Hive Ship Vs Battlestar Pegasus

[jnadreth]

I'm actually refering to the previous comment about the BSP having Ablative shielding to which my response was Armour

[ZeldaTheSwordsman]

And the original series Pegasus, armed with uber-high-yield fusion missiles and turbolasers(but less cool-looking) could pulverize the hive definitely.

[jnadreth]

I would'nt put it past them to pull of a BSG win with the Old battlestars

[Mister Oragahn]

Vipers are verry good fighters they reglarly hold teir own outmumbered 552 (bastars airwing to 120 tops on early on galactica had only 40) and cylon raiders are better than darts hands down so much so its not even funny.

Fighters will be pointless. There are just too many Darts, and the few battles between F-302s and Darts were short, thanks to hiveships releasing few Darts, and F-302s using some sort of shrapnel missiles, as seen in Allies, two missiles got rid of several Darts, because of many projectiles flying left and right.
But a hiveship, with its full complement of Darts, simply owns any Battlestar it's not funny, missiles or not.

The Raptors are the true ships capable of doing something substancial, for their FTL drives allow point jumps, and their volume allows them to carry many missiles and some nukes.
But that's just the basic paper requirements to have a chance to win; it does not automatically mean they would succeed, since aside from an internal explosion in some special section that could trigger a chain reaction, I don't see that happening.

The Raptors and Vipers would need to get into the Dart bays, assuming they have not wasted all their ammo trying to destroy the ship from outside. This is not Hollywood with the humans winning with a smart plan, a one billion dollars lucky shot with their last nuke.

Bays have doors, and there's just a hell of a lot of Darts to get through first. If you consider the vastness of hangars, hiveships could transport thousands of them easily.

Compare that to the, at best, six or seven dozens fighters from Pegasus, the odds go in favour of the Wraith.

Also pegasus is way more mobile than a hive it FTL is better int can roll to protect a damaget side doubling surviability.

Certainly not. Battlestars are very sluggish (contrary to Basestars). Hiveships are capable of greater manoeuverability, and I'm yet to see evidence that a Battlestar can take off from the surface of a planet.

The hive on the other hand has taken hits from nukes that were probably in the low gigaton range. I'm talking about the nuke in no mans land here that hit it on the outside. Now nobody ever stated a yeild for them but since we know that the SGC could already build 1 gigaton goa'uld busters in SG-1 season 1 and the small mines Everett brought with him in siege were each worth 1.2 gigatons it's hard to find a reason why the nukes they equipped the Daedalus with would be any weaker than those.

Hell, even since Failsafe, the SGC had several 1.2 gigaton warheads at their disposal.

There was an episode where the Daedalus used a 26 megaton nuke but that was to cause the Ori gate to redirect and McKay was already concerned that even 26 megatons would possibly blow the gate up.

I tend to trust a guy like Merlin more than McKay, if only that Merlin was a Lantean techie who actually knew what it would take to destroy a connected stargate: a gatebuster placed right behind the event horizon.

Since hives can survive hits from gigaton level nukes and they can destroy each other then that suggests that their own weapons are likely in the mid to high megaton or low gigaton range per shot as well, depending on how powerful you think the Daedalus nuke might have been. Even if you use the 26 megaton number you still end up with a hive that can rapid fire pulses of probably about 5-10 megatons a peice. Even that's more than enough to wreck the Pegasus in fairly short order.

Indeed.

Cain will also scare the hivequeen.

Cain may actually fall in love with the Queen and call for a truce.

And I shall repeat, what about the Original Series Pegasus?

Not interesting at all. Too many inconsistancies. I'll try to link you to a SBC thread when the site will stop going down because of traffic at a given period of the day.

We don't know that for sure. The Pegasus only actually blew up when it executed a suicide ram. And why does everyone ignore my question about, what if it was the ORIGINAL SERIES PEGASUS?

A few nukes critically crippled her, so much that even the ramming option into a Basestar, hardly the toughest ship on the block, resulted into the Pegasus' destruction.

