nBSG Force Sub: Final Battle

[NecronLord]

Would Angurius care to provide evidence that the Colony has FTL? Base-stars are the biggest things we've seen that can jump, along with battlestars. The colony dwarfs both.

[Bounty]

Would Angurius care to provide evidence that the Colony has FTL? Base-stars are the biggest things we've seen that can jump, along with battlestars. The colony dwarfs both.

Cavil states he moved the Colony to its current position shortly before the start of the Cylon civil war. That gave it about half a year to travel from near the Twelve Colonies to the singularity near Earth where it was parked in Daybreak. Hence, FTL.

[Ghost Rider]

Someone at least provided B5 power...so again I ask.

Is any motherfucker going to demonstrate Galactica? Or does this go the way of all fucking fanwank?

[StarshipTitanic]

Would Angurius care to provide evidence that the Colony has FTL? Base-stars are the biggest things we've seen that can jump, along with battlestars. The colony dwarfs both.

Cavil states he moved the Colony to its current position shortly before the start of the Cylon civil war. That gave it about half a year to travel from near the Twelve Colonies to the singularity near Earth where it was parked in Daybreak. Hence, FTL.

What Bounty said, plus we've seen the large Resurrection Hub in "The Hub" which also has FTL. Incidentally, I might be able to provide a rough size for the Colony with the evidence I've been gathering in my efforts to scale Galactica. I should have something on Friday or Saturday.

Someone at least provided B5 power...so again I ask.

Is any motherfucker going to demonstrate Galactica? Or does this go the way of all fucking fanwank?

Why don't you address someone specific who made arguments about Galactica's firepower instead of dropping these shrill two-liners and expecting everyone to care? You've certainly contributed the least to this discussion. Try to be like NecronLord and ask coherent questions with relevance to the scenario.

[Balrog]

Bah, I come back and look what you've done to the place...

Anyways, a few clarifications since the OP was a little bit vague (sorry). The Agamemnon does not have to ram the Colony, as she also has the boarding pods and assault boats seen in "Severed Dreams" to deliver Gropos. Also, an Omega does have missile launchers - as others have noted, they are modeled on the ships as the red tubes, and IIRC B5Wars (which is canon) does state that they have missile launchers - from which to fire its nuclear warheads. Oh, and no Anders. This is just pure EA going out to save a little girl for PR purposes

As far as firepower, the Cylons do pack nuclear warheads ranging from 50 kilotons (for their fighters) to 50 megatons (presumably their basestars), both from the miniseries, but their regular weapons are last I recall sub-kiloton.

[NecronLord]

What Bounty said, plus we've seen the large Resurrection Hub in "The Hub" which also has FTL.

I considered that, but it's almost certainly smaller than a base star.

I understand this to be the res-hub's explosion. You can see from the shadows (and debris passing in front of it) that it is closer to the camera than the base-star, and yet the hub is not much larger than the base-star. I will see about acquiring the battle in full and producing screenshots.

Of course, this is irrelevant, because evidence for the Colony's mobility has been provided and I stand corrected.

Why don't you address someone specific who made arguments about Galactica's firepower instead of dropping these shrill two-liners and expecting everyone to care? You've certainly contributed the least to this discussion. Try to be like NecronLord and ask coherent questions with relevance to the scenario.

GR's moderating policy is to shut down any thread without numbers or evidence. I don't think this qualifies - on the B5 side at any rate, of course, we've got them pre-packaged on Babtech, which is helpful - for that treatment though.

[Ghost Rider]

Someone at least provided B5 power...so again I ask.

Is any motherfucker going to demonstrate Galactica? Or does this go the way of all fucking fanwank?

Why don't you address someone specific who made arguments about Galactica's firepower instead of dropping these shrill two-liners and expecting everyone to care? You've certainly contributed the least to this discussion. Try to be like NecronLord and ask coherent questions with relevance to the scenario.

I'm sorry dumbfuck, I am not debating...I am demanding you follow the fucking rules of the forum, shithead. A few have requested this to stay open because they have more, but so far you are puttering around anything objective.

Put up or shut up.

[Anguirus]

The Agamemnon does not have to ram the Colony, as she also has the boarding pods and assault boats seen in "Severed Dreams" to deliver Gropos.

