nBSG: How did the cylons do it?

[Themightytom]

I did a search and i couldn't find a previous topic. if there is one than I apologize.

How did the cylons wipe out the twelve colonies? We ahve neer seen more than six base stars in one palce. the anture of the sneak attack suggests that they were probably outnumbered by the colonies 120 battlestars. They removed all effective resistance in under two days,

They had a major advantage with the backdoors into baltar's defense program, but I have trouble believing that the Galactica was the ONLY ship that didn't think to shut its computers down. the Pegasus made it out because their computer was offline, no one else did?

We saw nukes detonating in cities but how many nukes could the cylons be firing at once, could they have realistically wiped out all of the military isntallations on 12 planets in under two days?? What about space stations? What about hidden armories like ragnar? The series doesn't seem to have detailed much about the actual desruction of the colonies, What resources would you estiamte the cylons to have and how do you think theyw ere applied?

[FuncoWilkerbean]

This is just a conjuncture I'm throwing out there but maybe the Cylons didn't deploy their own nukes; maybe they detonated the Colonial nukes in their own silos. That wouldn't explain though how the cities were nuked... Hmm, this calls for a repeat viewing of the miniseries.

[StarshipTitanic]

How did the cylons wipe out the twelve colonies? We ahve neer seen more than six base stars in one palce. the anture of the sneak attack suggests that they were probably outnumbered by the colonies 120 battlestars. They removed all effective resistance in under two days,

The miniseries and Razor both show the effectiveness of raiders armed with nuclear weapons. Why would they risk basestars when they can throw hundreds of disposable raiders at targets and nuke everything valuable?

And if there were any more initial survivors, so what? Both the Galactica and Pegasus were infiltrated by Cylon agents. The case may have been the same with every major Colonial ship.

[Venator]

We ahve neer seen more than six base stars in one palce. the anture of the sneak attack suggests that they were probably outnumbered by the colonies 120 battlestars.

Given the report that D reads, and what we saw of the effect on the MkVII Vipers, it might as well have been "100 plus giant targets".

They had a major advantage with the backdoors into baltar's defense program, but I have trouble believing that the Galactica was the ONLY ship that didn't think to shut its computers down. the Pegasus made it out because their computer was offline, no one else did?

Galactica was due to be retired, and given Adama's stubbornness towards a networked computer in the museum, it's possible he opposed having the ship retrofitted like other old-model Battlestars. Just a theory, though.

StarshipTitanic got the rest.

[tim31]

It wasn't a case of 'no-one else thought to turn of their networks.' Galactica, as we well know, did not have network capacity for the CNP. Pegasus was just lucky enough to not have had the CNP running the show when the Cylons hit Scorpion Fleet Yards. It wasn't a matter of switching it off, because by the time they realized what was happening, it was over. Any battlestar commander that had read the reports and put two and two together may have been scared of what would happen if they shutdown their LAN, and even though we didn't see it, I'm sure there were a few battlestars that actually went down fighting; likely this is how the Atlantia was destroyed.

[Themightytom]

The miniseries and Razor both show the effectiveness of raiders armed with nuclear weapons. Why would they risk basestars when they can throw hundreds of disposable raiders at targets and nuke everything valuable?

And if there were any more initial survivors, so what? Both the Galactica and Pegasus were infiltrated by Cylon agents. The case may have been the same with every major Colonial ship.

There are a LOT of targets on even ONE planet. The Cylons didn't hit military targets exclusively and let radiation do the rest, they hit cities as well.

To do it as fast and as thoroughly as they did would avhe taken an enormous fleet, and if they ahd a fleet of that size, why risk showing their hand by relying on infiltrators. if Gaius had realized what six was doing (IE he had a mirror in his room and noticed her SPINE glowing, or caprican police caught her after she snapped the infants neck and discovered she wasn't "entirely" human) than the colonials would have gone to heightened alert.

if anything Razor raises tthe bar, because if all of those fighters were raiding the shipyards, there msut ahve been even MORE bombing the planets

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Well, from what I remember, the Cylons went nuke happy (kinda like Shep). They pretty much used nukes for just about any attack, be it small or large.

Though personally, there is the issue of how many nukes they used. If a planet were sufficiently urbanised closed to how Coruscant is, that would require a lot of nukes and I think by the hundred for each planet at least.

[tim31]

How could the CCPD have determined that six wasn't human? Actually picking Cylons based upon biology has always been hit and miss.

As for targets, they hit military installations and large population centres. Delphi, with a usable civilian spaceport, was spared. We didn't even see what kind of ground war they engaged in, but we do know that the cyclons had centurions fighting resistance groups on Caprica alone up to several months later.

