nBSG Colonies get Invaded

[Corvus 501]

AU: A somewhat different version of the 12 Colonies gets invaded by an alien species roughly equivalent to BattleTech's Star Leage. Both sides use Tylium for power generation, and have somewhat low powered inertial dampeners, though the Colonial model is optimized for low mass, high acceleration spaceships (fighters) while the invaders can safely accelerate extremly large warships, at the expense of using much bulkier dampeners.

Like in BattleTech, the aliens have long range, slow charging and high mass FTL drives, which take a good 12 hours to charge for a standard 10 light year jump, and exponentially longer to charge up to the maximum 50 light year jump. Like in BattleTech, they tend to use JumpShip equivalents to transport lighter ships, while their capitol ships can jump themselves. Unlike in BattleTech, they don't make use of aerospace fighters, instead relying on gunboats for similar duties, out of both cultural bias and technological leanings.

On the Colonial side, they use Tylium powered plasma drives for propulsion, while their dampeners can deal with about 4 gravities of acceleration on a Battlestar, and up to 10 gravities for a Viper MK IV. Weapons wise, the Colonials focus on a mix of dorsal railguns and fixed, forward facing coil guns for their main weapons, with missiles for a long range option.

The aliens are invading for general conquest and resource exploitation, and different factions are attacking both the Colonials and the Cylons.

[Corvus 501]

Backstory: Every faction (including Earth) gained advanced space flight technology from Kobalian ruins or wrecked starships. The Colonials directly inherited theirs, Earth discovered a wrecked ship somewhere in the outer Solar System, and the (currently unnamed) alien species found a enough wrecked ships to make a knockoff of the Kobalian FTL drive. The Colonials and the aliens use jumpdrives, but Earth developed a warp drive after learning to manipulate spacetime by studying Kobalian inertial dampeners and gravity generators.
It allows for (practical) long range travel, though it is comparatively slow, making up for low speed with range. Similarly, the lack of compleat Kobalian space flight technology, and little to no access to Tylium led to earth developing alternative power generation technology, namely metallic hydrogen fusion. The reason that fusion reactors can power warp drives is because the drive itself pulls its power from subspace, but activation takes huge amounts of power, and the power budget to keep it active isn't low either.

However, Earth (and her colonies) only come into play if their is either a Rag-Tag Fleet, or aggressive post war exploration.

[Corvus 501]

Each faction has there own set of advantages, here's the biggest ones:
Aliens: Armor. It's high level BattleTech standard, ablative, energy resistance and extremely strong.
Cylons: Communication. They can respond to strikes before they properly get under way.
Colonials: Defensibility . They're not on the end of a long slow (and hard to hit) supply line, and they live in a few densely populated systems that are resource rich and heavily industrialized.
Earth (not that they are likely to be involved) : Stragatic depth: They live in a widely spaced area ideally suited to long haul ships, and make use of system defense forces can stop everything short of a full scale invasion.

[Eternal_Freedom]

What size fleets are the Aliens attackign with? How many Basestars do the Cylons have? Is this just-before-Cylon-holocaust Colonies, or First Cylon War era?

If it's just before the miniseries, and assuming no computer virus silliness, then the Colonies have ~120 Battlestars, comprised of Mercury and Valkyrie class ships, with one, maybe more Galactica-type floating around. That's a good sized fleet of capital ships by BattleTech standards (as best I can recall), especially for only twelve worlds.

If Battlestars can pull a sustained 4g acceleration, then they are comparable with most BattleTech capships IIRC, if not faster than the majority.

You missed out an important Cylon advantage, that the Colonies also share to a degree: their FTL drive is much better at tactical uses than the Aliens one. For instance, we've seen Cylon raiders and basestars jump in and open fire at short notice, right next to the Fleet, whereas the BattleTech drive requires hours to charge and can only be used at Lagrange points.

