Battlestar Galactica 3.0

[Reynard]

You can assume the cylons got rid of the major colonies and their Battlestars first then systematically exterminated every other colony during the flight of the Battlestar Galactica.

I always wondered how 12 battleships held back the cylon empire so long and so well when there's references that cylon vessels were superior. They weren't even a fleet, each defending individual colonies. Did they have support and escort vessels and act as a carrier fleet? That would make sense.

 

[Condottiere]

I thought the revisioned version seemed to imply that there were lots of warships of differing sizes and capabilities, and they may have been sequestering.

The Cylons, being more focussed, might have been able to achieve more with less.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

Battlestars are like aircraft carriers, their purpose is primarily offensive, for projecting power to distant locations. I'm sure the planets themselves would have plenty of vipers scrambling from airfields, not just from the Battlestars themselves.

 

[enderra]

I always wondered how 12 battleships held back the cylon empire so long and so well when there's references that cylon vessels were superior. They weren't even a fleet, each defending individual colonies. Did they have support and escort vessels and act as a carrier fleet? That would make sense.

Yes, I am not sure if this was stated explicitly in the old show. In the newer version you have fleets (see Blood & Chrome, if nothing else). Also, battlestars are the cores of so-called "Battlestar Groups", of which the Galactica's was nr 75, presumably akin to modern-day carrier groups.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

One option for BSG would be to use a different FTL. The series (unlike the remake) never used a jump but rather what looked like a Warp drive. So maybe Stutterwarp is an option.

But only the Battlestar Galactica had such and FTL drive, and they had to leave the fleet behind because they weren't also so equipped. Actually there was only one episode when Bsg "went to light speed". Actually it had to be much faster than light speed, because light speed is slow. Also judging by their dialog, BSG is intergalactic travel, the routine entered different galaxies and searched them out looking for Earth. I kind of suspect the episode writers of being on drugs. "Cool man! They go. To a different Galaxy, that's way out! Never bother me with the details just so long as it sounds spacey!"
I also liked their time units, they used decimal time, turns out they weren't the first to do it either! The French made a decimal clock during their French Revolution. Now the Battlestar Galactica clock might be similar to what the French had done. Two time units stand out on the show, centons and microns. So a centon is one hundredth of something if we assume they are metric prefixes. Revolutionary France divided up their day into ten equal parts with each decimal hour being the asme as 2.4 standard hours, a centon is evidently one hundredth of one of those decimal hours, so there are 1000 centons in a day. Microns are the equivalent of seconds, so there should be 100 microns in a centon, even though a. Micron should be one millionth of one of those decimal hours!

 

[Reynard]

One thing very common in scifi scripts is labeling a stellar system as a galaxy or being so science inept to think hopping to another galaxy is no different than going to another star as if we don't have enough stars in one galaxy.

Sadly many scifi shows were more akin to JJ Abrams concepts of science in Star Trek.

 

[Condottiere]

The Galactica projects huge ass jump bubble that the huddling masses crowd into.

 

[enderra]

Yeah, I wouldn't attempt to use the old Galactica show as a source if you are looking for plausibility and logic. It was basically a planet of the week show. The new BSG at least had a somewhat sound foundation in science, and they attempted to be plausible and consistent.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

Yeah, I wouldn't attempt to use the old Galactica show as a source if you are looking for plausibility and logic. It was basically a planet of the week show. The new BSG at least had a somewhat sound foundation in science, and they attempted to be plausible and consistent.

The planets of the new BSG show weren't all that interesting, they were more or less backdrops for conflicts between Cylons and humans and for conflicts between humans and between Cylons.

There are some elements I would want to keep from the new show, but I think we can have more interesting planets as well. Star Wars had interesting planets after all, even though the movie was about a conflict between rebels and the Galactic Empire.

 

[Rikki Tikki Traveller]

One option would be to take the 12 colonies and set them in the OTU. Replace VIRUS with Cylon and you have your fleet, Traveller rules (and star maps) etc. Of course since so much was wiped out by Virus, you don't REALLY know what is left on those worlds have xxx years.

Searching for Earth? You know it is Rimward in a Sector called "The Rim" but your old maps are so corrupted, you don't know exactly how far away that is... or maybe you do and you are not trying to "find" Earth, you are trying to "get to" Earth.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

I think slower than light travel allows for the possibility of many human colonies that are unaware of the Cylon war, also it creates a lot of worlds that develop in isolation from each other.

