"BSG Fleet Composition" Topic

How do you like your fleets in BSG? Just the battlestars, like you see in the TV series? Maybe a large escort or two, like the Berzerk? Or with a proper modern navy style flotilla of picket ships, "goalkeeper" vessels and so on? Why do you prefer your choice? (Because it looks cool/canon is as valid as any other)

I like to eep players on their toes with surprizes. I have enough ships to do all 3 options. Sometimes pure battlestars, sometime with large and small escorts. Keeps the other side from getting complacent.

I also try to change the force composition of the cylons for the same reason. Changing both original and new series, or even a mix.

I like to add more than just battlestars to the human fleet cause it just seems natural. Now the cylons, I use only what was shown on tv. my thinking is they are droids so they have a one track mindset and are not as likely to adapt their ships and stratgy as humans.

I have a "Heavy" fleet and a "Strike" Fleet.

The Heavy fleet has heavy guns and lots of fighters. The Strike Fleet has fast gunstars and light battlestars (With 1 Ventral Flight pod) with a "bumper line" of Destroyers for escort/anti-fighter duties.

To tell you the truth, you never see an actual Colonial fleet in the series(either of 'em!), due to the scenario in the new series, and the time the original was made. The first series was mad in a time when some thought that only Aircraft Carriers would be needed for naval actions, and the new series battles either had all the smaller ships already destroyed, or not present in the first place!(combo of filming constraints/lack of forethought…XP)

"To tell you the truth, you never see an actual Colonial fleet in the series(either of 'em!)"

The OS was pretty clear that the colonial fleet was made up of battlestars. There were only 5 left at the time of the battle of Cimtar. After the battle when Galactica was recovering her ships Col. Tigh asked for a report of surviving craft. He was told that a number of vipers were recovered, but no battlestars survived. There was no mention of any other ships. I don't think the show's designers really thought things out much beyond that.

In fact, the only shows that I can think of that 'show' other types of ships, beyond the one or two major ones, are Star Trek and Babylon 5. Most other sci-fi shows just focus on 1-2 types of ships and that's pretty much it.

I just use battlestars. My picket consists of fighters and Raptors.

In BSG, we see three vessels in any detail: Galactica is an old carrier, Pegasus is a modern one. Fundamentally the same role. The Valkyrie appears to be a smaller design, perhaps for scouting and intelligence work (which is what it was used for in the episode where it appears).

If I were building a Colonial fleet from scratch, I'd build the fleet from mostly Mercury Class Battlestars like Pegasus. Then I'd supplement them with a couple Valkyries for tactical flexibility. I do see a need for a "scoutstar" to fill the destroyer role: a small general ship that does long-range scouting, survey work, securing trade routes and just generally showing the flag on far-flung outposts, etc. You could use such as ship as an escort carrier. I can even see the point of having an "assaultstar" that loads up on Marines and Raptors (or other assault boats) for planetary invasions.

I haven't seen any evidence in the show for "gunstars" or other naval analogues. Whatever the physics in play in the BSG world, direct-fire gunnery doesn't appear effective except as a last-ditch suicide move compared to fighter and missile swarms. Probably, in the few cases where gunnery would work, the disadvantaged ship would just use FTL to blink out anyway. Gamers seem to want the same WWII analogues they see in Star Wars. I don't see a reason for that.

So what happens to the other members of the carrier task force? Or the WWII mixed fleet? Well, those extra support ships are all there to defend the group from a particular threat. There are no subs in BSG. Defense against fighters and missiles is mostly handled by fighters and the battlestar's own point defense, probably because an attacker could always find a clear angle of approach (having 3 dimensions rather than 2 to play with), get there using FTL, and hit before the screening ship could move to intercept. An FTL-capable missile cruiser is possible, but why not use a swarm of Raptors? In fact, Raptors in just this configuration appear in the series. Strategic speed (using FTL) appears to be identical among capital ships, so why not use valkyries as your cruisers? Or even missle-armed Raptors again? Finally, there's supply ships… or are there? BSG explicitly states that the ships can go years between resupply runs. Sure a tanker or supply ship would be appropriate to include anyway, but not more than one or two such ships per fleet, and probably relatively well equipped so they can fit in with the fleet (it might even be a secondary mission of your light battlestars or scoutstars, which probably still have plenty of capacity). A merchantman that is that vulnerable or limits the fleet's mobility that much wouldn't be worth bringing along.

I don't buy fighters in hard sci fi settings, but if you grant that they exist and work the way they are seen to do in BSG, then it's hard to believe that fleets wouldn't turn out like power-gamed fleets in Full Thrust.