Don't get me wrong, Battlestars are exceptionally tough versus megaton nukes, but they cannot take a pounding from a ship that is bristling with cannons capable of at least megaton shots each, at a right rate of fire.

You also have to consider the power potential of hiveships. When chain reactors start, their systems can generate so much energy that we've seen entire hiveships be completely vapourized, that several times. That's, of course, a high end, but when you oppose the high ends of both universes, there's just no match.

Anyone who watches BSG knows that they actually pay attention to a little thing called tactics. For instance in the battle of the Resurrection Ship, the Pegasus and Galactica jump into point blank range of the Cylon Basestars so that their guns can tear the Basestars to shreds. And since the Battlestars use flak to suppress enemy fighters, I don't see why the Pegasus couldn't jump a few kilometres from the Hive, establish a perimeter with its flak, then launch several nukes. With no Darts to intercept them, and a relatively short distance to go, I think that the Hive would be taken out.

Safe that the Battlestar will have no defense against the energy cannons that will start spitting their, at least, multi-megaton projectiles over distances which we know can be orbital.
The flank of the Battlestar will be no more than luminous dust of shock, horror and silence before a single projectiles from the Pegasus reaches the Wraith hiveship.

If you pay attention to the Last Man, the Phoenix drops out of hyperspace, travels several kilometres toward the Hives before opening fire and destroying one, and is already past the other and entering Hyperspace by the time the second Hive starts firing.

They use technobabble beams that have gone through the Ori wank fields. These beams simply destroy everything.

The Hive's hull doesn't really resist nukes. We crippled a Hive in No Man's Land by scoring only one direct hit with a nuclear weapon. That's the only time that I can recall us ever successfully hitting a Hive with a nuke without beaming one aboard or using the Jumper.

The ship was not crippled. It still fought for several minutes, before a chain of explosions jumping from one Dart to the other reached back into the hiveship and hit a system which prevented it from firing again.

Besides, there is no way to know the yield of that nuke. They were Mark VIII, which could be anything from two digit megatons, to 1.2 gigaton.
Note, by the way, that the ship's structure didn't suffer much from that explosion.

If you recall Rodney saying in No Man's Land that there were so many systems messed up on the Hive that he couldn't find anything to overload, that was thanks to the Daedalus' one hit with a nuke.

The other internal explosions were what finally took care of the ship.

So I don't doubt that despite their lower yield, a few direct hits with nukes would still cripple a Hive, if not destroy it.

The survival of hiveships against their own fire for minutes would tell a different story, I'm afraid.

Let's not forget folks, the Pegasus took 3 direct hits to its hull from nuclear explosions and despite being damaged, still held off the Cylons and managed to jump away several minutes later, AFTER withstanding 3 nuclear detonations and missile bombardment from the Basestars.

It's true that the Hive's weapons would make short work of the Pegasus' hull though, especially given their high rate of fire. Using the FTL they would have to jump a few km's from the Hive, launch their Vipers immediately while establishing a flak perimeter, and use the Vipers to keep Darts away from the nukes while they travelled to the Hive.

I don't think that it would be as clear cut as every one thinks. Pegasus' ability to keep the Darts out of the nuke's path, plus their superior pilots and dozens of large railguns pounding away at the Hive, I think it would be a close fight.

The Pegasus would need to manoeuver and point her forward guns at the hiveship. Like the hiveship will sit there and wait. In Allies, The Pegasus Project and The Hive, we've seen hiveships fire at the Daedalus and hit, at distances which largely surpass what a Battlestar has ever been fighting at. Not to say that the Pegasus's massive slugs are slow.

Still though, a poorly designed Genii nuke was more than enough to destroy a Hive. I realize that this is a far easier prospect when the nuke is detonating from within, but still. All the Pegasus would have to do is employ the exact same technique that they used to board the Basestar in Razor.
Draw away the Darts...

All of them?

which would be no match for Pegasus' point defence and Darts...

