totally lifelike actors into a CGI animation.(The algorithmns are ferociously complex and the computer OS to handle the algorithmns is just now being written)

Once those hurdles are cleared we can desktop CGI our fanfilm with original actors (image copyrights?) and supply our own voice talent and script. These CGI actors become puppets that we marionette through our fan film to suit our story. Then you go and publish.

The hang up then is the copyright issue and the SAG(Who will go ballistic once actors' images can be morphed into a film.).

We saw a glimpse of the future when we saw that disgustiong frog JarJar.

gmd3d

October 6th, 2005, 02:08 PM

I just want to say 'These are very intresting threads, the most intresting I have read in a while on the abilitys of the Colonial fleet..' Don't let me stop you..Go on!!

WarMachine

October 6th, 2005, 02:27 PM

I do want to make one caveat, here: the whole basis of my thoughts on Colonial fleet strength, strategy and tactics is based on my 'jump-line' drive theory...Sometimes, I forget to mention that.

If the Gal/Colonial Fleet are using some other type of drive, a lot of my ideas go out the window.....My problem is that as hard as I try, I can't think of another FTL system that explains what we see as 'screen canon', at least from the technical side.....

Tabitha

October 6th, 2005, 02:37 PM

Oh great, you just blew my whole thought, I cant even begin to think now.. thanks a lot Taranis, you just stopped me cold hahahahah

tabbi

Kaith Rustaz

October 6th, 2005, 03:54 PM

Looking at the various sources, maybe "reality" is in the middle?

Cylon task forces are 3 basestars. Maybe a Colonial "Fleet" is 5 Battlestars? The Pegasus was the flagship and sole survivor of the 5th fleet. Galactica was the sole survivor of the "Home" or 1st fleet?

Looking at the Cylons flying basically Zeros (cheep, high manuver short-range fighters), with the Colonials flying higher quality fighters, the ability of the outnumbered humans to outfly/gun their opponent isn't far fetched.

5 BattleStars at 75 fighters each = 375 fighters. A pretty formidable force even against 1,000 enemy fighters. I recall several references to a Cylon Pinwheel attack, where several cylon ships surround and overwelm a single colonial. This would seem to indicate the Cylons often relied on overwelming numbers and massed group attacks as tactics.

Also of note, is the Cylons often willingness to absorb heavy losses in order to inflict a blow.
- At Cimtar, the fighters attacked unescorted.
- At Gamoray the fighters went back and forth until wiped out.
- On at least 1 other occation (Fire in space I think) they came in enmasse and just took it so that they could shield a kamikaze.

Cylon strength at Cimtar was about 1,000 fighters engaging the fleet, while basestars with full squadrons attacked the homeworlds. At 2-3 basestars per planet, that would give the Cylon strength at about 24-36 basestars, with a fighter compliment of about 90 per, that would give the Cylons a fleet at the destruction of about 4,200 fighters.

As to other ships, I do believe a foundry ship, agro ships, and other specialized types are mentioned throughout the episodes.

WarMachine

October 6th, 2005, 08:02 PM

Kaith,

I like your figures on the Cylons.....I'll knaw on this for a while, and get back to you.

General question: Has anyone ever written a RPG for BSG?

Tabitha

October 6th, 2005, 08:11 PM

RPG? Yes I have in both R.Talsorian rules (Mekton, Cyberpunk ect) as well as in the Dream Pod 9 system (Sillouette system, Jovian Chronicals, Heavy Gear)
Theres also stuff for the D20 system if you google it (Star Wars) so yea, there is and no there isnt, but you can put together a game if you try hard enough, depending on the system you like.
Theres a whole lotta gamin going on on road trips...

tabbi

Kaith Rustaz

October 6th, 2005, 08:21 PM

I kinda fudged the old FASA rules for Trek to do a battle between a battlestar and a V Mothership. :)
Oh, and have played some SFB with the Galactica add-on (unofficial of course).
While in HS I used to DM alot, wrote a wrestling RPG, and a couple of CRPG's.

Tabitha

October 6th, 2005, 08:30 PM

Holy crap, Im more of a nerd than I thought... I game, understand some sciency stuff, and post on a BBS.. maybe I am a nerd... wow... this is sureal

tabbi

Kaith Rustaz

October 6th, 2005, 08:42 PM

I used to be a nerd..then I got LASIK (bad move, long seperate story).

They stripped me of my pocket protector and protractor. It was terrible. ;)

Jester

October 7th, 2005, 12:06 AM

On the subject of the size and strength of the COLONIAL FLEET at the time of it's distruction - I found this very interesting and well thought out article on an old BSG Wargamming site.

Enjoy. :salute:

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The war with the Cylons lasted for around a thousand yahrens (hence the name), and during this time, Colonial Fleet Strength flucuated widely. These notes are intended to give some indication of the strength and composition of the Fleet at various stages of the war.
Around 7100:

The Colonial fleet is large and able. It consists of many types of ships of all sizes and is able to put large numbers of warships in the field. An example of this is the Fourth Fleet which consists of some six hundred fighting vessels (including two Battlestars) and was sent to battle in 7312. Then in 7328 the Battlestar Pegasus leads another fleet into action. As such, whilst I don't expect too many fleets of this size could be fielded at one time, they could be fielded (and lost) without too much concern from the Colonial High Command. In addition, forces would be around to defend Colonial holdings and the homeworlds while fleets went on the offensive.

By 7300, the amount of Fleets able to be fielded would be reduced to about 2 at any one time, with additional fleet elements around for patrol and defence.

Around 7337:

This point in time is around the time that Commander Cain left with his Fifth Fleet in the last Colonial gamble of the war - the doomed Battle of Molecay.
While the battle is mentioned in "The Living Legend", the reasoning behind it may be a fandom thing. Even so, it has fallen in historical use and so deserves mentioning here. The Fifth Fleet was sent as a last gamble to shatter the backbone of the Cylon offensive and buy time for the Colonials to re-group, re-arm and win back the offensive. While we don't know exactly how large the fleet was, we do know that it consisted of almost everything the Colonials had at that point, including all but five Battlestars and a few lighter elements. At this point, I think only six Battlestars remained in service, and five stayed behind to defend the Colonies. However, all other heavy ships (heavy cruisers, Gunstars) and most lighter ships that were surviving went with the fleet. I think the intention was, that as Commander Cain was leading the fleet, it was assumed that it couldn't fail and thus the stripping of ships and defensive resources was deemed acceptable as the fleet would be back long before the Cylons could take advantage of the fact. Not that they would be able to do anything about it at that time anyway.

Unfortunately the plan failed, and the fleet was all but destroyed. The only known surviving vessel was the Battlestar Pegasus, but this wouldn't be known until after the final destruction on of the Colonies.

Thus at the beginning of the year, the Colonials had a few hundred warships in their fleet, which was bearing the brunt of the Cylon invasion, although in a much reduced sphere of influence. 90%+ of this fleet went with the Fifth Fleet.

Around 7342:

We know for a fact that at the time of the peace conference the Colonials had 5 Battlestars surviving - the Acropolis, Atlantia, Galactica, Triton, Pacifica. We see them. However, we can also guess that other forces existed, although probably nothing as large as a Battlestar. We can deduce this from the following facts:

1: When the Galactica is recovering the surviving elements of the fleet, a total of 67 Vipers are recovered, some twenty five from the Galactica. It is told earlier that no other Battlestars were able to launch fighters, so these fighters had to come from somewhere. They could have some from planetary defence bases (we know the Cylons have physcially attacked the Colonial Worlds before, so it would make sense that the various planets has ground bases which may have had fighters present). However these fighters could easily have come from ships left behind.

2: We know that piracy exists around in and around the Colonial worlds - Commander Croft who leads the mission against the Cylon asteroid gun "Gun on Ice Planet Zero" was a captured pirate. As such, while it might be a good idea to take the majority of the Colonial Fleet on a "peace mission", it would be stupid to leave the entire Colonial worlds undefended. Also because the war has been going on for some thousand yahrens it would be tactically stupid too as well. These additional vessels may not necessarily be at the homeworlds at that time (I think that Cimtar is pretty close to the homeworlds to respond to any distress calls quickly, and also see above for additional Viper support), but could be out patrolling other areas of Colonial space, or what it left of it at that time.

