Redesign the Galactica

[wautd]

Despite being an old, if not absolute ship in it's universe it was still able to dish out a lot of damage to its state of the line adversaries. Looking at the amount of punishment it could take, you couldn't really blame it was lacking the the armor department either and its damage control seemed pretty solid. Hell, it even had an unexposed bridge, which is pretty rare in a mainstream sci-fi show as far as I know.

So yeah, in my layman opinion, it was a solid designed ship and the only flaw I could think of was that it was lacking in the heavy anti-capital gun department (like we saw in the Pegasus).

Having said that, how would you further improve the Galactica?

[Starglider]

Having said that, how would you further improve the Galactica?

Like most sci-fi capital ships, it doesn't seem to have any forward-firing engines (just some tiny bow thrusters), yet we don't see it flipping over and doing reverse thrust to slow down either. I'm not sure if this counts as an in-universe or out-of-universe observation, but I think the outer four sublight engines on the Galactica should have some kind of reverse thrust capability (either forward-pointing thrust chambers or thrust reverser doors similar to those on a high-bypass turbofan). Then the ship could deccelerate properly without turning ass-first to the enemy.

[tezunegari]

I might be wrong but I don't remember any belly guns on this fine lady.

I just don't see how a SPACESHIP can lack weapons at the keel or between the engines at the stern to defend against engine crippling.

And I would add smaller anti-fighter turrets at the landing bays to shoot down any cylon who might try to do a suicide run for the landing strips. Adding Pegasus-style double landing bays would be nice too.

(And I would shoot the guy who turned the starboard (?) tubes into a frakking gift shop)

[Bounty]

(And I would shoot the guy who turned the starboard (?) tubes into a frakking gift shop)

...why? Museums usually don't need to launch fighters from every orifice

[Starglider]

I might be wrong but I don't remember any belly guns on this fine lady.

Galactica has turrets on the underside, but they're easy to miss, and the firing arcs must suck. I can't find an appropriate screenshot but you can see them on this orthographic view.

I just don't see how a SPACESHIP can lack weapons at the keel or between the engines at the stern to defend against engine crippling.

The engines may get some defence from the fact that projectiles and missiles approaching would be destroyed by the (relativistic ion) exhaust. Of course BSG makes the same mistake as SW in having the engines (apparently) thrusting continually even during near-stationary fleet combat.

Adding Pegasus-style double landing bays would be nice too.

That may be too heavy for the pod retraction systems to cope with, and pod retraction is essential due to the (relatively) low wormhole diameter of the older jump drives.

(And I would shoot the guy who turned the starboard (?) tubes into a frakking gift shop)

The ship was being decommissioned and turned into a museum, so what's the problem?

[fusion]

Galactica has turrets on the underside, but they're easy to miss, and the firing arcs must suck. I can't find an appropriate screenshot but you can see them on this orthographic view.

FAIL : here is the link :

++http://media.battlestarwiki.org/images/ ... Bottom.jpg++

No hotlinking...

Edit: Also I would add some more guns to the bottom of the ship and instead of having the flight bays on the side I would have them top and bottom and double or even triple width... This would give galatica the same diameter while giving the ship more fighter capacity

[Captain Seafort]

Of course BSG makes the same mistake as SW in having the engines (apparently) thrusting continually even during near-stationary fleet combat.

Could that be explained by them wanting to keep the reactor at full power just in case, and using the engines simply as radiators rather than thrusters?

[RedImperator]

Rather than redesign the outer surface of the ship (which seemed to work pretty fucking well, all things considered), I'd eliminate the design flaw that lets a few centurions in secondary damage control depressurize the entire ship. I loved the second season, but that was a big eye-roll moment: ginning up an Achilles' Heel for one episode so a handful of Centurions could be an actual threat. Do that enough times and your ship becomes a running joke; after all, that's how Enterprise-D wound up being made of paper-mache and nitroglycerin.

[Starglider]

I loved the second season, but that was a big eye-roll moment: ginning up an Achilles' Heel for one episode so a handful of Centurions could be an actual threat.

That struck me as realistic. Many real world capital ships turned out to have fatal flaws in service, because naval architects do make mistakes and can't think of everything. It's a difficult problem to fix, because damage control needs to be able to depressurise areas of the ship to put out fires, even if they have crew in them (as they did in the pilot). My guess is that the Colonials fixed the problem in later classes with better security measures, but's Galactica's old-style computers and Adama's fixation with manual controls didn't allow correction of the problem. That and the fact that the brass probably thought boarding actions were obsolete and highly unlikely to occur in modern fleet combat.