[StarshipTitanic]

There are a LOT of targets on even ONE planet. The Cylons didn't hit military targets exclusively and let radiation do the rest, they hit cities as well.

To do it as fast and as thoroughly as they did would avhe taken an enormous fleet, and if they ahd a fleet of that size, why risk showing their hand by relying on infiltrators.

The Cylons also have a lot of flexibility since they have jump-capable fighters carrying multiple nuclear missiles of at least 50 megaton yields. Use the nuclear weapon yield calculator on the main site. Or look at this view of Caprica from the miniseries.

Why do you think the Cylons could only have done this with a massive fleet of basestars?

[Solauren]

Consider how many Raiders we've seen launched from a Basestar.

What, 200? 300? or more?

Each of of them could be carrying 2 nuclear weapons.

That's somewhere between 100 - 600 nuclear weapons.

That's more then enough to pound a planet flat, when it has no defenses.

Consider that Raiders have FLT drives that appear to be 10 (or more) times better then Colonial drives. It took Kara's Raider 10 jumps to make it back to the Colonies from Kobol, when it would take the fleet about 120.

What's to stop a raider from say, launching 2 nukes, FTLing back to a resupply depot (possibly a Colonial ones the Cylons took over in secret), loading up 2 new nukes, and then jumping to another one?

The Colonial military was completely offline, and all be annilated in the first few seconds of the 'war'.


How did the Cylons win?

Complete Surprise, Complete Deactivation of Enemy defenses, and massive tactical superiority via Orbital Nuclear Bombardment, that's how.

[white_rabbit]

I can't think of a source right now, but don't the Basestars have the capacity for over seven hundred raiders ?

[andrewgpaul]

Even if any other Battlestars did switch off the CNP, wouldn't they be then fighting blind? After all, that program was the operating system for the Colonial Fleet.

[Solauren]

700 Raiders raises the number of nukes from just 6 Basestars launching raiders to something like 4200. How knows what that number is after Heavy Raiders, and Missle Launchers on the Basestar itself is.

Scary, isn't it?

[tim31]

Now to play the other hand; either they have streamlined manufacturing of nukes, or they stockpiled like crazy for the operation.

Even if any other Battlestars did switch off the CNP, wouldn't they be then fighting blind? After all, that program was the operating system for the Colonial Fleet.

Precisely.

[Sarevok]

The military experts at SDN could easily point out how present day nuclear arsenals can send civilization back to stone age levels in matter of hours. Ok maybe that was a hyperbole but the point is once the battlestars are gone and surface defenses incapacitated what can the Colonials do ? Basestars could now target the planet from orbit with impunity. They can obliterate major population centers, destroy vital industrial areas, power generation hubs, agricultural regions with the destructive power of multi megaton atomic weapons. In a matter of days all that would remain are isolated pockets of resistance waiting to be slaughtered by Centurions. What we saw in the series is somewhat consistent with this image of initial devastating orbital bombardment followed by Cylons landing on the burning aftermath of Colonial civilization.

[andrewgpaul]

Now to play the other hand; either they have streamlined manufacturing of nukes, or they stockpiled like crazy for the operation.

They had 4o years to do it. The US and USSR managed a pretty decent arsenal in the same timeframe.

[Themightytom]

How could the CCPD have determined that six wasn't human? Actually picking Cylons based upon biology has always been hit and miss.

your right they probably couldn't have, but there is still a reasonable number of copies you can avhe before they start running into eachother or someone ends up meeting more than one.

As for targets, they hit military installations and large population centres. Delphi, with a usable civilian spaceport, was spared. We didn't even see what kind of ground war they engaged in, but we do know that the cyclons had centurions fighting resistance groups on Caprica alone up to several months later.

resistance fighters in a remote mountain area way out of the way. They should have still been pacifying cities and such.

[Themightytom]

Why do you think the Cylons could only have done this with a massive fleet of basestars

they couldn't and it wouldn't be practical, but I think they need MORE base stars than what we have seen to carry the Raiders and/or carry troops. We couldn't know how many base stars were used until a plausible strategy is revealed. if it relies heavily on orbital bombardment, why use raiders when a base star can sit at a distance. if it depends strategic strafing runs raiders seem more neccesary, if it was just drop a few nukes to spread panic, use the virus to shut down defenses and land a butt load of centurions, than you still need more base stars

[Junghalli]

Though personally, there is the issue of how many nukes they used. If a planet were sufficiently urbanised closed to how Coruscant is, that would require a lot of nukes and I think by the hundred for each planet at least.