3: Another slight clue comes in the film, when a Centurion is reporting the rumours of an exodus fleet to the Imperious Leader. He mentions that survivors tell of a warship which got away, and the Imperious Leader asks "What kind of warship?". Now, obviously this can be taken in many ways, but it can also be taken to mean that there were more than just Battlestars present at this time. For starters, if nothing but the Five Battlestars were still around, this question would be largely irrelevant as the Leader would know, through his spy Baltar, that the Colonials would only be sending Battlestars to get ambushed. Secondly, I'm ignoring the fact the Leader could be referring to Vipers, after all, while Colonials pilots can be very good at what they do, what possible threat is a mere Viper against a Cylon Empire? So, if we're not talking Vipers or Battlestars, what else is there? Ergo, some other type of warship.

4: Yet another clue comes in from the background chatter on the Galactica bridge during the battle at the Moon of Cimtar. If you listen really closely, you will hear the names of a couple of other ships - like the Triton. Are these ships the Battlestars themselves, or are they, as rumour has it, fleet escorts or other small cruisers.

Thus I think that at the time of the Peace Conferance, the Colonial forces consist of some five Battlestars and assorted smaller vessels (probably mainly light cruisers and maybe a few destroyer sized vessels). No larger vessels or heavy cruisers exist at this point - having been destroyed with the Fifth Fleet.

Damocles

October 7th, 2005, 12:27 AM

Originally Posted by Kaith Rustaz

Looking at the various sources, maybe "reality" is in the middle?

Cylon task forces are 3 basestars. Maybe a Colonial "Fleet" is 5 Battlestars? The Pegasus was the flagship and sole survivor of the 5th fleet. Galactica was the sole survivor of the "Home" or 1st fleet?

Looking at the Cylons flying basically Zeros (cheep, high manuver short-range fighters), with the Colonials flying higher quality fighters, the ability of the outnumbered humans to outfly/gun their opponent isn't far fetched.

5 BattleStars at 75 fighters each = 375 fighters. A pretty formidable force even against 1,000 enemy fighters. I recall several references to a Cylon Pinwheel attack, where several cylon ships surround and overwelm a single colonial. This would seem to indicate the Cylons often relied on overwelming numbers and massed group attacks as tactics.

Also of note, is the Cylons often willingness to absorb heavy losses in order to inflict a blow.
- At Cimtar, the fighters attacked unescorted.
- At Gamoray the fighters went back and forth until wiped out.
- On at least 1 other occation (Fire in space I think) they came in enmasse and just took it so that they could shield a kamikaze.

Cylon strength at Cimtar was about 1,000 fighters engaging the fleet, while basestars with full squadrons attacked the homeworlds. At 2-3 basestars per planet, that would give the Cylon strength at about 24-36 basestars, with a fighter compliment of about 90 per, that would give the Cylons a fleet at the destruction of about 4,200 fighters.

As to other ships, I do believe a foundry ship, agro ships, and other specialized types are mentioned throughout the episodes.

<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

I remember reading that in the Mariannas Turkey Shoot that Japanese fighters(Zekes) adopted a circle circuit as a defensive tactic against paired Hellcats that used a variant of the Thatch Weave where they scissored in a zoom and swoop attack on the incompetent Japanese pilots. It didn't work.

As to the Cylon numbers? It seems that if you combined your numbers and mine that the Cylons commited everything they had to Cimtar which jibes with my hypothesis.

Even at that they lacked the total forces to overwhelm the Colonials without extensive sabotage and surprise.

For example; I would think that each Colony would have local aerospace defense units(planetary anti-spacecraft missile and fighter defenses). A battlestar may require deep space infrastructure to build but you can build Vipers at Martin Marietta and base them at Robins.

Surprise is the only thing that works for the Cylons.

So the following has to happen for their ambush at Cimtar to work

-No Colonial Viper cap or recon.

-No deep space DRADIS functioning.

-communications jamming.

-and the Cylon ambush has to be close in time, no more than ten minutes apart at Cimtar and at the Colonies. Otherwise, some of the Colonies would have gotten fighters up and the Cylons, scattered apart as they were would be subject to defeat in detail.

A Colony could in theory easily scramble 100-300 Vipers provided the alert gave them warning.

For it to work, the Cylon basestars have to practically jump in on the Colony they were assigned to atack and hit the infrastructure before the ground defenses could react.

That also indicates something troubling to me.

The Colonies had no midrange deepspace fighter bases in their star system(s)?

As an afficianado of CBG and another fictional treatment of this subject,(see avatar) I find that astonishing and always wondered how you could explain this.

One last thought if I may; I always estimated that the basestars had three hanger complexes that held a battlestar's equivalent of fighters in each hanger complex. So I was comfortable with the number of 225-300 Cylon Raiders per basestar. It tied in with the radially symmetric design the Cylons used in their "double stacked sanddollars".

So if we were looking at a force of 36 basestars, I would have expected about 8100-10,000 Raiders?

Jester; I will have to consider that article. I find many of its assumptions interesting and strongly at variance with conclusions I reached from watching CBG.

How much of it, the article, is "canon"?

Tabitha

October 7th, 2005, 06:51 AM

Heres an odd thought (Yea I know an odd thought from tabbi? thats nothing new) Would the Warriors be more like the Dorsai?

tabbi

WarMachine

October 7th, 2005, 07:25 AM

<snip>

One last thought if I may; I always estimated that the basestars had three hanger complexes that held a battlestar's equivalent of fighters in each hanger complex. So I was comfortable with the number of 225-300 Cylon Raiders per basestar. It tied in with the radially symmetric design the Cylons used in their "double stacked sanddollars".

So if we were looking at a force of 36 basestars, I would have expected about 8100-10,000 Raiders?

Jester; I will have to consider that article. I find many of its assumptions interesting and strongly at variance with conclusions I reached from watching CBG.

How much of it, the article, is "canon"?

All,

After sleeping on this, I have to agree with Damocles.

Lurking in the back of my mind is the figure of 200-300 Raiders per Basestar(I think it's from HoG); with 3 Basestars per Colony, that means upwards of 900 Raiders per planet, plus the orbital firepower of the Basestars themselves...

...Still, I find those figures too low. As Damocles points out, just as the Cylons did at Gamoray, there is no reason for each Colony not to have had c.200-300 Vipers ready to go, in addition to at least a couple of remote-system fighter bases with a battlestar-level compliment of fighters; even allowing for a "Pearl Harbor"-style surprise attack, and the treason/sabotage of Baltar's agents, there should have been a much stronger Colonial response to the Cylon attack. Also, if you allow for lighter combat vessels of destroyer-cruiser size as per Damocles, you have an even more lopsided battle in favor of the Colonials.

The figure that I have been working from in my head was c.1000 Basestars throughout the Cylon Empire at the time of the Cimtar ambush; commiting 25-40 Basestars to a direct attack on the Colonies would be a significant chunk of their fleet.

At the same time, I hesitate to double the number of Basestars in the main attack to c.50-80, as this then begs the question: why did't they catch the Gal/RTFF flat-footed, either over Caprica or in their assembly area? Also, if they Basetars destroyed all/most of the Colonial fleet elements in-system, why didn't at least a few stick around?

In my model of the 'jump-line' drive, the Basestars would have started a relay, ferrying Cylon troops to the Colonies as extermination forces; but I can't justify not leaving at least one to four Basestars as operational bases for Raiders to work from, scattered throughout the system. Even allowing for heavy casualties among the attacking Basestars, they would run the risk of having to make a second series of assault landings, as surviving Colonial ground units would have wiped out the relatively small forces that the first wave could deliver.

:wtf: :wtf: Hmmmmmm......... :/: :/:

Let's try this:

*The Cylons stage simultaneous attacks at both Cimtar and the Colonies, committing the bulk of their forces at the Colonies;

*We know that they used tankers to escort the Raiders to Cimtar(I'm leaving aside the implications of the jump-line drive theory for the moment), so let's make the following assumptions:

**Apollo and Zac only found two tankers; that doesn't mean that there weren't more tankers hidden, given the interference from both the natural phenomenon and the Cylon's jamming

**Since it's pretty clear that there were at least 1000 Raiders at Cimtar, and I find it difficult to believe that each tanker could refuel c.500 Raiders, let's assume a total of ten tankers - Apollo and Zac spotted two and boogied(the correct thing to do), but missed the other eight - where each tanker can escort/refuel 100 Raiders

**Given the above, what if each Basestar in the main attack(on the Colonial homeworlds), say 36 total, were each escorting 5-10 tankers, each of which is supporting 100 Raiders apiece?