Because the Wraith pilots would be stupid enough to run into the rather obvious flak clouds and in range of the gatling turrets?

then have a few nuclear equipped Raptor jump directly outside of the fighter bay and fire their nukes into them.

The only that would work, if they get inside. That's assuming the Wraith have not even closed the bay's doors. If all Darts are ought, doors will be closed.

These VS threads are pointless though. Yeah, Stargate tech far outstrips BSG tech, but when you go by what you see on the show, the tactics employed in Stargate's ship battles are often lackluster. They have redeemed themselves as of late, but we never really see tactics being used by either side, other than simply ambushes.

I agree, they suck big times, but fortunately for the Wraith, the sheer power of their ships largely counterfeits the use of less than stellar tactics.

At least the Pegasus would do reconnaissance and come up with a good and solid plan, rather than blindly appearing in front of a Hive, sitting there completely still with shields up for a few minutes deciding what to do, trying and failing, then jumping back into Hyperspace. Or just blowing them away with the beam weapons.

Reconnaissance on what? They'd need to know where the hiveship at first, and in terms of sensors, Stargate are fast, have good ranges and in general more accurate.

Don't get me wrong, I love Stargate's ship battles, but the commanders of the ships use 2-dimensional tactics that are rarely smart. The crews of the Battlestars strike me as infinitely more professional and ruthless.

And lets face it, Cain was as badassed as any Wraith! If the Pegasus was under her command, she'd ram the Hive and take them both out before ever being destroyed.

Yes, relying on a Wraith being stupid enough to sit there and let the enemy ship come so close, so fast, despite being able to outrun the ship and outrange it with its weapons.

[Mister Oragahn]

the BSP is a little bigger...

The official length of a hiveship has been 11 km.

The Pegasus is, at best, over one kilometer in length.

They have never been used to deal with such massive targets, and would probably end wasting ammo without knowing what to hit in particular.

[thekillman]

while the hive is being hit, it just engages repair and in no-time, its back on again.

and i SERIOUSLY doubt the pegasus could take a stargate nuke. that thing is like GT's

[Dragon_Heart]

Vipers are verry good fighters they reglarly hold teir own outmumbered 552 (bastars airwing to 120 tops on early on galactica had only 40) and cylon raiders are better than darts hands down so much so its not even funny.

I agree if the writh got in wepons range pegasus would go down in minutes few but kamakasi dart wouldnt pass the flack barier

It would become a fighter battle and its certainly wouldnt be one sided we nee t know how many darts a hive can feild i reon the vipers could reasonably acheive a 10 to 1 kill ratio the darts would be no match + the raptor missile picket about 20 raptors x 10 missiles each tha would certaily blunt the frst wave.

Also pegasus is way more mobile than a hive it FTL is better int can roll to protect a damaget side doubling surviability.

The weakness of stargate races is they are all plain stupid the smartest race in terms of ship battles is the travlers but they would be novces in BSG all they do is make a fight vertical to increase their speed advantage fire at the same ship at the same time and ambush people (shepard) the lucien alliance ar probly the next smartes the rest are all idiots

alright, its very true that vipers kil datrs hands down, but hives carry a massive amount of darts, i mean come on, weve seen the hangars. if the bsg had 40 vipers it shouldnt make much difference as it would be like 20 darts on 1 viper. As for the flak barrier, it is for defense only. if a nuclear missile was out of its range, nothing could stop the darts, unless you want to sacrifice countless vipers.

[thekillman]

actually, 8 302's own every dart......


but hey, the hive's weapons would just OWN the BSP. if not, just ram the nose into it. after the entire front has vapourised, you can just find a planet, get some biomatter and regrow the nose

[Finger13]

Safe that the Battlestar will have no defense against the energy cannons that will start spitting their, at least, multi-megaton projectiles over distances which we know can be orbital.
The flank of the Battlestar will be no more than luminous dust of shock, horror and silence before a single projectiles from the Pegasus reaches the Wraith hiveship.

