Battlestar Galactica: Blood & Chrome

[CaptJodan]

Galactica was very intentionally under crewed, they knew what they were going to do and prepared in advance. It was also not badly maintained at all, the Cylons had just finished fixing her ups ave for the structural issues that resulted from shoddy construction. you can have a shitty ford taurus that breaks down three times a day, that will keep driving forever if you keep an eye on it. It's the crew component that makes the difference. The human cylons don't wear UNIFORMS let alone pressure suits, and they've intentionally dumbed the centurions down to rely on them, that speaks to their ability to handle damage control. DC is overseen by the way by a barely lucid hybrid, there's no way to tell if they are particularly good at it.

And at the end of their preparations and their shoring up, the ship was still groaning, power was still flickering, and it was still determined that the ship was a write-off. The Cylon goop didn't operationally extend the life of the ship the way Tyrol seemed to imply it would, though I would argue that it probably helped to hold it together during the battle and during the last jump.

As for Cylon repair ability, they seem fairly good at it. While Galactica never recovered fully from any of her wounds (the damaged flight pod pretty much stayed damaged throughout the series), the Cylon basestar regenerated most of its structure over the course of a few weeks/months during the latter half of the series to where you couldn't even tell it had been damaged. How long it takes to do that compared to the Colonials, I don't know, but in terms of repair ability, nBSG went with the "organic better than metal" meme, at least on that particular front.

These aren't even collisions on a level playing field, did you notice that the Cylon base star in Blood and Chrome ALSO survived the collision, it didn't even stop firing.

I never said the Cylon basestar in B&C was particularly damaged. Osiris was pathetically small in comparison.

but just because they design their ships with lots o spindly arms doesn't mean that's the reason the Colonial's have better survivability.

Why not? We see the spines blowing up from the basestars before the vipers are fully launched in your next example.

We have a counter example in Resurrection Ship, that was not a battlestar ripping through a base star that was a pitched battle,

It wasn't a battle where they didn't take any damage, but that damage was minimal. It was in no way a pitched battle. It was a relatively easy battle, and a battle where we didn't see Pegasus use her main guns of doom. One of the Cylon basestars arms was detonating just after Sturbuck launched. Certainly the battle lasted longer than other battles have, but that could be due to how they decided to use their tactics. They seemed to take very few direct hits, so could very well have been diverting most of their fire to defense.

and while we saw explosions in Exodus are you really ready to claim taht abse star was destroyed, or just damaged.

Once again, whole sections were being destroyed on those spindly arms you claim are just as robust as the hull of a Battlestar. Even if somehow it did survive, it likely wasn't combat capable and withdrew from the fight.

we haven't seen the Valkyrie pull that off,

Because we haven't seen that type fight against the Cylons.

nor the Osiris,

Because it's not a 10th the mass of a basestar.

not even Galactica.

Because we should expect an old warhorse apparently stripped of most of her guns and armor (as per B&C) to be compared to a top of the line battlestar like a Mercury Class.

None of these examples you pull out are going to have the firepower of a Mercury class.

No it was definitely the rule, as it managed to take out the vast majority of the Colonial fleet, that was a systematic flaw that won the day.

Stop being an idiot. It is not the rule if not a few days, at most, later, the Colonials find a way around the hack. The Colonials had a solution for this in the first Cylon war, which was why Galactica and her sister ships were (presumably, B&C doesn't do well with this) relying on older tech. They went through this whole thing once in the first war and found ways around it. In days, that advantage was circumvented in Vipers and Pegasus in the second war. And the second time around the only reason it was possible was because of Baltar, not because the design of the software itself was crap.

Well there could be a difference in opinion here, I think if something is rugged or robus it should be inherently sturdy, which is not how I would describe Battlestars, they have massive crews to keep them working.

Fine, than it's a difference of opinion. I don't know how you don't get "sturdy" from what was displayed on screen. But this is pretty moot if you just are going on gut feeling, or comparison to something like Star Wars ships.

The Galactica didn't survive for that long, Sam turned off the Hybrid pretty fast, and Starbuck jumped them out pretty quickly as well, I think it was clear the galactica wasn't going to survive much.

Tigh: "We can't take much of this."