**Suddenly, we have upwards of 1900-2000 Raiders per planet, plus the Basestars main batteries; if the Cylons deployed a couple of other tanker/Raider squadrons, they would be able to deal with any out-system bases...

At the same time, assuming heavy casualties among the Basestars, you still have the requirement to ferry troops back and forth; confusion occurs, ships get missed.....and the RTFF manage to escape.

Thoughts?

Damocles

October 7th, 2005, 09:48 AM

Originally Posted by WarMachine
<snip>

*We know that they used tankers to escort the Raiders to Cimtar(I'm leaving aside the implications of the jump-line drive theory for the moment), so let's make the following assumptions:

**Apollo and Zac only found two tankers; that doesn't mean that there weren't more tankers hidden, given the interference from both the natural phenomenon and the Cylon's jamming

**Since it's pretty clear that there were at least 1000 Raiders at Cimtar, and I find it difficult to believe that each tanker could refuel c.500 Raiders, let's assume a total of ten tankers - Apollo and Zac spotted two and boogied(the correct thing to do), but missed the other eight - where each tanker can escort/refuel 100 Raiders

<snip>

For crying out loud!(astonished)

I missed that.

How were the Raiders pre-positioned at Cimtar?

I have seen nothing that convinces me that Cylons had any kind of jump drive integral to that Raider smallcraft.

Tanker craft may inflate a worm hole and make the transit allowing Raiders to come with them, but for them to escort a thousand raiders? The idea I have is that ten tankers is no where near enough.

That needs explanation.

Any takers?

WarMachine

October 7th, 2005, 10:19 AM

For crying out loud!(astonished)

I missed that.

How were the Raiders pre-positioned at Cimtar?

I have seen nothing that convinces me that Cylons had any kind of jump drive integral to that Raider smallcraft.

Tanker craft may inflate a worm hole and make the transit allowing Raiders to come with them, but for them to escort a thousand raiders? The idea I have is that ten tankers is no where near enough.

That needs explanation.

Any takers?

Well, I addressed that in the first part of my post at http://www.colonialfleets.com/forums/showthread.php?t=12033

In the ep, we only see two tankers, but with c.1000 Raiders hitting the fleet at Cimtar, I seriously doubt that two tankers could refuel all of them. So, I went with ten tankers(8 were not found), each refuelling/escorting c.100 Raiders each....

Damocles

October 7th, 2005, 10:38 AM

Well, I addressed that in the first part of my post at http://www.colonialfleets.com/forums/showthread.php?t=12033

In the ep, we only see two tankers, but with c.1000 Raiders hitting the fleet at Cimtar, I seriously doubt that two tankers could refuel all of them. So, I went with ten tankers(8 were not found), each refuelling/escorting c.100 Raiders each....

Some questions.

How many Raiders can you send through a tanker-inflated wormhole?

How big was that wormhole each tanker opened?

Note that the freighters/tankers shown were NOT carriers and could not ferry aboard a hundred Raiders each..

Those Raiders had to get to their IPs under their own power.

That means something had to get them there either as a carrier or as an escort that could operate the "tramline".

Now I have a very good idea of just how much negative entropy it would take to transmit a man(if it was even possible) through a wormhole. A tanker, even a military tanker full of TYLIUM would not have the power to do that designed into it.

Therefore; I propose that the Cylons built special prepositioned wormhole inflation machines(Call these devices, "Jumpgates", at their end of the the wormhole tramline.)

That might explain the low number of tankers seen, and the lack of basestars(carriers).

Kaith Rustaz

October 7th, 2005, 12:14 PM

Damocles

October 7th, 2005, 12:23 PM

I think it might be something as simple as drop off the fighters, keep them in supply, jump back rearm and position to attack the colonies.

The unaccounted for additional tankers is easy to explain. Remember, there was a combination of jamming and the camoflage field (cloud). masking detection of the attack fleet.

So you postulate the basestar ferry model? Plausible. You would need only three basestars to do this. If you didn't expect the Raiders to come back, you could use two tankers for a one way kamikazi attack.

WarMachine

October 7th, 2005, 12:33 PM

Some questions.

How many Raiders can you send through a tanker-inflated wormhole?

How big was that wormhole each tanker opened?

Note that the freighters/tankers shown were NOT carriers and could not ferry aboard a hundred Raiders each..

Those Raiders had to get to their IPs under their own power.

That means something had to get them there either as a carrier or as an escort that could operate the "tramline".

Now I have a very good idea of just how much negative entropy it would take to transmit a man(if it was even possible) through a wormhole. A tanker, even a military tanker full of TYLIUM would not have the power to do that designed into it.

Therefore; I propose that the Cylons built special prepositioned wormhole inflation machines(Call these devices, "Jumpgates", at their end of the the wormhole tramline.)

That might explain the low number of tankers seen, and the lack of basestars(carriers).

Well, there's a great deal of "handwavium" involved in any discussion like this; we can't realistically say that we can even predict how a given FTL system will work, be it a wormhole, jump-point, warp, hyperspace or whatever.

Recall that the tankers from LL were "en route" to Gamoray; that means that the tankers themselves must be FTL-capable. My thinking is that any military vessel should be able to generate at least double their normal jump/displacement-field to envelope another vessel[s], and likely triple it. Because the tankers did not withdraw prior to the attack, I'm guessing that they exhausted their organic fuel load getting into the Cimtar system; the fuel in their bunkers was reserved for the Raiders.

From my estimated size of the tankers vs the Raiders, I think that the tankers could have safely "towed" about 100 raiders each, then topped off their tanks as their sensors picked up the Colonial Fleet arriving in-system.

As for the surviving Raiders at Cimtar, after the last battlestar there is destroyed, they likely broke and ran, trying to hide, until the Cylon SAR(Search And Rescue) groups could show up -- no sense in leaving perfectly good Raider craft and Centurion crews to float off into Eternity...

Jester

October 7th, 2005, 02:24 PM

<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Jester; I will have to consider that article. I find many of its assumptions interesting and strongly at variance with conclusions I reached from watching CBG.

How much of it, the article, is "canon"?

Damocles,
From what I understand - items "STATED" as being seen or heard on the show are to be taken as cannon. Those are listed as such in the article. The rest is based on cannon fact or items infered from cannon.

TANKERS:
Noticed a lot of talk on the subject of how the Radiers got to the point to meet their Tankers for refueling before the attack at Cimtar being dropped off or having special "Gate" ships, etc. As per Cannon Apollo and Zac discovered 2 of the tankers just before they came up on the attack fleet.

It is suposed they flew from a point from their Basestars to there to be refueled by their tankers. Why then could it not be possible for them to fly to SEVERAL tanker refueling points till they were in their launch positions to jump off for the attack. Supposing that, the Basestars wouldn't have to come close and risk being picked up on scans or by patrols and the Cylons could sneak their attack force into place piecemeal till it was ready. After the attack the Basestars could move in for recovery of their craft.

Damocles

October 7th, 2005, 02:25 PM

Well, there's a great deal of "handwavium" involved in any discussion like this; we can't realistically say that we can even predict how a given FTL system will work, be it a wormhole, jump-point, warp, hyperspace or whatever.

Recall that the tankers from LL were "en route" to Gamoray; that means that the tankers themselves must be FTL-capable. My thinking is that any military vessel should be able to generate at least double their normal jump/displacement-field to envelope another vessel[s], and likely triple it. Because the tankers did not withdraw prior to the attack, I'm guessing that they exhausted their organic fuel load getting into the Cimtar system; the fuel in their bunkers was reserved for the Raiders.

From my estimated size of the tankers vs the Raiders, I think that the tankers could have safely "towed" about 100 raiders each, then topped off their tanks as their sensors picked up the Colonial Fleet arriving in-system.

As for the surviving Raiders at Cimtar, after the last battlestar there is destroyed, they likely broke and ran, trying to hide, until the Cylon SAR(Search And Rescue) groups could show up -- no sense in leaving perfectly good Raider craft and Centurion crews to float off into Eternity...

Some real physics-or as real as the numbers of QM allow.

To inflate a basestar-sized worm hole requires 1500 solar masses equivalent of negative entropic energy. That is for a 1000 meter radius wormhole.