[Corvus 501]

The alien's capitol ships have higher sublight acceleration than the Colonial or Cylon equivalents. They can also build bigger ships than the other two involved factions can build while keeping a reasonable ability to accelerate. Furthermore, the aliens FTL drive is not limited like BattleTech ones, they just take a whole lot more time to charge up than their counterpart jumpdrives, preventing any more than two jumps in a row. (Capacitors hold twice the charge needed to jump a ship, both to give a reserve, and to allow an emergency jump)

[Corvus 501]

As to the first part of your post, the invasion fleets are roughly equivalent to the Colonials and the Cylons' current strength, as the scouts miscalculated, believing that fleet numbers where far lower than they actually where. The Cylons (at least some of them) where responsible for that, altereing computer records and sensor readings of the scout ships before ditching thear networks right before the left to report back home, resulting in the soon to be invaders sending an undersized fleet designed more for anti guerrilla warfare than major fleet engagements.
As a result, the first wave got annihilated, and the Colonials and Cylons now have access to much of the aliens technology. However, the second wave is inbound, which are appropriately sized conquest fleets. The other two involved factions, on the other hand, now have energy weapons. Adama's got a laser, Adama's got a laser, oh gods, Adama's got lasers.

[Esquire]

The alien invaders are smashed in a series of counterattacks as the Colonials use their superior FTL capabilities to ambush divided alien fleet elements with overwhelming force. STL speed is strategically irrelevant since all combat will take place around Colonial worlds, in range of any surface or orbital defenses emplaced and supported by land-based fighter squadrons. Battletech WarShips can be dispatched fairly easily by nuclear weapons, I think, where Galactica takes several (tylium-boosted, whatever that means) nuke hits over the course of the series without undue damage.

[Starglider]

This scenario is hoplessly underspecified with a vauge enemy defined only by 'worse FTL drives' and 'longer supply lines'.

As a result, the first wave got annihilated, and the Colonials and Cylons now have access to much of the aliens technology.

Back in 2004, this board was infested with Trekkies claiming that 'if the Empire invaded the Federation, the Federation would reverse engineer and copy the Empire's technology within months'. I suggest you go back and read some of those old threads to learn how idiotic this proposal is, assuming the interval between the attacks is less than 'many decades'.

[Corvus 501]

The Colonials and Cylons got lasers. Nothing else. Lasers are probably the simplest directed energy weapon thear is, and is something that they probably already have, even if it isn't a threat to ships yet. They now have insights into other alien technology, and might develop other useful bits of technology later, but for now they just have another weapon and a better idea of what they're facing.

[Lord Revan]

even the simplest of techs have several steps you need to make before you get the actual tech itself.

like development of manufacting methods for the components, development of material for the components and the development of the actual components themselves. That's just the parts for the device and it's assuming you know how it works in the first Place.

even several decades can be highly optimistic when it comes to reverse engineering, it's one of those things that takes alot of time when if you have a defector assisting you.

[Corvus 501]

even the simplest of techs have several steps you need to make before you get the actual tech itself.

like development of manufacting methods for the components, development of material for the components and the development of the actual components themselves. That's just the parts for the device and it's assuming you know how it works in the first Place.

even several decades can be highly optimistic when it comes to reverse engineering, it's one of those things that takes alot of time when if you have a defector assisting you.

You are acting like they are developing lasers from scratch, not adapting existing areas of industry. Synthetic diamonds, over powered LEDs, and advanced coolants would already be around, and as much as the 12 Colonies dumped a lot of their technology after the First Cylon War, I suspect that they would keep their advanced materials production capabilities.

[Lord Revan]

even the simplest of techs have several steps you need to make before you get the actual tech itself.

like development of manufacting methods for the components, development of material for the components and the development of the actual components themselves. That's just the parts for the device and it's assuming you know how it works in the first Place.

even several decades can be highly optimistic when it comes to reverse engineering, it's one of those things that takes alot of time when if you have a defector assisting you.

You are acting like they are developing lasers from scratch, not adapting existing areas of industry. Synthetic diamonds, over powered LEDs, and advanced coolants would already be around, and as much as the 12 Colonies dumped a lot of their technology after the First Cylon War, I suspect that they would keep their advanced materials production capabilities.

you still don't get it.

being able to make a laser doesn't mean you can make a laser weapon anytime soon. So the colonials know the first 20 steps out of 100 there's still the remaining 80 to deal with (yes I made up the numbers but they're irrelevant anyway and are there only to demonstrate a point), just because colonials have the materials to make lasers (hell we can make those today) doesn't mean they can turn that into a viable weapon anytime soon.

after all the pre-existing industries need to know what they're adapting into. I'll admit I've not seen all of the nBSG material but I can't remember any laser weapons what so ever.

