[newman]

4 times the length of pegasus would make it almost 8 km long. It would be a logistical and tactical nonsense. And nobody ever said the Atlantia was 4 times bigger then the Pegasus - or even bigger at all. Mercury class was gigantic already and obviously constructed as a flagship/task force leader type of ship. And if they had shown 8 km long ships someone would complain because they haven't shown any 20km long ones

[Meleardil]

I think some compromise would be good. A roughly Pegasus size ship, but equipped with something unique could be Atlantia. A fleet wide comm system, unbalanced weaponry 90% focused on protecting the Admiral for example. It can have a special look to make it more "flagship" like. One thing should not be. An uber-giga battlesuperstar. Somewhere at the 2km length are drawn the limit of acceptable and believable ship size.  Pegasus and Stardestroyers are perfectly sized from that point of view. Over 10 km superstructures are in the fairytale category, far from sci-fi. Cylon Colony was the most ridiculous and the ugliest "ship" in the whole series, and it is very hard to find something more stupid even in other stories. So, the small p**is frustration shall be compensated by something else, the "who's got bigger battlestar contest" will not happen here.

[StarSlayer]

We already have two fleet command ship classes designed.  For both the modern Fleet and 1CW respectively.  And before anybody asks, no they are not four times larger then a Merc.

[newman]

I noticed a lot of sci-fi fan's brains got really badly calibrated on what's big and what isn't. If it's not miles long it's not cool, let reason out the airlock. I mean people didn't want to believe the Valkyrie was about as long as the Galactica flight pod because that's "too small". Some even said the flight pods would be too small to be useful. Never mind the ship is still more then twice the length of a Nimitz class carrier

[karajorma]

One of these days I'll add the Boeing 747 pof to Diaspora again and take some shots.

Then again people tend to forget how big a 747 is compared to other planes.

[Snagger]

Anything bigger than a Mercury class would be ridiculous - even they are larger than credibility allows.  The sheer amount of resources required to build, maintain, fuel and operate something that size would make it impossible, and the size of the crew would be crippling.  A Nimitz class carrier has about 6,000, so the idea that Galactica has about 2,000 and a Mercury 1,000 is completely wrong - a battlestar (or star destroyer) of 1-mile scale would need a maintenance and engineering crew of 10,000 just to keep it running before you even consider operational and combat staff, logistics staff and so on.

Why would you tie so much up in one basket, when you can have more flexible capability by having smaller ships?  Putting all your eggs in one basket means a loss is more devastating and more likely; how do you conduct pincer movements or covering tactics with one massive ship?

The puerile "big is cool" attitude just has to stop.

[Angelus]

Yeah, bigger is not better/ cooler.
IIRC, the Stardestroyer from SW, with a length of ( iirc ) 1600m, has a crew of 35000 ( source: T. Zahns Thrawn trilogy ).

I doubt that the 2000+ crew on the Galactica was it's full crew complement, rather the minimum crew to run the ship in a time of peace, not to mention the fact that one Landing pod was turned into a souvenir shop, so there was no need to keep all the deckhands from that pod on the ship. Also the ol' Lady was about to get decommisioned, so half the wing was already re-deployed to other ships/ bases.

The reason that the Pegasus had only around ~1700 crew on board was:

a) it was docked at Scorpion Shipyards for refit, me thinks that's a good time to send most of the crew to RnR
b) most of it's systems are run by advanced Computer systems, which would allow it to operate the ship with appr. the same crew like a
    older Galactica class vessel ( <----with full crew )
c) over 700 people were killed during the attack on the Scorpion shipyards

Also, remember the HUGE Deathstar ( iirc 120km diameter ) was destroyed by a tiny X-Wing fighter. Size doesn't matter, search your feelings, you know it's true.

[Revan]

Also, remember the HUGE Deathstar ( iirc 120km diameter ) was destroyed by a tiny X-Wing fighter. Size doesn't matter, search your feelings, you know it's true.

Jedi doesn't count.

[Angelus]

Also, remember the HUGE Deathstar ( iirc 120km diameter ) was destroyed by a tiny X-Wing fighter. Size doesn't matter, search your feelings, you know it's true.

Jedi doesn't count.

Skywalker wasn't a Jedi by that time, he could have used the targeting computer. It was only done for dramatic purpose.


And the force thing, but he wasn't a Jedi.
 

