nBSG compared to Babylon 5

[Parallax]

I'm just sitting back, watching some Battlestar Galactica, and I'm wondering just how the technology and ship capabilities from both that series and B5 stack up against one another. FTL? Endurance? Weapon power and range? etc etc.

I'm pretty sure that if, for example, the Galactica jumped into B5 space and attacked the station then there would be no hope for said station (their defence grid/interceptor fire certainly couldn't cope with a Viper wing or even battery fire from the ship itself). On the other hand, Star Furies seem more manoeuvrable than Vipers.

So would the Bucket be more in-line with First One vessels? Or would it take a great number of Alliance ships to tackle the Galactica or Pegasus?

[Enigma]

I haven't seen NBSG but can the BG overcome B5's numerous Point Defense weapons and the Starfuries? What is the BG's rate of fire\weapons range?

[Nieztchean Uber-Amoeba]

Both B5 and the Galactica have excellent carrier and point defense armament, but I doubt Galactica has anything that can defend against beam weapons, and doesn't have the proper hitting power itself to destroy B5, aside from its nukes. I suspect the big bow batteries of a Mercury-class Battlestar could so well (though they've never been properly analysed, single salvo of them can cut through a Basestar like tissue paper). Frankly, there hasn't been much to go on for properly analyzing BSG. The finale showed that, theoretically, they can travel (presumably) truly immense distances in a single jump, but even knowing the way to or from some place, backtracking from where they were mid-season 2 back to Caprica would have taken something like ~24 jumps (or something, it was in the dozens), so perhaps the kind of jump in Daybreak was also the kind that would permanently damage the engines of even a non-busted Battlestar?

Neither do I think the Bucket can take much punishment. While the Mercury-class, again, could, after several months of guerilla warfare without rest, take 3 or 4 Cylon nukes without anything but immediate damages, the BSG lost a whole wing after just one nuke in the mini-series.

I think that, likely, in a stand-up fight the BSG couldn't stand up most B5 ships, though I think that the Pegasus almost certainly could. In a war, of course, the 12 Colonies simply don't have the industry or number of ships required to beat the Earth Alliance - they had a total of 120 Battlestars, and even if those were all Mercuries, something like 200 destroyers were lost at the Battle of Earth alone.

[Anguirus]

I'm seen a few vs. threads on this before, consensus seems to be it's a tough slog. I think that B5 would take out Galactica one on one, its energy weapons seem much better at vaporizing metal hulls than the standard missiles and shells on nBSG. Both sides seem to use nukes of about the same strength as strategic weapons. Vipers seem a bit more maneuverable than Starfuries but I don't think it's a slaughter either way.

A Minbari vessel destroys Galactica utterly. No need to invoke any First Ones. Shadow weapons would tear through a battlestar like it wasn't even there, their yields are scary.

[DrStrangelove]

B5s nuke yield energy weapons are a bit too much for nBSG

http://www.babtech-onthe.net/

[Chris OFarrell]

Oh boy...you're gona get it now.

Anyway, Babylon-5 has decent weapons, but a glass jaw of a hull, it really can't take damage at all well. The main guns on the Battlestars are not super crash hot, but they are enough to probably tear into Babylon-5, while their armor should be enough to take what B5 can throw at them, at least for long enough.

[NecronLord]

I think we're talking about the Babylon 5 setting, rather than B5 herself, here.

And a battlestar might hold up against an Omega for a while, but the more advanced ships, like Warlocks and Excaliburs, or Minbari and Narn ships, would likely one-shot Colonial capital ships as far as I can tell.

Warlock main weapons seem to have no trouble punching substantial holes in their targets.

The fighters, on the other hand, BSG might do better with.

[Bilbo]

I think we're talking about the Babylon 5 setting, rather than B5 herself, here.

True, comparing a warship to a space station is not very fair. But, on the other hand, considering what the upgraded Babylon 5 did to a Centauri Primus Battlecruiser a Battlestar may not last long once the big pulse cannon locks on and opens fire.

