Text 11571, 86 rader
Skriven 2007-02-05 10:59:27 av Jeffrey Kaplan (15010.babylon5)
     Kommentar till en text av rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated
Ärende: Re: Military tactics in sci-fi?
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It is alleged that Jeffrey MacHott claimed:

> > It's also strongly implied in "In The Beginning" when reference is made
> > to the Minbari's superior navigation abilities to come out of
> > hyperspace where they can do the most damage.
> 
> Well, in all of the cases, it's entirely possible for the force in 
> hyperspace to have some kind of spotter on the other side signaling 
> them.  In the case of Leftcourt, it could easily be the G.O.D. 
> satellites themselves that he was getting the information from, for the 

You mean the ones that Sheridan&Co destroyed?  Possible, I guess.

> Black Star, they outright stated that the Minbari flyer was acting as a 
> spotter, signaling when Lexington's squadron was in the kill zone.  The 

I was thinking more of the fleet actions.  IIRC, the Minbari fleet
jumped into the middle of the EA forces at the Battle Of The Line
without any prepositioned spotters.

> We've seen ships able to communicate from hyperspace to real space and 
> back, but we've not seen them use sensors that way, though in the case 

So far as I'm concerned, if you can communicate into realspace, you can
scan into realspace.  Maybe not with pinpoint accuracy, but at least as
an aid to navigation.

> of In The Beginning, the Centauri surprise attack couldn't easily work 
> unless they COULD scan from hyperspace, unless we assume they had set up 
> a covert listening post on the planet before Sheridan arrived.

Which the Centauri didn't know about until too late to do that.  The
Centauri ship that Mollari sent was the first Centauri force that could
be sent.
 
> > Strategically, it makes more sense to do it that way.  The group as a
> > whole would be prepared for essentially any type of mission needed
> > whereas a single JOAT vessel will always be deficient in something.
> > That the Omegas in B5 were never shown to be would be due to the fact
> > that everyone else was using the same behavior model.
> 
> Of course, the USS Enterprise has a negligible chance of having the 
> Kirov appear 5 miles away and lobbing missiles at her without warning, 

True.

> > The same can be said too about the Battlestars in BSG, though since
> > those ships are just so fracking huge, they can carry internally a
> > wider assortment of specialized troops, smaller ships, and other
> > equipment (forex, we've actually seen them dock other ships in their
> > refugee fleet inside the hanger pod - Colonial One is small only in
> > comparison).
> 
> Heh, the BattleStars are just kinda fun to figure out.  In their case, 
> the fighter wing seems to exist purely for defense and recon, having 
> limited strike capability itself (although it WOULD be kinda cool to see 
> a Raptor or a Viper carrying a torpedo or something), with the 

We did see a Raptor carry a missile.  Boomer was to launch it into a
Basestar landing bay, but the launcher failed.  Vipers do, or at least
can, carry missiles and bombs.  We've seen them use missiles against
Raiders from a longer range in the past, and Apollo used bombs against
the Cylon Tylium mine.  The guns are simply their preferred weapon. :)

> BattleStar's own armament providing the primary butt-whupping 
> capability.  The Base Stars, meanwhile, seem to derive most of their 
> offensive power from their fighter wing, carrying massive numbers of 
> Raiders.  Deprived of their fighter wing, a Cylon Basestar gets beaten 
> to a pulp by a Battlestar similarly devoid of fighter protection, as we 
> see in later seasons of BSG.

Basestars carry long range missiles, too.  We've seen them used
+often+, especially in the miniseries and early seasons.  Yeah, they
carry a frelling huge number of raiders, but then again... they don't
need to also provide crewspace for them since the Raiders themselves
are their own pilots.  So whereas the Galactica needs hanger space for
the Vipers and crewspace for the pilots, the Cylons only need the
hanger space.

-- 
Jeffrey Kaplan                                         www.gordol.org
The from userid is killfiled             Send personal mail to gordol

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