On the other hand getting close to the speed of light takes a lot of energy, probably antimatter as fuel. Fusion in real life can achieve 0.1% to 10% of the speed of light at most. I tend to eschew ship designs that require parts of the ship to be thrown away to save mass. Antimatter turns every ship into a super bomb should antimatter containment fail, which might happen of a ship takes enough damage in combat! The BSG television series sidestepped that issue by having a "magic" teleport drive they called a Jump Drive or FTL drive. Seems BSG could do all sorts of neat tricks with their FTL drives, like for instance jumping within close proximity to another ship to cause damage, or send scout ships to jump in and jump out, followed by a Base ship jumping in and unleashing a squadron of Cylon raiders. Seems to be too much teleporting around in the show, makes you wonder why they have rockets. Could not a ship simply make a jump from the surface of a planet into orbit? Why bother going into space at all?

 

[Reynard]

Battlestar Galactica, like too many scifi on a budget (or JJ Abrams' Star Trek) developed plot science. Things worked depending on what the story needed that episode and story writers did not graduate with science degrees. Remember too the audience was wowed by all they saw on the screen and didn't question what they saw any more than Buck Roger fans questioned clothes irons powered by a flare landing on Jupiter which had life.

Now, we either go along with silly mish-mash or we use our knowledge to make things possible or at least more plausible. I think the Traveller system allows this. The science and materials are often compatible with what was seen on BG. Jump space and jump drives are excellent fits allowing for the chase and discovery themes prevalent. Why reinvent Traveller to fit the bizarre science of BG?

For one other example, there are other settlements beyond the original twelve. There was a long devastating War with the Cylons that the Colonies are rebuilding from. The Colonies are a bit isolationist and were slowly re-exploring and more concerned with local defense. That makes the Traveller system generation perfect with the region dotted with settlements of varying cultures, government and technology both human and alien even the Cylons don't know about. Considering it took a 'generation' to find Earth; that's a lot of random scouting and may explain not picking up any radio wave transmissions either way. With Jump drives, and 'jump space' has described FTL travel for the series. This makes finding Earth, needing to make frequent stops for fuel and directions, the adventure it was. The difficulty of jumping over vast, uncharted distances can also explain why the Cylons seem to give up between the original series and Galactica 1980. So, yeah, Traveller works as is.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

Traveller has rules, while the writers of the New and Old BSG flew by the seats of their pants. the characters in either series didn't not have the freedom to try things out. For instance the last episode of the original BSG was the Gun of Ice Planet Zero, it was a knock off of the Guns of Navarone, with the Cylons of course playing the Nazis, and Starbuck and Apollo playing the part of commandos. Now the whole plot depended on the Fleet moving past that planet within range of that gun, so the Gun had to be destroyed. I really don't think we can have a situation like that in Traveller RPG, without a lot of contrivance by the GM.

They player says, "Ah but I don't want to go past that Ice Planet! Can't we go somewhere else?"
GM: "Nope, there are radiation clouds everywhere except for a narrow corridor which runs right past that planet within range of its guns, you've got no choice by to destroy it I the fleet is to survive."

How does that sound as a Traveller Adventure? Yep, I don't like it either! the GM basically tries to force the players to take one set of actions in order to comply with a rip off a World War II movie set in space.

 

[AndrewW]

Traveller has rules, while the writers of the New and Old BSG flew by the seats of their pants. the characters in either series didn't not have the freedom to try things out. For instance the last episode of the original BSG was the Gun of Ice Planet Zero, it was a knock off of the Guns of Navarone, with the Cylons of course playing the Nazis, and Starbuck and Apollo playing the part of commandos. Now the whole plot depended on the Fleet moving past that planet within range of that gun, so the Gun had to be destroyed. I really don't think we can have a situation like that in Traveller RPG, without a lot of contrivance by the GM.

Last episode of the original series was Hand of God.

That's the one where Apollo actually calls the Galactica a Base Star...

Also, with three Cylon Base Ships trailing the Galactica, even after avoiding the gun how did they get away, with the Galactica being limited to the speed of the slowest ship in the fleet.

Then there's the gun had to be destroyed and the clones wouldn't help, but would help take out the Cylons. Well, if the clones where in control of the guns it wouldn't have been firing on the Galactica so that would have worked as well, not to mention they might have been able to take out the Cylon Base Stars with it.

Yup, lots of issues with that episode, but that's Hollywood for you.

 

[Reynard]

In a Traveller scenario, there's only one fuel source and the guns (Spinal size ship killer?) are set in orbit over a gas giant or ground based on a water bearing planet and they need to refuel to leave the system before Cylons arrive. Time is of the essence! The Ref can come up with a reason for such security or assume the fleet is too much in a rush to care. Still could be part of the adventure and an alternate solution or a mystery that haunts the players as they continue on.

