Military Science Fiction

[Col. Tartleton]

The point should be that outside of a warhammer 40k scenario where operators and engineers don't properly understand their own technology due to regression, if you dump 50,000 organized post modern people on a planet they should be building cities with at least some semblance of modernity.

At the very least they should be laying out a (spread out for usable green space mind you) grid city of rammed earth buildings with running water and heating.

Not just wandering around in fields with a thousand yard stare. You can't live out of a back pack.

As far as I'm concerned everyone died within a month.

[Lord Baal]

Also, they don't know how the hell to live like that anyway. If they pretend to "live off nature" like a bunch of hippies, those lads are definitively going to break the war circle with the cylons since they will be the last humans.

[Menelik_I]

On to Menelik:

It wasn't "Technology Bad, Nature Good", and any cursory viewing of the ending can tell you that. It was "Cycle of War Bad, Break It When Opportunity Arises". But back to infrastructure. They don't have any when they land on Earth 148,000 BCE. Your Engineer underwear sucks. Let's demonstrate.

How exactly does does going back to the Stone Age solve that ? They already made peace with the surviving Cylons ANYWAY.

Every part they took from the ships in early parts of Razor is made of yet smaller parts. You as an engineer must shockingly know this. Kind of like how the mixer in my radio that I build for Wireless is made of resistors and transistors and capacitors and diodes. These smaller parts for those parts the Pegasus raided require precision machinery to build. The Pegasus is unique in that she actually possibly has the precision machinery to deal with building these smaller parts. But the Pegasus is gone now. Moving on.

So why does that exactly prevents them from using these parts in Machinery and stockpiling spare parts ? Does the Colonial build electronics and Mechanical parts with expiration dates ?

The fuel is Tylium. It's a more traditional fuel. I don't want to say it's a typical combustible fuel, as they don't exactly go into detail on this. But one thing we know for sure, any nuclear radiation hits it, and the Tylium loses all properties that makes it useful for making a ship the size of the Galactica move. Now, that of course makes it useless for anything small scale on the ground. Way too much volatility for way too little payout. Do something wrong and it blows up in your damn face. They only way you risk the use a Tylium power plant is if you're running the entirety of frakking New York State off of it. Not a forty thousand man colony that you can accidentally destroy the entirety of because you rushed the building of the power plant so people could have the infrastructure and you skipped a bunch of safety procedures. Assuming you have a power plant specialist in the first place.

Use the raptors as the Powerplants, put them 10 Kilometer away Down River and have 20 people watching over it.

WHAT WAS POWERING THE PUMPS IN THE ALGAE PLANET !

So, wherein do we get the fuel to run the tools with which to tear these piles of metal apart?

The Fuel is the Tylium you cannibalize from the other ships, Nowhere in the last Episode did I hear that they were running out of fuel. A couple of Raptors as powerplants or one of a slightly bigger ship to provide electricity, something like 10 MW would be enough. They can run that from their Tylium stash for 10 years, because just providing electricity is less taxing then moving a big ship around, providing life support, shields, DRADIS and doing FTL jumps.

As for the durability of Tylium they only run out of Tylium once in the series, when they have to take out that Cylon base on the asteroid field.

They do not need to process the piles of metal right away, they start by taking apart the bigger ships that did land and anything they scrapped from the bigger ships in them. Priority is for : Pipes, structural beams, plates, anything circular, screws, Bold and cables.

Also the only ships with maintenance equipment would be the mining ships. Most of their ships were passenger liners or shipping containers. We'll write that off to you not paying attention again. Moving on.

1- The tools they used to build the Blackbird is more than enough.
2- Have you ever seen any kind of Aeronautical Workshop ? The Galactica Maintenance Deck equipment + any other tools they can salvage from the other ships is more than enough.