Getting them back out may be a problem. Raiders promptly picked off the parked Raptors in Daybreak. However, they will be able to land a very significant force...just without all the friendly Centurions to help.

Oh, and no Anders. This is just pure EA going out to save a little girl for PR purposes

In that case, all of the following is relevant:

-How did the EA find the Colony?
-Does Cavil know about the EA? Does he know that they know of the Colony's location?
-Does the EA have a schematic of the Colony? How much do they know about the Cylons and their capabilities?

Without Anders, I'm not sure how Sheridan can pull this off unless he is able to conduct a great deal of pre-battle intelligence or he stops caring about saving Hera. If he jumps in really close (presuming he is able to) then he can launch Starfuries and breaching pods, but the Colony can blast him to pieces...his heavy weapons might kill Hera if he uses them, and his interceptor turrets are vulnerable to the heavy artillery being sent his way. If he stays farther out in the system, his support ships can't fly through the debris field to reach the Colony in a timely fashion, and in fact probably won't be able to at all. Meanwhile, the Colony can launch its Raiders and jump them into Sheridan's immediate vicinity.

Let me get this straight, you dont think an Omega class destroyer; with numerous nuclear weapon yield energy weapons, is a threat to a basestar.

Which several are destroyed by galactica and pegasus throughout the series with decidedly non nuclear weaponry. Your logic here is odd

Yours is nonexistent. Let's look at the post that you replied to of mine, which you actually quoted.

he's not going to be afraid of Sheridan's one capital ship unless it whips several basestars without a problem, which I'm not sure it can do.

Now, what is the difference between "I'm not sure it can whip several basestars without a problem" and "It's not a threat to a basestar"?

Anyway, I'm sure Omega would promptly destroy a Cylon baseship if it was facing it and at a decently long range. However, it would be risky for it to engage two or more that were not parked right next to each other. Omega Destroyers are not very maneuverable and assuming they are not many times more durable than the Black Star, they are vulnerable to Cylon nuclear weapons. They also have to deal with a very large number of Raiders, and we know that EA interceptors, while highly effective, quickly start to overheat if they are heavily taxed.

These are the factors I was taking into account when I described myself as "unsure" how well the destroyer could deal with a basestar attack. If you are more confident, by all means tell me why, but try to do so in a manner that shows me that you read and comprehend the posts of mine that you quote.

[Balrog]

Sorry for the wait.

-How did the EA find the Colony?
-Does Cavil know about the EA? Does he know that they know of the Colony's location?
-Does the EA have a schematic of the Colony? How much do they know about the Cylons and their capabilities?

For the sake of this scenario, assume the Colonials/Rebel Cylons stumbled upon the EA, told them the whole deal, and asked them to help them out in exchange for some tech swap or whatever. Hence they've given them all that they know about the colony. Cavil doesn't know they're coming anymore than he knew Galactica was coming.

[Connor MacLeod]

Okay. I got around to doing the scalings after I did some consultation with Brian Young, who is as knowledable about these things as I am and has been following nBSG. He also provided me with some useful battle clips to help judge things as well as the Nova ramming stuff, so this is all thanks to him.

For the Galactica:

1440x325x170 (350 widest point, 720 meters long, 290 m thinnest point, 720 m long)

654x105x70 (two of them)

1-2 km in 10 sec (acceleration) Works out to an average velocity of 100-200 m/s give or take.

Depending on your dimensions, teh Galactica comes out to a volume of some 9e7 m^3 roughly, assuming the Zoic data is in fact accurate. Yes yes, I know they did the CGI, but that's no guarantee that things fuck up actually IN the series. Its happened with enough CGI-oriented sci fi (Star Wars and Babylon 5 I have firsthand knowledge with such fuckups. b5 is notorious for CGI errors in that manner.) In "Daybreak part 2" the ship is far closer than a few kilometers (it looks to be no more than a few hundred meters in some shots) and that definitely impacts the calcs (both in terms of scaling, because the galactica will be smaller). And if the dimensions are even a bit smaller the volume (and hencec mass) will go down.

Also, the velocity figure above is generally off the idea that they were roughly a ship length away AND that the Zoic figures are accurate. If the distance is less the velocity is going to be less.

