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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.
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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"?