Also do you place Vipers above Starfuries? You suggest yes, someone else says no, but a Starfury certainly has more advanced weapons and the improved Starfuries with missles certainly outpower gun only Vipers.

[lord Martiya]

I don't know if Vipers are faster than Starfuries, but the Furies are more manovrable by a long shot. And the Vipers would have a second and far worst problem: interceptors. If the Vipers happens to cross the sight of some interceptor battery not dealing with a battlestar's fire, I seriously doubt they'll survive long against guns powerful enough to destroy them and so accurate to destroy missiles and disrupts energy pulses.

[Steel]

I don't know if Vipers are faster than Starfuries, but the Furies are more manovrable by a long shot. And the Vipers would have a second and far worst problem: interceptors. If the Vipers happens to cross the sight of some interceptor battery not dealing with a battlestar's fire, I seriously doubt they'll survive long against guns powerful enough to destroy them and so accurate to destroy missiles and disrupts energy pulses.

I think we need to get some serious quantification going on here, as there are shots where interceptor fire is going as slow as about 50m/s.

The shot I'm thinking of there is an episode where starfuries are attacking B5 and 2 are going for the bridge, one gets taken out by the slowest stream of interceptor fire ever.

Further we've see vipers spin on their end faster than starfuries and perform more agile manoeuvres as well as having longer range within system. Without someone actually bringing some decent numbers on the vipers we cannot say if they are superior based off the fact that starfuries are in their setting meant to be very agile.

[NecronLord]

Also do you place Vipers above Starfuries? You suggest yes, someone else says no, but a Starfury certainly has more advanced weapons and the improved Starfuries with missles certainly outpower gun only Vipers.

While both are essentially equivalent in manouvering (neither has inertial compenastors), and Starfuries have better guns, as far as I know, a fully kitted out battlestar carries a metric crapload of vipers. Earthforce doesn't seem to deploy nearly so many fighters per tonne of carrier. I think the pulse cannons on a fury also have a shorter range, too.

Nials, on the other hand, being gravitic, and carrying half a terawatt (minimum) of firepower that seems to propagate at C, would be lean mean viper-killing machines. I am now happily imagining a fleet of whitestars defending the colonies, and thier fighters tearing large holes in vast raider formations.

[Nephtys]

Also do you place Vipers above Starfuries? You suggest yes, someone else says no, but a Starfury certainly has more advanced weapons and the improved Starfuries with missles certainly outpower gun only Vipers.

While both are essentially equivalent, and Starfuries have better guns, as far as I know, a fully kitted out battlestar carries a metric crapload of vipers. Earthforce doesn't seem to deploy nearly so many fighters per tonne of carrier.

I'm not sure. We haven't seen an actual Carrier in the B5 show, but they exist in the canon-level tabletop game materials apparently, and Earthforce's are pretty heavy (100+ fighter wings). Omegas are line combatants that carry 36 fighters, which isn't quite the same thing.

I forget, how long is Galactica?

[NecronLord]

I think she's about a kilometer long. But you'd be wise to check that. Same general length as an Omega, anyway (recall the 'Battle of the Colony, with an Omega' thread?)

[Alyrium Denryle]

question

Do Vipers fully utilize these things called the laws of physics in flight? IE. do they properly display adherence to Newtonian mechanics? If they do not, then how will they deal with a pilot who can, while evading their fire, turn on his own axis and shoot at them?

[Darth Wong]

I'm not going to make specific technical arguments or get into an argument about which one is more powerful because I don't watch nBSG, so I don't know much about it.

I would, however, like to point out that people keep throwing around subjective comparisons like "A is more powerful than B" on their own, with little or no supporting evidence. Has no one does this kind of work on nBSG? If not, then where are these evaluations coming from?

[Anguirus]

Do Vipers fully utilize these things called the laws of physics in flight? IE. do they properly display adherence to Newtonian mechanics? If they do not, then how will they deal with a pilot who can, while evading their fire, turn on his own axis and shoot at them?