[newman]

Do NOT use the Force! Use the targeting computer!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-M9cLu63RHM

[Felix 039]

I think some compromise would be good. A roughly Pegasus size ship, but equipped with something unique could be Atlantia. A fleet wide comm system, unbalanced weaponry 90% focused on protecting the Admiral for example. It can have a special look to make it more "flagship" like. One thing should not be. An uber-giga battlesuperstar. Somewhere at the 2km length are drawn the limit of acceptable and believable ship size.  Pegasus and Stardestroyers are perfectly sized from that point of view. Over 10 km superstructures are in the fairytale category, far from sci-fi. Cylon Colony was the most ridiculous and the ugliest "ship" in the whole series, and it is very hard to find something more stupid even in other stories. So, the small p**is frustration shall be compensated by something else, the "who's got bigger battlestar contest" will not happen here.

The Cylon Colony... IS a colony tho... Not exactly a ship, more like a space station... but you are right, it IS UGLY.

[newman]

The Colony was ugly but the worst part of it was it really felt out of place, didn't have a look consistent with everything else. Looked more like some Shadows base from B5 then something built by the same race who built the basestars.

[Sushi]

Do NOT use the Force! Use the targeting computer!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-M9cLu63RHM

 
That was pretty awesome.

[Snagger]

Yeah, bigger is not better/ cooler.
IIRC, the Stardestroyer from SW, with a length of ( iirc ) 1600m, has a crew of 35000 ( source: T. Zahns Thrawn trilogy ).

I doubt that the 2000+ crew on the Galactica was it's full crew complement, rather the minimum crew to run the ship in a time of peace, not to mention the fact that one Landing pod was turned into a souvenir shop, so there was no need to keep all the deckhands from that pod on the ship. Also the ol' Lady was about to get decommisioned, so half the wing was already re-deployed to other ships/ bases.

The reason that the Pegasus had only around ~1700 crew on board was:

a) it was docked at Scorpion Shipyards for refit, me thinks that's a good time to send most of the crew to RnR
b) most of it's systems are run by advanced Computer systems, which would allow it to operate the ship with appr. the same crew like a
    older Galactica class vessel ( <----with full crew )
c) over 700 people were killed during the attack on the Scorpion shipyards

Also, remember the HUGE Deathstar ( iirc 120km diameter ) was destroyed by a tiny X-Wing fighter. Size doesn't matter, search your feelings, you know it's true.

I know the G was being decommissioned and the Peg was in drydock, but even so, ships of that size could not be run with such pitifully low crews.  I seem to recall a reference to the Galactica having a crew of about 4000 during the war and the deleted scenes of Adama and Tigh discussing the war disclosed that 2,000 were lost aboard the Galactica when Centurions boarded her in the last week of the war and depressrised the ship (refernced in the intitial meeting between Adama and Roslin in the mini, but without any numbers given).  The scene was a flashback for Tigh in the Scattered episode of S2, and is the explaination of why tigh knows the Centurions are going for the Aft Damage Control and Aux Fire Control stations rather than the reactors or CIC.

Anyway, the SW Star Destroyer crew numbers back my estimate for a large Battlestar, remembering that Battlestars have much less automation than ISDs, especially the original BSs.

Given that the entire Royal Navy comprises about 45,000 personnel, and that includes all the dock workers, admin staff in London and so on, a single ship with that size crew is unrealistic for any military force.  It's too unwieldy and too much of a drain, so bigger ships are plain stupid.

[SpardaSon21]

Keep in mind the Colonies have a much greater population base than we on Earth do.  They have twelve planets' worth of potential crewmen.

[newman]

It's not just a matter of crew. It's still a matter of going over a certain size making no sense. For the resources to build and maintain that thing you could have had 4 very capable smaller ships (but still pretty large) that give you a lot more tactical options. Also if you lose one of them you still have 3, you haven't lost the entire task force and 10000 crew and officers with it.

[SpardaSon21]

So newman, assuming that is true, why does the United States spend so much money building supercarriers when it could just build multiple smaller ones for the same cost?

[Colonol Dekker]

They're not supercarriers, they're just the standard.
 

[SpardaSon21]

Point still stands.  Why isn't the U.S. building lots of smaller carriers instead of the ones we build now?

[Sushi]

Can you make them any smaller? They seem pretty compact for what they need to accomplish: room to take off, room to land, room to move jets around on deck. Their minimum size is somewhat constrained.