You'll have to wait for the new Battlestar: Chrome and Steel for a look at Colonial Fleet composition during the first war.

Oh, so I almost forgot:

My goal fleet is 3 Mercury (Pegasus-type) BattleStars, including the flagship. An older, smaller design of BattleStar (for variety-- a fleet will have several generations co-existing). Two light BattleStars. Three ScoutStars (perhaps Fleet Action Chronos frigates?). One "assaultstar" to carry the equivalent of an MEU. And enough fighters and raptors to make Drew rich, or dead of white metal poisoning, or both.

Such a fleet could handle nearly any mission handed to it. Add a rag-tag fleet (or another assaultstar loaded with colonists and equipment), and you'd be able to run for years and restart the human species elsewhere.

"I haven't seen any evidence in the show for "gunstars" or other naval analogues. Whatever the physics in play in the BSG world, direct-fire gunnery doesn't appear effective except as a last-ditch suicide move compared to fighter and missile swarms."

That's an interesting statement. I haven't seen every episode of BSG but I have seen several episodes that have naval combat and I'm kind of scratching my head when I try to sort out what I see with this statement.

In the battle for the resurrection ship the BSGs Pegasus and Galactica went toe-to-toe with two baseships and toasted them pretty handily with gun fire. In fact, the Pegasus seems to have a killer main battery that seem purpose built to rip open Cylon baseships.

The series seems to draw an interesting balance- Cylon fleets seem to stand off at long range and use swarms of raiders and missiles to chew up their targets however they seem to have "glass" jaws. On the other hand, the battlestars seem to be armored from head to toe and covered with guns: big guns to smash baseships and small guns to rip up formations of missiles and raiders. Vipers almost seem to be after thoughs: just another, mobile, point defense system to pick off missiles and raiders. We've seen them used offensively, but not on the scale of the raiders.

I "think" the battlestars have missiles, but I don't recall seeing them used. But main batteries? You bet! The Colonial Fleet has that in spades. However 'gunstars' seem a stretch. Maybe… but why have them when you can have a Mercury class battlestar that is covered with guns AND has swarms of vipers to provide support?

There were only a couple battles where a battlestar engaged at point-blank range. In the battle of new caprica, Pegasus was sacrificed using point-blank gunnery. And the battle you mention to destroy the resurrection ship.

In both cases, and going off the in-show graphics, it seemed to be firing the same gunnery that it used against raiders, point defense weapons, rather than bringing online any specifically anti-ship weapons. There was no mention of specific anti-ship weapons. Of course, the weight of fire from your whole ship is enormous, especially when it's ignoring incoming fire.

Both battles were cases of desperation, where fighters were in short supply. At New Caprica, the colonials were heavily outnumbered and the pegasus attack was explicitly a suicidal desperation maneuver. At the resurrection ship, both cylon and colonial fighters were out of the picture due to a colonial diversion and the resurrection ship's FTL drive was disabled by stealth so the basestars were pinned down trying to ablatively buy time either for the Resurrection Ship's FTL to come back online or for the raiders to return and realize they'd been lured into a diversion. The BattleStars using guns were a surprise move. That actually supports the idea that gunnery engagements were extremely rare.

Under normal conditions, BattleStars do have missiles. Galactica has nuclear missiles aboard, but it only had five, due to it being about to be decommissioned. This was stated explicitly (the battlestar wiki goes into detail about this, and there was an episode where a nuclear missile Adama had threatened to launch was a plot point). But their main defense and armament is their Viper complement.

BaseStars have no direct-fire weapons, just missiles, raiders and heavy raiders. In the normal course of events, a BaseStar could just jump out on FTL. In fact, since Raiders all have FTL, it begs the question of why BaseStars ever show up at all when they could deploy raiders and have them do the jumping. But that's never answered (plot hole). BSG is weird in that we never actually see a full-up fleet engagement; every battle in the series is with one or two of the last ships in the colonial fleet and has to be fought accordingly. So we have to infer what a full colonial fleet must look like and how it fights.

My feeling is that in the normal course of affairs, vipers and missile-armed Raptors have the anti-ship duty. At least, when they can catch a basestar and it doesn't FTL out. It's only when they're critically outnumbered and desperately trying to screen humanity's last two ships that they understandably focus on defense.

Two open questions: Why do colonial carriers have big engines and batteries when the base stars don't? Why don't Vipers have FTL?

