Galactica Damage (Exodus II spoilers)

[hoof]

One of the things that I haven't seen discussed yet is the kind of damage BSG took as a result of the battle above New Caprica. It is obvious that Galactica was crippled when Pegasus showed up, and had minimal, if any, defensive firepower at this point. The forward dorsal turret set took a direct hit on-screen, and the rear one was lit with a glow that we haven't seen for the Galactica's guns. I'm guessing that implies that they are damaged/destroyed, and the glow is the "embers" glowing after destruction. Of course, this is speculation. But the fact that those guns weren't firing implies that they were either damanged, out of ammo, or their ammo supply was disrupted (damaged hoists?).

If the cylons were smart (and from previous episodes they've demonstrated combat competence), they would target the defensive firepower as a priority. Knock out Galactica's guns (or at least it's fire control mechanism), and then you can fire away w/o worry about your missiles getting shot down. This also implies that the Cylons might have refrained from using expensive nukes against the Galactica, deeming this unnecessary, esp. once the Galactica's defensive guns were knocked out.

Either way, I don't see how the Galactica could rationally have come out of that fight w/o losing most of her big guns. Given the size of those guns (by my estimation, they were at least as big as a WW2 era battleship turret), I seriously doubt that they could be replaced. What this means is that Galactica's firepower has been eliminated, even if the ship survived. This means that unless a rational explanation for why Galactica has significant defensive firepower (or the writers simply choose to ignore the obvious that the guns would've been taken out during the battle), we shouldn't see any more BSG vs Basestar fights, as the Galactica should no longer be able to defend herself.

OTOH, with Pegasus leaving her air wing behind, Galactica now has more vipers/raptors than she can probably handle. They shouldn't be short on Vipers at this point, and they'd be smart to (temporarily) retire the Mk II's until attrition reduces the Mk VII numbers significantly. In addition, for the first time since the beginning of the 2nd Cylon war, Galactica can (theoretically) have a full compliment of crew. Too bad about the loss of its guns...

Another issue is the heavy damage the port pod took. I'm guessing the Cylons focused on the port pod knowing the starboard one was dead weight. How many launch tubes did they lose?

Basically, from any reasonable tactical assumptions of the battle of New Caprica, Galactica has lost her teeth. Apart from her air wing (which got a big "boost" from gaining Pegasus's air wings), she really shouldn't be able to take on capital ships at this point. I'd expect that the series will either explain why the ship still has significant firepower, or it will focus on longer-distance fights (vipers vs raiders, remote planet ops, etc).

Yes, she probably can do significant self-repair, But replacing those big guns (which appear to be as big as WW2-era 100+ton guns), and/or replacing/repairing their ammo supply mechanism should require dry-dock facilities and heavy industry to manufacture the parts. Neither of these are available to Galactica. It's one thing to replace large sections of spacecraft skinning. It's quite another replacing a 50-ft 50-ton weapon, it's mount, it's ammunition supply train, etc. And to do that several dozen times (to replace most of her big guns) seems a little-far fetched.

[Dutch_Razor]

Maybe they'll steal some

[SoulReaver]

anyone else here got the impression that

Spoiler:

the flak barriers on the Galactica didn't seem anywhere near as effective as in previous episodes?

[Selin Peers]

SoulRe@ver, few things for you to take into account.

1.) Galactica was probably running on less then a skeleton crew. That taken into account with the probability that the primary turrets at the very least are all individually crewed and targeted by gunnery crews and I wouldn't be surprised if the light turrets are all similarly crewed, perhapes 4 turrets to a single gunnery station? You may ask how I came to that conclusion? If you noticed in the Mini-series the big turrets appeared to have targeting cockpits of sorts. Meaning that they're all individually manned by a gunner. That alone, integrated with the fact that the ship was dangerously undermanned, suggests the vast majority of Galactica's Light Turrets, which argueably could only bracket a Cylon Basestar (as they didn't really have any raiders to contend with at the time), were not manned, as what available gunnery crews were probably manning the primary batteries and turrets which COULD do damage to basestars!