Now that is enough room for the basestar but not for a halo of Raiders in tow or close-grouped around it. And that is energy expended per second inflated.

I give you the basestar ferry option or the jumpgate option. I like the jumpgate option myself because the investment in materials and screen evidence closely match that solution. I don't see the Raiders towed by those tankers.(Remember the night,masre of the Gemini mission that lassoed the Agena rocket with which they rendevouzed in 1967? That snarl would be nothing compared to 100 tow cables......

I don't beleve in tractor beams. Magnets on the other hand? ;) The hull of that freighter doesn't have enough surface area to hold 100 Raiders without some of them skidding off. :D

Damocles

October 7th, 2005, 02:43 PM

Damocles,
From what I understand - items "STATED" as being seen or heard on the show are to be taken as cannon. Those are listed as such in the article. The rest is based on cannon fact or items infered from cannon.

TANKERS:
Noticed a lot of talk on the subject of how the Radiers got to the point to meet their Tankers for refueling before the attack at Cimtar being dropped off or having special "Gate" ships, etc. As per Cannon Apollo and Zac discovered 2 of the tankers just before they came up on the attack fleet.

It is suposed they flew from a point from their Basestars to there to be refueled by their tankers. Why then could it not be possible for them to fly to SEVERAL tanker refueling points till they were in their launch positions to jump off for the attack. Supposing that, the Basestars wouldn't have to come close and risk being picked up on scans or by patrols and the Cylons could sneak their attack force into place piecemeal till it was ready. After the attack the Basestars could move in for recovery of their craft.

There are time issues that prohibit you from asssuming that the Cimtar ambush is organized as a staged Cylon Raider phased fly in.

Basic argument boils down to the idea that the Raider has but about a few hours endurance, and that the relative delta vee on those rockets is limited to accelerations of about .01c. For Galactica to get to Caprica to respond to the distress call as quick as it did required a micro-jump or else Cimtar was within minutes of Caprica instead of the more likely hours(all deltas are assumed to be c)

The clearesat and logistically least complex explanation to my mind is the one that the film seems to show. The Cylons massed their Raiders in their hide by jumping the Raiders straight into the assembly area by gate or by carrier. The tankers could jump in independentlly and engage in a refuelling evolution that would be simple dock, tank up, and peel off from the otherwise powered down free drifting raiders.

No need for tow lines, no need for more than the few tankers seen and it explains all those Raiders out in the middle of nowhere without basestar support.

The canon evidence the article cites seems to support a more damaged Colonies than I saw. It would make me wonder if President Adar was a complete fool to accept the offer of a peace conference if the Cylons had such an obvious advantage and didn't push it as circumstances should have suggested. I have to think about that and come up with an explanation.

WarMachine

October 7th, 2005, 03:00 PM

Some real physics-or as real as the numbers of QM allow.

To inflate a basestar-sized worm hole requires 1500 solar masses equivalent of negative entropic energy. That is for a 1000 meter radius wormhole.

Now that is enough room for the basestar but not for a halo of Raiders in tow or close-grouped around it. And that is energy expended per second inflated.

I give you the basestar ferry option or the jumpgate option. I like the jumpgate option myself because the investment in materials and screen evidence closely match that solution. I don't see the Raiders towed by those tankers.(Remember the night,masre of the Gemini mission that lassoed the Agena rocket with which they rendevouzed in 1967? That snarl would be nothing compared to 100 tow cables......

I don't beleve in tractor beams. Magnets on the other hand? ;) The hull of that freighter doesn't have enough surface area to hold 100 Raiders without some of them skidding off. :D

Hmmmm.....I think we may have a misunderstanding. Let me retrench, here, and go back on to the "jump/tramline" idea.

I'm using that idea directly from the Niven/Pournelle "Future History" series("The Mote In God's Eye", and "The Gripping Hand"), and the "Mercenary/Prince" series that runs in conjunction.

Basically, you sidle up to the region of space where the jump-point is located, and activate the drive. The drive generates a spherical displacement field, and moves everything within that field to the opposite end of the tramline connection(i.e., the next star over).

The travel is instantaneous; there is no "wormhole" per DS9 or B5. It's literally: drive-on/drive-off/you're-there.

Once in the destination system, you slog along under conventional chemical energy drives or whatever to get to either the system primary, or the next jump-point. Whatever real-space velocity you had at the point-of-origin, you retain on arrival (which can occasionally make things very interesting).

There were never any figs given AFAIK for the Alderson Drive(the name from the original Niven/Pournelle series) as regards power requirements, so I'm ballparking the size of the displacement field[s].

What this means in the Cimtar example is that the Raiders don't have to anchor onto the tanker's hulls, they simply need to get close to the tanker, close enough to be enveloped by the displacement field. At Cimtar, they would "shake out" until they inserted into the cloud.

Maintaining a tight and relatively static formation shouldn't present any real trouble for the Cylon Raiders(five columns of five Raiders, spaced radially around the tankers' cylindrical body), as the Cylon attack waves that we see onscreen are pretty tight formations, as is.....Of course, the RTFF using this system would be..."interesting" is somehow inadequate :D

WarMachine

October 7th, 2005, 03:18 PM

<snip>...The canon evidence the article cites seems to support a more damaged Colonies than I saw. It would make me wonder if President Adar was a complete fool to accept the offer of a peace conference if the Cylons had such an obvious advantage and didn't push it as circumstances should have suggested. I have to think about that and come up with an explanation.

**nods head** Yep...That's my take on it. I think that the Colonies had suffered a series of military reverses in the couple of years/yahren previous to Cimtar that made them susceptable[sp?] to a peace offer. It's clear that not all of the Council were fully convinced; Adama may have been the only one vocal about it, though.

That's why I have no trouble postulating c.15 operational battlestars patrolling the Colonial system, while five escort the President and Council to Cimtar: the rest of the Fleet was in space dock, or had new keels building to try and replace losses.

Kaith Rustaz

October 7th, 2005, 03:49 PM

WarMachine

October 7th, 2005, 03:59 PM

Another question here is, was the point of the ambush to destroy or delay? It may have been simply to delay the main fleet until the damage had been done to the colonies. The success of the ambush may have been icing on the cake as it were.

Also, thinking about this more...and looking at WWII bomber raids, even accepting a higher state of technology, the cylon fighters we saw on screen basically just shot up the place. There would have to have been a much heavier attack, especially considering the size of a planet. Take Earth for example. If we estimate a cylon strike force of 3 basestars, and 3,000 fighters, how long would it take to really do some major damage to Earth? Just taking out the US alone would take a few hours.

Crossing series for a moment, if one looks at V, there was a mothership per major city. I think that show estimated 50 or so ships, each comparable to a Cylon Basestar. In the B5 universe (which has a comparable combat style to the BSG one) we see the Centari using a massive orbital bombardment against the Narns.

I think the Cylons would have initially used a combination of surgical strikes against military hard points (bases, air fields, defenses) before resorting to straffing runs on civilian targets.

Returning to the attack, it seems like they attacked in at least 2 waves. Tigh reports attacks being launched (present time) against the inner (??) colonies. This means that there was some time for some of the colonies to prepare for defense.

Per Cimtar: I would say, both...Get the battlestars so heavily-engaged that they can't retreat quickly, and destroy them if at all possible...

In the Colonies, I think you are spot-on: nail down the hard targets in the first wave, backed up by 'ortillery'(orbital fire support), cause some general hate and discontent(the seemingly mindless attacks on the plaza where Serina is broadcasting), and follow up with selective nuke bombardment and spraying with a fast-acting bio-agent to poison the food supply of any survivors(ref. the line in 'Saga': [approx] Jolly: "...We checked it for radiation, but not for Pluton poisoning..." Apollo: "Pluton? That breaks down the structure of food..."; likely a blight, like mold on Rye)

peter noble

October 7th, 2005, 04:01 PM

Damocles

October 7th, 2005, 04:10 PM

Hmmmm.....I think we may have a misunderstanding. Let me retrench, here, and go back on to the "jump/tramline" idea.

I'm using that idea directly from the Niven/Pournelle "Future History" series("The Mote In God's Eye", and "The Gripping Hand"), and the "Mercenary/Prince" series that runs in conjunction.

Basically, you sidle up to the region of space where the jump-point is located, and activate the drive. The drive generates a spherical displacement field, and moves everything within that field to the opposite end of the tramline connection(i.e., the next star over).

