As others have said, the military aspects need tightening up. Much of the show is governed by the rule of cool, rather than real world logic, which I understand because it is an entertainment show, but if you like a little reality to creep in to your shows, there are 'niggles'.
Space fighters and their pilots are great TV but iffy in terms of actual capability/utility (I can’t find it at present, but there was some years ago a very good summary of physics/power ratios etc that almost proves fighters wouldn’t be practical or even possible); I think the original book of the OTL series said that Galactica was almost as fast as her fighters. If you must have fighters, at least give them some punch like a few missiles, not what looked like 30mm cannons.
No escorts or lighter scouting vessels seem to exist. What proctected the battlestars or civilian ships in an emergency?
Marines should probably have better all environment suits/armour.
Cylon basestars seem weak, taking only a few hits to destroy compared to a battlestar.
The handful of fighters left aboard Galactica seem to be hard to kill, as numbers never seem to drop significantly and they are always kept in service. I realise the ship is huge (launch tubes alone are supposedly 170ft long) but to keep operating without any outside support (a base or even a fleet support ship/tender) is stretching things.
Even at near light speed, distances are so vast that battles would be a lot of time watching screens to see what had happened minutes or hours before (lag from light reaching sensors means what you see on screen is what has happened, not what is happening) then trying to react to it, something a few recent novel series such as The Lost Fleet get right. Accurate but poor TV viewing.
Mines, probably in reality stealthy missiles waiting in ambush, would be a good idea.
As for “Space Smoke Bombs”, definitely a doable concept. My thoughts turn straight to the Traveller RPG, where ships could carry something called Sandcaster, which was basically like chaff for the space age, distorting radar returns, damaging incoming missiles and ablating laser fire etc. At a pinch it could even be used like a giant shotgun round, throwing lots of crap in front of attacking fighters. Traveller and the similar 2300AD, though 'just games', had a very good base concept for designing spaceships. You had to do the sums to work out what you could squeeze into a hull and what you could achieve in terms of manoeuvre, distances and speeds etc. Again, not so great for a TV show but if you want to have at least a little science in your fiction then they had it.
A couple of troublesome aspects for me (I gave up watching quite quickly and then only dipped in and out, so may have missed explanations for these) are that
- How does a humanoid Cylon get into the Colonial Fleet? Surely they can’t just appear with no background, no history and rise through the ranks like Tigh did? My admittedly patchy understanding is that they seem to be unboxed by the Cylons pretty much as they exist in the series. Even if they ‘age’, which they must do or they would soon be spotted, how is there no discrepancy with their lives?
- Twelve colonies, but no one seems to have moved out and colonised other worlds, or at least the exodus doesn’t seem to encounter any other smaller colonies. Surely with the amount of independent shipping that existed some people would have set out to found their own worlds? Whether they be for commercial, religious or criminal reasons, or simply the need to get out from under the government, some group would have mortgaged themselves to the hilt and taken a ship away from the twelve.
- I would have expected at least the Colonies central governments to have sent out scouting missions beyond their worlds. In that case, planets and resources would be mapped and known, at least for several jumps distance in every direction except towards Cylon space, and exploration ships or way stations might be encountered along the way. Even today we know where our near neighbour stars are. A civilization with FTL technology would be unlikely to restrict itself to 12 crowded worlds, bordered by a known enemy, without at least looking further afield. I had a concept idea for a parallel adventure based around a 'Phoenix' ship, a huge cargo vessel packed with the wherewithall to allow survivors to rebuild on anogther planet if anything happened to the main 12. It would have given the fleet, if they found its hiding place, the resources to use when they got far away from the disaster.
- Galactica broadcasts calling for ships to gather at the depot, which must have been an FTL transmissions beamed out across space, yet Pegasus didn’t appear to hear or know until they met up later.