2.) Note in all previous engagements the Galactica has fought, they've been primarily mono-frontal confrontations (With the exception of Resurrection Ship, I think, at at that point in time both the Galactica and Pegasus were dividing their attention between two basestars). Meaning the Cylons were all coming at the Galactica from one direction. In Exodus, note that Galactica was caught inbetween atleast three Cylon Basestars from three directions. That ladies and gentlemen is what we call a 'Crossfire.' Think about it, if what point defense and primary offensive batteries the Galactica had, were all of a suddenly split between three targets that just soo happened to be intent on pounding the hell out of it, I doubt very seriously your flak barrage perimeter would be nearly as effective either. Infact, it would be far less effective then a flak barrage split to three targets, therefore at 33% effectiveness. It, would almost be negligible, infact. Probably more on the order of 15-20% effective.

3.) Furthermore, there's no telling how many of the periphery light turrets were burned away durring the Galactica's free-fall. I'm not sure if we've seen in any episode yet whether the turrets are contained internally and deployed for combat, or if they're mounted outboard. Meaning that if they are outboard mounted, that atleast the turrets ventrally and along the edges of the flightpods would have sustained extensive heat damage if they weren't designed to endure those types of stress.

[SoulReaver]

Selin Peers> 1 point to consider: flak cannons need not be manned, since it's (apparently) a non-targeting principle (they form a protective "barrier" with a reasonably high probability of missile interception) - if that's the case then manning is kinda irrelevant. Besides, whether the battlestar is facing 1 basestar of is surrounded by 4 basestars shouldn't make that much of a difference when it comes to barrier effectiveness (outside statistical considerations) especially if the basestars are "evenly" spread around the battlestar - flak cannons are supposed to be disposed along the entire ship, so in a 1 vs 4 scenario each side of the battlestar (with its corresponding flak cannons) would be facing a basestar. On the other hand in a 1-on-1 confrontation with a basestar only, a fraction of the flak cannons (those on the side facing the basestar) would be of avail, the rest would be completely useless


EDIT (k so that's more than 1 point -) : to address the "burning up" issue: the armor battlestars are made of most likely protect the cannons as well (and we've seen that armor to be quite effective even against nukes) If so then I'd say that armor can shrug off atmospheric friction heat with ease

[SoulReaver]

Maybe they'll steal some

or they could "commandeer" a basestar - that'd be cool (if somewhat unrealistic )

[Admiral Mappalazarou]

One of the things I love about BSG is the lack of the RESET BUTTON that Voyager seemed to use at the end of all of their eps....God, I hate Voyager....

[P-90_177]

i don't hate voyager but i know what you mean. they'll probably deal with galacticas damage in a later ep.
although on the other hand, there seemed to be extensive damag on the flight pod when it was nuked in the mini series but that damage was never seen or even mentioned again as far as i'm aware.

[designez]

The damage done to Galactica will be mentioned IF it serves a purpose in the story.... Otherwise you can assume that Galactica has a full crewcomplement now and can repair any damage until they cancel the series or run out of budget!

[hoof]

designez, I suspect that you're right. BSG seems to deal with "details" only when it serves the story. I'm very happy that BSG does try to maintain consistency (even worrying about how many vipers are left, as RDM's podcast about "Flight of the Phoenix" implies), but details are rarely brought up for details' sake.

For example, the food/supplies situation was brought up only a few times. One can easily see that 50,000 mouths to feed would quickly run through available food supplies for a bunch of ships not designed for extended space ops with large numbers of people on board (imagine a 747 having to tend to its passengers for 3 months, or a cruise liner for a year w/o resupply). However, mass-starvation wasn't an issue before New Caprica, and would make for a poor direction to take the series in (as once the food situation becomes critical, that would dominate all other concerns until it was remedied).

I suspect that like designez said, we won't hear a thing about this unless it becomes important to the story, or until a dramatic battle occurs where we see the guns in action (thus implying they survived the pounding in Exodus).

Same thing happened to Pegasus as a result of The Captain's Hand. We never really learned how beat-up Pegasus got due to the multiple nukes and 3 baseships pounding on her.

But being a war history junkie, and fascinated by engineering issues (esp. how they relate to wars), this episode did make me think about the issue of what condition Galactica really would be in after such an enounter!

[SoulReaver]

One of the things I love about BSG is the lack of the RESET BUTTON that Voyager seemed to use at the end of all of their eps....God, I hate Voyager....

The apparent "reset" feature ain't really unrealistic given Federation level of tech which is a hell of a lot more advanced than human tech in BSG - no doubt damage repair is way more efficient
(also Star Trek ships have shields which means much less damage during battles, thus less to repair)

[Arative]

In the podcast for Exodus II, RDM said that they plan on having the damaged monitors and equipment in the CIC for a while. Not sure how long a while is but I would guess an epsiode or two.