For B5:

Omega: 1300-1500 m long, 200-250 meter most sections (including hammerhead) hammerhead 230-270 m tall, 230 m wide. 250 m long.

Rotatin gsection 300-350 m long, ,300-350 m tall, 200-250 m wide. Engine section 300-350 m long, 250-300 m wide/tall.

Volum eof an Omega is a bit more variable since the dimensions are variable, but between 8e7 and 1e8 m^3, depending on the exact combination of figures used.

Nova rams .6-.8 sec to cover 150-160m. ~1 second to ram through War Cruiser completely (300-400 m approx distance) velocity is going to be at least 150-200 m/s, possibly as high as 300 m/s or so if I wanted to be less conservative.

A Nova is not an Omega, and lacks the rotating section, ,so it actaully has less mass (about 1/3 to half less due to the absence of the rotating section) but a Nova is an OLDER EA warship. Omegas are newer, bigger, and more powerful. They should be at least as durable as the Nova.

You'll note I go with volume and not mass, because I'm going by the sci fi analysis standby and assuming iron construction for both. Lacking any definite proof (and wanting to be conservative, at least for the B5 side) of exceptional material strength or mass or whatever, I'm going with Iron because its a good all-around material to work with (at least I can recall Mike saying that, and many calcs I've seen go with iron for construction material.) Its also highly unlikely that the materials of the vehicles are going to be excecptionalyl denser, tougher, or beyond iron by more than a few times unless they have some exotic materials science technology (EG SW neutronium), and again we have no evidence for that, so its a perfectly reasonable assumption under SoD to make.

And the basic conclusion is... at most, we're talking comparable performance for both, given roughly equal mass/volumes and roughly equal velocities. This is actually more than a bit generous to the Galactica side, since I didn't bother to do in-show scaling and I'm merely assuming the Zoic stuff is consistent (not my responsibility to prove, its the Galactica's side to do that.) and as I outlined above, there's a good possibility the ship is smaller, so the figures (mass and velocity) could be lower by an unknown degree.

In terms of "force", the Nova takes about a second to plow through the Minbari War Cruiser in ItB while it takes at least several seconds for the Galactica to actually breach the Colony, so the comparable force is going to be not better than B5 - less if anything. The same logic about materials above applies, and the thickness isn't going to be an issue - the War Cruiser is hundreds of meters across, and even assuming that 95% of that length is empty space is going to be many meters (or tens of meters) of thickness to punch through - and the Omega does so without substantial loss of velocity.

So there, I met that burden of proof. Which is far more than the NBSG (or Titanic) has done. Indeed, ,Tittanic has done little more than engage in evasion and hand-waving and just outright dishonestY (this could involve shifting the burden of proof, since he technically represents the galactica side and has utterly failed to bring any tangible numbers to that side of the debate desspite demands.) I hadn't even pressed my own prior demands for proof even though he decided to abuse my goodwill. I made TWO precise demands, one WAS directly related at him:

Fine, its not against a planet. I stand corrected. But if we're goign to be pedantic, has anyone actually DONE any scaling to determine the actual distance? Or are we supposed to guessf rom pretty pictures. I operate on numerical estimates when I can, not vague guesses, and if this whole "precision" thing is a big deal, I want to know for certain how fucking precise Galactica was, and how the hell this was determined.

But since you think ramming is such a big issue, why don't you provide evidence to back up your claim? checking the Wiki shows that Galactica rammed the thing, so I want to know WHY it would be different for an Omega. You've done calculations, I presume?

He makes a specific claim about "collision physics being different" even though he hasn't evidently crunched the numbers (he pretty much ignored that) and I dont see how you can claim that without actually doing an analysis. Or supporting the "moon sized" space station (but the whole scaling things I've asked about has been ignored, too.)

And this was after he's been demanding proof of other people (he did it of NL, in addition to me). In fact, the ONLY evidence he could be bothered to provide was to say "go look up the episode and watch it yourself" - he coudln't be bothered to link to it, to give a more precise idea of where it was in the ep (it wasn't where he said either.. it was a good ten minutes off)

So basically we're left with alot of posturing and evasion because the BSG side (or Titanic specifically take oyur pick) can't be bothered to follow board policy, hence GR calling him on it.