The travel is instantaneous; there is no "wormhole" per DS9 or B5. It's literally: drive-on/drive-off/you're-there.

Once in the destination system, you slog along under conventional chemical energy drives or whatever to get to either the system primary, or the next jump-point. Whatever real-space velocity you had at the point-of-origin, you retain on arrival (which can occasionally make things very interesting).

There were never any figs given AFAIK for the Alderson Drive(the name from the original Niven/Pournelle series) as regards power requirements, so I'm ballparking the size of the displacement field[s].

What this means in the Cimtar example is that the Raiders don't have to anchor onto the tanker's hulls, they simply need to get close to the tanker, close enough to be enveloped by the displacement field. At Cimtar, they would "shake out" until they inserted into the cloud.

Maintaining a tight and relatively static formation shouldn't present any real trouble for the Cylon Raiders(five columns of five Raiders, spaced radially around the tankers' cylindrical body), as the Cylon attack waves that we see onscreen are pretty tight formations, as is.....Of course, the RTFF using this system would be..."interesting" is somehow inadequate :D

More "real" physics.(Here goes nothing :eek: )

Your micro-wormhole is curled space/time in the form of a "cell". When you inflate it; it looks for all the world to you like a spinning hypermass(misnamed blackhole) and acts the same way. It is not some Babylon 5 tunnel into hyperspace. You aim at the spinning event horizon "equator" of your inflated-wormhole at a tangent and slide in just under the c radius limit into one of the segmented "branes" of that flipped time/space where the three spatial ordinates have transposed positions with the time ordinate. You pop out into the other side of the event some distance(as determined by the peculiar relationships of spatial geometry and angular momentum in this "brane" if you did this correctly, alive and not knowing if any time has passed at all. Since all time in realspace is local and you displaced without crossing those quanta of space/time that are contiguous in ralspace between where you were amnd where you are, you cannot know if any time transpired at all for you in the wormhole transit.(Theory suggests that the local time you are inside the wormhole event horizon is about equal to 1/2 pi/r^2 of the microwormhole's inflated radius in seconds).

As a rough rule of thumb you need a hundred solar masses for each 100 meters of wormhole "brane" radius.

If you want to know the shape of the "brane" into which you skim/dive?

http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/~pbourke/surfaces/mobius/mobius3.gif

is a two dimensional representation of the four dimensional rotator manifold.

WarMachine

October 10th, 2005, 07:03 AM

Cylons try to strike with superior numbers because they are "incapable of independent thought" which is a significant military weakness compared to independent free-thinking and highly adaptable humans.

It's like some sort of cybernetic blitzkreig, the trick is to have enough ships to overwhelm the humans because I can imagine the CF defeating a Cylon force that outnumbers them 3 or five to one.

Of course the odds are significantly reduced if you've fooled the enemy into thinking you're suing for peace. ;)

....Which fits in well with "machine logic": don't worry about quality if it's unnecessary, just steamroller as you can.

New thought: The rationale for a three-Cylon crew on a Raider - in the event that they have to land, they have a small group to compensate by numbers for their inferior performance one-on-one...

..Something GINO 2.0 never quite understood.... :D

Kaith Rustaz

October 10th, 2005, 08:10 AM

WarMachine

October 10th, 2005, 09:26 AM

I think the GINO cylons were specialists, where as the TOS cylons were general use.
Based on watching how mobile (or rather how not) they were, and how great their marksmanship was (did the go to Stormtrooper school?) It's hard to imagine them fielding an effective ground force.

Definately speacialists...As far as ground forces go, we didn't really see a lot of their ground forces, when you think about it. The only places I know of are at Carillon and in 'Lords', and in both places, there were problems with terrain(okay, and cost/shooting issues) that kept us from seeing a more diverse spread of ground combat tech.

That's one of the things I'd like to see in a remake/continuation: having the Gal run across the last ship of the Colonial equivalent of an MPS(Maritime Pre-Positioning Squadron), basically a military supply ship carrying a huge amount of gear for ground combat, but few/no troops...maybe a ship that also escaped, and has been trying to catch up ever since....

I'm trying to locate a picture that is kind of a memory, showing a Colonial assault team preparing to stage a hostage rescue during 'Baltars Escape'; I'm interested in it, because it's the only time, IIRC, that we see Colonial long guns/rifles....

Tabitha

October 10th, 2005, 10:44 AM

One must remember, TOS cylons are superior, there are many copies and they too have a plan hahahahahahahahha

sorry it made sense in my head

tabbi

Jester

October 10th, 2005, 11:26 AM

I think you can imagine it along the lines of the attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. The aim of the attack was to take out the "Big Units" (Carriers & Battleships) of the Fleet. Once this was done further strikes would take out the samller ships and support facilities. Once this was done the enemy would be able to operate with no oposition in their plan to take the Pacific.

Per Cimtar - you can look at it along the same lines. Once the Fleet was crippled the Cylons would be cleared to take on the Planitary defences and start the distruction of the Colonies.

The reason I go with this theory is, IMO, I don't think the Raider type ships would have the firepower to destroy the Colonies unless they were all toteing Nukes or something similar. The Cylons would have to bring in big "Bombardment" ships of some kind and to do that they would have to deal with the Colonal Fleet first.

:salute:

WarMachine

October 10th, 2005, 11:55 AM

Jester,

I view it as "Pearl Harbor Meets The Phillipine Invasion", where the PI invasion is the most important part of the attack.....

Tabitha

October 10th, 2005, 12:12 PM

I think you can view it more like an NFL game with the Phx Cardinals. Both sides have a team, and they know the game, but one side is destined to lose because they just suck at the game and the other side at least thought about a strategy to win, while the other side walked out with no clue they were playing yet.

tabbi

Westy

October 14th, 2005, 11:45 PM

Lets assume that the Atlantia was ceremonial only (ala AirForce 1) for a moment, and that the 4 BattleStars accompanying her were the "best" of the fleet.

The only ceremonial ship at Cimtar that I know of was Star Kobol. There's no reference in the movies or the books that Atlantia was a mere ceremonial ship. In one of the books it mentions Atlantia's sister ship the Pacifica which was supposedly the biggest Battlestar ever constructed. I don't buy it that Atlantia was for ceremony only.

Kaith Rustaz

October 15th, 2005, 07:02 AM

The question is though, what exactly was the "Star Kobol"? There are no references to any BattleStar called Kobol in any of the resources I found. Atlantia was refered to as the Presidential BattleStar though.

Pg 13 mentions that "with the destruction of the Atlantia's sister ship, the Pacifica, Adama's craft had become the largest fighting battlestar in the fleet."

Fighting BattleStar. Implying there were non-fighting ones.

the book continues to describe Atlantia as "a hive of bulkily designed sections", possibly implying it was of poor design, or a slapped together design.

Senmut

October 31st, 2005, 06:28 PM

Why assume they ran? They may have had other fleets off doing DMZ patrols. Just because your at peace talks does not mean you just welcome the old enemies in. Remember Ronald Regan "Trust, but verify" and that wouls explain the lack of ships in the series attack. Naturally they would not necessarily NEED Corvettes, Cruisers, Destroyers, and the tending ships, repair ships, Light Assault Carriers, Landing ships ect ect ect... for a presidential function. Most likely the ships we saw in the series attack was what could be spared from their duties. When Adama says the fleet is gone, he may honestly believe it, after all if the Cylons were jamming the other fleets reports, or keeping them from hearing about the colony attacks, then Adama might very well believe it. And they would probably want to keep the other fleets ignorant of the attack. They would enrage the other fleets, making their fight harder. So theres a good probability that there are other types and numbers of ships, just not as many Battlestars.
At least thats the concept I use in my stories, the fight for the colonies just begins after the Galactica leaves. If they ever return, in my stories at least, they will find a ragged series of colonies with battered fleets patrolling them, wondering where the Battlestars went.

tabbi

Excellent take, Tab. You have come close, I think. With many battlefronts, as well as garrison sites and spacestations, what we saw at Cimtar cannot be the entire Colonial Fleet. The Cylons go for it because the President is aboard. Given their obsessively centralized mentality, the Cylons cannot conceive of their foes surviving once Adar and the top leadership are gone. Rememebr SB's comment that the "main attack is on the President's ship."