[SpacedTeddyBear]

Thankfully, the retracting flightpods never became a big of a plot device that some people ( including me) initially thought. But it'd most likely increased the time it took from when the last bird touched down, to when the actual jump was made.

I'd eliminate the retractable mechanism, and have the gap between the main body and the pods "filled in" with expanded hanger bays and production facilities for starters. Then I'd mount a medium caliber cannon or two on each of the "arms" that are attached to the flight pod.

Internally, there'd be security stations at each hallway/intersection that leads to a vital area of a ship with protective barricades rather than stacked boxes.

Like most sci-fi capital ships, it doesn't seem to have any forward-firing engines (just some tiny bow thrusters), yet we don't see it flipping over and doing reverse thrust to slow down either.

It may have bow thrusters in the same location that the Pegasus had used in Razor just after Cain ordered the docking connections to be severed. They were actually powerful enough to destroy part of the station it was docked with.

[RedImperator]

I loved the second season, but that was a big eye-roll moment: ginning up an Achilles' Heel for one episode so a handful of Centurions could be an actual threat.

That struck me as realistic. Many real world capital ships turned out to have fatal flaws in service, because naval architects do make mistakes and can't think of everything. It's a difficult problem to fix, because damage control needs to be able to depressurise areas of the ship to put out fires, even if they have crew in them (as they did in the pilot).

And there are no safeties which prevent the entire ship from being depressurized in one go, nor any way to override secondary damage control? And there's no way to manually seal off compartments, either? No gastight hatches, no way to close the vents? Come on. A fatal ship-killing flaw is something like thin armor over the magazines. For something this calamitously dumb, you'd have to deliberately design it that way.

Thankfully, the retracting flightpods never became a big of a plot device that some people ( including me) initially thought. But it'd most likely increased the time it took from when the last bird touched down, to when the actual jump was made.

I'd eliminate the retractable mechanism, and have the gap between the main body and the pods "filled in" with expanded hanger bays and production facilities for starters. Then I'd mount a medium caliber cannon or two on each of the "arms" that are attached to the flight pod.

Congratulations. You've just removed Galactica's ability to jump. The reason the ship had retractable flight pods was because BSG-verse FTL works by creating artificial wormholes, and Galactica's older FTL can't create a wormhole wide enough to fit the ship with the pods extended.

[tezunegari]

Congratulations. You've just removed Galactica's ability to jump. The reason the ship had retractable flight pods was because BSG-verse FTL works by creating artificial wormholes, and Galactica's older FTL can't create a wormhole wide enough to fit the ship with the pods extended.

Then just take a metal saw to the old style FTL, get a bit sweaty and haul in a new FTL drive.
We are talking about redesigning Galactica afterall.

If the pods are fixed and more deck space added: Viper/Raptor production, chemical processing for explosives and a limited ore/tylium refinery might be a good idea. At least metal recycling and production facilities for spare parts should be added.

[Vympel]

There's no point in changing out the FTL, you might as well make her the Pegasus or the Valkryie and then be done with it.

[Thanas]

The Galactica can jump with her pods extended, it just causes some very bad things to happen to the structural integrity of the ship, as seen in the finale.

[Bounty]

If the pods are fixed and more deck space added: Viper/Raptor production, chemical processing for explosives and a limited ore/tylium refinery might be a good idea. At least metal recycling and production facilities for spare parts should be added.

There are support ships for those functions. The Viper factory or ore refinery can't be cheap or light; besides, even if you have a refinery, where are you going to get the ore? Or should Galactica carry a mining rig, too?

Galactica looked like she was designed to defend the Colonies, not long-term autonomous operation. Unless she was specifically stated somewhere to be capable of doing long-term missions on her lonesome I don't see much merit in making her a jack-of-all-trades.

[Starglider]

Then just take a metal saw to the old style FTL, get a bit sweaty and haul in a new FTL drive. We are talking about redesigning Galactica afterall.

Mmmyeah. How do you know the Galactica can meet the power/space/cooling/computer support requirements of the newer drive? These are huge turbine-like things. It sounds about as practical as refitting the USS Enterprise (CVN-65) from the eight small nuclear reactors it was designed with to the two large reactors used in the Nimitz class, i.e. not practical at all.

The Galactica can jump with her pods extended, it just causes some very bad things to happen to the structural integrity of the ship, as seen in the finale.