I think the answers to these two questions are related. Raiders have FTL and Viper's don't for tech reasons. Vipers also seem better in a dogfight, possibly because they skip the heavy and expensive FTL. But an advantage of having fighters with FTL is that BaseStars can launch their raiders and run from a fight (even in defensive situations!). BattleStars can't, because the Vipers don't have FTL and so the BattleStar has to stick around and survive until the vipers are recovered.

I do agree with one point in there, which is that it makes sense for a carrier to have guns and fighters. Fighters are kept in the flight pods. They don't use a lot of the ship's surface area, just the volume. Guns are all surface features. So the two can both share a ship. However, for the reasons above (including evidence from the show itself and the logic of the FTL drive) I think even those guns are all point defenses with at best a secondary anti-ship capability.

However 'gunstars' seem a stretch. Maybe… but why have them when you can have a Mercury class battlestar that is covered with guns AND has swarms of vipers to provide support?

Escorts *are* a part of the NuBSG fleets, as confirmed by the writers themselves. Saul Tigh served on the Brenik, which had a complement of less than 100. Interestingly, the Valkyrie was also envisioned as a cruiser class.

picture

The only escort properly seen is the Berzerk*:

picture

*Not actually called that, it's based on a fan design and misspelled at that. I also just noticed that it also has a single underslung flightpod…

Why have escorts? The same reason there are Vipers. Defence in depth and battlespace mobility. Columbia got destroyed because her defences failed (virus?) and there were no escorts to intercept Cylon missile fire. Battlestars are pretty valuable, and you can't use them for relatively minor tasks like guarding fleets, patrolling and simply being a missile sponge. Having an escort to thin the hordes of raiders means you save valuable Vipers and pilots too.

There may be another (non-wet-navy-analogue) reason for escorts: FTL drive spin-up time. Perhaps escorts can micro-jump during the battle.

Personally, I would prefer a ratio of 1 or 2 battlestars and perhaps 2 escorts each at most. I'd like players to really hurt when their toy spaceships go pop. Also, with so many squadrons on the board it gets difficult keeping track of things

Cylons… dunno. Just lots of basestars? Not having smaller "vulnerable" ships makes it difficult to get small victories, recreating the sort of desperation in both series.

BSG is weird in that we never actually see a full-up fleet engagement; every battle in the series is with one or two of the last ships in the colonial fleet and has to be fought accordingly. So we have to infer what a full colonial fleet must look like and how it fights.

Unhelpfully, the BSG: Razor flashback to the first war has 3 Battlestars versus 2 or 3 basestars. Escorts may have been destroyed or out of frame. Similarly, 3 Valkyries seem to have formed a battlegroup but again escorts may have been out of frame. Escorts *do* exist, we just don't see them. The Valkyrie class may just be an escort, the BSG cruiser equivalent – it's the most numerous.

But an advantage of having fighters with FTL is that BaseStars can launch their raiders and run from a fight (even in defensive situations!).

You could explain that by having Basestars take longer to spool up FTL than raiders. Whatever is being spun in the FTL drive has volume, and probably has a number of dependencies on surface area: tension, rate of cooling/heating, rate of spinup/spindown etc.

Help, I feel geeked out. Where's my lightsabre and tricorder.

Yeah I didn't mention the flashback to Adama's last battle in the first war because it was so brief and unhelpful.

BTW, and the series never answers this one either, but why not simply launch your raiders and have them all jump in, and leave your BaseStar out of combat altogether? We know the raiders can make multiple jumps on short notice and at longer range. Answer: the series runners never answer this one. I don't think they thought it through.

Two things weigh against using the Brenik incident to support an escorts theory: first, the ship is never identified as an escort; it's just a small ship with an ammunition magazine, and therefore potentially an armed merchant or scout carrier. Second, the ship was from early in the FIRST war; the original battlestars were from the end of the war and appear to have marked a major change in tactics. So whatever the Brenik was, it doesn't tell us anything about how the fleets work now.

I haven't read interviews with the series runners, so you have me there.

Why have escorts? The same reason there are Vipers. Defence in depth and battlespace mobility. Columbia got destroyed because her defences failed (virus?) and there were no escorts to intercept Cylon missile fire. Battlestars are pretty valuable, and you can't use them for relatively minor tasks like guarding fleets, patrolling and simply being a missile sponge. Having an escort to thin the hordes of raiders means you save valuable Vipers and pilots too.