Senmut

October 31st, 2005, 06:40 PM

As to the slow response of the Fleet to the Cylon ambush. Imagine the following scenario.....
It is the fall/early winter of 1945, and somewhere in the Pacific, five top-of-the-line Fleet Carrier are cruising along towards Japan. Since the japanese have sued for peace, no one is expecting treachery. Most of the crews are at ease, most of the planes are on the hangar decks, undergoing maintenance or neatly tucked away, the pilots either asleep of loafing. Few anti-aircraft posts are manned. After all, the war is over, right?
Suddenly, radar picks up at least 1,000 aircraft, identified as Japanese, approaching at top speed, emerging from a weather front, 100 miles and closing. The alert is sounded. Pilots are roused and briefed as quickly as possible, planes are being hurridly fueled and armed, anti-aircraft is manned, planes hoisted to the flight decks, and the ships have to turn into the wind to launch. As you can see, they are NOT going to be ready once the enemy force reaches. A few planes may make it up, but barring a miracle, it will be total carnage.
Just an analogy.

TwoBrainedCylon

November 1st, 2005, 03:41 AM

This is something else that will hopefully have more insight come ... say around March 2006.

Sandy

Tabitha

November 1st, 2005, 06:01 AM

I think Senmut is right about his analogy, though to take it one step further, let us consider, there are at least three flat tops in the area, but the Japanese strike a land base that was not expecting trouble and destroy it. The carriers simply cannot get to the base soon enough. We called it Pearl Harbor, the Colonies called it Cemtar...

tabbi

Qeutzal

December 13th, 2005, 11:41 PM

I have been reading your thoughts on how the colonies could be destroyes so easly and I would like to add my two cubits also.

1. Since the original show lasted only one season, the colonial navy was never fully developed. There had to be other types of war ships like cruisers, frigates, destroyers, scout, etc. frack, look at Star Trek and Star War. Even in the real world, the U.S. Navy has other classes of ships. Can you imagine trying to protect the U.S. with only 12 aircraft carriers; I cannot.

2. Another thing that has bothered me is why only 12 battlestars? there has to be more than just one per colony; if a battlestar left to engage the cylons, the home planet would be defenceless. My belief is that each colony has 12 battlestars at there desposal not one.

Here is my theory of what happened on that faithfull day. Since the war with the cylons was over, the majoraty of the fleet was in space dock and most of its warriors were planetside to celebrate the Armistice, only a skeleton crew was left to run the ships. The five battlestars on route to rondevou with the Star Kobal which I presume to be a diplomatic ship, were not fully armed as a sigh of good faith. With each battlestar not carrying its full complement of vipers, they were easy targets. When the cylons attacked the orbiting shipyards, most of the ships were probably powered down and had no chance to fight back.Well that is my theory and its probably nothing new to you.

By the way,here are several battlestar names that I have come up with

Gryphon, Sinaloa, Anahuac, Caligula, Olympus Mons, Kaifa Mons, Europa
Akira, Arco sadi, Aurora, Hellion and Osiris.

Griffworks

December 14th, 2005, 09:34 AM

That seems to track, at least to me.

Before I get in to this, I've not read thru every post there, just skimmed them. So, if I say something already covered, please keep that in mind and be gentle. :D

Dialogue in "Saga of a Star World" tells us that none of the other battlestars at the Cimtar Peace Conference (Atlantia, Pacifica, Acropolis and Triton) survived. Tigh comes on the bridge and approaches Omega asking for a status report on the other battlestars. Omega looks at Tigh and says "we're the only surviving battlestar" or something along those lines. So, there's how we know that Galactica was the only of those five to survive.

I'd further suggest that not only that, but that the Basestars attacked en masse, destroying any orbiting defenses, such as ships or stations. Remember that one basestar can field something like 300 or 400 Raiders and at least three basestars were orbiting Caprica prior to the attack. There's also the info that came out about Baltar and his lackey's sabotaging the Colonial Defenses. If you have no fore-warning of an attack and the enemy shows up at your doorstep unannounced, you have a Pearl Harbor type situation. So, even if you have a single battlestar on full alert above each of the 12 Colonies and several Cylon Basestars suddenly show up, they'd be overwhelmed and destroyed in a relatively short amount of time.

Imagine of the Cylon's had three battlegroups of 12 basestars set up to attack the defenses of each Colony in a specific order - Group One attacks Arilon, Group Two attacks Gemenon and Group Three attacks Caprica. You've got one, maybe two Battlestars in orbit and on regular patrol status. Here come 12 basestars at your one or two battlestars. The enemy could afford to take heavy losses in fighters and heavy damage to a couple of basestars that move in and pound on you while the others encircle you in all three dimensions and then open up themselves. With the Raiders doing kamikaze runs on a battlestar it'd be over fairly quickly - and then on to the next Colony on the list: Tauron!

WarMachine

December 14th, 2005, 11:24 AM

That seems to track, at least to me.

Oh, yeah...read through the rest of the thread. There would have had to be a massive Cylon raiding fleet in the Colonial system, no matter what.

With the conference, the other ships of the fleet, as well as the planetary-defense units, were likely standing down and partying when the attacks came in. Coupled with Baltar's sabotage, the Colonies likely never had a chance.

Qeutzal

December 15th, 2005, 11:05 AM

the Star Kobal??? what kind of ship was she?

I just finished watching the first episode of Battlestar Galactica on the Sci-Fi channel and listened to Sarina's news report. She states that the Armistice meeting was the be held on the Star Kobal. Since it was not seen with the 5 battlestars, I pressume she was sent days ahead and the Galactica & other battlestars were on there way to rondevou with her.

My theory is that she is a diplomatic ship not a battlestar or any kind of warship. The Star Kobal was probably the first ship to be destroyed by the cylons.

Griffworks

December 15th, 2005, 02:43 PM

I'm at work so don't have the link here, unfortunately, but I've got a link to an interesting site that purports that there were likely something like 26 Battlestars as a part of the Cimtar Fleet. I'm not saying that I completely agree with his reasoning, but his breakdown and the logic used are somewhat compelling and certainly interesting, to say the least.

The gist of the theory is that if you carefully watch the first 20 minutes of "Saga of a Star World" where we see the Fleet at Cimtar, we get a couple of views of the fleet that don't exactly match up. In one view, we see five ships in a staggered line - the classic shot used in the opening title sequence. later, we get a different view w/the ships in what almost appears to be a wedge formation as they're scattered in a horizontal type pattern versus the earlier vertical type pattern. Still later, we get at least one other angle shot w/this angle showing a different type formation.

I think that it was more a matter of visualizations being sort of "taken advantage of", but I do think the guy makes good points and think it's interesting that he pulled that together.

WarMachine

December 15th, 2005, 03:39 PM

Griffworks

December 15th, 2005, 03:50 PM

Oh, yeah...read through the rest of the thread. There would have had to be a massive Cylon raiding fleet in the Colonial system, no matter what.
OK I've still read thru them all, as I'm trying to read just a few and then analyze them some. Gonna have to read and analyze a few more, as some of ya'll have a LOT of ideas in one thread! Not sayin' it's a bad thing, just that there's a lot of info for me to try and read thru and I keep getting distracted (here at work). So far, I agree with most everything everyone's written regarding other fleet ships in the Colonial Fleet. I certainly agree that, not unlike the statement made in TNS' Miniseries, there had to be more than just a handful of battlestars.
With the conference, the other ships of the fleet, as well as the planetary-defense units, were likely standing down and partying when the attacks came in. Coupled with Baltar's sabotage, the Colonies likely never had a chance.
I kind of have a hard time thinking that they would have had the entire military standing down to party. That just doesn't make sense for me, given that we know they'd been at war for a thousand yarhen. But then again, I'd have thought that more commanders would have followed Adama's example and at least alerted their fighters w/o launching. Especially if you've been at war for a thousand yarhen.

Of course, chalk it all up to dramatic licensing, neh?

Griffworks

December 15th, 2005, 04:00 PM

:eek: :cool:! My interest is peaked -- can you backtrack to that link?
Sure, when I get home! It was entitled something like "Fleet at Cimtar Analysis".

EDIT: Ah, ha! I did a Google search on the phrase Fleet at Cimtar and came up with it:
http://www.geocities.com/repcisg/index0.html

I was a bit off on my thinking, as it'd be months since I'd last looked at the site, but instead of wedge formation it was a diamond formation. He's also got some interesting stuff if you go to the last page of all that fleet analysis. One of the other links is to a page w/ a possible internal layout of the landing bays.