Just because the original writers were overworked and under budgeted doesn't mean a game ref is.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

Some issues that might be addressed if we did Battlestar Galactica with Traveller rules.
First off the Raptors in the second series get replaces with the 100-ton Scout/Courier as it does the same job as the Raptor in the 2003 series. Also in the 2003 series the Jumps were instantaneous so raptors could be the size of helicopters, in the standard Traveller Game that's not going to fly as a Jump takes 5 days, the crew will need to live onboard the Scout/Courier while they wait to get out of Jump Space. Another problem is after scouting various star systems looking for Earth and avoiding the Cylons, somehow the Scout/Courier has to get back to the fleet, and there is no guarantee that they fleet will be at the last location. If the Cylons attacked it, the fleet is going to have to make a Jump in a hurry. It will probably remain outside the 100-diameter limit of any planet it is near, and it will have precalculated and distributed the Jump coordinates to all the ships in case the Cylons show up, the Scout ships will have to know what those prearranged jump coordinates are in advance before they undertake their mission. The Galactica could dispatch an X-boat to where the Scout ship was sent to inform them they had jumped to avoid the Cylons and telling them where they jumped so the Scout ship can meet up with them.

Another thing is that each of the ships will have to stock 5 days of food and supplies in case they have to Jump in a hurry. During those 5 days in jump space each ship will be alone and their will be no traveling between ships. There is about 30 Capital ships in the fleet, and more numerous smaller starships, such as the Mercenary Cruiser, Scout/Courier, Safari Ship, Lab Ship, Free Trader, Far Trader, Subsidized Liner, Patrol Cruisers. My guess is Colonial One would be a Subsidized Liner guarded by a couple Patrol Cruisers. The Battlestar Galactica is the only military Capital ship in the fleet, though the Battlestar Pegasus with Commaner Cane might show up at some time. What do you think the tonnage of the Battlestar Galactica should be? It is a huge ship with two landing decks and launch tubes for its fighters. The central portion of the ship is essentially a Battleship armed with missiles and a spinal mount, with possibly a black globe for defense. The Cylons have a more advanced Jump drive, in that they are not limited to 100-ton starships or greater, their Raiders have Jump drives, they are also automated and have no life support as the ships are Cylons themselves. The other type is the standard Centurian, these would be their troops, then their are the 12 model "skin jobs". The Basestars have a degree of self-awareness as well. Which do you like, the "double flying saucers" or the "jacks"? What should the centurians be armed with?

 

[Reynard]

Just finished grabbing as much information on Battlestars and colonial small craft plus the Land-Ram troop transport. Now time to twist and crunch it into Traveller mechanics. It should also give a rough clue to the tech level of the series.

It's mentioned the colonials use ion engines for thrust while the Cylons use reactionless. Mongoose has reaction drives in High Guard and the gravitic drive is the standard maneuver drive. I'm assuming though the ion is still more like a Traveller maneuver drive. Other earlier editions of Traveller made note of the various propulsion types and their tech levels. At worst the Cylons are a tech level higher.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

Maneuver drives are from 1 to 6 in Traveller. That would work fine for BSG. Cylon raiders have jump drives, even though they are fighters. Vipers don't have jump drives, that means more space can be devoted to their maneuver drives, which means 1 viper is more than a match for your typical Cylon Raider. But the Raider can jump if it reaches the 100 diameter limit, it can probably also jump from within the 100-diameter limit but with a greater chance of misjump. The raider is a cylon, that is their is no life support inside, it is an unmanned fighter controlled by a cylon brain. Another class of Cylon raider is comparable to the 100-ton Scout/courier, it I also controlled by a Cylon brain, but can also carry passengers, such as Cylon Centurians and the 12 model Cylon skin jobs, which require an oxygen atmosphere for breathing, so the heavy raider is the Cylon version of a scout/courier with life support. So how "human" do you think the Traveller version of the skin jobs should be? We could have a simple android that looks human, until we look inside an see all the wires and such, we could do a Terminator version of the Cylon skin job, it has a metal mechanical skeleton surrounded by flesh, an x-ray device can probably detect that metal skeleton. We could do a clone of a human body with a computer within the cranium instead of an organic brain, that would be harder to detect, we could use a synthetic organic brain, it is basically grown and made up of cells, which would be very hard to detect.

 

[Condottiere]

While it may be fun converting BSG ship designs to Traveller, especially the Galactica if you can figure out how to structure in the pylons.

However, the Raptor does hark back to sub 100 ton starships, which aren't possible.

 

[Reynard]

Remember there already is a Battlestar game out if people want to have game mechanics specifically geared to the physics of the show. I was under the assumption we here are trying to create a version using the mechanics and technology of Traveller. In many ways I find this fitting corrects all the goofy non-science rampant in the original show. Can't say much about the new show because I had to give up on the direction it took and I haven't found much tech spec to base designs. For me it's a what if experiment.