That's actually my point! Blocking threats in two dimensions is challenging but doable. Defending in three dimensions is hard because FTL lets you pop in anywhere you want, instantly, and there's too much space to defend. Vipers provide all the advantage of escorts, and they're mobile enough that they can race to engage a threat. Unless escorts move like fighters (no evidence to suggest they do) then why have escorts at all?

Put another way: if escorts are super-mobile, can thin the ranks of raiders, and are more survivable and cost-effective than vipers, why have vipers? Answer: we never see these super-escorts, but we see plenty of vipers, being sent on exactly the kinds of missions we'd imagine for escorts.

The "Berserk" (with its flight pod) seems more like a CVL along the lines of the Valkyrie. "Cruiser" means many things in many contexts, often just relative tonnage, but the one time we saw it, the Valkyrie seems to have been used in a CVL rather than an escort role. And from the episode it seemed to rely on its fighter wing rather than guns for its punch just like the BattleStars.

As I said earlier, I can envision a small "scoutstar" role that carries mostly raptors and a couple vipers for long-range scouting. It's non-canon but doesn't change the picture greatly. I just don't see any point at all in adding gunships to the setting.

Of course, there's the elephant in the room: this is all nonsense anyway. The real question is: what makes for a fun game?

1) What nonsense do we invent to make tabletop encounters more like the ones we see on the TV show?

2) What makes for a tactically interesting game?

3) What PSB do we attach to let us suspend our disbelief?

Now you'd think that the second point argues for inventing escorts: more ships on the table, more roles, etc. But I say the opposite. Look at Tuffleyverse fleets, B5 fleets, Battlefleet: Gothic fleets, and Star Wars fleets.

The most common fleet has a nice mix of types, with lots of small escorts, several cruisers, and one big ship. A nice pyramid. And fighters! Lots of fighters. Noticing a certain deadly sameness to it all?

So why make lots of assumptions of dubious canonicity, all so we can field fleets in BSG that behave much like the fleets in lots of other settings?!

Even games based on those other settings, rule-makers are constantly trying to keep players from bringing an optimum fleet of a few large carriers loaded with fighters and point defense. They do this (understandably) to keep the games behaving like the background material.

In BattleStar Galactica, we don't have that problem! In most rule sets, as near as we can tell, the optimum fleet IS the canon fleet. So why wrestle with interpolations and inventions to create a fleet that plays just like Babylon 5 when you can just let BSG be BSG and have a different tactical model altogether.

Interesting discussion guys. I'm watching with interest as I'm sorely tempted to get into some BSG gaming using Colonial Battlefleet and MvM but have been puzzled myself over the different ship classes and the reasoning behind them.

Well, as an example, here's my fleet:

1x Ribbed BSG
1x Armoured BSG (for variety)
1x Berserk
1x Fox Class light battlestar
2x Loki Cruiser

Basically all of them are battlestars but with varying amounts of armour and firepower. There are a *few* escorts but these are either dedicated escort battlestars or half-size gunstars. All have enough armour and guns to hold off raiders on their own. All of the ships also look good and have character: losing a ship should be painful, just like tallying up the Vipers lost in a battle. As you say, the series and movies should be the inspiration: even losing an escort, the player should be thinking "Oh gods! Columbia's gone!" and hear the haunting screams of her doomed crew. If they're a fanboy/girl that is.

Escorts probably all have docking bays to pick up stray fighters if their parent ship has jumped or been destroyed. Imagine what would happen if a battlestar is destroyed and its Vipers are still milling about in space whilst the escorts (sans bays) jump out.

Micro-jumping might be constrained by the fact that jumps "beyond the red line" are unpredictable and dangerous, ie jumps need careful calculation and foreknowledge of the arrival conditions. This also explains why the fleet always jumps together but nobody knows where the heck they are.

I like the idea of different sized vessels, since no one can afford to purchase just the larger ones.

You'll be needing smaller, more expendable vessels for some missions, in order to have at least some presence in various star systems. Without them, you cede it to the enemy.

There's an interesting chat about this here: link

It looks at what is seen onscreen at the Scorpion Fleet Shipyards and extrapolates from there. Short version = the Colonial Fleet is composed of Battlestar Groups (BSGs). Each group consists of one heavy battlestar like the Mercury class, 2 newer but smaller (more economical?) battlestars such as the Valkyrie class, and 2-3 Berzerk class escorts. 5-6 ships total per group. If we take what Adama and Thrace said in the first episode and assume ~120 total ships makes up the entire fleet, that'll call for 20-24 BSGs. With Twelve Colonies that's be roughly 2 BSGs per colony, not that they're necessarily apportioned that way…

I always assumed I'd be doing simple Battlestar fleets for Full Thrust as all I could find were the badly cast resins that seemed to come from China.

