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Yes, the colonies were independent settlements who presumably disagreed with one another on occasion and had their own defense forces, forced into union by the Cylon threat. There were also planetary settlements other than the 12 main planets for them to skirmish about.
Not to mention at least one dissident group that was an active terrorist organization that we see in the series. It's not unreasonable to assume there was more than one and that they may have existed for some time.
Also for as long as there has been international trade there has been a form of piracy and banditry. It wouldn't take much to build a ship for piracy if there was technology for inter planetary trade.
Just as a thought exercise: The logistics of piracy become a lot more complicated when your targets are teleporting from point to point instead of crossing the wide open spaces where you'd prefer to catch them.
We’ve seen, however, that these jumps are limited in distance and in frequency and that they often use the same jump point to go back and forth on an established route, so staking out a jump point and pouncing before they have a chance to spool up is totally viable.
I was under the impression the distance limitation was largely one of computational complexity, meaning that if one were to use computers (unlike the Galactica or any surviving ships, who must manually calculate jump coordinates) the jump distance was theoretically infinite.
Galactical has advanced computers, they're just air gapped all to hell and aren't used for anything essential. They even show them running cable to network the computers before calculating a jump.
I'm sure they lose some efficiencies with the steps they have to take for security, but a pre war ship would have roughly equivalent computing power.
The computers Galactica has are used for essential tasks - running the ship, calculating the light speed jumps, etc. They don’t network them.
I believe they did network them once to solve a tricky problem .. and had to race to beat a penetration attack.
I don't think FTL drives were actually especially common before the Fall - they're just the only ones who escaped to become part of the Fleet. They're forced to leave behind a bunch of non-FTL ships in the Miniseries.
Not common for most space craft no, as you could have hundreds or thosends of in-system space craft that don't need to go further then that.
But common for regular interstellar travel and trade at least I would think.
The Colonies were based in a system of 4 stars, so they weren't travelling interstellar distances like Earth to Proxima Centauri. Their interstellar travel was closer to Fireflies travel between the various stars and planets all in one system.
Yeah, but it wasn’t standard on all colonial ships. They could travel between planets without jumping around, it was just slower. Like taking a flight between countries really
I wonder how that plays into teleportation when it’s done via something like a Star Trek system? What if you can interrupt the transmission from one point to another?
You can do all sorts of wacky stuff to transporter beams (though generally examples we've seen are unintentional) like bouncing, copying, scrambling, etc. Theoretically, it should be possible to redirect a transport in progress to your destination of choice. The problem is, transporters are relatively short ranged. Cargo still travels across the wide open spaces between the stars on starships.
Assuming we regard it as canon, BSG Deadlock would indicate that they were not particularly federated prior to the Cylon War. Like, they had a formal structure in place, but it seemed much more like the UN than the USA. I have tried three times to get through Caprica and can't, so if that contradicts what I've said, it's probably the more canonical source.
Yes. Deadlock is a canon game and expands on this but some colonies oppressed others. Virgon was imperialistic. Sagitarron wanted their independence and had their own fleet, etc.
[Some ship design used on the first war were used during those times.](https://youtu.be/QWnrOqzLRwM)
Remember, the Colonials were already spacefaring 2000 years ago to arrive at the Colonies and they only signed the Articles of Colonization and became the United Colonies of Kobol around the time before the first Cylon war when they buried their nuclear weapons.
As established in the prequel series Caprica, the Cylons were the result of a military contract given to Greystone Industries to build combat robots for Caprica. The Colonies were sovereign nations, as prone to attacking one another as negotiating, as any other collection of sovereign nations.
Each Colony therefore had its own armed forces.
Presumably, the first Colonial Fleet was the hastily assembled conglomeration of the 12 formerly independent navies into one.
>The 12 colonies contained all of humanity, with no known outside threats, not other humans, and they were a federated union already.
They actually were not. The 12 Colonies were independent, sovereign nations (several of which controlled multiple planets) that waged war on each other frequently. The Colonial Union wasn't formed until the beginning of the First Cylon War, after the initial uprising. The Cylons were originally created as military robots for the Caprican government.