Well there's two strategies to what I wrote though. I mean that the Pegasus would have to do recon to find out where the Hive was, then jump in as close to the Hive as possible and open up with all of its batteries and nukes. In Stargate they can sense Hyperspace windows opening, then the ship exiting hyperspace has to decelerate and raise shields etc. before engaging. The FTL jump on the other hand is instantaneous. The Wraith would not be able to see them coming, and if the Pegasus knew the exact location of the Hive and could jump accordingly, it could already have nukes launched very quickly, long before the Darts would be summoned.

They use technobabble beams that have gone through the Ori wank fields. These beams simply destroy everything.

I am aware of that. I wasn't talking about how easily the Phoenix destroyed the Hive, I was saying that it took the Hives a good of deal time to return fire. By the time that they were shooting back, the Phoenix was already reentering Hyperspace.

The ship was not crippled. It still fought for several minutes, before a chain of explosions jumping from one Dart to the other reached back into the hiveship and hit a system which prevented it from firing again.

27:42 - The Daedalus scores a nuclear hit on a Hive.

27:50 - Michael states that the Hive is seriously damaged from the nuke.

30:55 - McKay accesses a Wraith computer and says that it's hard to find anything to damage since everything has already been messed by the nuke.

33:50 - The Daedalus fires on the dart bays, finally putting the ship out of commission.

I didn't say that the nuke was the end of the Hive, I meant that it did serious damage to the Hive's systems. Several hits in multiple places of the hull, even from weaker nukes, would no doubt do similar damage.

Besides, there is no way to know the yield of that nuke. They were Mark VIII, which could be anything from two digit megatons, to 1.2 gigaton.
Note, by the way, that the ship's structure didn't suffer much from that explosion.

Exactly, so neither of us are right. It's all speculation.

The other internal explosions were what finally took care of the ship.

In that scenario yeah, only because the Daedalus had no other nukes. If they had scored 3 or 4 hits, that Hive would have been history.

The survival of hiveships against their own fire for minutes would tell a different story, I'm afraid.

There is no way of knowing the power of the Hive's weapons. The 'puny' nukes in BSG obliterated the Cylon Resurrection Hub in Season 4, which was a massive station and looked pretty decently armoured. And those were only fighter mounted nukes. The ship nukes would no doubt have higher yields.

The Pegasus would need to manoeuver and point her forward guns at the hiveship. Like the hiveship will sit there and wait. In Allies, The Pegasus Project and The Hive, we've seen hiveships fire at the Daedalus and hit, at distances which largely surpass what a Battlestar has ever been fighting at. Not to say that the Pegasus's massive slugs are slow.

Which is why the Pegasus needs to make an accurate jump to point blank ranges, scoring several hits instantly to hopefully damage a system.

All of them?

Yeah, that strategy would be kind of stupid.

Because the Wraith pilots would be stupid enough to run into the rather obvious flak clouds and in range of the gatling turrets?

Durrr, that's the point of a flak barrier isn't it? It establishes a perimeter around the ship in which its own ships and weapons could theoretically travel unharmed, save for any missiles or ordnance the enemies might also be firing into it, or any ships that made it through.

The only that would work, if they get inside. That's assuming the Wraith have not even closed the bay's doors. If all Darts are ought, doors will be closed.

They could jump in right after the last Darts have exited.

I agree, they suck big times, but fortunately for the Wraith, the sheer power of their ships largely counterfeits the use of less than stellar tactics.

Yeah, but then using their poor tactics to form a logical scenario, it seems the Pegasus would have the upper hand in having a clue. The major operations that we see in BSG are well planned and executed attacks. The only times that they run blindly into a confrontation are when Cain has her power trip in Razor and Garner takes the Pegasus into an ambush.

Reconnaissance on what? They'd need to know where the hiveship at first, and in terms of sensors, Stargate are fast, have good ranges and in general more accurate.

You don't know about the accuracy of Stargate sensors in comparison to DRADIS. There is no basis for comparing the two.