Despite that line, they took exactly 1:21 of fire. That's an eternity given the volume of fire they were taking. And while a lot of it was low caliber stuff, some of it was hitting hard enough to visibly shake the ship on the exterior shots. This, from the one area on the entire colony that was made out to be armed pretty well because it was a chokepoint, the only place ships could enter and exit safely in.

The Raiders were being held at bay by the vipers.

They clearly weren't completely holding them off. Galactica continued to take damage, fires in CIC, main guns being blown off, etc.

The Galactica was broken accross, not lengthwise, and even though the structural members were cracked, the decks themselves could have been keeping her together, just not enough to do much more then plow forward in a straight line. The engine casings look self contained and reinforced.

Thank you for proving my point. Despite the cut corners and shotty construction, it was a well built and designed ship with redundancies for main systems, rigid deck construction, and reinforcement along the engines. Hell, with the kind of bucking that the Galactica did after the jump (actual vehicles were flying out of the flight pods), you would expect power lines to be severed, systems to go offline due to shock damage, and a whole host of other problems. I was surprised that the reactor was still functioning and that power was still on. I certainly would not have expected the engines to keep running, and certainly not all 4 of them.

The Colonials have plans procedures, and backups for EVERYTHING.

Having backups, plans, and procedures in place, and building a ship around those procedures is what helps to make it a rugged, sturdy ship. It's a ship with compartmentalized construction, heavy doors, armor plating, by your own words reinforced engine mounts, and deck plating strong enough to hold together a ship that is trying to tear itself apart. Of course it needs a crew to run it, but it's still designed in such a way that it can stay functional even with many of it's systems damaged because most of those systems have redundancies. In contrast, the Cylons have spiny arm ships, large hallways with no noticeable compartmentalization, and are severely damaged/destroyed by a nuke detonating CLOSE BY.

[Skylon]

To be fair, nBSG did do a better job of showing the scars of the ship than did Voyager, though the real scars didn't start to actually seem problematic until after they found nuked Earth. And in the early seasons they did talk about the problems getting replacement parts for vipers and having to scrap one to save others. They just dropped that after a while and went with "the ship is only as damaged as the plot". I had a hard time believing that the ship could jump even one more time, let alone twice, after it starting to groan and power flickered everywhere.

Things seemed to be going okay with Galactica, until post-New Caprica. A couple times in season 3 the condition of the ship came up, with Tigh commenting that the only way to repair a lot of the damage would be in a drydock. Season 4 everything went to hell, with Tyrol noticing the cracks in Galactica's structure, culminating in Boomer's jump in near-proximity to Galactica, causing major damage.

The port-side actually took on some of Galactica's most notable damage, from the nuke in the mini-series, to Boomer blowing out the water tanks and the near-jump in season 4.

The Vipers they pretty much gave up on as a plot matter once Pegasus showed up.

[Vympel]

The Vipers they pretty much gave up on as a plot matter once Pegasus showed up.

I don't know if "gave up on" is the right word - Pegasus explicitly started building new Vipers, somehow - we learned that in Season 2's "Scar" IIRC.

As it is there were never enough fighter engagements in the series to seriously raise the question of their running out of Vipers, and the Pegasus offered a whole shitload more of them and spare parts to last the end of the series.

[Themightytom]

And at the end of their preparations and their shoring up, the ship was still groaning, power was still flickering, and it was still determined that the ship was a write-off. The Cylon goop didn't operationally extend the life of the ship the way Tyrol seemed to imply it would, though I would argue that it probably helped to hold it together during the battle and during the last jump.

At the end of the battle, the Battlestar survived, which is what we've really been talking about. it was way beyond reasonable design life, doing something it's builder's probably never intended it to. unless you think they REALLY intended them to operate as long as Galactica did, support the passengers and fleet that it did, endure the conditions that it did, which include dropping through atmosphere, and traversing all kinds of bizarre radiation situations, some beyond human tolerance, and THEN take on a situation like they found at the colony... by design. If it wasn't by design, than either the builders utterly stumbled across an unbelievable product, or the design was enhanced considerably by the crew operating the ship.