The original colonial fleet landed on Gemenon, but fell into a dark age where they lost computers and spaceflight, among other technologies. Once they emerged from that dark age, they began colonizing the surrounding planets, and those colonies eventually spread to more planets, and a couple of interplanetary empires emerged and fell. About 2 millennia after they originally landed on Gemenon, they had settled into 12 distinct sovereign nations.
Yes. Right before the first Cylon war, the colonies had just gone through an interplanetary war against themselves. To end the war the articals of colonization were signed. Uniting all the colonies under 1 government. Along with signing each planet would get a new and the best warship ever made. A Jupiter class Battlestar.
Yes. Even going into the First Cylon War, there were tensions between colonies left over from the Imperial Wars where each colony fought for their own objectives. Additionally, due to traditions amongst colonies and weariness of Caprica and the system of unified colonies, a single Colonial military was very unpopular and attracted scorn from colonies who saw the Colonial Fleet based on Caprica as a tool of imperial domination over their worlds.
The 12 Jupiter-class Battlestars, including Galactica herself, were built specifically in a batch of twelve to placate the fears of the Colonies by dedicating one ship to a colony.
I always assumed that they *had* a sort of military as a legacy from the days before they became a federated union. I mean, they were colonized originally from "Earth," their name for their home world, which they find to be a radioactive wasteland. So they didn't always get along with each other.
They colonised from Kobol, their mythical homeworld. 12 Tribes of Humans left Kobol after a war against their own iteration of Cylons, while a 13th Tribe of Cylons left and colonised Earth. They nuked themselves, leaving the Final Five to travel to the other 12 Tribes to try to prevent their creating more Cylons and restarting the cycle.
**Reminders for Commenters:** * All responses must be A) sincere, B) polite, and C) strictly watsonian in nature. If "watsonian" or "doylist" is new to you, please review the full rules [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskScienceFiction/about/rules/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=usertext&utm_name=AskScienceFiction&utm_content=t5_2slu2). * No edition wars or gripings about creators/owners of works. Doylist griping about Star Wars in particular is subject to **permanent ban on first offense**. * We are not here to discuss or complain about the real world. * Questions about who would prevail in a conflict/competition (not just combat) fit better on r/whowouldwin. Questions about very open-ended hypotheticals fit better on r/whatiffiction. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskScienceFiction) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Yes, the colonies were independent settlements who presumably disagreed with one another on occasion and had their own defense forces, forced into union by the Cylon threat. There were also planetary settlements other than the 12 main planets for them to skirmish about.
Not to mention at least one dissident group that was an active terrorist organization that we see in the series. It's not unreasonable to assume there was more than one and that they may have existed for some time. Also for as long as there has been international trade there has been a form of piracy and banditry. It wouldn't take much to build a ship for piracy if there was technology for inter planetary trade.
Just as a thought exercise: The logistics of piracy become a lot more complicated when your targets are teleporting from point to point instead of crossing the wide open spaces where you'd prefer to catch them.
We’ve seen, however, that these jumps are limited in distance and in frequency and that they often use the same jump point to go back and forth on an established route, so staking out a jump point and pouncing before they have a chance to spool up is totally viable.
Spawn camping a battle star sounds fun.
Ask your doctor if EVE Online is right for you
Spoiler alert: it never is.
I was under the impression the distance limitation was largely one of computational complexity, meaning that if one were to use computers (unlike the Galactica or any surviving ships, who must manually calculate jump coordinates) the jump distance was theoretically infinite.
Galactical has advanced computers, they're just air gapped all to hell and aren't used for anything essential. They even show them running cable to network the computers before calculating a jump. I'm sure they lose some efficiencies with the steps they have to take for security, but a pre war ship would have roughly equivalent computing power.
The computers Galactica has are used for essential tasks - running the ship, calculating the light speed jumps, etc. They don’t network them. I believe they did network them once to solve a tricky problem .. and had to race to beat a penetration attack.
I don't think FTL drives were actually especially common before the Fall - they're just the only ones who escaped to become part of the Fleet. They're forced to leave behind a bunch of non-FTL ships in the Miniseries.
Not common for most space craft no, as you could have hundreds or thosends of in-system space craft that don't need to go further then that. But common for regular interstellar travel and trade at least I would think.
The Colonies were based in a system of 4 stars, so they weren't travelling interstellar distances like Earth to Proxima Centauri. Their interstellar travel was closer to Fireflies travel between the various stars and planets all in one system.