And as far as reconnaissance goes, how else would the two ships just magically meet each other? It's just as logical to say that the BSG and Hive might detect each other at the same time, while the Hive is culling a planet or something and is committed to its location. The Pegasus jumps away but sends a recon team to scout the exact ship and take some photos, relays it to Pegasus and the Pegasus jumps right on top of them.

Yeah it's far fetched, but so is the two of them just meeting each other in the emptiness of space. The Pegasus might be travelling at sublight since FTL is different from Hyperspace, but the Wraith would be cruising by in Hyperspace.

Yes, relying on a Wraith being stupid enough to sit there and let the enemy ship come so close, so fast, despite being able to outrun the ship and outrange it with its weapons.

From what we've seen in the show, Hives sit nice and still and just lob shots at their enemies. Now true, if the Pegasus jumps far out and has to travel at sublight speeds then it wouldn't get close. They would have to jump close and attack instantly if they had any chance of victory.

[Mister Oragahn]

Well there's two strategies to what I wrote though. I mean that the Pegasus would have to do recon to find out where the Hive was, then jump in as close to the Hive as possible and open up with all of its batteries and nukes. In Stargate they can sense Hyperspace windows opening, then the ship exiting hyperspace has to decelerate and raise shields etc. before engaging. The FTL jump on the other hand is instantaneous. The Wraith would not be able to see them coming, and if the Pegasus knew the exact location of the Hive and could jump accordingly, it could already have nukes launched very quickly, long before the Darts would be summoned.

Uh-huh. So the Colonials would have the ability to scan around an undefined space and range, know for some reason the working of a hiveship despite having poor sensors, come with a battle plan without knowing what would happen, and yet the Wraith, with their better sensors, would have no right to get so privy about the Pegasus' dirty secrets?

That is without saying that as they're shieldless, hiveships don't lose much on defenses since it's armour that does the job.

If you remove that bizarre advantage about the Colonials having the luxury of coming with a plan and the ability to attack the hiveship by surprise and with enough precision in their jump, the odds are stacking against Pegasus.

I am aware of that. I wasn't talking about how easily the Phoenix destroyed the Hive, I was saying that it took the Hives a good of deal time to return fire. By the time that they were shooting back, the Phoenix was already reentering Hyperspace.

I also see that despite her super weapons, the Phoenix actually had to retreat.

27:42 - The Daedalus scores a nuclear hit on a Hive.

27:50 - Michael states that the Hive is seriously damaged from the nuke.

30:55 - McKay accesses a Wraith computer and says that it's hard to find anything to damage since everything has already been messed by the nuke.

33:50 - The Daedalus fires on the dart bays, finally putting the ship out of commission.

I didn't say that the nuke was the end of the Hive, I meant that it did serious damage to the Hive's systems. Several hits in multiple places of the hull, even from weaker nukes, would no doubt do similar damage.

Exactly, so neither of us are right. It's all speculation.

Well, the speculation can only go that far, since we've seen a hiveship do this to a planet. It may look small, but not so much once you consider the size of the explosions in comparison to the planet.

With brightness up and contrast down to notice the planet's silhouette:

The previously damaged ship (from No Man's Land) was not fully powered and manned by one inexperienced human with some DNA in her body, Teyla. They couldn't even get the targetting right.
More interestingly, the recent episode of SGA has definitely proved that it takes a Wraith captain to use a ship to the full extent of its abilities, and even activate and fully control systems which Teyla could not get working.

Finally, hiveships can rain that stuff on other hives for minutes before going down.

It comes as no surprise that a Mark VIII has far more chances of being a gigaton weapon than a nuke of 26 megatons which would not even require naqahdah.

For the history, a small quantity of raw naqahdah was all that was needed to transform a 335~350 KT standard warhead into a Goa'uld buster. We'll also consider that 304s were initially planned to defend Earth against the Goa'uld, who have ample access to naqahdah, up to the point where the SGC and Carter considered, several times, that they'd need naqahdria, not naqahdah, to stand a chance against the Goa'uld, by building shields, and weapons that could take their ships down, even when such ships would be shieldless.