I basically started this discussion assuming that other participants, b ased on their comments would have at least some knowledge of B5. Hell, as it turns out, getting information isn't that bloody hard. Anyone could have done what I did beforehand since the information is already at hand (Galactica's stuff is on the wiki, assuming it IS accurate, and as NL pointed out Babtech already has its info on hand.) so there's no reason *I* had to do both sides, except someone decided to be a dick about it and keep dodging around the issue. But now, since I've basically met all the burden of proof I need to (and then some; I'm not going to put any more effort into something that the other side hasn't even made ANY effort on - if anyone has problems with it we can take it up with the mods/Admins), so I'm going to start demanding equivalent proof be met, and I'll leave it up to GR to deal about it, since he's more than aware of the issu.

[Connor MacLeod]

For the sake of this scenario, assume the Colonials/Rebel Cylons stumbled upon the EA, told them the whole deal, and asked them to help them out in exchange for some tech swap or whatever. Hence they've given them all that they know about the colony. Cavil doesn't know they're coming anymore than he knew Galactica was coming.

But do they know of EA in general? Or a broadly general idea of ship capabilities? If they don't then there are good odds they kill themselves if they manage to blow up the Omega.

[Anguirus]

^ Why is that? I'm not aware of Omegas making a super-boom when they go. In fact, in Severed Dreams one is destroyed and doesn't explode at all.

[Connor MacLeod]

^ Why is that?

An Omega needs to output megatons of enerrgy into its reactors at a bare minimum to be able to move even if we assumed the thing massed as much as an aircraft carrier and that it had less than a single gee of acceeleration. The weapons arrays are kiloton arrays at minimum. Both are volatile. Where do you think that energy is going to go, especially in close proximity to the Colony? Is there somehow evidence that it can withstand huge amounts of energy?

Nevermind the possibility of exploded debris flying out in random directions and impacting. (Which HAS happened in B5. It happened in the B5 Ep And Now For a Word I linked to.)

Hell, based on the ACTA novel jump engines are rather volatile and can completely obliterate a ship.

I'm not aware of Omegas making a super-boom when they go. In fact, in Severed Dreams one is destroyed and doesn't explode at all.

You do recall tha tthe Hyperion blew up after the Alexander hit it, ,right? And I believe there's the Pollux (the one hit by the White Star in seson 4 "No surrender, No Retreat"). And ther ewas an Omega destroyed by a DRakh cruiser in Crusade (War Zone, ,its reactor went up.)

[Anguirus]

An Omega needs to output megatons of enerrgy into its reactors at a bare minimum to be able to move even if we assumed the thing massed as much as an aircraft carrier and that it had less than a single gee of acceeleration.

Equally true of a battlestar, and yet they pounded it with all the artillery they could muster. Might be stupid, considering that Raptor nukes knocked it out of position, but there you go.

You do recall tha tthe Hyperion blew up after the Alexander hit it, ,right? And I believe there's the Pollux (the one hit by the White Star in seson 4 "No surrender, No Retreat"). And ther ewas an Omega destroyed by a DRakh cruiser in Crusade (War Zone, ,its reactor went up.)

Fair enough, but we still have an example of an Omega being hit by ship-killing firepower that didn't explode. They have about the same track record as battlestars, actually. In the Miniseries a battlestar is gutted but doesn't explode. In Razor the Columbia explodes, and in Exodus the Pegasus explodes.

[Connor MacLeod]

Equally true of a battlestar, and yet they pounded it with all the artillery they could muster. Might be stupid, considering that Raptor nukes knocked it out of position, but there you go.

..

Fair enough, but we still have an example of an Omega being hit by ship-killing firepower that didn't explode. They have about the same track record as battlestars, actually. In the Miniseries a battlestar is gutted but doesn't explode. In Razor the Columbia explodes, and in Exodus the Pegasus explodes.

