Colonies of Kobol vs UNSC 2492

[Honorius]

Scenario:

40 years after the Cylons signed the Cimtar Accords and the Articles of Colonization to become the 14th Tribe of Man with Styx as their Homeworld in the Cyrannus System, a long-range Colonial Expedition stumbles across the UNSC Colony of Far Isle just in time to see the UNSC start razing the planet. Intervening in time to prevent more deaths, the Colonials are now at war with the 13th Tribe which hasn't spent nearly 2,000 years fighting an on-off war between relatively close colonies that limited outward expansion from the Cyrannus Cluster in addition to Colonies having relatively higher living standards and a relatively more barren patch of the Galaxy they settled.

Covenant don't exist. Final Five is heresy and those speaking it will be shot by the Departmento Commissariat. Cylons are fully integrated into Colonial Civil and Military Society and are equals.

Both the UNSC and the Colonies are in this fight to the end, as the UNSC believes the Colonies of Kobol belong under Earth rule, FTL drives restricted, and the Cylons dismantled. The Colonies of Kobol think Earth has crossed a line by nuking the people of Far Isle who were legitimately asking to manage their own affairs without oppressive rule by distant leaders, and the Cylons amongst them having fought long and hard for their freedom and recognition as Human, refuse to surrender those rights.

How goes this scenario?

[Eternal_Freedom]

Well you've basically changed the premise of BSG entirely. The Colonials won't have their big fleet of ~120 Battlestars because those were built to fight the Cylons, who are now peaceful members of the Colonies. So we have literally no idea what sort of strength the Colonies have.

Or even what their ships would be like, since presumably with no Cylon threat the limits on networked systems and AI won't be in place, so yeah, I've no clue what Pegasus might look like in this setting.

But honestly...the UNSC probably has a larger fleet, willingness to bombard planets with nukes, individually more powerful ships/longer-ranged ships (MAC rounds are supposedly 600 tonne slugs fired at 0.04c, I can't see Battlestars tanking many hits) and more experience using shipboard AIs to optimise performance.

FTL drives may give the Colonials an advantage, but given that they don't even know where Earth and other major UNSC bases are, that doesn't help much.

[Elheru Aran]

Which BSG, even? Old BSG? New BSG?

[Eternal_Freedom]

Given the references to 40 years after the war, FTL drives and the Final Five, I'm assuming new BSG. Old BSG might be considerably worse for the UNSC, but oBSG Cylons were a separate race, not human-created rebels.

[Elheru Aran]

OK... I'm not that familiar with the BSG mythos, just wanted to be clear on what was going on there.

[Honorius]

Well you've basically changed the premise of BSG entirely. The Colonials won't have their big fleet of ~120 Battlestars because those were built to fight the Cylons, who are now peaceful members of the Colonies. So we have literally no idea what sort of strength the Colonies have.

Or even what their ships would be like, since presumably with no Cylon threat the limits on networked systems and AI won't be in place, so yeah, I've no clue what Pegasus might look like in this setting.

But honestly...the UNSC probably has a larger fleet, willingness to bombard planets with nukes, individually more powerful ships/longer-ranged ships (MAC rounds are supposedly 600 tonne slugs fired at 0.04c, I can't see Battlestars tanking many hits) and more experience using shipboard AIs to optimise performance.

FTL drives may give the Colonials an advantage, but given that they don't even know where Earth and other major UNSC bases are, that doesn't help much.

The 120 Battlestars were a peacetime fleet. The Mercuries probably exist as seen in the show and fight alongside Basestars.

At this time, the UNSC doesn't have artificial gravity, AIs are in their infancy while the Colonials massively outclass the UNSC in AI technology to the point they became a sentient and sapient race that has their own civilization. Battlestars and Vipers have vastly greater acceleration from the miniseries alone where Colonial One and Galactica's Viper Squadron were hitting 9% the speed of light in speed. Then there was the battle of the resurrection ship where we see Pegasus and Galactica circle strafe a duo of Basestars and the battle of New Caprica where Pegasus went flat out to break the encirclement of Galactica. Finally we see Galactica's performance in the battle of The Colony.

So it will take a good size UNSC Fleet and the right circumstances for the UNSC to take down a Battlestar, in addition their Archers are basically out of the fight due to the Colonials Flak and ECM capabilities and the Colonials aren't going to sit still for a MAC round as they aren't protecting a civilian fleet like in the show. This is before we get down to Colonial FTL advantages.

Ground wise, the Cylons alone heavily tilt the balance in the Colonials' favor and the Spartans don't exist yet.

Finally the UNSC's control of the Outer Colonies is also coming apart due to its corrupt rule so the Colonials can pick up plenty of allies in the Outer Colonies while the UNSC retrenches itself in the Inner Colonies where their rule is more established.

[Eternal_Freedom]

120 was a peacetime fleet...kept around in case the Cylons come back, and since it was only an Armistice not an actual peace treaty, you can argue that they're still at war (a la North/South Korea). Why would they have a strong fleet of capital ships meant for slugging matches against other capital ships when they don't have any non-domestic enemies to fight?

AS for your numbers on acceleration...can you elaborate on those? I don't think I've seen any mention of Colonial One or Vipers hitting relativistic speeds. As for Battlestar performance, the Colony battle doesn't show much: she jumps in, crashes into the Colony and then sits they getting fired at. The others may be better examples.

As for UNSC ships, hmm, honestly not sure about the artificial gravity bit. If you go by the books, sure, AG systems didn't come along until 2552 from Covenant tech, and the Pillar of Autumn had a rotating section...but this is clearly not shown by the games at all. I would have to grab my copy of Fall of Reach to see what it said about AIs, but I'm pretty damn sure they weren't "in their infancy" in 2492. Consider, when Halsey goes to see John-117 as a kid, she and Keyes ride in a small diplomatic shuttle, which has an onboard AI, and that was 2517.

A quick search of the Wiki reveals, ah yes "The first generation "Smart" A.I.s were developed by humanity in the mid-21st century." as per "Contact Harvest," page 30.

What you've basically done is completely change both universes, give them motivations which don't mesh with what we see in either show/series, and ask for a punch up.