Battlestar Galactica ships, etc.

A few miscellaneous thought on BSG for FT:

You can see my version of the Galactica, a generic Colonial
Battlestar (based on the Pegasus) and a Cylon Base Star on Mark
Siefert's Unofficial FT web page. My designs are a bit smaller
than Steven Guffey's, but are fairly well balanced. They reflect
my views on the technology of the Galactica and Cylons -- no
shields, a few big weapons, lots of PDAFs and fighters. I had to
hold down the number of fighters, though, because there is reason
to believe that the Galactica can carry over 150 Vipers, which is
a bit much in FT terms, and the Raider complement of a Base Star
is said to be 300!

One weapons system that the Pegasus had but the Galactica didn't
-- or never used on screen -- was missiles. FT missiles are a bit
big in terms of mass, so I gave the generic battlestar design a
pulse torpedo to simulate clusters of missiles. The Galactica is
more optimised for long-range and anti-fighter combat -- I really
saw it as having been modified for its new role as a fleet
defence ship.

Colonial Battlestars would appear to be have a dual capital
ship/fighter carrier role, although the Galactica, as the only
battlestar with the Fleet, needs to operate more as a carrier in
order to survive (attacks on sabotaged Base Stars
notwithstanding). Certainly, the few full-scale battles seen in
the series show both the Galactica and the Pegasus charging at
Base Stars with the intent to engage them in ship-to-ship combat.

By contrast, Cylon Base Stars operate more as pure carriers,
hanging back and letting their Raiders do the fighting. This
seems to be more a matter of doctrine (and, in the case of
Baltar, cowardice) than capability since the briefing on the Base
Star's armaments given in the episode "The Hand of God" mentions
two "megapulsars" plus numerous laser turrets.

The Ravishol Pulsar from "The Gun on Ice Planet Zero" can be
neatly simulated by a Nova Cannon, with the modification that it
can only hit a single target and the "beam" will disappear once
it has hit its target. You might want to shrink the templates
somewhat, too, to simulate the fact that the Pulsar puts out a
narrow beam rather than a ball of energy -- I incline towards
using a slowly-spreading fan, say, 5 degrees of arc wide.

The Destruction of the Colonial Battlefleet scenario should, IMO,
be rather different to Steven's version. For a start, there were
only 5 battlestars there, and no Base Stars took part -- just
lots and lots of Cylon fighters. The Base Stars were off
destroying the Colonies...

Re miniatures: Comet Miniatures do metal models (2-3" long) of
the Galactica, Viper and Raider -- not in scale with each other.
The Galactica miniature, unfortunately, looks to be based on the
Monogram model kit, one of the _worst_ travesties of an SF model
ever inflicted on the public. The Viper and Raider models are
large enough to be used as squadrons, with a die or chit standing
for the number of fighters remaining. Rumour hath it that
Monogram may be going to re-issue its BSG models sometime in the
future, in which case the battlestar and Base Star kits could be
used with Comet's fighter miniatures.
--------------------------------------------------------------
"We gotta get out into Space,	     | A sentiment echoed by:
 If it's the last thing we ever do!" |	   Phil Atcliffe  
   -- Return to the Forbidden Planet |	(p-atclif@uwe.ac.uk)