Yes, but a reactor is pretty deep inside the ship and you need to badly damage it to really do anything. Same with the jump engine. Weapons arrays.. not so much. They're a tricky thing, and they'd be much more easily destroyed. And given the energy outputs of B5 energy weapons even on a conservative level, they're going to be considerable. And even if not, they further add to the risk of "blowing the ship up" since as noted in LOTR, destroying them can contribute d irectly to the destructio nof the ship. (Which is presumably what we sw in In the Beginning with the Black STar, and why Sheridan delayed until just before the ship was going to fire.)

Can the Galactica (or any other ship) boast the same?

[Vympel]

Helo's gun throughout S1 was able to put pretty good-sized holes in Centurions. Then they retconned that for Season 2 so they could have the survival of the ship hinge on their limited supply of explosive rounds.

No, they changed the gun from Season 1 to Season 2 completely, for other reasons - the one used in the Miniseries and Season 1 was too hard for the armorer's to work with. It was a finnicky custom job (a homage to the Blade Runner pistol). So they just added an explosive-round launcher to an FN FiveSeveN pistol and that became the new standard armament. However, the Miniseries/ Season 1 pistol did make a comeback as Adama's weapon in the Razor flashbacks.

[Uraniun235]

Yeah, but they didn't have to nerf it down to a single-round explosive. There was still a conscious decision made to make the Centurions even deadlier.

[Bilbo]

Yeah, but they didn't have to nerf it down to a single-round explosive. There was still a conscious decision made to make the Centurions even deadlier.

Possible in universe explanation.

Helo being a member of the military initially had his sidearm loaded with standard toaster killer rounds. This allowed him to kill toasters on Caprica with very little effort. It would make sense that the standard round loaded by military personel is a toaster killer round. On the other hand police and military police in the colonies would be better off using a round like the ones we use today in our police forces, not armor piercing.

Later on the Galactica is boarded by Centurions. By this point the sidearms and rifles of most on the Galatica are not loading toaster killers but instead they are using soft-core human killing rounds. The Galactica has had civilian problems, etc and using rounds designed to penetrate toasters against soft humans is not very efficient. When the Centurions board there is a mad scramble to get to the armory and load up on heavier penetrating rounds.

[Batman]

That would mean all they'd have to do to make their forces a hell of a lot more efficient in fighting toasters (and they KNEW they'd probably at some point be fighting toasters) would've been issuing a few magazines of FMJ along with the standard crowd-control JHP. Sorry. If a dinky sidearm can kill Centurions a dinky sidearm can kill Centurions. If that pistol can do it, a rifle can do it a lot better.

[Bilbo]

That would mean all they'd have to do to make their forces a hell of a lot more efficient in fighting toasters (and they KNEW they'd probably at some point be fighting toasters) would've been issuing a few magazines of FMJ along with the standard crowd-control JHP. Sorry. If a dinky sidearm can kill Centurions a dinky sidearm can kill Centurions. If that pistol can do it, a rifle can do it a lot better.

Unless they had a lot less of the toasterkiller rounds which would have only come from the Galactica, than the human rounds, which could possibly be scavanged from supplies from all the civilian ships.

Sure the Galactica loaded with as much ammo as possible in the opening movie from the supply depot but one would expect that they would focus on ammo for the ships as opposed to grabbing extra sidearm ammo.

[Agent Fisher]

Of course, the boarding party could have just been heavily uparmored. The Cylons probably figured that they couldn't override the computer systems to make their movements through the ship easier and decided to send bulletheads with extra armor on so they could get through. Cause later, in the final battle, everybody's guns work. Pistols, rifles, carbines, machine guns, they're all bringing toasters down.

[Connor MacLeod]

Pump enough bullets into the target, even non-explosive ones, and you'll probably disable the thing. Didn't they make alot of use of SMGs or PDW type weapons rather than full-size battle rifle/assault rifles usually? Hell, the rounds might even be designed to tumble or fragment even after impact or something more exotic.

[Uraniun235]

Well, yeah, we can cock up whatever kind of flimsy after-the-fact in-universe explanation, but anyone who seriously thinks there wasn't a retcon made in order to make the boarding action and the Kobol ground fights easier to produce deadlier for Our Heroes must be insane.

[Vympel]

Everyone's guns work in more than just the Battle of the Colony - they work on New Caprica (against the Centurion firing squad), at least. I think there're just different types of Centurions with different levels of protection.