As for Cylon repair ability, they seem fairly good at it. While Galactica never recovered fully from any of her wounds (the damaged flight pod pretty much stayed damaged throughout the series), the Cylon basestar regenerated most of its structure over the course of a few weeks/months during the latter half of the series to where you couldn't even tell it had been damaged. How long it takes to do that compared to the Colonials, I don't know, but in terms of repair ability, nBSG went with the "organic better than metal" meme, at least on that particular front.

So the question has to be asked, why have that feature in the first place, what purpose does it serve. base stars may not be giant flimsy accidents, they may have a particular role which makes them a credible threat to a battlestar.

I never said the Cylon basestar in B&C was particularly damaged. Osiris was pathetically small in comparison.

We clearly can't base colonial technology on their ability to endure collisions, the examples are too different.

Why not? We see the spines blowing up from the basestars before the vipers are fully launched in your next example.

That could be the manner in which Cylons incorporated redundancy. Spindly arms that regrow back, spread out in different directions? Those could literally be designed to decentralize critical portions o the ship, they could be designed to be blown off. We don't know what's inside them, if it's living compartments or just spare magazines they stuck out in the arms to avoid a ship killing central explosion.

By comparison, it seems a little odd to have two flight pods sticking out on opposite sides of the ship, when you could have one big one and not have to truck materials and supplies to two different sides of the ship, and waste space on all the infrastructure duplicated...
...until you consider what happens of a heavy cruiser rams one of them, the redundancy keeps tthe ship in action.

We have a counter example in Resurrection Ship, that was not a battlestar ripping through a base star that was a pitched battle,

It wasn't a battle where they didn't take any damage, but that damage was minimal.

Um we don't know that.

It was in no way a pitched battle.

Shit was flying EVERYWHERE it was totally pitched, Lee was concussed, but you could still tell that all ships involved were taking considerable fire, at one point galactica was getting double teamed which had me thinking Cain was hanging them out to dry for a second.

It was a relatively easy battle, and a battle where we didn't see Pegasus use her main guns of doom.

It was relatively easy because of the strategy involved, the Colonials had a battle plan and executed as opposed to the Cylons having the plan. They didn't have a fleet to cover, weren't being hacked, and the Cylons in turn were trying to protect the resurrection ship. Just because the Colonials didn't have to ram the Cylons, or have the shit kicked out of them before they could even respond doesn't make it an easy battle for either side. DC parties were probably on station and ready to go, as opposed to scrambling to work in their boxers, or woefully undermanned and underprepared.

One of the Cylon basestars arms was detonating just after Sturbuck launched. Certainly the battle lasted longer than other battles have, but that could be due to how they decided to use their tactics. They seemed to take very few direct hits, so could very well have been diverting most of their fire to defense.

That's the point though, the Colonials don't one shot the Cylons when they have a choice, they aren't so completely badass they plow right in shrugging off nukes, they try to minimize risk and damage. the Cylons in turn don't get one shotted, even hampered with a target to protect. They don't do as well as the Galactica does by comparison protecting a fleet jumping out, but neither side seems particularly eager to engage directly, given the choice. The Colonials typically try to keep fighters at bay, and the Cylons are happy to keep their base ships lobbing shit from a distance. I think both sides are perfectly capable of harming the other, the Colonials have tougher armor, the Cylons have greater redundancy, but the colonials also have trained, disciplined crews.

Once again, whole sections were being destroyed on those spindly arms you claim are just as robust as the hull of a Battlestar. Even if somehow it did survive, it likely wasn't combat capable and withdrew from the fight.

I never claimed they were as robust at all, I have maintained that the Cylons aren't complete pushovers, there's a LOT of distance between the two claims.

Because we haven't seen that type fight against the Cylons.

We've seen them DYING against the Cylons

Because it's not a 10th the mass of a basestar.

So you DON'T HAVE examples of Colonial ruggedness, nor counter examples of Cylon weakness. in the situations where the Colonial forces do the most damage, to the Cylons it has required either the destruction of a warship, or careful time and planning. This is not a good case that Colonial warships are considerably more rugged than Cylon ones. The technologies are complimentary as are the philosophies behind them. The outcome of any battle relies heavily on the crew's ability to control damage.

Because we should expect an old warhorse apparently stripped of most of her guns and armor (as per B&C) to be compared to a top of the line battlestar like a Mercury Class.