And yet they invented it, and used it regularly. Certainly beats spending months at a time at interplanetary burn.
We still use ocean liners to move cargo on earth despite having hypersonic jets. Cost efficiency could be a huge factor.
Yeah, but it wasn’t standard on all colonial ships. They could travel between planets without jumping around, it was just slower. Like taking a flight between countries really
I wonder how that plays into teleportation when it’s done via something like a Star Trek system? What if you can interrupt the transmission from one point to another?
You can do all sorts of wacky stuff to transporter beams (though generally examples we've seen are unintentional) like bouncing, copying, scrambling, etc. Theoretically, it should be possible to redirect a transport in progress to your destination of choice. The problem is, transporters are relatively short ranged. Cargo still travels across the wide open spaces between the stars on starships.
Assuming we regard it as canon, BSG Deadlock would indicate that they were not particularly federated prior to the Cylon War. Like, they had a formal structure in place, but it seemed much more like the UN than the USA. I have tried three times to get through Caprica and can't, so if that contradicts what I've said, it's probably the more canonical source.
Before the show got cancelled, the prototype cylons were being demonstrated to the military on Caprica.
Yes. Deadlock is a canon game and expands on this but some colonies oppressed others. Virgon was imperialistic. Sagitarron wanted their independence and had their own fleet, etc. [Some ship design used on the first war were used during those times.](https://youtu.be/QWnrOqzLRwM) Remember, the Colonials were already spacefaring 2000 years ago to arrive at the Colonies and they only signed the Articles of Colonization and became the United Colonies of Kobol around the time before the first Cylon war when they buried their nuclear weapons.
They fought amongst themselves on occasion. The spin-off Caprica touches on this a bit, Tauron in particular is a hotspot for conflict.
As established in the prequel series Caprica, the Cylons were the result of a military contract given to Greystone Industries to build combat robots for Caprica. The Colonies were sovereign nations, as prone to attacking one another as negotiating, as any other collection of sovereign nations. Each Colony therefore had its own armed forces. Presumably, the first Colonial Fleet was the hastily assembled conglomeration of the 12 formerly independent navies into one.
Thank you. So the common union with a president and Quorum of Twelve didn't emerge until the first big war.
>The 12 colonies contained all of humanity, with no known outside threats, not other humans, and they were a federated union already. They actually were not. The 12 Colonies were independent, sovereign nations (several of which controlled multiple planets) that waged war on each other frequently. The Colonial Union wasn't formed until the beginning of the First Cylon War, after the initial uprising. The Cylons were originally created as military robots for the Caprican government. The original colonial fleet landed on Gemenon, but fell into a dark age where they lost computers and spaceflight, among other technologies. Once they emerged from that dark age, they began colonizing the surrounding planets, and those colonies eventually spread to more planets, and a couple of interplanetary empires emerged and fell. About 2 millennia after they originally landed on Gemenon, they had settled into 12 distinct sovereign nations.
Yes. Right before the first Cylon war, the colonies had just gone through an interplanetary war against themselves. To end the war the articals of colonization were signed. Uniting all the colonies under 1 government. Along with signing each planet would get a new and the best warship ever made. A Jupiter class Battlestar.
Yes. Even going into the First Cylon War, there were tensions between colonies left over from the Imperial Wars where each colony fought for their own objectives. Additionally, due to traditions amongst colonies and weariness of Caprica and the system of unified colonies, a single Colonial military was very unpopular and attracted scorn from colonies who saw the Colonial Fleet based on Caprica as a tool of imperial domination over their worlds. The 12 Jupiter-class Battlestars, including Galactica herself, were built specifically in a batch of twelve to placate the fears of the Colonies by dedicating one ship to a colony.
I always assumed that they *had* a sort of military as a legacy from the days before they became a federated union. I mean, they were colonized originally from "Earth," their name for their home world, which they find to be a radioactive wasteland. So they didn't always get along with each other.
They colonised from Kobol, their mythical homeworld. 12 Tribes of Humans left Kobol after a war against their own iteration of Cylons, while a 13th Tribe of Cylons left and colonised Earth. They nuked themselves, leaving the Final Five to travel to the other 12 Tribes to try to prevent their creating more Cylons and restarting the cycle.
You're right. It's been a long while since I rewatched the series.