WarMachine

December 16th, 2005, 06:34 AM

Sure, when I get home! It was entitled something like "Fleet at Cimtar Analysis". EDIT: Ah, ha! I did a Google search on the phrase Fleet at Cimtar and came up with it:
http://www.geocities.com/repcisg/index0.html

I was a bit off on my thinking, as it'd be months since I'd last looked at the site, but instead of wedge formation it was a diamond formation. He's also got some interesting stuff if you go to the last page of all that fleet analysis. One of the other links is to a page w/ a possible internal layout of the landing bays.

:eek: :wtf: :eek: Interesting.....While I like his landing bay layout(I may need to seriously rethink a few things for "FoI"), I'm not convinced by his Cimtar Fleet count.

Even using a low-ball figure of c.70 Vipers per Battlestar(my count), 25 Battlestars would be packing 1,750 Vipers between them...his count of 148 Vipers per Battlestar would be 3,700 total; the result is either that the general level of Viper-pilot skill sucks(which I'm not buying), or that the long-accepted 1000 Cylon Raiders at Cimtar is flat wrong, and needs to be c.10,000.

Does anyone have a canon/semi-canon ref to the number of Raiders? (My books are in boxes at the moment :( )

I can buy into c.12 Battlestars at Cimtar, but 25 is way too extreme a number; after a thousand yahren of warfare, there has to be more than one Commander unwilling to believe that the Cylons suddenly want to play nice, meaning that there should have been FAR more Vipers.

My other issue is having the Gal so far back in his formation. This is not a matter of fan-pride, but of the fact that Adama - the Gal's Commander - is a member of the Council of the Twelve...the Gal should be near the front end of the formation, near the Atlantia -- which is the impression I got from the fighting.

Another problem with the books-vs-airings is the whole "Star Kobol" issue. If the peace meeting was taking place on the Star Kobol, why did the initial dinner party happen aboard the Atlantia?

Finally, if there were c.25 Battlestars at Cimtar, how many were defending the Home System? How many Baseships were in the attack? Why weren't more Baseships lurking to ambush the returning Gal, and the RTF?

So.

While I'm REALLY liking his flight-pod layout(and I think I'm going to use that), I think we should stick to 5-10 Battlestars at Cimtar. :salute:

Kaith Rustaz

December 16th, 2005, 11:16 PM

Oh, that layout was sweet. Nice detective work there. Have to agree with WarMachine though. The reported numbers don't match up with what we saw.

WarMachine

December 17th, 2005, 05:49 AM

:eek: http://www.geocities.com/repcisg/index0.html ..... :rolleyes:

After waking up from a very interesting dream involving suppressed AK47s, tiger-stripes and a RenFaire/paleontological dig(I need to cut down on the "Rainbow Six 3"), I have done a careful count on the Vipers depicted in the link above: there are a total of 112 -- in that one pod!.

That's right: 224 Vipers per Battlestar equals a whopping 5,600 Vipers at Cimtar, according to his count.

Yeeesssh. :blink: :?: :erk: :rolleyes:

:hack:

Methinks I'm going to leave my counts at 96 Vipers and 14 shuttles per Battlestar at full strength(48/7 per pod).....I think that's an extremely reasonable package for a Battlestar in commission, and still allows room for more surviving Vipers and shuttles per "LL" and the apocryphal evidence of the Foundry Ship's capabilities..... :viper:

:colonial: :warrior:

Dayton3

December 20th, 2005, 06:02 AM

Mind if I add this.

1) In "Living Legend" Adama refers to the three baseship Cylon force as the largest Cylon force he has seen since the destruction of Caprica.

The then tells Cain "they didn't use much more than three baseships when they wiped out our entire fleet at Caprica"

2) In "The Hand of God", Tigh briefs the Colonial Warriors on the Baseships fighter strength of 300 ships. He says "you'll be outnumbered by two to one".

Starbuck says "not much worse than we were at Caprica".

Boomer says "we lost at Caprica".

Based on this one can infer than.....

1) A substantial fleet of colonial warships was present at Caprica during the annhilation of the Colonies.

2) That fleet was protected by around 400 Viper fighters. (the baseships would've had around 900 fighters in total) Presumably land based. I assume Baltars pilot, Proteus (Karibdas) sabotaged the defense systems at Caprica to prevent most of them from launching in time to engage the Cylon forces.

In my outline for a future remake of BG. I had it where the entire fleet of battlestars went to the peace conference as a show of strength..........but the support elements and escorts of the fleet were left at the colonies for rest, refit, and of course protection.

When the baseships attacked the colonies, they overwhelmed the Colonial warships and defenses there because they lacked fighter support. Just as a modern carrier battle group would be completely overwhelmed if their air wing were eliminated.

I also think there were alot more than 5 battlestars at Cimtar. But more on that later.

Incidentally, I would bet that assuming the Battlestars at four squadrons each (similiar to the baseships) that they would number about 35 fighters per squadron, giving a total of 140 Vipers per battlestar. It would have to be at least this number to give credibility to Colonel Tighs statement about the 300 Cylon fighters outnumbering the Galactica squadrons "two to one".

WarMachine

December 20th, 2005, 07:17 AM

Mind if I add this.

Sure...

2) In "The Hand of God", Tigh briefs the Colonial Warriors on the Baseships fighter strength of 300 ships. He says "you'll be outnumbered by two to one".

I wondered where that quote came from.....

Based on this one can infer than.....

1) A substantial fleet of colonial warships was present at Caprica during the annhilation of the Colonies.

2) That fleet was protected by around 150 Viper fighters. Presumably land based.

Don't neglect the idea that each Colony may have had its own defense squadron/fleet of smaller ships or Vipers...Also, take into account Baltar's sabotage teams, and what appears to be a general ennui among the Colonial population...That's mostly dramatic license to get the story moving, but that's what we have to work with.

In my outline for a future remake of BG. I had it where the entire fleet of battlestars went to the peace conference as a show of strength..........but the support elements and escorts of the fleet were left at the colonies for rest, refit, and of course protection.

When the baseships attacked the colonies, they overwhelmed the Colonial warships and defenses there because they lacked fighter support. Just as a modern carrier battle group would be completely overwhelmed if their air wing were eliminated.

Or....it could be the other way around: not enough fighters in the air, and not enough capitol ships to engage the baseships.....

I also think there were alot more than 5 battlestars at Cimtar. But more on that later.

See my posts above: allowing for significantly more than five Battlestars at Cimtar means that there have to be far more that c.500 Vipers -- which means that either there were a whole lot more than 1000 Cylon Raiders, or that Colonial Viper pilot abilities suck swamp water.....Which the later ep's don't reflect.

TwoBrainedCylon

December 20th, 2005, 07:41 AM

FWIW, this is what we determined as the strength for Exodus. Here's a tidbit from a future episode:

After the Battle of Molokay, where the 5th fleet was destroyed, the Colonial Congress opted to review the status of all Colonial fighting forces. The wholesale destruction of so many ships and crews, including the Battlestar Pegasus, inspired protests from the Pacifist Movement unlike any previously seen. They introduced theories that the battlestars, massive armored fighting ships capable of waging war across a dozen systems simultaneously, were actually a destabilizing element that helped prolong humanity’s conflict with the machine race. By employing warships of such power and prominence, the Colonial fleet was emboldened to launch attacks that forced the Cylons to respond in kind. This enflamed a continuing circle of violence that blinded leaders to other solutions that would end the destruction.

Conservative politicians, all former military officers, wholly denounced such ignorant thinking. They argued that the Colonial Fleet needed more battlestars as they were the centerpiece of the forces that not only inflicted so much damage against the enemy but also repelled their advances well before they threatened the integrity of the homeland. They pointed to the exploits of the Columbia and its successes as the best example of the great service the battlestars provided. The 14 battlestars still in service were the strength that kept the Cylons at bay.

The Pacifists were enraged. They detailed the great logistical burden even a single Battlestar inflicted on the people. The financial drain alone was staggering. The crew needed to operate each of these tremendous starships was greater than would be required if additional fleets of fighting craft were introduced into the forces. Since one Battlestar could only be in a single location at any given time, the military was actually undercutting its own fighting ability and emboldening its commanders to conduct operations that were better designed to give them personal glory than bring an end to the war.