No, and that's why you shouldn't lump so many different situations together to prove such a broad apoint, there are too many variables.

None of these examples you pull out are going to have the firepower of a Mercury class.

If you want to argue that the pinnacle of Colonial technology exceeds the pinnacle of Cylon technology, that's a different argument, one that does not include Osiris, Galactica, Valkyrie, or anything but a Mercury and a base star.

Stop being an idiot. It is not the rule if not a few days, at most, later, the Colonials find a way around the hack.

The hell it isn't! The majority of the Colonial forces got wiped out in those few days. you're still dismissing the in universe situation by drawing out of universe context, the Cylons won, period, their fleet beat the Colonial one, utterly.


T

he Colonials had a solution for this in the first Cylon war, which was why Galactica and her sister ships were (presumably, B&C doesn't do well with this) relying on older tech.

We don't know that the Cylons have tried it yet, actually, and it would explain a lot of they tried it during this movie, but I suspect the writers thought they would have seasons to draw it out.

They went through this whole thing once in the first war and found ways around it. In days, that advantage was circumvented in Vipers and Pegasus in the second war. And the second time around the only reason it was possible was because of Baltar, not because the design of the software itself was crap.

The second time was because of SIX not Baltar, she was the infiltrator and saboteur.

We didn't see the cylons try to hack Vipers or Pegasus, we don't know whether the hack was fixed by going back to an earlier version of the CNP or if the Pegasus denetworked and had to accept a lower level of performance, the Cylons DID manage the hack Galactica the minute they networked their systems, to do something they couldn't haven pulled off otherwise.

Fine, than it's a difference of opinion. I don't know how you don't get "sturdy" from what was displayed on screen. But this is pretty moot if you just are going on gut feeling, or comparison to something like Star Wars ships.

I'm not really doing either

Tigh: "We can't take much of this."

Despite that line, they took exactly 1:21 of fire. That's an eternity given the volume of fire they were taking. And while a lot of it was low caliber stuff, some of it was hitting hard enough to visibly shake the ship on the exterior shots. This, from the one area on the entire colony that was made out to be armed pretty well because it was a chokepoint, the only place ships could enter and exit safely in.

Did you interpret "Much" to refer to an increment of time or an amount of accumulated damage, because I definitely took it to mean the latter. Calling 1:21 seconds of fire an eternity is a subjective assessment that is not at all supported by a volume of fire we can't calculate onto a surface we don't know the capabilities of.

They clearly weren't completely holding them off. Galactica continued to take damage, fires in CIC, main guns being blown off, etc.

...and nobody in Scotland is truly Scottish I guess.

Thank you for proving my point.

No the damage wasn't where you thought it would be, it was EVERYWHERE ELSE. you had unreasonable expectations.

Despite the cut corners and shotty construction, it was a well built and designed ship with redundancies for main systems, rigid deck construction, and reinforcement along the engines.

come on. stop selling me a gently used battlestar.

Hell, with the kind of bucking that the Galactica did after the jump (actual vehicles were flying out of the flight pods), you would expect power lines to be severed, systems to go offline due to shock damage, and a whole host of other problems.

Yeah we SAW those happening.

I was surprised that the reactor was still functioning and that power was still on. I certainly would not have expected the engines to keep running, and certainly not all 4 of them.

So because the very last thing we would possibly want to break didn't, the big G sailed through all right? No. The thing was wrecked, it was being held together with prayer.

Having backups, plans, and procedures in place, and building a ship around those procedures is what helps to make it a rugged, sturdy ship.

Ahem Concession accepted. Colonial tech not invincible, crew keeps it running.

It's a ship with compartmentalized construction, heavy doors, armor plating, by your own words reinforced engine mounts, and deck plating strong enough to hold together a ship that is trying to tear itself apart. Of course it needs a crew to run it,

Oh stop apology accepted Jodan, no worries.

but it's still designed in such a way that it can stay functional even with many of it's systems damaged because most of those systems have redundancies.

Yes and they can turn themselves on because...oh wait they can't. they are designed to be operated manually.

In contrast, the Cylons have spiny arm ships, large hallways with no noticeable compartmentalization, and are severely damaged/destroyed by a nuke detonating CLOSE BY.