Now for the biggest hole in your engineers underpants. You'd use less fuel if you crashed the ships that can't land into the sun and just cut off the hull of the ones you are using. Because you just made a useless mess of their hull and structures. You're spending ten times as much fuel straightening things out as you are actually making use of things. Bra-frakking-vo. Cut up the ships with the engines you are using, but leave the hull intact around the engines. Gosh why didn't you in your engineer's underpants think of that bit of brilliance?!

Wut ?

Their first priorities is to cannibalize the parts in Space to land them safety, and then when they don't have fuel anymore they crash the hulls on earth. Also if you problems if fuel consumption then Crash land the Ships on the MOON. So at least you can use them in the future if need be and assume to last that long. Moon is more near than Sun, I win.

What's your fuel? Wood? The Tylium that ran the Raptor ain't going to last forever so someone's going to have to build something a little more traditional. We'll assume that every colony has someone with this capability. For the sake of your argument. Well as you cut the forest or jungle back, you're spending most of your time and people just getting more fuel to and from the pump. As opposed to caring for your crops. Ouch. How much food are you losing to weeds? To rodents? To general lack of care?

You are being Obtuse.

They can build simple Newcomen Engines to power pumps for drinking water and irrigation, use wood as the fuel for it. Word towards a Netwon type steam Engine so as to provide rotary power that could help you power : cranes, land-tilling machines, ships, trees cutting tools, pumps, compressors and much more.

And last I checked, the Galactica didn't have power cables miles long. The raptor equipment would also sink any barge they could build.

The Galactic is a 1500 Meters long spaceship, there is at least a Mile of Cables there, there are 20 other spaceships in orbit with perhaps as much cable.

What is the weight of the Raptor ? 100 Gazillions TONS ? They can make something that float even if they have to make a log raft held together.

I actually laughed when you said all year farming season. Here, folks, we have someone who wants to kill off the usefulness of the land and force them to pick up and move to another location and start farming again because they've basically farmed their land to death. Good job. Now, it's going to take a few years to do this, probably half a decade at the least probably more.

You can have year long planting by alternating the crops because different plants have different roots deeps, generally it give you 2 years of continuous planting and 1 year of rest cycles.

Having Irrigation sure beats not having any in any conceivable scenario.

I'm wondering, when you need to go hunting for fertile land, how do you propose we move the infrastructure? We can't just fly these ships around with us anymore, and we certainly can't just pick them up and move them on our backs.

Looks like we're back in the stone age and are a hunter-gather-agrarian society.

Is that irony or is that irony?

Each one of the River Basin I gave for examples are at minimum 200 000 Square Kilometers by surface ... they can find enough land.

The raptors engines are small enough to fit in a barge to be move around to power things.

They were damned tired of war and couldn't give a damn less about your engineers underpants with god knows how many huge holes in it. Go to a better school. Or at least learn how to rant better. It was "Cycle of War Bad, Break It When Opportunity Arises". And they did.

Reported for Personal Attack, this is why I wanted to ignore this thread because your idea of a point is to insult and denigrate people. I gave you tens of practical examples and points, but insulting my skills and schools is your idea of discussion ? Reported.

It was "Cycle of War Bad, Break It When Opportunity Arises". And they did

Nothing they did broke anything, the idea of fatalism of Human vs Machines on a Cosmic scale is dumb.

[Gaidin]

How exactly does does going back to the Stone Age solve that ? They already made peace with the surviving Cylons ANYWAY.

The cycle up to then is they pretty much colonized with tech they had. They wanted to break the cycle. Cursory viewing of the story reveals such.

So why does that exactly prevents them from using these parts in Machinery and stockpiling spare parts ? Does the Colonial build electronics and Mechanical parts with expiration dates ?

Not expiration dates persay, more parts wear out from use. Although now that they're actually in atmosphere, rust could be a problem. Expiration dates, for lack of a better term, might suddenly be an issue. Though less of an issue than they would be for something like food.