It would come as rather curious that for some reason, the main armament of the Daedalus would consist of puny two digits megaton nukes.

When compared to the Battlestars' nukes, assumed to be mid-megaton level ones, which not only take time to deploy, but would be much likely fired in a sort of simplistic navigational mode, that is, not adopt paths as evasive as those fired by the Daedalus, and above all as they show no ability to nuke spam in an alpha strike as the Daedalus did, which is the only reason it took the Wraith by surprise, there's very little chance of even one nuke going through the Dart screen.

Then, if one hits, most signs says the hiveship could deal with it with no problem, since a hiveship would much likely be capable of dealing with nukes hundred times more powerful.

Besides, we don't even know if Pegasus' nukes would be as powerful as Galactica's. New tactics and a lack of an enemy would likely warrant a new form of surgical striking tactics, and the fact that the Mercury-class Battlestars are good destroyers along carriers, compared to the Galactica which is a carrier with a sort of ballistic nuke strike ability, says things changed, and therefore nothing proves that a Mercury would even be built to deploy the same kind of nuclear ordnance as the old Battlestars were used to 40 years ago.

The Pegasus strikes me as a ship meant to punch through enemy lines and deploy as many fighters as possible to assure this gets done swiftly. Her frontal heavy fire arc just being another confirmation of this.

In that scenario yeah, only because the Daedalus had no other nukes. If they had scored 3 or 4 hits, that Hive would have been history.

Not necessarily. Three or four nukes could have dealt serious damage to the stern of the ship, but nothing says they ship would have blown up.

There is no way of knowing the power of the Hive's weapons. The 'puny' nukes in BSG obliterated the Cylon Resurrection Hub in Season 4, which was a massive station and looked pretty decently armoured. And those were only fighter mounted nukes. The ship nukes would no doubt have higher yields.

That the Cylon Resurrection Hub could be taken down by fighter mounted nukes says nothing of the strength of the small nukes. First, because Cylons don't make their ships as solid as Colonial ones, since Basestars have been notoriously weaker than Battlestars, although having regenerating abilities.
Secondly, for Resurrection Ships have also been identified as completely defenseless vessels which could be crippled by the mere firing of a few Vipers's cannons.

Hell, didn't even mere missiles disable the CRH's FTL drive, before the nuclear warheads were used? Can't remember.

Yeah, that strategy would be kind of stupid.

This is why I don't see all Darts stupidly following a much smaller bait.

Durrr, that's the point of a flak barrier isn't it? It establishes a perimeter around the ship in which its own ships and weapons could theoretically travel unharmed, save for any missiles or ordnance the enemies might also be firing into it, or any ships that made it through.

My point is that a flak barrier is a rather evident neon sign, as evidenced by the massive explosions which result as an interdiction field around a Battlestar. It would be suicide for Vipers to go through that, so Darts would have no reason to go through it either.

Besides, Pegasus relies on its forward railguns, and as such, does rarely sit there, firing flak around.

They could jump in right after the last Darts have exited.

How would they'd know to do that exactly?

You don't know about the accuracy of Stargate sensors in comparison to DRADIS. There is no basis for comparing the two.

In general, SG sensors can pick ships moving in hyperspace seconds before they come out, they can scan over several light years, in close proximity they can tell what's inside a ship in general, roughly, compared to the DRADIS that just puts dots on a screen, and they can tell a great many things about which system is being powered.

The only bizarre thing about those sensors in nBSG is how when it comes to FTL, they can apparently make precise jumps in some cases, but I believe that's often preceded by an hefty amount of calculations. In Stargate, trips through hyperspace seem to be decided at the last moment, and yet are achieved with equal if not higher precision.

And as far as reconnaissance goes, how else would the two ships just magically meet each other?

