BSG weaponry

Television, Movies Games and Books Galactica Verse
#1

All right, here is something that has been bothering me for a while. In Cylon war 1, they fought for 40 years, right? Then about a 30-40 year peace correct? This means the Colonials have been at odds with the Cylon[s] for close to a century.

Here is the part I have a hard time getting over: in 80 years, no one has produced a standard issue firearm that will be effective against the Cylon[s]??!! I mean come on, a fifty caliber rifle, or some armor piercing rounds would probably do the trick. So this leads to a few possibilities:

A.- The colonials didn’t worry about that craaaaaap because they were more worried about each other than the Cylon[s].

B.- the colonials are cheap and incompetent.

C.- space combat took a higher priority than ground combat. So much so, that the infantry weapons were neglected.

Thoughts?

#2

The first cylon war was actually only between 12 and 13 years long, and then a 40 year break before the new war. I would say that it would be hard to develope a weapon to combat a new version of an enemy that hasnt been seen yet. But at the same time we have seen colonial firearms that at least have some ability to damage the cylon centurions. But we should also consider the possability that neither the Galactica nor the Pegasus were equipt with the most powerfull and advanced weapons of their day either. I think its also important to consider ballistic limitations as well. All said, I dont think the situation has been ideal for researching the best way to combat an enemy that hasnt been seen in 40 years.

#3

The colonials did have those explosive rounds that made short work of those cylons that infiltrated galactica in early season 2. The only problem is that Galactica didn’t have neary enough of them.

#4

Right you are Magnus

#5

Oops, where in the hell did I get 40 years from!!??

I had forgotten about that, but what I was getting at was the weapon the colonials have now and back in CW 1 seemed more for human opponents. Shouldn’t every single person have standard issue anti-cylon gear (even during peace times) if Cylon[s] were the major threat?

Something like this:

//youtu.be/g77sLmw-UcY

#6

Well since they werent at war with the cylons then I would have to say no, they shouldnt all have weapons equipt for flighting the cylons. I think in reality they would carry what they would use for their current assignments. That doesnt mean such weapons dont exsist, but I dont see them carrying a kit that doesnt apply to the mission at hand. Thats how the military works.

#7

I mostly agree with you, but a person is just as dead if you shoot them with normal round or an armor piercing round, so carrying a round that would likely put down either a Cylon or human would make more sense to me. Technically, the cylon[s] never really had a peace with the colonials, just an armistice, which is just really a ceasefire. Plus the admiralty certainly seemed to think they would one day be fighting the Cylon[s] again.

As for how the military works, believe me, I have humped my share of heavy equipment through some pretty tough terrain that at the time seemed pretty pointless. So I don’t think being prepared for all possibilities is too far off base.

#8

The Colonials major fear, though, and seemingly the driving force for them having a huge military, and space fleet, was fighting the Cylon war, and the worry that someday they would return. Now, we’ve seen in the flashbacks in Razor and elsewhere that we were fighting mechanized centurions since day one, both in space and on the ground. So yeah, I would fully expect there to be a huge buildup of handheld weaponry designed against them. BSG isn’t big on lasers, phasers, etc., the technology isn’t there. SMGs (sub machine guns) seem to be all over the place, even in Galactica’s armory, but they’re pretty useless against a centurion. What we should be seeing is a shotgun-type longgun, or a big caliber rifle or bullpup type with, I don’t know, .50cal titanium sabot rounds or 00buck depleted uranium shotgun shells. And they should be all over the place, people should be tripping over them when they go to dinner! Galactica already loaded up at Ragnar Anchorage in the miniseries, and that’s a weapons storage facility, so you’d think that if Galactica’s stores were empty they would have loaded up on some small arms while they were there.
Heck, even an old fashioned sticky bomb (a grenade with an adhesive coating…throw-stick-boom) would be pretty useful. The pilots sidearm has that nifty grenade launcher attachment, but range/accuracy is way limited compared to what you would have on a shoulder fired weapon.
Of course, they can’t think of everything! And I suppose if blasting centurions was easy it wouldn’t be as fun/tense to watch.
But if Chief can jury rig an entire spacecraft, you’d think someone could have built a big potato gun or something along that line…

#9

I agree that it is better to have something and not need it than to not have it and need it, but this just isnt the way the military works. Equiptment is issued on an as needed basis. And I think thats the idea RDM is going for.

