posted
In TNS, they have never shown the Vipers doing any FTL jumps, at least as far as I can remember. I've been under the assumption that Vipers don't have FTL drives since they need to land on the Galactica before it can jump. The Raptors and the Cylon Raiders are the smallest craft we've explicitly seen with FTL drives.
Now, in "Pegasus".... (minor spoilers below)
...the CAG mentioned doing an FTL jump with the Vipers and Raptors during his briefing. Could it be that the Mk VII Vipers are equipped with FTL drives, and the Mk IIs are not? I would imagine that if the Mk IIs could jump, they wouldn't have to land on the Galactica before they could bug out every time the Cylons attack.
posted
I didn't think about that, but they are sending a mixed reconaissance team, aren't they? That is, as you say, made up of Vipers and Raptors, and neither the Pegasus nor the Galactica are ferrying them. Huh. For that matter, their stealth ship has to have an FTL drive too. (Unless they mentioned putting one in in "Flight of the Phoenix" and I missed it.)
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
Seeing how the new Blackbird (it's not a Viper, the name "Viper" refers specifically to the front-line space superiority fighter, or whatever you call it) is designed for stealth and recon, I think it's a perfect natural to squeeze a FTL drive into the frame -- the Raptor isn't much bigger, considering its crew-carrying capabilities means there's a lot of "empty" space in the frame.
I also can easily believe that the Mk. VII has an FTL drive, since it seems the FTL drive was never used much in the inter-war years....
-------------------- “Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.” — Isaac Asimov Star Trek Minutiae | Memory Alpha
Registered: Nov 2000
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quote:Originally posted by Trimm: Didnt we see the new Viper do an FTL jump in Flight of the Phoenix?
Looking at that part of the episode I don't think it jumps - I think Starbuck briefly fires the engines up to full and then kills them to "go quiet" and give Lee a fright. It does look like an FTL jump but I think it's just a quick boost.
Does seem sensible for the later Vipers to have FTL though...I know that colonial technology in general isn't supposed to be as advanced as that used by the Cylons, but there has to be some level of parity or the Cylon war wouldn't have ended in a ceasefire.
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Registered: Nov 2004
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posted
Well, had to be. The war was forty years ago, after all. And we really don't know what the goals were, on either side. Or for that matter, who started it, as I recall. I mean, OK, the Cylons rebelled, but we haven't heard what was involved in that.
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
There would still have to be a rough technical parity in BSG's modern day - if only for the simple fact that if there was a huge technological gap between the Colonies and the Cylons, the Cylons wouldn't have needed to pull off the sneak attack. They would just have steamed in, overwhelmed the technologically inadequate colonial defenses and done it that way. Instead, they had to find a way to sneak in by the backdoor and bring those defenses down. This would imply that colonial and cylon tech were (for the most part) evenly matched. After all, what do the Cylons care about casualties? Their centurions don't seem to be individuals, and even the Humano-Cylons get reborn when their old bodies die. The only worry they would have is that if they took the colonials on in a fair fight, they might have lost and the colonials might have decided to wipe them out completely.
As for the Cylon war, I would like there to be some exploration of it - there has to have been something to not only spark off a rebellion, but create an animosity that lasted 40 years and ended with a devastating attack. The Cylons are nothing if not intelligent, and evolving - they don't seem to be closed to the idea of change and yet their attitude towards humanity seems very fixed. I wonder what the previous generation of colonials did to their Cylons to so deeply entrench those feelings?
FD
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Registered: Nov 2004
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posted
I don't think that tracks. The Cylons may think nothing of death, but that doesn't mean they have infinite resources. Why spend spacebucks on spacejet fuel when a plurality of nuclear warheads will do the job? Besides that, the Cylon goal was (near) genocide, which required an instantaneous strike on all the colonies and assorted Colonial assets. That's a job requiring finesse, not brute strength.
In every encounter since, the fleet has either just survived long enough to run, or won through surprise and trickery. Granted, that's with an obsolete battlestar and a handful of torn up Vipers, but still. What few technical details we know are all in the Cylons' favor.
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
There is also the possibility that there were very few cylons compared to the (former) human population.
It might take a loong time for a top-model cylon to be built/programmed/trained/whatever and it's more logical to limit losses however possible.
Even a modern military would need strategy against a primitive force that out-numberes them 10-1.
Or the writers have not considred this issue at all....being busy actually making the show and all must consume much of their time.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
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posted
Well, they should think of these things, enquiring minds need to know! So who cares if the show is a few weeks late, huh? Who's with me? Hello? Anyone? Heeellloooooo?
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