Um dangerously decentralized missile boats with massive fighter complements, big wide kill zones to prevent boarders and... wait, when was a nuke detonated close by that caused that damage, what are you referencing.

[Themightytom]

And at the end of their preparations and their shoring up, the ship was still groaning, power was still flickering, and it was still determined that the ship was a write-off. The Cylon goop didn't operationally extend the life of the ship the way Tyrol seemed to imply it would, though I would argue that it probably helped to hold it together during the battle and during the last jump.

At the end of the battle, the Battlestar survived, which is what we've really been talking about. it was way beyond reasonable design life, doing something it's builder's probably never intended it to. unless you think they REALLY intended them to operate as long as Galactica did, support the passengers and fleet that it did, endure the conditions that it did, which include dropping through atmosphere, and traversing all kinds of bizarre radiation situations, some beyond human tolerance, and THEN take on a situation like they found at the colony... by design. If it wasn't by design, than either the builders utterly stumbled across an unbelievable product, or the design was enhanced considerably by the crew operating the ship.

As for Cylon repair ability, they seem fairly good at it. While Galactica never recovered fully from any of her wounds (the damaged flight pod pretty much stayed damaged throughout the series), the Cylon basestar regenerated most of its structure over the course of a few weeks/months during the latter half of the series to where you couldn't even tell it had been damaged. How long it takes to do that compared to the Colonials, I don't know, but in terms of repair ability, nBSG went with the "organic better than metal" meme, at least on that particular front.

So the question has to be asked, why have that feature in the first place, what purpose does it serve. base stars may not be giant flimsy accidents, they may have a particular role which makes them a credible threat to a battlestar.

I never said the Cylon basestar in B&C was particularly damaged. Osiris was pathetically small in comparison.

We clearly can't base colonial technology on their ability to endure collisions, the examples are too different.

Why not? We see the spines blowing up from the basestars before the vipers are fully launched in your next example.

That could be the manner in which Cylons incorporated redundancy. Spindly arms that regrow back, spread out in different directions? Those could literally be designed to decentralize critical portions o the ship, they could be designed to be blown off. We don't know what's inside them, if it's living compartments or just spare magazines they stuck out in the arms to avoid a ship killing central explosion.

By comparison, it seems a little odd to have two flight pods sticking out on opposite sides of the ship, when you could have one big one and not have to truck materials and supplies to two different sides of the ship, and waste space on all the infrastructure duplicated...
...until you consider what happens of a heavy cruiser rams one of them, the redundancy keeps tthe ship in action.

We have a counter example in Resurrection Ship, that was not a battlestar ripping through a base star that was a pitched battle,

It wasn't a battle where they didn't take any damage, but that damage was minimal.

Um we don't know that.

It was in no way a pitched battle.

Shit was flying EVERYWHERE it was totally pitched, Lee was concussed, but you could still tell that all ships involved were taking considerable fire, at one point galactica was getting double teamed which had me thinking Cain was hanging them out to dry for a second.

It was a relatively easy battle, and a battle where we didn't see Pegasus use her main guns of doom.

It was relatively easy because of the strategy involved, the Colonials had a battle plan and executed as opposed to the Cylons having the plan. They didn't have a fleet to cover, weren't being hacked, and the Cylons in turn were trying to protect the resurrection ship. Just because the Colonials didn't have to ram the Cylons, or have the shit kicked out of them before they could even respond doesn't make it an easy battle for either side. DC parties were probably on station and ready to go, as opposed to scrambling to work in their boxers, or woefully undermanned and underprepared.

One of the Cylon basestars arms was detonating just after Sturbuck launched. Certainly the battle lasted longer than other battles have, but that could be due to how they decided to use their tactics. They seemed to take very few direct hits, so could very well have been diverting most of their fire to defense.

That's the point though, the Colonials don't one shot the Cylons when they have a choice, they aren't so completely badass they plow right in shrugging off nukes, they try to minimize risk and damage. the Cylons in turn don't get one shotted, even hampered with a target to protect. They don't do as well as the Galactica does by comparison protecting a fleet jumping out, but neither side seems particularly eager to engage directly, given the choice. The Colonials typically try to keep fighters at bay, and the Cylons are happy to keep their base ships lobbing shit from a distance. I think both sides are perfectly capable of harming the other, the Colonials have tougher armor, the Cylons have greater redundancy, but the colonials also have trained, disciplined crews.