As I recall that was after the Cylons had attached their bizarre techo-organic gibblets to the fleet's drives to increase their range; it might not have been possible with the stock colonial drives. Or of course as you say it might've been possible from the beginning at the cost of severe structural stress and/or burning out the drives.

[Thanas]

I think the later - when you see galactica finishing her jump in the finale, the whole ship ripples. Kinda like the jump process - which causes the ship to shrink and then expand. Here a similar ripple runs through the ship, causing it to bend and twist.

Of course, I could be misremembering things.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Of course BSG makes the same mistake as SW in having the engines (apparently) thrusting continually even during near-stationary fleet combat.

Could that be explained by them wanting to keep the reactor at full power just in case, and using the engines simply as radiators rather than thrusters?

Actually, I would imagine that the ship derives some power from the engines and like jet engines, you have to run them constantly to get power from them.

[His Divine Shadow]

Maybe add some laser turrets for extra point defence work, the ordinary cannons sure do provide a good flak screen but I felt that galactica could have been well served with some PD lasers as well, they do have several advantages that has been brought up in discussions about real life lasers.

With a laser you could shoot down incoming missiles for instance alot easier.

Edit: Oh and install a fully equipped machine shop in the pod bay that was turned into a museum. Galactical did well with just one pod anyway and they really could have used some manufacturing ability.

[wautd]

Maybe add some laser turrets for extra point defence work, the ordinary cannons sure do provide a good flak screen but I felt that galactica could have been well served with some PD lasers as well, they do have several advantages that has been brought up in discussions about real life lasers.

With a laser you could shoot down incoming missiles for instance alot easier.

While it would make sense, I can't remember laser weapons in the nBSG universe though.

About the flak screen, just how effective was it? It looked impressive but I remember Vipers flying trough it like it was nothing (unless they had some kind of anti friendly fire system in place?)

[His Divine Shadow]

Yeah I haven't seen any examples of it, but we're making lasers now that can blow up missiles, it's really hard to imagine they don't have that technology but do have FTL and engines with enough power densities to make entering and leaving gravity wells a piece of cake.

I dunno though, we've never seen lasers, maybe they where banned by the gods or whatever. In reality though it was probably just Olmos who didn't want any pew-pew lasers in his show anymore than he wanted aliens :p

[Lord Revan]

btw (I'll admit I've not seen any of the season 2 or 3 episodes) but could it be possible that there's a safety margin with the FTL drive so that Galactica could jump pods extended but doing so would place the ship in unessery risk, so they made it so that Galactica (and other Battlestars of her class) could retract the pods to jump safely?

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

What's the credited speeds for the missiles? I would imagine that no matter how smart they are at evading defences, lasers will always be able to shoot them down, with enough power that is.

[Anguirus]

My guess is that the Colonials fixed the problem in later classes with better security measures

The Pegasus did NOT fix the problem, or at least Admiral Cain doesn't believe that they did. When the Pegasus is boarded by Cylons in Razor she immediately orders troops to secondary damage control. Don't ask me why they weren't there in the first place.

While I certainly agree that this reeks of a huge script Achilles heel, I would point out that the Cylons are technological savants, and it may be difficult to design a damage control center that a) can do its job and b) can't be used to depressurize the ship if Cylons get control of the facility. Remember, a bunch of Centurions (not mental giants) disassembled their Heavy Raider and turned it into a fully functional SAM site. The Final Five hooked Anders into the ship with what, a whole day to work on the problem? (Which was a hardware problem.)

[RedImperator]

My guess is that the Colonials fixed the problem in later classes with better security measures

The Pegasus did NOT fix the problem, or at least Admiral Cain doesn't believe that they did. When the Pegasus is boarded by Cylons in Razor she immediately orders troops to secondary damage control. Don't ask me why they weren't there in the first place.

While I certainly agree that this reeks of a huge script Achilles heel, I would point out that the Cylons are technological savants, and it may be difficult to design a damage control center that a) can do its job and b) can't be used to depressurize the ship if Cylons get control of the facility.

I don't buy this. Depressurization makes sense as a firefighting method when the fire has to be put out immediately--like in the mini, when it was threatening the Viper fuel storage tanks. Everywhere else, I don't see why normal firefighting techniques, combined with a method to seal the compartment and deny it oxygen that way if necessary, should do. And even if you do want the ability to remotely depressurize any compartment, that's still no excuse for having no safeties to prevent the entire ship from being blown out, nor is it an excuse for not having any kind of override anywhere, nor is it an excuse for not being able to manually seal compartments.