The Fuel is the Tylium you cannibalize from the other ships, Nowhere in the last Episode did I hear that they were running out of fuel. A couple of Raptors as powerplants or one of a slightly bigger ship to provide electricity, something like 10 MW would be enough. They can run that from their Tylium stash for 10 years, because just providing electricity is less taxing then moving a big ship around, providing life support, shields, DRADIS and doing FTL jumps.

Ten years is not an impressive number when talking about civilizational development.

1- The tools they used to build the Blackbird is more than enough.
2- Have you ever seen any kind of Aeronautical Workshop ? The Galactica Maintenance Deck equipment + any other tools they can salvage from the other ships is more than enough.

You're not reading what I'm saying. I am in no way contesting the tools and machine shops that a ship like the Galactica or the mining ship, and ore processing ship they had would have. I am contesting what every other ship would have. The most you're getting out of every other ship is your traditional toolbox. It's not that impressive.

Wut ?

Their first priorities is to cannibalize the parts in Space to land them safety, and then when they don't have fuel anymore they crash the hulls on earth. Also if you problems if fuel consumption then Crash land the Ships on the MOON. So at least you can use them in the future if need be and assume to last that long. Moon is more near than Sun, I win.

Crashland them wherever the hell you want. By the time you get to the moon to get them you've got enough sources of metal you don't need the damn things anymore. Point stands the brilliant idea of crashing them on earth to make use of scrap metal leaves you using ten times as much fuel to make them into usable scrap just from a pile of rubble.

You are being Obtuse.

They can build simple Newcomen Engines to power pumps for drinking water and irrigation.

What are they going to maintain it with?

The Galactic is a 1500 Meters long spaceship, there is at least a Mile of Cables there, there are 20 other spaceships in orbit with perhaps as much cable.

I know you just didn't use the ship with failing life support as a point did you?

What is the weight of the Raptor ? 100 Gazillions TONS ? They can make something that float even if they have to make a log raft held together.

You don't need that much weight to flip a wooden barge. That is all they have right now. Wood. Especially if you wan them building engines. All their metal is going into building engines. Get your priorities straight.

Reported for Personal Attack, this is why I wanted to ignore this thread because your idea of a point is to insult and denigrate people. I gave you tens of practical examples and points, but insulting my skills and schools is your idea of discussion ? Reported.

You're not your school. I can criticize your school all I want. And the mods know this.

Nothing they did broke anything, the idea of fatalism of Human vs Machines on a Cosmic scale is dumb.

How did you ever get through four seasons of the tv show? That's what it was about from the very start. I'm utterly curious and I must know.

[Lord Baal]

Just to put some data in there, the Sun is actually the most demanding energy intensive place to go in the solar system and even in vacuum of the space some sorts of corrosion are still an issue.

Also 10 years would mean nothing for a developing civilization that has no access to higher knowledge.

But 10 years for a rebuilding civilization with access to a great deal of it's prior knowledge is enough to be back on their feet, again not flying FTL but a moderately good state of civilization.

Also simply saying go to a better school is not against the ToS, it come across as rude yes, but I think is not an insult unless he outright state a peyorative name at you.

[Menelik_I]

All their metal is going into building engines. Get your priorities straight.

So if they land 200 TONS of metal they MUST use it all to build engines ? And what if they land 1000 TONS of metal ? Should they also MUST use it all ? What about 50 TONS ? THEY MUST use all of it to build engines no matter what is their energy Needs because Gaidin said so.

Many of the Colonial Ships that did land in New Caprica must be at least a 50 T of scrap metal there, they can get another 50T from the ships in orbit besides the spare parts.

10 years might not be long enough on the "Civilization Scale" but it is heck long enough on the lifespan of the normal human being.

They only need enough pumps for their drinking water needs, irrigations needs and maybe a few engines to run a few river barges.

Five Tones of Metal to build each of these babies, draft Tyrol and his entire maintenance crew to make it, alongside that Aeronautical Engineer from the Pegasus.