Once again, whole sections were being destroyed on those spindly arms you claim are just as robust as the hull of a Battlestar. Even if somehow it did survive, it likely wasn't combat capable and withdrew from the fight.

I never claimed they were as robust at all, I have maintained that the Cylons aren't complete pushovers, there's a LOT of distance between the two claims.

Because we haven't seen that type fight against the Cylons.

We've seen them DYING against the Cylons

Because it's not a 10th the mass of a basestar.

So you DON'T HAVE examples of Colonial ruggedness, nor counter examples of Cylon weakness. in the situations where the Colonial forces do the most damage, to the Cylons it has required either the destruction of a warship, or careful time and planning. This is not a good case that Colonial warships are considerably more rugged than Cylon ones. The technologies are complimentary as are the philosophies behind them. The outcome of any battle relies heavily on the crew's ability to control damage.

Because we should expect an old warhorse apparently stripped of most of her guns and armor (as per B&C) to be compared to a top of the line battlestar like a Mercury Class.

No, and that's why you shouldn't lump so many different situations together to prove such a broad apoint, there are too many variables.

None of these examples you pull out are going to have the firepower of a Mercury class.

If you want to argue that the pinnacle of Colonial technology exceeds the pinnacle of Cylon technology, that's a different argument, one that does not include Osiris, Galactica, Valkyrie, or anything but a Mercury and a base star.

Stop being an idiot. It is not the rule if not a few days, at most, later, the Colonials find a way around the hack.

The hell it isn't! The majority of the Colonial forces got wiped out in those few days. you're still dismissing the in universe situation by drawing out of universe context, the Cylons won, period, their fleet beat the Colonial one, utterly.


T

he Colonials had a solution for this in the first Cylon war, which was why Galactica and her sister ships were (presumably, B&C doesn't do well with this) relying on older tech.

We don't know that the Cylons have tried it yet, actually, and it would explain a lot of they tried it during this movie, but I suspect the writers thought they would have seasons to draw it out.

They went through this whole thing once in the first war and found ways around it. In days, that advantage was circumvented in Vipers and Pegasus in the second war. And the second time around the only reason it was possible was because of Baltar, not because the design of the software itself was crap.

The second time was because of SIX not Baltar, she was the infiltrator and saboteur.

We didn't see the cylons try to hack Vipers or Pegasus, we don't know whether the hack was fixed by going back to an earlier version of the CNP or if the Pegasus denetworked and had to accept a lower level of performance, the Cylons DID manage the hack Galactica the minute they networked their systems, to do something they couldn't haven pulled off otherwise.

Fine, than it's a difference of opinion. I don't know how you don't get "sturdy" from what was displayed on screen. But this is pretty moot if you just are going on gut feeling, or comparison to something like Star Wars ships.

I'm not really doing either

Tigh: "We can't take much of this."

Despite that line, they took exactly 1:21 of fire. That's an eternity given the volume of fire they were taking. And while a lot of it was low caliber stuff, some of it was hitting hard enough to visibly shake the ship on the exterior shots. This, from the one area on the entire colony that was made out to be armed pretty well because it was a chokepoint, the only place ships could enter and exit safely in.

Did you interpret "Much" to refer to an increment of time or an amount of accumulated damage, because I definitely took it to mean the latter. Calling 1:21 seconds of fire an eternity is a subjective assessment that is not at all supported by a volume of fire we can't calculate onto a surface we don't know the capabilities of.

They clearly weren't completely holding them off. Galactica continued to take damage, fires in CIC, main guns being blown off, etc.

...and nobody in Scotland is truly Scottish I guess.

Thank you for proving my point.

No the damage wasn't where you thought it would be, it was EVERYWHERE ELSE. you had unreasonable expectations.

Despite the cut corners and shotty construction, it was a well built and designed ship with redundancies for main systems, rigid deck construction, and reinforcement along the engines.

come on. stop selling me a gently used battlestar.

Hell, with the kind of bucking that the Galactica did after the jump (actual vehicles were flying out of the flight pods), you would expect power lines to be severed, systems to go offline due to shock damage, and a whole host of other problems.