It could be that they don't have the materials or technology to build laser weapons or power sources compact enough to power such weapons and those have be invented first.

[Borgholio]

even the simplest of techs have several steps you need to make before you get the actual tech itself.

like development of manufacting methods for the components, development of material for the components and the development of the actual components themselves. That's just the parts for the device and it's assuming you know how it works in the first Place.

even several decades can be highly optimistic when it comes to reverse engineering, it's one of those things that takes alot of time when if you have a defector assisting you.

You are acting like they are developing lasers from scratch, not adapting existing areas of industry. Synthetic diamonds, over powered LEDs, and advanced coolants would already be around, and as much as the 12 Colonies dumped a lot of their technology after the First Cylon War, I suspect that they would keep their advanced materials production capabilities.

We on present-day Earth have had lasers for the last 60 years and we only got around to developing a combat laser "small enough" to fit in a jumbo jet 10 years ago and we only managed to get one to fit on a warship last year. So turning the known concept of a laser into a practical weapon can still take a very long time.

Now, the Colonials have overall more advanced tech than we do. You'd THINK they know about lasers. But we don't see any evidence of that in the show. I don't even think they had laser sights on weapons (it's been awhile so please correct me if I'm wrong). So that leads to two possibilities. First, they determined that lasers were pointless / impractical as weapons and abandoned that line of research. This could have been due to heat dissipation, materials limits, power generation...any number of things. Simply knowing these aliens can do it doesn't suddenly mean they can do it as well without going back to the drawing board. The second possibility is that they simply may never have created that technology. I mean just because they have FTL drives and advanced AI doesn't mean they developed lasers or even thought about some kind of directed energy weapon. We have had a century of Sci-Fi to look at for inspiration, but the Colonials may not have had that. It may be completely foreign to them.

[Esquire]

Why are lasers better than existing Colonial weapons?

[Borgholio]

Why are lasers better than existing Colonial weapons?

They might not be, in fact. Colonial armor is very heat-resistant. They can absorb several nuke hits, so even a powerful laser might not do much more than scorch the paint.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Aside from the difficulties in reverse-engineering enemy tech (and you'd think their engines would be higher priority, since the aliens can apparently build something larger than a Battlestar and yet push it faster than a Battlestar can), lasers probably aren't the "easiest" directed-energy weapon, since I think that Casaba Howitzer thing technically counts. It's a one-shot nuclear powered plasma cannon after all.

[Lord Revan]

the main problem here is that Corvus is seriously under estimating the the complexity it takes to build something like laser weapon.

lets take the Messerschmit Me 262 "Schwalbe" and the Lockheed Martin F-22 "Raptor" both are jet powered fighter aircraft, yet if you gave germany (or the UK who were planning jet planes as well but didn't get them in service in time) an F-22 in pristine condition with manuals intact and onboard and with a defector assisting them, it's doutful that the germans could reproduce a single F-22 before the allies over ran them (or that UK would be able to reproduce one before the war was over).

And I hope I don't to remind that finding an item in pristine condition with manuals and someone to assist you is the "best case" scenario and in most cases you got at best an item that's damaged and possibly unuseble, at worst you got a pile of parts that used to be the item.

[Corvus 501]

Aside from the difficulties in reverse-engineering enemy tech (and you'd think their engines would be higher priority, since the aliens can apparently build something larger than a Battlestar and yet push it faster than a Battlestar can), lasers probably aren't the "easiest" directed-energy weapon, since I think that Casaba Howitzer thing technically counts. It's a one-shot nuclear powered plasma cannon after all.

Engines are not the problem, inertial dampeners are. The aliens' dampeners work best with large scale power sources, like battleship reactors, and are designed to work over large areas. Colonial and Cylon dampeners work best over small areas, and are rather power efficient. The whole issue with acceleration differences stems from the way that the different species built them. Colonials and Cylons build "core" based dampeners, while the aliens build "network" dampeners, which allows a larger volume to be affected at the expense of power consumption. The actual engines are roughly as advanced, but they are designed differently, in reflection of how their inertial dampeners best work.