What about they appear around on the opposite sides of a planet's orbit, or in some planetary system?

It's just as logical to say that the BSG and Hive might detect each other at the same time, while the Hive is culling a planet or something and is committed to its location. The Pegasus jumps away but sends a recon team to scout the exact ship and take some photos, relays it to Pegasus and the Pegasus jumps right on top of them.

Or Pegasus is doing some recon around an ice planet, has its PAC out and Raptors doing scanning, and is certainly not ready to commit an attack.
These scenarii are uninteresting. In a pure case with no bias, both ships start at a given distance without knowing much about the other.
Or both crews know the enemy. But conditions much be equal if nothing is specified.

From what we've seen in the show, Hives sit nice and still and just lob shots at their enemies.

It's not like there's much else to do. A hiveship versus a hiveship is just a contest between two identidical ships, and there's pretty much nothing to gain in putting your energy in your thrusters, particularly since it means you'll probably end running away to some degree, and expose your stern, which sports much less batteries than other places.

Basically, when a hiveship meets another hiveship, the best they can do is put everything in cannons and hull regeneration and spam each other as strong and fast as possible.

Now, when it comes to other cases, sometimes they sit there and shoot, sometimes they move around as in Siege Part I, Siege Part III and Be All my Sins Remember'd.

[Finger13]

Uh-huh. So the Colonials would have the ability to scan around an undefined space and range, know for some reason the working of a hiveship despite having poor sensors, come with a battle plan without knowing what would happen, and yet the Wraith, with their better sensors, would have no right to get so privy about the Pegasus' dirty secrets?

That is without saying that as they're shieldless, hiveships don't lose much on defenses since it's armour that does the job.

If you remove that bizarre advantage about the Colonials having the luxury of coming with a plan and the ability to attack the hiveship by surprise and with enough precision in their jump, the odds are stacking against Pegasus.



I also see that despite her super weapons, the Phoenix actually had to retreat.



Well, the speculation can only go that far, since we've seen a hiveship do this to a planet. It may look small, but not so much once you consider the size of the explosions in comparison to the planet.

With brightness up and contrast down to notice the planet's silhouette:

The previously damaged ship (from No Man's Land) was not fully powered and manned by one inexperienced human with some DNA in her body, Teyla. They couldn't even get the targetting right.
More interestingly, the recent episode of SGA has definitely proved that it takes a Wraith captain to use a ship to the full extent of its abilities, and even activate and fully control systems which Teyla could not get working.

Finally, hiveships can rain that stuff on other hives for minutes before going down.

It comes as no surprise that a Mark VIII has far more chances of being a gigaton weapon than a nuke of 26 megatons which would not even require naqahdah.

For the history, a small quantity of raw naqahdah was all that was needed to transform a 335~350 KT standard warhead into a Goa'uld buster. We'll also consider that 304s were initially planned to defend Earth against the Goa'uld, who have ample access to naqahdah, up to the point where the SGC and Carter considered, several times, that they'd need naqahdria, not naqahdah, to stand a chance against the Goa'uld, by building shields, and weapons that could take their ships down, even when such ships would be shieldless.

It would come as rather curious that for some reason, the main armament of the Daedalus would consist of puny two digits megaton nukes.

When compared to the Battlestars' nukes, assumed to be mid-megaton level ones, which not only take time to deploy, but would be much likely fired in a sort of simplistic navigational mode, that is, not adopt paths as evasive as those fired by the Daedalus, and above all as they show no ability to nuke spam in an alpha strike as the Daedalus did, which is the only reason it took the Wraith by surprise, there's very little chance of even one nuke going through the Dart screen.

Then, if one hits, most signs says the hiveship could deal with it with no problem, since a hiveship would much likely be capable of dealing with nukes hundred times more powerful.

