BSG vs nBSG

[wautd]

And I mean the original BSG. While I know nBSG still had "absolete" vipers and battlestars (they were old but did pretty damn fine), how do their respective technologies compare? (weapons, FTL,...) Didn't the original BSG have pewpew lasers, which would certainly have an edge in space compared to the slugtrowers that nBSG is stuck with.

[Batman]

There's lasers, and there's glowy energy weapon thingies called lasers. If memory serves, oBSG Viper 'laser torpedoes' (I think that was what they called them) weren't all that particularly speedy, and their (or their users') accuracy wasn't all that hot either. Both make a Raider go kablooey, that's about all you can tell.
As for FTL, I very much suspect oBSG's FTL (and a lot of other aspects of it) was so ill-defined that a fruitful comparison is the next best thing to impossible.

[Srelex]

Didn't the energy blobs fired in oBSG magically dissipate after fifty meters or so?

[Batman]

I think Viper guns had a range a bit better than that but they did the ever popular flak burst thingy at the end of their run if memory serves.

[Marcus Aurelius]

Yea they fired to a point then blew up.

Of course real-life anti-aircraft shells do that, too, although there would not be much use of doing it in space. Yes, even small (20-40 mm) ones that do not have adjustable time fuses but rely on impact fuse. The design is to stop AA gun shells from falling down intact and killing friendlies or civilians on the ground.

An example:



Note that the tracers burn out first and some time after that you can see the explosions.

[Stark]

Good to see nobody has a monopoly on useless military trivia around here. :v

Aside from their fuel blowing up planets, are there any scalable events in oBSG?

[Marcus Aurelius]

Good to see nobody has a monopoly on useless military trivia around here. :v

Just like nobody has a monopoly of being a... well, you know what I mean

Aside from their fuel blowing up planets, are there any scalable events in oBSG

Aside from the centurions being bulletproof I can't think of any.

[Darksider]

bulletproof against old-west style revolvers. And those bullets still left a dent. Nothing like the higher-end nBSG Cylons that required explosive ammo to kill.

[Marcus Aurelius]

bulletproof against old-west style revolvers. And those bullets still left a dent. Nothing like the higher-end nBSG Cylons that required explosive ammo to kill.

Well, as a general rule explosive bullets penetrate less than proper AP or even normal ball/FMJ... Of course with advanced enough materials tech that could change. But I agree; being bullet proof to Wild West style revolvers is no great feat. Even Ned Kelly's gang managed that to a degree in the 1870s with no special materials.

@DXIII: funny. How about oBSG vs. a Star Destroyer then

[Marcus Aurelius]

@DXIII: funny. How about oBSG vs. a Star Destroyer then

Hey, at least the Star Destroyer is finally picking on someone its own size!

I'd expect that if the events were present in the show that we'd normally scale (like asteroid destruction), they'd come out really close. The creators of sci-fi don't say "well our ship does NNN joules which would do this in situation X". They just say "this would look cool and we can animate it in our budget/with the tech of the day".

You get no argument from me. I have always thought that maintaining the visuals as the ultimate source of in-universe information is almost a purely arbitrary decision. One reason for that is that we also hear sounds which we should not hear. There are strenuous ways to rationalize that, but they do not make much sense to me in the final analysis.

I understand that holding the visuals supreme makes it possible to do the kind of calculations that the versus debating is largely based on. In my mind those calculations themselves are the interesting part, not the actual versus debate, so I don't complain about people using them. I couldn't care much less if SW, ST or SG-1 has more powerful pew pew guns compared to each other. Nevertheless the trend you pointed out is pretty clear. It's just like in the 1980's racing games your racing car would explode if it hit something. Anyone remember the original Pole Position arcade game? It would hardly be an acceptable damage model today or even back in the 1990s...

[Eternal_Freedom]

Old Galactica versus a ISd would be interesting. Then again, even if firepower and scale are comparable (both ships heavy weapons seem to be GT range, so presumably lighter weapons would be similar range) the ISD has shields and Galactica doesn't

However, in one of Mike's pages on the main site, he shows an example of a ST vs oBSg debate, where he finds (or reproduces, not sure which) evidence for, ahem, "superconducting hull armour" on the battlestars.

Also, I can't be certain but I think Galactica might have an edge in maneuvreability. This is counteracted by the fact that Galactica's heavy weapons are bow-mounted fixed heavy lasers (unless we use Pegasus and her missile launchers, but that hits PD fire problems) so manuevering cancels out

Galactica can apparently reach lightspeed in normal space, which is cool, and would make for a useful getaway tool if they fighting in a gravity well

[Eternal_Freedom]

Did you miss the phrases I used to show ambiguity?

"Galactica can apparently reach lightspeed" = "Apparently"
"even if firepower and scale are comparable" = "if"
"presumably lighter weapons would be similar" = "presumably"

I know there isn't enough information to compare, so I'm going with the generalisations made

Oh, and on the "lightspeed" bit, when she is moving at lightspeed, we see the stars moving in the same was as we do for normal motion, just faster. So I think they were being literal for that one

[inviz345]

Obsg armor, shield, TURBO-LASER CANNONS / TURRET WEAPONS and LASER CANNONS. Nbsg wont even get a shot in.

[Asdeed]

Fuck the technology, oBSG Colonial Warriors flew into battle wearing suede jackets and open faced helmets, they had balls of fuckin steel!

[Eternal_Freedom]

I'll second that

[Themightytom]

Fuck the technology, oBSG Colonial Warriors flew into battle wearing suede jackets and open faced helmets, they had balls of fuckin steel!

They were wearing spacesuits underneath and the helmets were forcefields

Wasn't there an episode where they were scouting a solar system in like fifteen minutes? Like
Apollo: Hmmm this planet is a gas giant, no good!
Starbuck: "Yeah mines an iceball no luck here."
Apollo: "Its ok, I just came across a castle planet"

or something

if galactica could get up to lightspeed I guess I don't understand why none of them could make it back to...
over to... because at that speed its like around the corner..

the colonies before the Cylons finished crushing them. they had fighters pew pewing the cities, for whatever reason which would have taken forever if they had a decent number of cities.

Maybe it was a really small solar system. I'll look for the episode tonight I think it was on netflix.