#10

2 thoughts I had when I saw this thread…

  1. Equipment quality :-
    a) That old saw ‘…and remember, your personal weapon was manufactured by the lowest bidder’
    b) 9 years spent using and ultimately instructing on a small arms system in the UK which took over 10 years to be ‘upgraded’ to the L85A2 model which had a certain amount of provision for such elements as mud, dirt, dust, and propellant fouling

These lead me to feel there’s a good likelihood the colonials just have crappy inappropriate materiel

  1. The military tends to
    a) Equip to fight the last major war - the run up to WWII most of the military of the world, with one or two notable exceptions, were setup to kick ass if WWII had been WWI, the director’s cut
    b) Hoard crap like the worlds biggest kleptomaniac… because that might come in handy one day - he-uge supplies of really old howitzers, and 2 whole frickin battleships ‘knocking around’ in Gulf War 1 which had been largely purposeless since either WWII or Vietnam dependant on who you ask.

…

All of which leads me to expect there to be shedloads of those HEAP rounds sat in every every arms locker… just possibly they may be

a) hidden behind 20 years of munitions stocktake stickers and thus invisible
b) containing propellant/explosive which is highly unstable due to age

…

Also… AP rounds + exo-atmospheric vehicle = bad craap

There’s one darn fine argument for Corporal RedShirt (or Billy but I better not go there or i’ll get whupped) not having ammunition loaded which could inadvertantly decompress the ship

…

Finally…

Perhaps the Guardians (and I could do with rewatching Razor to see about this one) weren’t armoured, and thus the need for AP rounds is a new thing… though that’d seem a bit wierd to me, maybe shiny != armoured

anyway… i’ll stop now

#11

In one of his podcasts, or possibly an interview, RDM said that there was a continuous back-and-forth between each side making improvements and refinements to their weaponry. That’s why, e.g., the Cylon boarders had to be taken out with explosive rounds early on, but later on a standard round suffices.

#12

<duplicate deleted>

#13

Damn - I bet non-AP ammunition is dirt cheap in the colonial fleet then… just ask Zarek for the latest prices

#14

The pilots would have had to stock a big supply of those sticky airhole patcher-uppers if they made a habit of capping off rounds in their ships.

#15

Oddly enough, known throughout the fleet as
“the starbuck rule”…

#16

As to why firearms hadn’t kept pace with the new cylon centurions. Keep in mind that for 40 years nobody had seen a new cylon centurion so all the military had to go on was the old cylon design.

Early on in the series Helo takes out a centurion at close range with his sidearm. Did he have explosive or armor piercing rounds as a standard issue or could it be that centurions specifically selected for a boarding mission might have had more armor than the standard centurion.

#17

Perhaps he just squeezed the trigger really hard

#18

On second thought, maybe they should just issue everyone a four foot piece of pipe :smiley:

#19

awesome

LMAO

#20

Not to be an ass iGhost, because I have enjoyed the discussion, but we will just have to agree to disagree on this point. All I can say is that in the US Army I have carried heavy anti-tank weapon in areas that had no tanks, and while escorting high value assets where we had to break contact whenever we came under fire, I carried claymores of all things (while mounted in a south african made vehicle that is nearly impossible to get out of). Maybe other militaries work differently, but this is the way I saw it work in the last eight years.

I haven’t seen that episode in a while, but it had seemed to me he was just lucky in hitting the bullethead in its one weak spot—the face plate.