Re: [GZG] Cylon base stars

*drops out of lurk*

Based on what I've seen of the show (I own all the DVDs released to date
and have watched basically every episode), I think the Basestars would
be properly characterized as follows:

First Cylon War era basestar:  mass ~250, average hull with decent
armor, armed pretty much entirely with long range heavy missiles and
lots and lots of fighter bays loaded exclusively with attack fighters. 
Probably thrust 1-2, normal drives.  These things were relatively
clunky, but more stoutly built than the modern basestars, and
established the Cylon combat doctrine of trying to stay on the offensive
with raiders while remaining at a distance to employ missile
bombardment.  They probably also had at least some form of ECM or
something else to represent their effective electronic warfare suites.

Modern basestar:  mass ~300 or more, weak-fragile hull, minimal armor,
armed similarly with long range heavy missiles, with heavier loadouts of
fighter bays to make up the extra mass.  Thrust 1-2 again, advanced
drives this time.  These things were a bit more nimble, although still
not particularly fast, and were built more for efficiency at piling on
the fighter payloads, so in game terms I'd make them larger, but lighter
in hull points with the extra space going to more fighter bays.  Their
electronic warfare suites would be considerably superior to the earlier
models as well as to the Colonial battlestars.

The raiders themselves, I'd be pretty adamant in describing every one of
them as an attack-class -- none of the raiders are portrayed as being
nearly as good at dogfighting as the vipers they fight against, but when
they're left alone to attack actual shipping that isn't protected by
fighter cover, even the ones that aren't nuclear-armed seem to pretty
much tear the place up in hurry.  To represent the quality gap between
them, I'd call the modern raiders heavy attack fighters, probably long
ranged as well to portray that they're much more able to travel on their
own without direct basestar resupply, both via FTL and otherwise, while
the older raiders from the first Cylon War would probably be straight up
attack fighters.  The modern raiders would also mix in some torpedo
bombers along with the attack fighters to represent the ones that are
armed with nuclear weapons.  The heavy attack qualities of the modern
raiders would improve their rate of exchange against even other
fighters, but still, the only occasions in which even modern raiders are
shown as being a match for any model of viper whatsoever is in the
Miniseries where they've managed to shut the vipers down outright with
electronic warfare, so I figure this is modeled well by the fact that a
heavy attack fighter isn't much use against a normal fighter.

Conversely, I'd characterize a viper as being either a normal fighter or
maybe a cross between a fighter/interceptor that can still engage
shipping to some degree, and a battlestar as being a well armored mass
240-260 vessel, depending on whether it's a Galactica type or a Mercury
class, with various kinetic weapons mixed in with a somewhat lighter
fighter armament of vipers.

Still wishing I could play this game more often, haven't in about six
years... but nostalgic enough for it that I still watch the mailing
list.  :/

Eric/Stilt Man

-----Original Message-----
>From: Thomas Pope <tpope@cs.cmu.edu>
>Sent: Mar 9, 2009 11:36 PM
>To: gzg-l@vermouth.csua.berkeley.edu
>Subject: Re: [GZG] Cylon base stars
>
>> 'What's that batting stretched across the table? 
>> Nebula? Dust cloud?'
>> 
>> 'Nope, it's the launched Cylon Ready 5...'
>
>Way back in my optimistic days (of last month) when I thought they only
had something like 300 fighters, I had this crazy plan to buy up scads
of fighters from Bergstrom and try to do a full set. 
>
>Of course, it didn't take long to come to my senses.  While I could
paint up a ton of raiders with a basecoat/wash, I'd have to do the viper
striping by hand, and they'd probably take me 15 minutes each.
>
>Didn’t take long to do the math, even with the much more sane
estimate (varies depending on where you look) of "only" 80 vipers
onboard.
>
>...and 452 PDS mounts.  :-)
>
>http://en.battlestarwiki.org/wiki/Galactica_type_battlestar
>
>
>One of these days I'll scale everything down to something manageable
and start the project.	
>
>> Damn, been TOO long since you posted! Start making a 
>> habit of it again. ;->
>
>I haven't gone away, just been lurking, and life has remained
"interesting" for far too long.  But I'll see what I can do.  :-)
>
>Tom
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