[techjunkie]

Which is also an opportunity.

Obviously the stores for replacement parts (bridge monitors) are non-existant as Galactica was being decomissioned at the start of the series. Ultimately, these will need to be scavanged from the surviving ships in the fleet.

Considering that the fleet has 1 science vessel (from the original information on SCI FI's website, in the ship gallery) - her long range sensors were better than Galactica's, and she had longer range jump drives than the rest of the fleet. Originally, her use was to act as a salvage and research ship within the fleet. Perhaps she could be salvaged, her assets to refit the Galactica...

Note: all references to ship specs are gone from the sci fi website...

The obvious news was Galacticas return to essentially full strength in crew, vipers and raptors - perhaps even a surplus as the crews amalgamate.



Tech Junkie

[Selin Peers]

Selin Peers> 1 point to consider: flak cannons need not be manned, since it's (apparently) a non-targetting principle (they form a protective "barrier" with a reasonably high probability of missile interception) - if that's the case then manning is kinda irrelevant. Besides, whether the battlestar is facing 1 basestar of is surrounded by 4 basestars shouldn't make that much of a difference when it comes to barrier effectiveness (outside statistical considerations) especially if the basestars are "evenly" spread around the battlestar - flak cannons are supposed to be disposed along the entire ship, so in a 1 vs 4 scenario each side of the battlestar (with its corresponding flak cannons) would be facing a basestar. On the other hand in a 1-on-1 confrontation with a basestar only, a fraction of the flak cannons (those on the side facing the basestar) would be of avail, the rest would be completely useless


EDIT (k so that's more than 1 point -) : to address the "burning up" issue: the armor battlestars are made of most likely protect the cannons as well (and we've seen that armor to be quite effective even against nukes) If so then I'd say that armor can shrug off atmospheric friction heat with ease

I don't believe the light turrets are exclusively flak cannons however. There have been a few instances where there were commands issued in CIC to switch from Fighter Suppression to Flak Barrage. Which leads me to conclude that the turrets themselves are multi-munition platforms. In Fighter Suppression mode, it's likely that they load basic projectiles, similar to what the Vipers use, and go into a point defense mode (In which instance, since they don't have the computer targeting systems required for that type of targeting, the batteries would have to be manned by gunnery crews). In Flak mode, they load timed, explosive shrapnel shells, utilized to form a barrier of stell between the Battlestar and hostiles, effective at screening almost all missles that cross it (Fighters are likely intelligent enough to circumvent it). However, I do admit that the coordination required for Flak Barraging is likely far less, and therefore would require fewer gunnery crews. However, I still content, to be at maximum effectiveness that gunnery crews would need to be present at their batteries if the call to switch to Fighter Suppression came.

[SoulReaver]

I don't believe the light turrets are exclusively flak cannons however. There have been a few instances where there were commands issued in CIC to switch from Fighter Suppression to Flak Barrage. Which leads me to conclude that the turrets themselves are multi-munition platforms. In Fighter Suppression mode, it's likely that they load basic projectiles, similar to what the Vipers use, and go into a point defense mode (In which instance, since they don't have the computer targeting systems required for that type of targeting, the batteries would have to be manned by gunnery crews). In Flak mode, they load timed, explosive shrapnel shells, utilized to form a barrier of stell between the Battlestar and hostiles, effective at screening almost all missles that cross it (Fighters are likely intelligent enough to circumvent it). However, I do admit that the coordination required for Flak Barraging is likely far less, and therefore would require fewer gunnery crews. However, I still content, to be at maximum effectiveness that gunnery crews would need to be present at their batteries if the call to switch to Fighter Suppression came.

The requirement should be null actually - flak barrage being a protective barrier rather than a directed weapon all they need to do is set the flak cannons to auto-firing mode, which btw is most likely what they've always done (and we know for sure that one of the 2 battlestars did it in Exodus II since the Pegasus was entirely encompassed by the flak barrier even after the crew had abandonned ship)
Of course the flak cannons may serve multiple purposes, but when u think about it, choosing what purpose they should serve is quite a no-brainer in some circumstances: in the Exodus scenario for example the battlestars had 2 types of enemies:
1) the basestars with their nukes, and
2) cylon raiders
since the raiders were more like angry little mosquitos compared to the firepower of those 4 massive basestars I'd say fighter suppression would have been the least of the crews' concerns