PS: I reported you again, please stop insulting me personally and provide any kind of counter argument that doesn't border trolling. That would be appreciated.

[Gaidin]

So if they land 200 TONS of metal they MUST use it all to build engines ? And what if they land 1000 TONS of metal ? Should they also MUST use it all ? What about 50 TONS ? THEY MUST use all of it to build engines no matter what is their energy Needs because Gaidin said so.

Mostly I'm saying until they're able to establish an infrastructure that lets them mine new metal they're not going to be building anything out of metal that they can build out of wood. We demonstrated quite aptly before the 19th century that water travel can be done quite well with vehicles made from wood, and they're dropping people off in areas with plenty of trees. 200 Tons of metal is still a precious resource. The wood isn't. The wood they can experiment with. The wood they can deal with plenty of error.

PS: I reported you again, please stop insulting me personally and provide any kind of counter argument that doesn't border trolling. That would be appreciated.

PS: Not a damn clue what you're talking about.

[Menelik_I]

Mostly I'm saying until they're able to establish an infrastructure that lets them mine new metal they're not going to be building anything out of metal that they can build out of wood. We demonstrated quite aptly before the 19th century that water travel can be done quite well with vehicles made from wood, and they're dropping people off in areas with plenty of trees. 200 Tons of metal is still a precious resource. The wood isn't. The wood they can experiment with. The wood they can deal with plenty of error.

They don't need to mine for new Metal for the first Decade or so, and by the second Decade they should be able to find Iron and Copper and be able to mine it.

Sure of course prioritization means that the Metal is reserved to build engines for essential things, which might include a few river Barges to move crops around when the Tylium runs out.

They can build their houses and building out of wood. Who said anything about building metal barges ? O even joked of kids getting their girlfriends on dates on wood barges.

[Gaidin]

Oars and Sails.

Save the engines for things other than transportation. Like your awesome water purification system.

[Menelik_I]

Oars and Sails.

They can do it too if they want to, just you drive a VW second hand car and Obama drives a Armored GMC they can have a of different ships for different uses.

If you want for example to get 20 trees logs (total weight 10 Tons or something) or move 10 tons of urgent supplies from the logging station 10 Km away then using the Raptor engine Power or Steam powered barge. If you are just a bunch of blokes on a non urgent mission use the sails and oars barge. You could move a 10 Ton steam power-plant around in a slow barge too if it wasn't too urgent to get it to Destination.

The reason why you would need powered Barges in the beginning is that you will need a hell lot of wood to build houses for 50 000 people and to move around the agricultural equipment to make everything speedy. But after that you can go lazy sailing.

It sure in hell beats going Pygmy Hippie style, and walking in the wilderness with a backpack.

[Lord Baal]

I'm on Gaiding on this specific one. It would be far better go Egyptian on this one and move the grains/harvest/passengers on sail/oar ships and save any engine/fuel to make other work like producing electricity or running water pumps.

Steam engines would work too but would need awful lots of wood, but meh, they have plenty.

And please scale back the conflict a bit.

[Menelik_I]

Save the engines for things other than transportation. Like your awesome water purification system.

They are better off just boiling off the water in most case, by purification I mean slightly filtering water before pumping it because muddy river water would not be nice to pipe to people and might cause some clogs.

[Gaidin]

I'm on Gaiding on this specific one. It would be far better go Egyptian on this one and move the grains/harvest/passengers on sail/oar ships and save any engine/fuel to make other work like producing electricity or running water pumps.

Steam engines would work too but would need awful lots of wood, but meh, they have plenty.

The wood only becomes a problem when they get into a population in the millions. Their glass ceiling is still food production and still will be for a long time. They aren't exactly able to produce fertilizer on a whim and haven't ever been able to. Most of their clothing would be in the form of skinning what they hunt, and they could preserve the meat assuming they could figure out a way to do so. Not exactly the hardest thing to do, if they can find a source of the materials.