Vipers do that shit all the time in nBSG. Check out 3:20 in the clip below, a Viper flips end-over-end in its own hangar bay to shoot up a Raider. If anything nBSG is better about physics than B5 (they even used relativity as a plot device once).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bk3Pl8cVBW0

As far as nBSG firepower and such is concerned, I haven't done any serious work and won't have time in the near future. Their strategic weapons are nukes that use real-world measurements (I believe that ship-to-ship weapons are in the kiloton range, the Cylons have MIRVs with a dozen-odd warheads each in the 50 megaton range but never are seen to use them on enemy ships. Both tonnage measurements are from the miniseries, city-killers as a distinct MIRV design different from other Cylon nukes comes from The Plan), and their other weapons (Cylon and Colonial) are chemical-propelled explosive missiles and shells, but I'm not sure how to start to quantify those yields (they are explosive so it's not just a function of momentum).

A battlestar can withstand a few kiloton-range nuclear detonations but will sustain damage from them (i.e. burning fuel lines on the verge of igniting the magazines, or FTL knocked out, requiring immediate and heavy damage control efforts). Their defenses consist of very heavy hull plating (patched up after direct nuke hits with a scorch mark while effectively shielding crew from radiation, or withstanding collision with an asteroid-sized enemy base) and anti-missile flak, the latter of which would be great against Starfuries but I doubt so much against targeted beam weapons. Honestly, battlestar durability seems to depend on damage control effectiveness (or, less charitably, the needs of the plot). The Columbia was destroyed by non-nuclear ordnance, albeit a great deal of it...eventually an internal explosion tore the ship apart. The crippled Pegasus was also torn to pieces by an explosion in the engines (well after an earlier incident when it shrugged off three Cylon nukes), and during the Fall of the Colonies docked battlestars were ripped in two and sent pinwheeling into the station by one or more nukes fired by Raiders.

Battlestars have two major offensive systems. Nukes, unstated yield, one of which is considered capable of destroying a Cylon baseship (more fragile than a battlestar) and six of which were considered "enough to devastate a continent." They seem to be considered too easy to intercept to expend in ship-to-ship combat since they have a rather limited number in the show. And then there is the main battery, which fires explosive shells that can cripple a baseship in a volley or two (again, fragile compared to a battlestar but still a kilometer-plus warship), and which is apparently considered suitable for use on an enemy battlestar by Admiral Cain in Pegasus.

That's not counting the fighters of course. When the rebel Cylons allied with the Colonials and started handing out nukes like party favors, Vipers were seen to destroy a large Cylon installation (3-5 km?) with a nuclear strike, and in the series finale the MASSIVE Cylon Colony (hundreds or thousands of km...someone check the Wiki) is knocked out of a stable orbit by one Raptor's arsenal of six or so nukes (this is probably the biggest consistency problem in the series, as I can't begin to reconcile that with the yields normally seen in the series. In this scene the explosions created appear to be many times larger than Babylon 5 itself would be). If the fighters and Raptors aren't armed with strategic weapons, of course, they are stuck with machine guns and guided missiles, basically. In fact, Vipers have been ordered *not* to engage larger ships, as presumably it would be a waste of time and ammo. This indicates that Starfuries have more firepower, since they seem to eat Centauri warships for breakfast. However, I don't see how this gives them an advantage against Vipers in ship-to-ship combat. Viper cannons insta-kill Raiders (they usually leave the new living Raiders more-or-less intact but explode the old crewed Raiders into massive fireballs).

[Sarevok]

nBSG fighter weapons seem to be based around world war 2 aircraft guns. In season 2 episode "The Farm" heavy raider mounted weapons fail to bring down a single centurion despite repeated hits. Both vipers and raiders are way out of their leagues against starfighters sporting directed energy weapons. They dont have enough punch and their armor is non existant to boot. Range is also awful. Even when hitting ground target with no ECM they have to strafe like a biplane with machine guns. High altitude bombing with guided weapons is a concept alien to both cylons and colonials.

In terms of capship design battlestars are not bad. Problem is nukes are silver bullets in nBSGverse. One raptor with a rack of six nuclear missiles could easily bring down any warship cylon or colonial, A 50 kiloton nuke is very likely to knock out any battlestar. 3 similar hits almost left Peagasus dead. Cylon defenses are even weaker since their ships have no armor at all.

