Battlestar galactica

[tus3]

• 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.

Maybe, the range of Galactica's broadcasting system was limited to the Cyrannus System and it just so happened that at the moment Pegasus was still far away due to its blind jump?

 

[hopper2cool]

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.

Agreed to all the above. Space fighters heck just "World War II IN SPACE" is probably a bit unrealistic for real space combat. But "rule of cool" and all that.
The lack of lighter ships is a massive issue. What we "know" about the Colonial Military (from the show) is that 30 Battlestars is a quarter the fleet. There might be some escort ships. There might not be. It is BATTLESTAR Galactica so it is kind of expected. There might be some destroyer equivalent or the Valkyries are the smallest ship in the Navy.

Cylon basestars seem weak, taking only a few hits to destroy compared to a battlestar.

Very true. I just handwave it away with 3 things.
1, The Cylons came up with a good plan to kill 25 billion humans very quickly. That they were "only" 98.3% successful in killing the Battlestars is pretty darn good. That the Battlestars kicked the crap out of the Basestars in any fight after the destruction of the Colonies the Cylons at least had massive number advantages.
2. The Basestars are alive well sort of alive. A ship can add more armor or a mass driver or whatever not exactly explained but there reasons to become tougher and more dangerous. The living Basestar has to grow that sort of stuff. It might not be possible in the timeframe that.
3. Cavil is an idiot. He wanted to show his mommy and daddy that he is better than them. Tigh was retiring so he only had until the 40th anniversary of the end of the Cylon War to make his move.
These all work either alone or together.

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.

The Galactica always has around 30 fighters. Lost 10 at Ragnar Anchorage and then they have 30 to get tyleum. Lost 7 against Scar and they have 30 to show down against the Pegasus. It's just magic that way.

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.

True again "rule of cool" trumps logic.

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.

I said in another BSG thread that jumping in and firing 100 nukes seems more likely but "not cool" so I can understand why they didn't.

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?

This one doesn't bother me much. The Cylons are good at computers and sliding Sharon Valerii in as a Raptor pilot or as a flight officer trainee seems a lot easier than shutting down the Battlestars or the other defense systems that the Twelve Colonies would have. The "Final Five" is harder to explain especially Tigh but it's "not impossible".

• 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.

Yeah it's weird. I personally think it's unlikely but I can understand it. On New BSG the Colonies Fall. Roslin and the gang are fleeing from the Cylons. If they checked out "space farming world 11" and show up just long enough to get a quarter of the people off the planet and a few Mk. IV Vipers. That would be kind of depressing.
The RTFF can't stay (need to look for Earth and all that). So these smaller planets are all frakked until Cavil bothers to show up to kill or turn the women into breeding tanks. Best to keep the mass extermination in the miniseries.

• 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.

I figure something like a civilian Raptor is carrying news so the other planets. The planets in the double binary (and boy is that unlikely) would be light days away in many cases. At best.
As someone else said above the Pegasus might have been out of the Cyrannus system so missed it. Or the logistics of how the Twelve Colonies worked wasn't really an issue since letting the Twelve Colonies get destroyed had to happen.

 

[tus3]

Lost 7 against Scar and they have 30 to show down against the Pegasus.

I believe you are confusing the chronology. Scar was episode 15 of Season 2, whilst Pegasus was episode 10 of Season 2.
However, otherwise I agree. You'd expect they would have lost a lot in the episode 33.

 

[NHBL]

I'm working on a timeline where original Battlestar Galactica is in Season Three. In Season 2, they contacted 1979 Earth, unofficially. By mid Season Three, deals have been worked out, and some Vipers have Sidewinder Colonial/Human hybrid missiles. As yet, the Colonials only have them working from the rear aspect, and Vipers can't handle the Phoenix with Colonial tech added on. (The Galactica CAN, but the missiles can be dodged. Raiders strafing the Galactica will sometimes get a Sidewinder up the tailpipe as they withdraw.)
Battlestar Galactica is just referred to occasionally as a bit of popular culture that the main character LOVES.
(At either the end of Season 3 or the beginning of Season 4, there will be a shuttle landing at a major US facility.)

 

[MaxGerke01]

I'm working on a timeline where original Battlestar Galactica is in Season Three. In Season 2, they contacted 1979 Earth, unofficially. By mid Season Three, deals have been worked out, and some Vipers have Sidewinder Colonial/Human hybrid missiles. As yet, the Colonials only have them working from the rear aspect, and Vipers can't handle the Phoenix with Colonial tech added on. (The Galactica CAN, but the missiles can be dodged. Raiders strafing the Galactica will sometimes get a Sidewinder up the tailpipe as they withdraw.)
Battlestar Galactica is just referred to occasionally as a bit of popular culture that the main character LOVES.
(At either the end of Season 3 or the beginning of Season 4, there will be a shuttle landing at a major US facility.)

So did the 13th tribe come to this Earth or no ?