As to the energy weapon question, lasers are the easiest to strap on to a battlestar's hull, which can give you both offensive cannon, and point defenses guns that never run out of ammunition. (Though you still need to watch the heat buildup, even if you cycle the heat into the water tanks)

[Corvus 501]

the main problem here is that Corvus is seriously under estimating the the complexity it takes to build something like laser weapon.

lets take the Messerschmit Me 262 "Schwalbe" and the Lockheed Martin F-22 "Raptor" both are jet powered fighter aircraft, yet if you gave germany (or the UK who were planning jet planes as well but didn't get them in service in time) an F-22 in pristine condition with manuals intact and onboard and with a defector assisting them, it's doutful that the germans could reproduce a single F-22 before the allies over ran them (or that UK would be able to reproduce one before the war was over).

And I hope I don't to remind that finding an item in pristine condition with manuals and someone to assist you is the "best case" scenario and in most cases you got at best an item that's damaged and possibly unuseble, at worst you got a pile of parts that used to be the item.

Let's put it this way. Laser weapons are a project that both defending factions have been long working on. By the time the invasion rolls along, there are a few years away from being able to build small scale laser weapons, but not much priority was given to the project, compared to the railgun, coilgun or missile projects. Post invasion, on the other hand, laser weapons are one of the few small scale, large impact projects that would be both useful and make for good propaganda. Basically, laser weapons are one of the definite advantages that the aliens have that also looks good.

[Lord Revan]

now first off I'd love to see your evidence that the Colonies have done any research into laser weapons what so ever.

Second even if the colonies have done research into laser weapons how do we know there were anywhere close to developing a viable weapon when this invasion happens

Third that Me 262/F-22 example went right over your head didn't it? the reason Nazi Germany would be able to reproduce an F-22 even under optimal condition is that bulk of the materials needed had not been invented/discorved yet.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Um, no, laser weapons aren't the easiest to "slap on" to a Battlestars hull. Actually, any energy weapon would require a shipyard and major work to add, because you either a) add a complete new mount, which means cutting a hole in the (rather substantial) armour and building the mount, or b) replacing an existing PD mount with laser weapons, which still requires running a lot more power cables than a gatling gun would need.

Plus, there is also the unadressed point that nBSG hull armour is very heat resistant (nuke hits, Galactica's little free-fall stunt over New Caprica), so lasers, which work primarily by heating the target, would be ineffective.

If the Colonies were going to be working on any DEW, I would expect them to use something like a charged particle beam or something that disrupts electronics, since they are, y'know, fighting robots mostly.

[Elheru Aran]

Corvus, if you want to write a fic, do so. If you want to have a Battletech versus nBSG scenario played out, then define it that way. Vaguely trying to mix up the situation with specious 'aliens that are just like Battletech but not' and 'the colonies are using the alien technology that they have figured out in just a few years' factors isn't going to be productive.

[Esquire]

Let's cut to the chase.

Corvus: Why would the Colonials want lasers in the first place? Why do you think they're better than existing kinetic weapons?

[Corvus 501]

Lasers are sci fi weapons. They are being invaded by aliens. No matter how ineffective they are, having laser cannon LOOKS good. As to lasers being non cannon compliant, first, thear's the black projects that every government has, and second, I gave everyone inertial dampeners and Tylium powered plasma or fusion drives. THIS IS (as I said in the OP) AN AU. Laser weapons seem to be a likely weapon project, about as likely as an inertial dampener baised on Colonial gravity plates, or a plasma drive as opposed to what seems to be a solid state fission rocket.
I'll admit that charged particle weapons would be an excellent anti robot weapon, but just looking at current science indicates that lasers are simpler weapons to build. In other words, an excellent starter weapon in the field of beam weapons.

[Corvus 501]

Let's cut to the chase.

Corvus: Why would the Colonials want lasers in the first place? Why do you think they're better than existing kinetic weapons?

They migh not be, but they make excellent supplementary weapons, and are something to show off to the public.