Alas, I've been visiting RavenStar and NovaStar (wait, brothers-in-arms merchants?) entirely too much lately.

While TGA is correct, any particular battle is unlikely to have representation from all parts of the fleet. That said, you also tend to bring whats available, not necessarily what's optimal.

Lots of 'little brothers' tend to die uneconomically, but there are some dances you just can't decline.

Doug

Interesting discussion on the forum Daniel links to, though I didn't see any mention of the number or composition of battlestar groups (except from one person basically speculating much as we are here).

Most importantly from this discussion's point of view, is escorts and their roles. Lampyridae makes an interesting observation: that the "Berzerk" class has an underslung flight pod, making it a small carrier. The valkyrie of course has two, and the battlestars all seem to also have flight decks.

Which again leaves us without any examples of major combat ships that aren't some kind of carrier. Primary weapon: vipers and nukes. Primary defenses: viper screen, then point defense, then armor. The best canon candidate for a gunstar turns out to also be a light carrier.

I've never claimed that the colonials don't use smaller ships (in fact, I've outlined such classes and their potential missions), but at this point it appears that all the warships are carriers of one kind or another.

Btw: responding to this:

As you say, the series and movies should be the inspiration: even losing an escort, the player should be thinking "Oh gods! Columbia's gone!" and hear the haunting screams of her doomed crew. If they're a fanboy/girl that is.

Best line so far in a great thread.

Yes, Battlestars are by definition "Carriers", so always have them.

Gunstars are similar to battleships, and don't. Escort Stars are like cruisers, etc.

Haven't checked the links above, but there was some discussion about this on the Star Ranger message boards, at:

star-ranger.com

Wellspring,

I wonder if in a situation as you describe

Primary weapon: vipers and nukes. Primary defenses: viper screen, then point defense, then armor.

that a bloody big gun would actually be quite a tactical advantage. PD and fighter screens are not going to be very effective defence against a gun whereas they seem rather adept at intercepting missiles?

While there doesn't seem any canonical evidence for such a beast, a ship carrying large guns would have to be really big to still house the vipers and PD so might well offset the mass difference of the flight pods and whatnot into the other weaponry.

It could be that the design evolution has gone full circle, battlestars were developed because gun armed vessels were falling prey to the cylons missiles and so they matched their opponents tactics, but now they're on a similar/even footing an alternative is developed to gain the upper hand going back to guns?

Something that has been overlooked is that in the new series, we're led to believe that there were numerous armed clashes between colonies themselves.

Therefore, gun to gun combat could have been a regular occurrence in the 40 years or so since the Cylon war. Thus a major component of battlestar design evolution would have been influced by the need to combat other battlestars.

It was also clear in the show that the big guns had two fire modes. An armor-piercing kinetic kill round for destroying enemy starships and a flak mode. These were supplemented by dozens or hundreds of point defense/flak cannons along the length of the flight pods or hull.

Also, as we saw in the show, as it turned out battlestars were in gun range of basestars quite often.

For whatever reason, it was necessary for the cylons to appear relatively close to the targets to deploy fighters and apparently it was felt that the missile fire the capital ships could contribute was worth absorbing the kinetic hits from the battlestars.

Tactical micro-jumps didn't seem to be an option at the starship level as it never happened in the show. Or maybe spool-up was too long? We don't really have enough technical information to know why they employed the tactics they did. . . but the fact is they did.

I think I covered earlier in the thread the cases where direct ship-to-ship gunnery was employed and why those cases aren't typical.

One particular point stuck out: yes it IS possible that had the second Cylon war not hit that the pendulum would have swung back to gunnery. But weighing against that is the FTL drive. It appears that except under special circumstances (such as the two battles in the series), a cylon would simply jump away rather than face direct gunnery. Much like a soap-bubble carrier in Full Thrust if it had a "buh-bye" button that it could push at will.

We know that the colonials need precise calculations and ramp-up to use their FTL. That's probably why they have guns. The cylons are known to have superior FTL (that's a plot point) and don't appear to need to spool up their drives. Which is probably why they don't have direct-fire capability.

So that explains the anti-ship munions aboard a colonial ship, especially since they're fired from the point defense arrays the ships already have. Definitely doesn't give a rationale for gunstars unless you add a LOT of new material.

(the "Berzerk" class has an underslung flight pod)

they gotta get supplies and crew aboard some how. Doesn't mean it has vipers assigned.

