Colonial Battlestars

[terra_atlantis]

Damn Baltar and the Cylons :-)

I think it is pretty clear from on-screen evidence that colonial ships are far better armed/armoured than Cylon Baseships, I mean the pegasus destroyed 3, albeit one was rammed and the other was destroyed by debris from Pegasus. I seem to remember somewhere that cylon ships rely on the Raider escorts for preotection, and their hulls seem "very week" compared to Battlestars!!

So does any agree with me that Battlestars rule the Galactica universe (well would have!)

[maneth]

Well, if any Battlestar was rammed amidships like Pegasus rammed the Basestar, there wouldn't be much left of either ship afterwards.

[terra_atlantis]

In that episode, the pregasus opened up with its forward batteries, and the first baseship was "minced" I mean compared to the hammering the Galactica & pregasus took, it would seem, that either a) cylon baseship weaponry is inferior to colonials, or b) colonial armour is far superior, or even both?

[P-90_177]

the cylons seem to rely on out numbering and overwhelming their oponents. i wouldn't say their weapons are supperior though it's just that galactica and pegasus have defensive fire on your guns.

[ManiacMike]

I dont think basestars even have regular canon fire?

I could be missing something though, could basestars only offence be its nukes? and raiders if you count them...

[P-90_177]

actually the base stars mainly have just standard missiles not nukes. they do have nukes but they mainly just go with none nuclear ordanence. but your right they have no rail guns like colonial ships.

[Nero]

The Colonials and Cylons took two different approaches to Warship construction.

The Colonials went for mainly unguided projectile weapons while the Cylons opted for guided missiles. Also the Colonial Battlestars themselves were obviously built to absorb/dish out a huge ammount of damage. The Cylon Basestars on the other hand seem to rely heavily on their Raiders to handle the close range fighting while the Basestars stay out of range and volley missiles in(As seen in the Mini-Series & Scattered)

The best comparison is between a modern day Missile Cruiser and a WW2 Battleship.

The Cruiser has the advantage of longer range weapons(Missiles) but suffers from weak armour.
The Battleship has high levels of armour and powerfull shorter range weapons.

Long Range the Cruiser has the advantage, Short range the Battleship would win hands down.

[Alfff]

I would have thought that the basestars were carriers more than anything else... all those little spikes you see on the hull are actually raiders... lots of them...

[P-90_177]

yeah but the battlestars are mainly carriers too so I don't think that makes much difference. But it is correct that the basestars carry a lot more raiders then a battlestar carries vipers.

[hoof]

The problem is, theoretically, the Colonials didn't have much intel on what hardware the cylons would be building. One would guess they did projected design improvements over the 1st cylon war designs, and designed their warships around that, with room for error. As Pegasus shows, that approach worked well.

Knowing when the Cylons got good access to Colonial warship plans is a mystery. I suspect that they, too, had a hard time until the human models started infiltrating the Human ranks, and were able to work into sensitive areas with access to that kind of information. Since that only occurred in the last few years before the 2nd Cylon war, and since large fleets of warships take time to build (the reason the Humans still had Galactica in service), it's likely the Cylons had to guess what they would fight in their designs too.

From what we've seen, the Humans did better in the guessing game. The modern Cylon basestars are noticably inferior 1 vs 1 (and even 2 vs 2) to Colonial Battlestars of the Mercury class. While the Basestars can fight Galactica 1 vs 1 safely, they could not take on the Pegasus 1 vs 1 and had to rely upon superior numbers. The question, of course, is how many BaseStars the cylons had. It's possible that the Cylons have several hundred, in which case, superior Battlestars wouldn't have been as useful.

In WW2, the Japanese built the biggest battleship ever, the Yamato class. It was noticably superior to virtually every other battleship ever built, except in fire control and sensor technology (which gave the Iowa-class battleships the advantage). The idea was, for the Japanese, that they could never match the US in sheer numbers, so they tried to make their warships superior. Given that their overall strategy was to make war and end it quickly (via negotiation), this makes a bit of sense. As it turned out, the US wasn't interested in a negotiated end to the war, and the Japanese (along with her superbattleships) were crushed by the US's superior war-making and war-manufacturing machine. I wonder if, had the Cylon virus failed, would the Cylons have had that edge in numbers and manufacturing, rendering the superior Colonial Battlestars less of an issue.

[FlightPod]

I believe battlestars are a carrier/battleship hybrid, battleships in the real world only had 1 or 2 planes and they were not fighters, but spotters i believe. Carriers on the other had plenty of planes, but no cap ship guns, just aa for the most part (though at least 1 or more US carriers had 8 8inch guns on at one point around WW2 time). As such battlestars have capship guns, thick armour, and a fair few vipers, but not as many vipers as a they could have had if they were pure carriers.

Also projectile physics is different in space than on a planet. Overall battleships would work better in space than they do on planet cause gunnery would be easier, especially since ballistics isn't an as serious concern, not at least at the ranges with which Galactica and Pegasus have engaged baseships on screen. And those suppression batteries seemed quite good.

Overall it seems the Colonial hydrid battleship/carrier concept worked better than the cylon pure carrier concept.

[techs]

Cylons resurrect so they are not as concerned as humans about staying alive, which accounts for the un-armored design of their ships.

[hoof]

Actually I disagree with the ressurection part being a good reason for unarmored design. Ressurection helps in the long-term (your people retain the experience of the battle even if they lose), but in the tactical sense, it's a non-issue (the battle is over too fast). Instead, unarmored ships mean you need more ships to win your battles, and rarely is the production savings worth it.

In WW1 and WW2, navies experimented with the battlecruiser concept. The idea was that you could build a ship with big guns, make it go fast, and armor it, pick two. The battlecruiser was armored vs cruiser-class guns but not battleship-class guns, yet had battleship-class firepower. In the end, they did not prove worthwhile, as a) their superior speed didn't make up for their vulnerability, and b) battleships eventually got built that were as fast (like the Iowa class battleship, which was faster than any battlecruiser).

Besides, we have no evidence that the cylon warships are unarmored. Given the firepower of the average Battlestar, and given the fact that the Baseships survive direct barrages from a Mercury-class battlestar (Exodus II excluded of course), I'd say they have some armor.

A more pertinent question is why didn't the Colonials have more nukes onboard their ships. If a baseship can be destroyed by regular ammunition, and they don't have defensive guns, why not just have nuke-armed missiles or projectiles? Problem solved, one battlestar can take on a dozen baseships, and kill them quickly.

Actually, the basestars do appear to have defensive guns. In "Captain's Hand", when the Pegasus opened up on the baseship, some of the projectiles appeared to be destroyed before hitting (not all the projectiles exploded on the hull, some appeared to split up before impact). Of course, this is all speculation.

[Temp2]

To me, it seems to me that Battlestars and Baseships have some sort of relationship with the Japanese Ise-class battlecarriers (converted from battleships) and Russian Kiev-class aviation cruisers, respectivly. The Ise-class ships kept their forward big guns, while they had a hanger and flight deck placed rear of the superstructure; one of them carried 14 dive-bombers and 8 floatplanes. The Kiev-class had a couple dual-purpose (for both AA and surface engagements) guns, torpedo tubes, defensive AA guns, and a lot of SAMs, besides an air wing of up to 30 fighters and helicopters. Obviously, the Basestars mount much more offensive weaponry in the way of missiles, Battlestars weren't converted battleships, and both ship types carry alot more fighters and support craft, but, at least in my mind, the concepts are at least somewhat similar.