In addition battlestar firepower is very limited in range and damage. Its not accurate either since the unguided flak fails to stop raiders from getting close. Battlestars have no beyond visual range missiles of note either. Nukes are also extremely rare. Galactica or Peagasus never fired any and cylons used less than a dozen in the entire series.

So that leaves battlestars as woefully fragile craft with conventional weapons in a setting where warships routinely trade nuclear yield energy weapon fire.

[Anguirus]

High altitude bombing with guided weapons is a concept alien to both cylons and colonials.

Is "orbit" not high-altitude enough for you? Or are you discounting the so-called "Great Toasting of the Colonies"?

Both vipers and raiders are way out of their leagues against starfighters sporting directed energy weapons.

Why is that? Just because a Starfury has heavier weapons doesn't mean they are drastically better at scoring kills. If a Viper gets hit by an autocannon it's almost always out of the fight.

If you presented evidence that a Starfury can withstand direct hits from Vipers and keep fighting, then you'd have a better point. As it is, I think a Starfury has a slight edge in durability (since they can take grazes from energy weapons) and a Viper probably has a slight edge in maneuverability. IMO it's really the heavier weapons on the capital ships that lead to BSG-forces losing out.

[NecronLord]

I'm not sure there's any evidence that starfury cockpits are anything but toughened (Polarised?) glass, and a starfury does have a larger forward cross-section than a vyper, though maybe not a raider. I can't see why anyone'd think they're more durable.

[Samuel]

In terms of capship design battlestars are not bad. Problem is nukes are silver bullets in nBSGverse. One raptor with a rack of six nuclear missiles could easily bring down any warship cylon or colonial, A 50 kiloton nuke is very likely to knock out any battlestar. 3 similar hits almost left Peagasus dead.

And in B5 a nuclear mine took out a Mimbari ship and a man portable nuclear bomb destroyed a massive artifact that was supposed to origionally have been a threat to the Vorlons (The B5 movie Thirdspace).

[Bilbo]

In a list season episode there is a scene where Garibaldi is in a hurry and has to fly a Starfury without a spacesuit. He comments that one wrong move and he was toast. It did not sound like he was all that sure of the strength of the cockpit.

Comparing the two fighters is difficult. A Viper has a smaller cross section but a Starfury will grant better visibility. Standard Starfurys carry pulse cannons while Vipers have gun cannons. Vipers can go into atmosphere, basic Starfuries cannot while the newer models can. The newer models also carry a larger amount of pulse cannons and missiles.

Another problem is we do not see enough of the newer Vipers performance to scale them. Since Vipers will not be vulnerable to hacking there would be no reason to compare the old outdated Viper model.

[NecronLord]

In terms of capship design battlestars are not bad. Problem is nukes are silver bullets in nBSGverse. One raptor with a rack of six nuclear missiles could easily bring down any warship cylon or colonial, A 50 kiloton nuke is very likely to knock out any battlestar. 3 similar hits almost left Peagasus dead.

And in B5 a nuclear mine took out a Mimbari ship and a man portable nuclear bomb destroyed a massive artifact that was supposed to origionally have been a threat to the Vorlons (The B5 movie Thirdspace).

Yes, and those were said to be megatons in both cases. The (generous, mind you) upper limit on what the Black Star took (and survived with damage from the first bomb) is 102 kilotons. Galactica's taken is 25 kilotons, though that assumes that raider nukes actually are 50Kt, of which there's no evidence one way or the other.

And don't bring up internal detonations (the Thirdspace object) again. By that yardstick, a proton torpedo can destroy the Death Star.

[Bilbo]

In terms of capship design battlestars are not bad. Problem is nukes are silver bullets in nBSGverse. One raptor with a rack of six nuclear missiles could easily bring down any warship cylon or colonial, A 50 kiloton nuke is very likely to knock out any battlestar. 3 similar hits almost left Peagasus dead.