( had two fire modes. An armor-piercing kinetic kill round for destroying enemy starships and a flak mode)

From the tv series and this above makes it pretty clear the battlestars out gunned the cylons and tried to use this advantage. Its also very obvious from the series the cylons always tried to overwhelm the B/S with raiders, missiles and boarding actions. So I see the humans using escort ships to provide flak cover so the B/S can try to close and use their guns to take out the cylons capital ships. I always figured the cylon capital ships had to stay near the raiders to provide command n control. After all they are robots and are purposely limited in not being able to learn beyond a certain point.

I assumed the Cylon missile ranges were somewhat limited, which was why their Basestars chose to close on the Battlestars.

They wanted a knock-out punch to wipe out humanity, so weren't overly concerned with their own losses in the short run.

From the movie, it appears the Battlestars have really heavy, forward firing batteries, helping to clear their paths of anything that gets in their way during an attack pass, or a hyper-space jump run.

It appears that except under special circumstances (such as the two battles in the series), a cylon would simply jump away rather than face direct gunnery. Much like a soap-bubble carrier in Full Thrust if it had a "buh-bye" button that it could push at will.

--------------------------------------------

Except that there were lots of battles in the series. Never once did the Cylons drop fighters and jump away. For instance in the pilot, the battle at Ragnar anchorage would have been a perfect opportunity to do that, and they chose not to. Never once in the whole series.

So clearly there is some technological or doctrinal reason they do not do it. (The real reason being the writers wanted cool space battles). But there is a reason.

So, the series as shown actually supports the use of guns as a regular feature of engagement. Which in turn makes pure-battleships a logical evolution in ship design.

Now whether or not what we know about their technology aligns with the tactics they are using is another question entirely. But if you're basing your information purely on the show, gunships should logically exist.

The very first episode tells us exactly how long it takes Basestars to spool up FTL – 33 minutes. A lot of human ships can manage better. Remember, the Cylons had much further ranged FTL capability, but this probably came at a cost in some design factor. Since they were planning on crippling first strikes and didn't mind much about losing basestars, a slow spool-up seems much more in order. Add to that a limited area in which to mount the diameter of FTL drive probably leads to other design changes too.

It seems quite clear that the FTL drives use some kind of point-to-point transfer, probably by manipulating strings. These strings could be connected to others, but proper data for the volume of space is required to know which strings to select. It's possible to select any string at random and jump down it. Moving at different speeds probably also screws things up – moving at different mass-energies compared to the target means you might pop out in a different place.

This is probably why jumps always appear to take place at low orbital velocities and they can't make out-of-plane attacks. Also the worry about appearing in the middle of star – the relative mass-energy (including gravitational and gravitomagnetic params) in the middle of a star might also correspond with the departure point's mass energy.

Assuming spoolup was the issue and not transmission lag as one of the humanform cyborgs reported the fleets new location.

That would assume a constant distant over which jumps are plotted. After having jumped 200-odd times I'm sure a transmission lag would have been noticed. I'm sure the Colonials would have picked that up.

I think the implication anyway is that the Cylons take the same amount of time to plot and execute a jump.

Lampyridae, that's your interpretation of the jump rules for cylons. The authors of that episode actually stated that they didn't have a clear in-world explanation for the time interval.

Also, in "Guess What's Coming Home for Dinner", the hybrid jumps the basestar moments after it is connected-- no delay at all. So long spin-up times (a problem for colonials) is apparently not an issue for Cylons.

Actually my personal bet was always that the cylons picked a set time just to mess with the colonials heads, remember they still turned up 33 minutes after the captured transport loaded with nukes jumped in late. They could have been sooner since they knew were to send the transport.

Oh and I blame this thread for distracting me from my plans to make some basestars to build some colonials instead.

Robert

The Cylons showing up 33 minutes after the arrival of the Olympic Carrier is a rather dead giveaway that something is up with that ship.

Spooling up really isn't the issue – the Pegasus jumped away within minutes of a Cylon attack, while still in spacedock, presumably with reactors and everything dialled back. Plotting the jump is. Presumably jumps in unknown space take longer to plot as well. So jumps to and from known space take a shorter amount of time. Jumps further out require more navigational input.

That's how I see the show anyway. It's not like it has to make sense, the rules you choose just have to work for the game – and you can mix and match Nu and TOS all you want. I like mixing the more optimistic "space Egyptian" feel with the hard tech of Nu BSG, leaving out the soap and self-flagellatory condemnations of mankind that plague all "good SF."