BattleStar V BaseStar

magick

im talking one on one here, a battlestar v a basestar in a slug fest here.

the base star seems to rely on its fighters for defensive cover where as a battlestar has an array of "anti aircraft" guns

Rev Hellfire

Putting my propeller hat firmly on.

I think we can take it that on a simple one on one either of the two battestars are more than a match for a single basestar. In the miniseries the galactica held off three basestars while allowing the fleet to escape from the refuelling depot. Added to which the pegasus while caught off guard destroyed a basestar while under attack from three bases.

Khannie

Nice spoiler there rev. :P

In the original series the base stars had laser turrets. I remember this from when apollo and starbuck flew in-between two of them at around episode ten.

In the new series though, I'd expect the battlestar to reign supreme over a base star purely because of the heavy batteries on the side. The "incoming ordinance" (i.e. missiles) that you see in the pitched space battles seem to suggest that the base stars may have some kind of missile firing capability.

Dunners

I suppose it's getting a little too in-depth but you could assume the Cylons built in little or no actual defences to their basestars as they were relying on their virus disabling the Colonials fleets. Given that basestars are probably just glorified missile batteries designed to pummel helpless or nearly helpless planets/battlestars with a shedload of ordinance.

Barry Aldwell

The main difference between the Battlestar and Basestar (other than size) is their armament. A Basestar holds several times the amount of fighters that a Battlestar does, and it depends on these fighters to defend it while it uses its offensive armament (missiles, as noted above, some with nuclear warheads) to attack enemy capital ships. A Battlestar has a mix of offensive weapons (main batteries) and point defence weapons (flak guns). The flak guns allow the Battlestar to put up a wall of flak between the enemy and themselves, which will destroy fighters and incoming ordnance. This frees up large amounts of Vipers to actively seek out and destroy the enemy raiders.

Given that cylon raiders are FTL capable, I'd argue that Cylon basestars were not originally meant as capital ships capable of slugging it out with other capital ships - they are meant as bases from which raiders could refuel, rearm and then jump into the fight, and as weapons platforms for orbital bombardments. It's also possible that the basestar is a living organism capable of reincarnation, like raiders, and so the cylons decided to not install point defence systems, opting for more raider capacity or offensive weapons capacity instead. This would explain why the

Basestar in The Captains Hand retreated when the Pegasus concentrated it's fire on it

User45701

very good reasoning i never thought that the base stars where alive but that would explain why they retreated i assumed it was because so far out the loss of a base star is still a blow they need to kepp all there shis but ye it could have reatreated cause it idnt want to die

secret_squirrel

Barry Aldwell wrote:

living organism capable of reincarnation, like raiders

How do we know this? And if its from a US episode - damn you to heck for not using spoiler tags.


edit: practising what I preach

Barry Aldwell

secret_squirrel wrote:

How do we know this? And if its from a US episode - damn you to heck for not using spoiler tags.

I......guessed it, yes, that'll do..........

(Apologies, I didn't think of spoilering that)

It's not that shocking tbh, it won't ruin an entire episode on you or anything, it's more an interesting little fact that adds an element to an episode.