And please scale back the conflict a bit.

There is no conflict.

[Lord Baal]

Exactly. I think it depends more on how they organize themselves and more importantly, who much access they have to knowledge! Those are the primary factors, then right there with them is food followed closely by shelter.

[Menelik_I]

Most of their clothing would be in the form of skinning what they hunt, and they could preserve the meat assuming they could figure out a way to do so..

I don't know what they used in the 12 colonies but there are a range of plant fibers such as Raphia that they could use as clothing. It is less available and durable than Cotton, so they will have to content themselves with less cloths.

and they could preserve the meat assuming they could figure out a way to do so. Not exactly the hardest thing to do, if they can find a source of the materials.

They could just smoke the meat, same as fish.

[Lord Baal]

Their priorities should be:

- Organization: Function like a team and ration supplies until they start making a surplus of food.

- Knowledge: Hold and secure access to knowledge. Books are specially desirable since they are durable, computers would be terrific (if solar powered or if they manage to get electricity back up) but they should try to transfer as much digital the info to paper as they can, since they really won't be building computers anytime soon. Also identify agronomists, engineers, survivalists, technicians, in important fields and such, make sure they impart as much of the knowledge as they can.

- Food production: This is pretty self explanatory and is right there with the first two. Domestication of an appropriate animal would be highly advisable.

- Shelter: and commodities should be the primary overall goal. By commodities I mean basic things like clothing and furniture.



Actually that would be no much different from a game of Dwarf Fortress XoD

[Ciabhán]

Everyone needs to start playing nice. This thread will be watched and if it continues further action will be taken. Those of you to whom this applies know who you are.

[Menelik_I]

Their priorities should be:

- Organization: Function like a team and ration supplies until they start making a surplus of food.

- Knowledge: Hold and secure access to knowledge. Books are specially desirable since they are durable, computers would be terrific (if solar powered or if they manage to get electricity back up) but they should try to transfer as much digital the info to paper as they can, since they really won't be building computers anytime soon. Also identify agronomists, engineers, survivalists, technicians, in important fields and such, make sure they impart as much of the knowledge as they can.

- Food production: This is pretty self explanatory and is right there with the first two. Domestication of an appropriate animal would be highly advisable.

- Shelter: and commodities should be the primary overall goal. By commodities I mean basic things like clothing and furniture.



Actually that would be no much different from a game of Dwarf Fortress XoD

I pretty much agree with your priorities, but what would be even more interesting in this scenario is that even when they were in space some people refused to go follow the rationing system totally and there was a black market, which unfortunately involved also prostitution of minors.

But point is that besides a good organization and pooling of resources a lot of people in the fleet shown signs of Business thumb so there a chance that a lot of people would try to mount basic proto-entreprises to try to deal with the non essentials such as : find some form of oil, building non essential furniture, finding edible plants, valuable plants and medicinal plants and much more.

Actually the top 2 priorities will be to make Booze and find some Tobacco substitute, because I was under the impression that they smoked a lot in BSG, just imagine when their stock of cigarettes run out, they are going insane right there.

Also lets not forget the Doctor and Baltar lab equipment, actually the biggest problem here is that Baltar is a crook and will BS everyone with his non working inventions like the Cylon Detector.

Back to Space Warfare, is there any kind of countermeasures to Laser beams in for a space battlestar ?

[Lord Baal]

Well black markets are almost guaranteed in every place some rationing and scarceness takes place, and it's something kind of unavoidable. The first one I can see there is people with knowledge (be it in their heads or in paper/computers) not wanting to share. That's why organization is top priority, this activity as unavoidable as it is should be minimized as much as possible, specially for knowledge. Booze and sex on the other hand, as for sad as it might seems are not on the top of the priority.

[Col. Tartleton]

Sex, booze, and cigarettes?

Forget the Nile, this looks like a job for Virginia!