Yeah we SAW those happening.

I was surprised that the reactor was still functioning and that power was still on. I certainly would not have expected the engines to keep running, and certainly not all 4 of them.

So because the very last thing we would possibly want to break didn't, the big G sailed through all right? No. The thing was wrecked, it was being held together with prayer.

Having backups, plans, and procedures in place, and building a ship around those procedures is what helps to make it a rugged, sturdy ship.

Ahem Concession accepted. Colonial tech not invincible, crew keeps it running.

It's a ship with compartmentalized construction, heavy doors, armor plating, by your own words reinforced engine mounts, and deck plating strong enough to hold together a ship that is trying to tear itself apart. Of course it needs a crew to run it,

Oh stop apology accepted Jodan, no worries.

but it's still designed in such a way that it can stay functional even with many of it's systems damaged because most of those systems have redundancies.

Yes and they can turn themselves on because...oh wait they can't. they are designed to be operated manually.

In contrast, the Cylons have spiny arm ships, large hallways with no noticeable compartmentalization, and are severely damaged/destroyed by a nuke detonating CLOSE BY.

Um dangerously decentralized missile boats with massive fighter complements, big wide kill zones to prevent boarders and... wait, when was a nuke detonated close by that caused that damage, what are you referencing.

[the atom]

So you're saying when a single weapon does serious internal damage, and dozens of another weapon make orange flashes, that in some way the second inherits the power of the first? I thought it meant that the regular missiles were way weaker than 15kt nukes. Silly me!

A few buckled plates and a few fires that were easily dealt with by a push of a button constitutes 'serious internal damage'? I'm just saying that when a nuclear missile is a relatively minor issue that can be dealt with by venting some corridors and some minor repairs (they didn't have a dry dock or any way to repair any major damage at all remember?), logic tells us that the conventional missiles used against these wonder ships with the expectation of causing some damage probably have a little more bang then people are giving them credit for. Or have you already established a value based on 'orange flashes' or something?

Sure I mean... in universe those buttons include venting hundreds of crew into space, but that's probably a decision made lightly. :

Well yes, thematically it's all very sad and terrible and a huge loss and blah blah.

[Stark]

Unless you're saying dozens of nuclear missiles would have done the equivalent 'not really anything' we see their petrol bomb missiles do, I don't think you have a point.

Luckily the human weapons shred Cylon ships like tinfoil. :V

The rationale that shooting crap missiles that do nothing at Galactica 'logically' means they must be powerful is terrifying. Its far more likely they were simply complacent (or had no proper weapons for stupid plot reason).

[Flagg]

I always took the view that a Battlestar was built to be a tank, while the Cylon Basestar is more along the lines of a helicopter. Plus, Cylons had resurrection, so armoring the fuck out of a basestar full of easily downloaded skinjobs and raiders doesn't make a whole lot of sense thematically.

[Themightytom]

Unless you're saying dozens of nuclear missiles would have done the equivalent 'not really anything' we see their petrol bomb missiles do, I don't think you have a point.

Luckily the human weapons shred Cylon ships like tinfoil. :V

The rationale that shooting crap missiles that do nothing at Galactica 'logically' means they must be powerful is terrifying. Its far more likely they were simply complacent (or had no proper weapons for stupid plot reason).

The FIRST thing Adama said when they got hit by the nuke and Kara told him there was heavy damage and violent decompression was "Rad levels are normal, looks like the hull plating kept out the hard stuff."

I don't know the difference between nukes, versus conventional, but I doubt it matters to the Colonials as much as the radiation part, everyone freaks out whenever there's a radiological alarm but honestly, we saw that conventional missiles hitting the pod had them worried enough they started to retract their flight pods. The way bsg ships work, they are actually not a big equal target. If you hit the flight pods so they can't retract, the ship can't jump, and they're screwed, if you irradiate the crew, your screwed. if you pummel them with bullets, your screwed. Battlestars are just one problem after another needing to be fixed. I don't think that makes them shitbuckets or anything, in fact it's a lot more realistic than, "The klingons shot us in the turbolift! We're all gonna die!" "one just shot our bridge....meh..."