I don't think any of the Colonial planets where anywhere near city-planet level of population density, or at any rate I can't recall any evidence of it. Caprica was a pretty major world and it seemed to be around modern Earth level of urbanization.

[Themightytom]

That's somewhere between 100 - 600 nuclear weapons.

That's more then enough to pound a planet flat, when it has no defenses.

not really? it could make it unliveable, but the colonials should ahve a pretty decent number of planetary bases, they seem pretty militarized although we are watching the show from the perspective of a battlestar

Consider that Raiders have FLT drives that appear to be 10 (or more) times better then Colonial drives. It took Kara's Raider 10 jumps to make it back to the Colonies from Kobol, when it would take the fleet about 120.

but without knowing how far away from the colonies the cylon frontier is, we still don't know that a raider could make it, either way the jumps take fuel so how good will the raiders be on half a tank of tylium?

What's to stop a raider from say, launching 2 nukes, FTLing back to a resupply depot (possibly a Colonial ones the Cylons took over in secret), loading up 2 new nukes, and then jumping to another one?

Nothing. That would be painfully slow and ineffecient but i suppose if the cylons ahd to do this as a last minute act of defense rather than a carefully planned out..
...

The Colonial military was completely offline, and all be annilated in the first few seconds of the 'war'.

No it wasn't, they were if nothing else still able to send reports that they were having malfunctions, which indicates that they were alive to do so, and the systems failures seemed inconsistent. Duella was reporting different results on different battlestars which implies differing levels of success.

Complete Surprise, Complete Deactivation of Enemy defenses, and massive tactical superiority via Orbital Nuclear Bombardment, that's how.

I was looking for more detailed speculation as to "How" not just "By doing it"

[Themightytom]

Though personally, there is the issue of how many nukes they used. If a planet were sufficiently urbanised closed to how Coruscant is, that would require a lot of nukes and I think by the hundred for each planet at least.

I don't think any of the Colonial planets where anywhere near city-planet level of population density, or at any rate I can't recall any evidence of it. Caprica was a pretty major world and it seemed to be around modern Earth level of urbanization.

My udnerstanding was that Caprica was a MORE developed colony, they refer to Geminon and Saggitaron as "Backwaters" in a few episodes, Balter even adopted a caprican accent to sound educated Too bad, a city planet would avhe done better against nukes, sure more people would ahve died but they would be a lower percentage as densley packed buildings on a planetary scale might reducce the efficacy of nukes, and many buildings with independent circulation systems could be sealed off to reduce contamination

[andrewgpaul]

Also, if Helo's adventures are anything to go by, the planets were reasonably unharmed, outside urban areas.

[DrStrangelove]

nBSG basestars carry 792 raiders according to battlestar wiki. 1584x50MT=79200MT 79.2GT just from one wave of raiders from one basestar. this does not count however many missile the basestar itself can fire. 120 is a commonly accepted number for number of basestars in the cylon fleet. this is equal to the number of battlestars in the colonial fleet as mentioned in the miniseries and razor.

assuming they used half their strength, thats 5x79.2GT=396GT per colony per wave of raiders. assuming a 3hr turn around for rearmament thats 3.168TT per day, more than enough to wipe out colonial civilization.

the cylon virus in the colonial defense network shut down navigation and fire control rendering everything connected to the network immobile and impotent thus ensuring their easy destruction. the only reason the galactica and pegasus escaped, was due to the fact that adama didnt allow the networking systems to be installed in the galactica, and the nav system on the pegasus was offline during the attack. allowing the pegasus to make a blind jump away

[RedImperator]

My udnerstanding was that Caprica was a MORE developed colony, they refer to Geminon and Saggitaron as "Backwaters" in a few episodes, Balter even adopted a caprican accent to sound educated Too bad, a city planet would avhe done better against nukes, sure more people would ahve died but they would be a lower percentage as densley packed buildings on a planetary scale might reducce the efficacy of nukes, and many buildings with independent circulation systems could be sealed off to reduce contamination

Ok, this I gotta hear: how does packing targets together tightly make nukes less effective?

[Gil Hamilton]

They had 4o years to do it. The US and USSR managed a pretty decent arsenal in the same timeframe.

The time frame is kind of the problem that's always bothered me. 40 years is not a whole lot of time given that the Cylons picked up and left Colonial space. Rebuilding a new spaceborne infrastructure and making the shift from Centurion-style Cylons to Skinjobs, then building an armada of warships to smash the human worlds seems like a real tight fit for that sort of timeline.

Of course, we have the X-factor that the Cylons almost certainly had help and were guided to their current state by something else. Who knows how much they could have helped or provided the cylons with, in addition to making them fleshy and batshit crazy?