Two
points:
They were recreating the original and that was basically CVN in
space. Yes, it had some secondaries that could be batteried to
do some damage, but it was fighters that kept the enemy fighters
off the ships of the fleet, including the Galactica, in both
shows. And fighter guns could take out or cripple civilian ships
and enough of them could even cause critical failures on a
Battlestar (in the original).
The original was much more than a CV in space. There were the
primary lasers and missiles that both the ships carried (though used
rarely).
The fighters...were grossly overpowered for dramatic purposes. The
Cylons only were able to do the damage they did by packing Radiers
full of Solonite (IIRC, it was Solonite) and flying them into the
one weakpoint of the ship; the landing bays.
When
they redesigned the new look, it had to still have that
character, but with a solid look and feel borrowed from CVNs and
Battleships internally. That's likely what drove the aesthetic.
The fact the Galactica (2003) could take a right whaling and
still keep rolling ahead was somewhat in line with prior canon.
The fact it had nuclear missiles of their own was sensible
(given the Cylons had them).
They had them, but they were not a primary weapon, to the point
where they were never used by either Galactica or Pegasus.
I
do agree fighters were important screening and area defense
assets. However, if one side lost the fighter battle, then they
could become (with losses albeit) ship killers with even modest
luck. I think they would not have been as good at killing
military ships as a Cylon Basestar in the new iteration so those
were willing to join in and shoot it out to try to take
Galactica out (and thus end the Colonials forever as the rest of
the fleet could be taken piecemeal).
30mm kinetics (which was what both the Vipers and Raiders used, or
something in that category) weren't going to scratch the 5 meters of
armor that covered Galactica. And while they may have chipped away
a little at the baseships, they too were a bit more armored than
autocannons could hurt.
The
cylons used missiles more often and I often suspect that was a
stylistic/plot choice rather than any form of doctrine (the
doctrine, if it was stated, grew from the dramatic benefit of
missiles - guns blow you up fairly immediately, missiles you can
run, flee, dodge, jink, distract, etc. and that sequence makes
for great action and lets your heroes live more often).
The missiles were the Cylon doctrine. They didn't just use them
"more often", it was all they used with the exception of the canons
on the Raiders which again, did didly squat to Galactica. Most of
the fighter v. fighter kills were due to canon fire.
I
also suspect we can't know how much tonnage was devoted to
armour - I suspect a lot - they had a lot of internal shock
frames and bulkheads and that is one manifestation of armour (as
Traveller does not make itself concerned about internal
structure at least in the earlier generations... not sure about
T5). We do agree that their fuel requirements for jump were
lower (though non-zero) than those in Traveller where you not
only give up a lot of space to jump fuel, but also to jump
engines on large ships.
According to canon sources, Galactica had 5 meters of armor on all
areas, while Pegasus had more. The fuel requirements are darn close
to zero; they made more than 238 jumps as of the conclusion of
episode "33", not counting the jumps before the Cylons started
chasing them, and they still weren't worried about fuel. Each of
those jumps was up to 12 light years, and they did it all in 130
hours.
--
Kurt Feltenberger
xxxxxx@thepaw.org/xxxxxx@yahoo.com
“Before today, I was scared to live, after today, I'm scared I'm not living enough." - Me