[Stark]

You can also pummel them for minutes at a time with petrol bombs. If they'd used their actual ship-killer weapons in Exodus they'd have won the war. They didn't because robots are just stupid (or hilariously they had none because ... ).

Being prudent about protecting their bizzarely moving flight pods with the huge holes in them is a bit different than 'constantly bombarded by dozens of missiles then just gets away lol'. These events don't contradict each other at all, and indeed its the penetration from a small nuclear warhead that makes me think the ship isn't as SUPER ULTRA RUGGEDISED MIL-STD-12A that others do. If that nuke had hit somewhere important or been stronger than water, it might have crippled the ship immediately - if it'd hit the retraction gear it's possible the Galactica would have been destroyed right there. This isn't a mark against the show or the ship... it just makes Exodus look even stupider than it did already.

[Flagg]

Yeah, I wondered at the time why the Baseships never used nukes in Exodus. Unless they did and the flak guns just singled them out and destroyed them, which could explain why so many conventional missiles were nailing them. Assuming they even had the capability of singling out radiation signatures for targetting.

[Stark]

It could easily have just been over confidence; the Cylcons never appeared very tactically adept.

[Darksider]

Well someone does dramatically yell "radiological alarm" every time the Cylons fire a nuke, so they can certainly tell if they're in play. Maybe they can detect them with their targeting systems and single them out.


Edit: Of course the fact that there was no dramatic yelling indicates that they weren't, so whatever.

[Stark]

In Exodus the ship was almost silent and sure couldt stop the train line of regular missiles hitting. It's just dumb, because they needed Galactica to be able to escape once Pegasus destroyed itself for no reason.

[Darksider]

The battle in Exodus was flashy and exciting to watch, but it was basically a giant reset button. Almost everything that happened during the fight was specifically calculated by the writers to kill off the Pegasus and get the bulk of the Colonials off the giant "ZOMG Iraq Allegory!" hole they'd written them into on New Caprica.

[Flagg]

In Exodus the ship was almost silent and sure couldt stop the train line of regular missiles hitting. It's just dumb, because they needed Galactica to be able to escape once Pegasus destroyed itself for no reason.

Like I said, it's possible that they were allowing the regular missiles to hit them in order to focus all fire on nukes. Though IIRC in "Resurrection Ship" both Galactica and Pegasus were shrugging off nukes like nobodies business.

[the atom]

Unless you're saying dozens of nuclear missiles would have done the equivalent 'not really anything' we see their petrol bomb missiles do, I don't think you have a point.

Luckily the human weapons shred Cylon ships like tinfoil. :V

The rationale that shooting crap missiles that do nothing at Galactica 'logically' means they must be powerful is terrifying. Its far more likely they were simply complacent (or had no proper weapons for stupid plot reason).

Buckling the plates and causing internal fires is a lot more then the conventional missiles usually lobbed ever do in single hits, so I'm not really sure where you're going with this. Have you established some sort of value for these 'petrol bombs' or is this sort of a 'theme' thing?

[Grumman]

Yeah, I wondered at the time why the Baseships never used nukes in Exodus.

I was thinking that perhaps the Cylons didn't want to nuke the colony, but looking it up Three was going to set off a nuke anyway.

[ray245]

Saw the last episode. Towards the end, the characters are so unlikeable that I simply could not care whether Adama and co. survive the battle.

[Guardsman Bass]

I just watched the finale.

All in all, I really enjoyed watching most of it. It's pretty much just a fun little bit of space opera, even with the crazy "wheels within wheels" conspiracy at the end for the Big Reveal. Nothing too substantial, but enjoyable nonetheless.

[Jade Owl]

It could easily have just been over confidence; the Cylcons never appeared very tactically adept.

Actually, the Cylons lack of tactical prowess in the serires makes a lot of sense. The whole Cylon war effort was being run by the Significant Seven humanoid models, who were created after the war and therefore had zero actual combat experience.

The only Cylons with actual combat experience (and presumably better tactical sense), were the Centurions, all of which were either scrapped or had their intelligence neutered when the Ones took over. Even the during the Fall of the Colonies there was no need to flex any tactical muscles in their brains, the program they sneaked in did all the work for them.

The Cylons in the new BSG really didn't know what they were doing, militarily speaking.