Besides, we don't even know if Pegasus' nukes would be as powerful as Galactica's. New tactics and a lack of an enemy would likely warrant a new form of surgical striking tactics, and the fact that the Mercury-class Battlestars are good destroyers along carriers, compared to the Galactica which is a carrier with a sort of ballistic nuke strike ability, says things changed, and therefore nothing proves that a Mercury would even be built to deploy the same kind of nuclear ordnance as the old Battlestars were used to 40 years ago.

The Pegasus strikes me as a ship meant to punch through enemy lines and deploy as many fighters as possible to assure this gets done swiftly. Her frontal heavy fire arc just being another confirmation of this.



Not necessarily. Three or four nukes could have dealt serious damage to the stern of the ship, but nothing says they ship would have blown up.



That the Cylon Resurrection Hub could be taken down by fighter mounted nukes says nothing of the strength of the small nukes. First, because Cylons don't make their ships as solid as Colonial ones, since Basestars have been notoriously weaker than Battlestars, although having regenerating abilities.
Secondly, for Resurrection Ships have also been identified as completely defenseless vessels which could be crippled by the mere firing of a few Vipers's cannons.

Hell, didn't even mere missiles disable the CRH's FTL drive, before the nuclear warheads were used? Can't remember.



This is why I don't see all Darts stupidly following a much smaller bait.



My point is that a flak barrier is a rather evident neon sign, as evidenced by the massive explosions which result as an interdiction field around a Battlestar. It would be suicide for Vipers to go through that, so Darts would have no reason to go through it either.

Besides, Pegasus relies on its forward railguns, and as such, does rarely sit there, firing flak around.



How would they'd know to do that exactly?



In general, SG sensors can pick ships moving in hyperspace seconds before they come out, they can scan over several light years, in close proximity they can tell what's inside a ship in general, roughly, compared to the DRADIS that just puts dots on a screen, and they can tell a great many things about which system is being powered.

The only bizarre thing about those sensors in nBSG is how when it comes to FTL, they can apparently make precise jumps in some cases, but I believe that's often preceded by an hefty amount of calculations. In Stargate, trips through hyperspace seem to be decided at the last moment, and yet are achieved with equal if not higher precision.



What about they appear around on the opposite sides of a planet's orbit, or in some planetary system?



Or Pegasus is doing some recon around an ice planet, has its PAC out and Raptors doing scanning, and is certainly not ready to commit an attack.
These scenarii are uninteresting. In a pure case with no bias, both ships start at a given distance without knowing much about the other.
Or both crews know the enemy. But conditions much be equal if nothing is specified.



It's not like there's much else to do. A hiveship versus a hiveship is just a contest between two identidical ships, and there's pretty much nothing to gain in putting your energy in your thrusters, particularly since it means you'll probably end running away to some degree, and expose your stern, which sports much less batteries than other places.

Basically, when a hiveship meets another hiveship, the best they can do is put everything in cannons and hull regeneration and spam each other as strong and fast as possible.

Now, when it comes to other cases, sometimes they sit there and shoot, sometimes they move around as in Siege Part I, Siege Part III and Be All my Sins Remember'd.

I don't really disagree with you, so I don't feel like arguing it more lol. You have your points and are probably right.

I concede defeat!

[thekillman]

just for confirmation: i know the size of my country on a globe. those blasts were GATEBUSTER size. not to be confused with First Strike, where the planet was MUCH smaller.

[Ed]

the pegaus would fore nukes they would mout them on smaller ships and punch through the darts darts being exceptionaly crap fighters 1 F302 of 16 got to a hive and took out its hyper drive now vipers being better fighters and there being 160 ish of them (we are asuming both shups in mint condition right) would have no trouble getting through and nuking things

And the colonials get to be smart because they are smart BSG battles are planned merticulously in SG the just spam each other almost never does anyone move at all

[Mister Oragahn]

For the record, here's a slightly more explicit illustration of the hiveship's firepower:

[Ed]

look at the nuking caprica gets in the mini series http://erika.fisherking.org/files/caprica.jpg
admitedly thats about 10 nukes

A hive even a fleet of hives couldnt do that in the pic you showed the hive hast done that in one shot