These arguments gave the moderate leaders, always seeking some advantage to placate all sides of the political spectrum, an opportunity and they seized it. They proposed that the battlestars be recognized as critical elements of the military but that they be limited to a total of 12. With this, each of the 12 Colonies of Man would assume responsibility for manning and maintaining their own Battlestar, evenly distributing the burden among all. It was a controversial initiative that met much opposition but it finally passed. The two oldest battlestars were stripped clean and mothballed. The remaining ships were arranged into four fleets, with the Battlestar of the most prominent planets assuming the command positions.

With this setup, we established that five battlestars went with the president. The rest were deployed in guard actions. The three baseships referrenced were the ones that directly attacked the president's fleet and then swept in to hit Caprica. Other warships engaged in the overall assault, smashing the Colonial fleet from the sides and then hitting their own target planets. Eleven battlestars were destroyed in all, leaving the Galactica "the last battlestar".

Its admittedly an after-the-fact patch to correct limitations imposed by the cost of special effects in the late 70s and some on-the-fly writing but it seemed to follow the "official" sources pretty well and stick with the fan accepted concept of 12 battlestars.

It doesn't mean its right in line with what Larson originally intended, but that's the best version we could come up with.

BTW - I like this discussion.

Sandy

Griffworks

December 20th, 2005, 08:55 AM

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! :D

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. :salute: 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! :LOL:

WarMachine

December 20th, 2005, 11:30 AM

Griff: no problem! Things can get snitty at times, but this is nice.

As to your observations:

I always maintained that Viper sqdrns were 32 Vipers, organized into two flights of 16 ships, each of four 4-Viper elements; that meshes directly into a Battlestar's lauch profile of 32 launch tubes split between two flight pods.

With one complete sqdrn on the launch rails, I think that there is room for no more than four sqdrn's at an absolute maximum; three sqdrn's would equal 96 Vipers, and still allow room for 10-14 shuttlecraft(w/o transporters, they'll need that many admin-craft, if not more).

In re the recovery operations over Caprica in the aftermath of the Cimtar ambush, the dialogue runs something close to:

Tigh: "What's the count?"

Omega: "67 fighters, Sir...25 of our own..."

That indicates to me a loss-rate of c.75% of the Gal's Vipers, assuming she was at 100% or close to it.

In rewatching the series, I don't see a staggering number of Vipers lost in combat after 'Saga', so I'm thinking that between pick-ups from surviving battlestars and planetary defense sqdrns, and the addition of the bulk of Silver Spar Squadron at the end of "LL", the Gal is up to c.3 sqdrns: Blue, Red and Silver Spar.

Given the Foundry, Mining and Electronics(the Celestra) ships, unless they meet massive opposition/accident, the Gal should be in Vipers for a long time to come.

Did I miss anything?

Damocles

December 20th, 2005, 01:10 PM

WarMachine

December 20th, 2005, 02:05 PM

Normal operations of a military unit during peacetime assumes at least 1% attrition over a deployment cycle.

<snip>

One of the BETTER carriers.

Check the accident history.

Then consider the Abe as a battlestar.

As always;

Certainly....I was simplifying it for those those who might not have heard the DLS...

Having a certain amount of spare frames and pilots is a good idea for any smallcraft-launching vessel...the question, though, is: What is a battlestar's Strike Package at full strength?

At my low end, I said 64; however, I'm more than happy to modify that to 96-100, as I'm pretty sure they have the space available. The place I have trouble is when people start attributing 200-300 Vipers per battlestar, for the reasons listed above.

I could conceivably fill any additional space with, say, 10% more Vipers, and a total maximum shuttle count of 20-25/battlestar, but no more -- they're running out of room for spares, fuel and maintenance by then.

Also, note that the 96-100 Vipers/14-25 shuttles might include a specialized sqdrn of EW/Ground Attack/SpecFor craft.

Dayton3

December 21st, 2005, 08:48 AM

Something no one appears to be considering here.

Who says all the Battlestars at Cimtar (whether you believe in 5, 12, or 20) actually had their full complements of fighters?

In my story outline where there were 12 battlestars, two didn't have any fighters. Their commanders had their squadrons stand down for rest and refit during the peace talks. The battlestars themselves being there simply for show.

Also for those mentioning Adamas question and Tighs answer "Have any of the other Battlestars gotten any fighters off? & "No sir"...........one must point out that this is very early in the battle. Chances are that a handfull of fighters were eventually launched by other battlestars.

Finally for those of you who suggest that 140 or so fighters per battlestar would be too many fighters at Cimtar for the Colonial fleet to be overwhelmed by 1,000 Cylon fighters I must point this out.

Assume all 140 Galactica fighters were launched. Assume the remainder of the battlestars combined managed to launch a similar number.

The Colonial forces in fighter strength would've still been outnumber FOUR TO ONE.

This would've meant at least FIVE HUNDRED Cylon fighters would've been able to target the battlestars for at least one pass. Cylon fights can fire about three laser shots per second.

So you would've seen the battlestar fleet taking hits by as many as FIFTEEN HUNDRED laser shots in a single volley?

More than enough to cause massive damage that the fleet never recovered from.

One final thought. Most of our viewing of battles in the series featured elite pilots. Starbuck, Apollo, Boomer, Jolly, Sheba............naturally they would destroy vast numbers of Cylon ships. But the average Galactica pilot might not be so lucky.

In fact, look at the times a Colonial pilot "missed" a Cylon ship.......what was the result?

1) Zac missed one. Ultimately that ship crippled his. Resulting in his eventual death.

2) Sheba missed one in "Living Legend" Resulting in her severe injury.

3) Starbuck missed one in "Fire In Space" Resulting in severe damage to Galactical.

So missing a Cylon ship even once could have severe consequences.

WarMachine

December 21st, 2005, 11:09 AM

Also for those mentioning Adamas question and Tighs answer "Have any of the other Battlestars gotten any fighters off? & "No sir"...........one must point out that this is very early in the battle. Chances are that a handfull of fighters were eventually launched by other battlestars.

<snip>

Finally for those of you who suggest that 140 or so fighters per battlestar would be too many fighters at Cimtar for the Colonial fleet to be overwhelmed by 1,000 Cylon fighters I must point this out.

Assume all 140 Galactica fighters were launched. Assume the remainder of the battlestars combined managed to launch a similar number.

The Colonial forces in fighter strength would've still been outnumber FOUR TO ONE.

<snip>

Good points, except for the above.

Over Caprica, we have the Tigh-Omega dialogue behind Rigel, indicating recovery of 42 Vipers that were not from the Galactica; although they could possibly be from planetary defense sqdrns, the implication is clearly that they are from the Fleet at Cimtar.

Also, check your figures: with 10 Battlestars running 140 Vipers each at full strenth, that's 1400 Vipers at Cimtar. Assuming that the other nine battlestars launched no more than half their Vipers, that's still 770 Vipers; even knocking it down to 500, you still have only a 2-to-1 advantage.

On Viper pilot skill, I'm basing their relative skill levels on their numbers in "HoG": if a baseship carries 300 Raiders, and the Gal pilots are outnumbered "2-to-1" (according to Tigh), there are obviously c.150 Vipers on the Gal -- allowing for pickups from planetary sqdrns and Silver Spar, I don't see the Gal losing that many Vipers over the course of Season 1.

Dayton3

December 21st, 2005, 11:28 AM

IIRC, the only episodes where the Galactica lost substantial numbers of Vipers was "The Gun on Ice Planet Zero" and "The Living Legend". And of course, assuming that Pegasus was at close to full strength (say 100 Vipers at the beginning of the episode) and only about 25 or so of the Pegasus Vipers destroyed, they alone would restore the Galactica to "near" full strength.

The 67 Vipers recovered immediately after Cimtar were of course the 25 Galactica Vipers and 42 launched from other battlestars. I assume the other battlestars were only able to launch token numbers of fighters each before suffering damage that prevented them from doing so.

Adama told Tigh in the pilot episode "A couple of Cylon bombs in this bay and we wouldn't be able to get a single fighter off".

So one can assume that the landing/launch bays are an early target and the Cylons do make a point of targeting them. This is born out by the fact in that at least 3 episodes the Cylons quickly damage the Galacticas bays.

Given that the Colonials managed to salvage 220 starships from the Colonies capable of carrying large numbers of passengers on an interstellar voyage, it isn't that great a leap to believe that a couple of dozen Vipers from various land bases might've made it to Galactica as well.