And in B5 a nuclear mine took out a Mimbari ship and a man portable nuclear bomb destroyed a massive artifact that was supposed to origionally have been a threat to the Vorlons (The B5 movie Thirdspace).

Minbari hulls are not that strong. The show demonstrated that even old Earthforce Hyperion Cruisers could damage them if they could get a hit. The Minbari depended on their cloaks to make hits difficult. Its hard to gauge what this means on comparison to other ships from other races.

Your second comparison means little considering that the nuke was detonated inside the artifact which was basically a dimensional jumpgate. Considering how explosive regular jumpgates are in B5 this one is probably even worse.

[NecronLord]

In a list season episode there is a scene where Garibaldi is in a hurry and has to fly a Starfury without a spacesuit. He comments that one wrong move and he was toast. It did not sound like he was all that sure of the strength of the cockpit.

Also, he has no ejection system. As I remember B5, the starfury eject was in a suit. In comparison, in The Lost Tales, not only was Sheridan quite happy to fly around in one without a suit in a non-combat situation, he was happy to put the Centauri 'Regent' Prince in one without a suit too.

Comparing the two fighters is difficult. A Viper has a smaller cross section but a Starfury will grant better visibility. Standard Starfurys carry pulse cannons while Vipers have gun cannons. Vipers can go into atmosphere, basic Starfuries cannot while the newer models can. The newer models also carry a larger amount of pulse cannons and missiles.

Another problem is we do not see enough of the newer Vipers performance to scale them. Since Vipers will not be vulnerable to hacking there would be no reason to compare the old outdated Viper model.

In all honesty, there's no reason to believe one fighter can't kill the other, given that while the viper uses reasonably slow bullets, we've not seen much durability from Starfuries. Similarly, a Starfury can blast a similar ship wide open. They are both mentioned pulling high single figure gravities in accelleration, and other details like number of missiles are not known (to me, at least).

It probably comes down to luck and/or pilot skill.


On the other hand, BSG capships can be harmed by double-digit kiloton nukes. According to babtech, an Omega-Class Destroyer's lower limit firepower is 40 TW/sec (9 kt/sec) per beam with a range of seven hundred kilometers or more, and all-round firepower of two beams covering almost all angles. Given that there were serious doubts about Galactica surviving even a single 50Kt nuke (and remember, less than 25 KT would be absorbed by the ship) in the miiniseries, I can't imagine Galactica (and there's no indication tha more modern battlestars are more durable) would endure more than a few seconds in combat against an Omega class.

And of course, cylon basestars seem positively fragile in comparison to their enemies, as shown by numerous scenes in the series.

This may seem to contradict B5 warships being killed by less than hundreds of kilotons, it's worth noting that we rarely see in-universe ships survive more than a few seconds of sustained maltreatment from an Omega's weapons and survive, unless they're First One ships or something similar.

Babtech's analysis of Earth Alliance warships.

[Batman]

As per Severed Dreams at least Starfury eject means jettisoning the entire cockpit so no spacesuit SHOULDN'T matter-IF the thing remains airtight after separation and actually carries life support, which is far from a given.
Besides, regardless of the eject, ANY hit that pokes a hull in the cockpit means that without a spacesuit you die. Plus the spacesuit might function as an anti-g suit so not having one might have not inconciderably restricted Garibaldi's range of available maneuverability (note that this is merely speculation).

On the actual topic, I agree with NecronLord-the fighter vis-a-vis could go either way. If anything I'd give the maneuverability edge to the Vipers and I don't think there's any reliable data available on EITHER ship's firepower.
While we've seen Starfuries CARRY missiles we've to my knowledge never seen them use any in space combat.

Capital ship vs capital ship nBSG loses, HARD. Battlestars are vulnerable to double digit omnidirectional nukes when EarthAlliance (which by no means is at the top of the B5 power totem pole even where the Younger Races are concerned) warships have beam weapons in the KT/sec range and at least OCCASIONALLY use them at triple to quadruple figure km ranges.
nBSG could likely AVOID conflict if they so chose thanks to their instantaneous FTL but if the DO stay to fight, they lose.