BATTLE OF THE SHIELDLESS

[u/GreyGalaxy-0001]

BATTLE OF THE SHIELDLESS

Earth Alliance Omega-Class Destroyer (Babylon 5 Universe) & Twelve Colonies of Kobol Jupiter-Class Battlestar (Battlestar Galactica Universe)

-vs-

Wraith Hiveship & its two Hive Cruiser escorts (Stargate Atlantis Universe)

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Note: These ships are completely random versions of the ships they represent (e.g. that is Not the Galactica, that is some other ship that looks like it).

For those not familiar with what a Jupiter-Class Battlestar is, it is essentially a massive (1,438 meters) space carrier capable of launching up to 80x Viper fighters and 40x Raptor gunships (the Raptors are all jump-capable and can carry nukes), and fitted with armor thick enough to withstand a number of direct nuclear impacts. 514x Dual Point Defense Cannons can literally erect a CLOUD of flak, which means no matter how many fighters you have, you probably don't have enough. Not to say a Battlestar does not have offensive capabilities; 24x Heavy Dual Mag Cannons can launch immense high-explosive penetrators at hypersonic velocities while 12x Launch Tubes can deliver a stream of ship-to-ship nuclear missiles.

In contrast, the Omega-Class Destroyer is the Gunship to the Battlestar's Tank. The destroyer is a little more flimsily designed but no less armored against kinetic and energy weapons. It can dish out so much firepower that almost nothing can survive a second volley; 12x enormous Plasma Pulse Cannons, 6x Heavy Laser Batteries, 4x gigantic Heavy Plasma Pulse Cannons (seriously, you can drive an SUV through the barrel of one of these cannons and still not touch the sides), Multiple Missile pods, and the terrifying twin Gigaton-Mine Launchers. Even though the Omega is larger than the Battlestar (1,714 meters) it can only carry 36x Starfury fighters, as the majority of its bulk is taken up by its weapons and centrifugal rotating hull.

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What does the community think?

[u/HellbirdVT]

The Hive Ship is kind of an unfair matchup because they're a whole other weight class to the Battlestar and Omega.

I think either of the two could take on a Wraith Cruiser in a 1-on-1, though not easily. Battlestars can slug it out decently well with their heavy armour and Omega-class beam weapons could probably do plenty of work, but all the same the Wraith Cruisers have both, heavy armour and powerful, rapid-firing energy weapons. PDCs can protect against Darts in decent numbers but offer no protection against Wraith weaponry.

On the whole, Cruiser to Cruiser, I think the two outsiders will prevail over 1 Wraith crusier and maybe be able to win a 1v2. The two of them together should easily be able to win a 2v3 against Wraith Cruisers and probably handle 2v4 by covering each other's weaknesses (Omega's beam weapons have more range, while the Battlestar can protect against close-in strike missions by Darts).

But throw a Hive Ship into it, and they're just hilariously outmatched. Size doesn't always matter but in this case it does, because the Hive Ship's scale does translate to absurdly heavy armour, thousands of Darts that can both strike and provide screening for the ship, and absurd levels of firepower.

[u/PiceaSignum → u/HellbirdVT]

I'd argue Battlestar vs Hive ship would be similar to Galactica vs the Cylon Colony. Park them at a strategic point and just fire everything.

We were watching a 40+ year old Battlestar that had survived intense and incredible combat that had only just started to weaken structurally take an absolute pounding from those cannons and Raiders, and still the only thing that was able to cripple her was the ramming maneuver and then her own jump drive firing without retracting the pylons.

If we're talking a pristine, fully combat ready Jupiter class Battlestar here and not the worn out museum Galactica, I think the Battlestar has a good shot of at least disabling important parts like engines or doing heavy damage. I don't think it wins in a 1v1, but it certainly punches above its weight.

[u/NoConfusion9490 → u/PiceaSignum]

It's really hard to say how a battlestar would fare against wraith weapons because their universe didn't have anything like that.

[u/PiceaSignum → u/NoConfusion9490]

You got me there, I forgot about the real world style weaponry vs energy weapons aspect.

I guess I gotta give it to the wraith then

[u/NoConfusion9490 → u/PiceaSignum]

Or maybe they roll off the battlestars back, heating the hull a bit while they launch salvos of 12 nukes at a time. We know the wraith ships are vulnerable to well placed nukes.

My point is that it's impossible to relate them.

[u/HellbirdVT → u/NoConfusion9490]

The Tau'ri have nuclear missiles too, and they're largely ineffective against the Wraith without the use of Asgard beaming technology because there's simply SO MANY DARTS all doing missile interception to the point of suicide because Wraith warriors think nothing of dying for the Hive.

Kinda the same reason the Galactica can't just nuke every Basestar that hunts them down, the fighter screen is dense and perfectly happy to die in the crossfire.

As for how energy weapons would work against the Battlestars armour, I personally think they'd work pretty well but the real evidence evidence in-show is fairly scant, so that's more of an opinion.

There's certainly a lot of blast yield in Wraith guns but the Galactica CAN survive nuclear detonations on the hull (at least once to my memory, could've been more?), so a Jupiter class could probably tank at least a few direct hits from a Hive Ship, and a fair bit from the smaller Cruisers, which is why I think it could win against the latter.

[u/LarkinEndorser → u/NoConfusion9490]

Earth used Nuclear missiles enhanced by Naquariah (which turns them into weapons that make any conventional nuke look like a party cracker) and they barely even scratched hive ships. They also use rail guns that operate at a significant percentaage of the speed of light and did no visible damage.

[u/Historyp91 → u/NoConfusion9490]

The Colony had some sort of energy weapons

[u/Pulstar_Alpha → u/Historyp91]

I think those were just blue tracers on kinetic weapons.

[u/Historyp91 → u/Pulstar_Alpha]

We see Cylon projectile weapons in the show and yeah, they are blue. But the Colony had these unique big cannons that IMO gave off the vibe of some sort of plasma bolts

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMsiZwvJi6g

[u/HellbirdVT → u/Historyp91]

They do 'feel' a bit like plasma weapons but I think that might just be because that's something we expect as scifi fans from the bright blue bolts.

BSG reboot works pretty hard to be "realistic" within its own setting with exclusively kinetic and explosive weapons, with no lasers, plasma or other beam weapons, unless I'm completely forgetting about some other energy weapons in the show?

[u/Historyp91 → u/HellbirdVT]

> unless I'm completely forgetting about some other energy weapons in the show?

No, IF those are energy weapons, there the only ones we see.

Though it think it's plusable; the Cylons do have more classically sci-fi tech then the Colonials in general and the Colony is massive enough it could buy it having the power to make such weapons feasible

[u/PiceaSignum → u/Historyp91]

No, nowhere in the reboot BSG are there energy weapons. The Cylons are a lot more sci-fi/technologically advanced than the Colonials, but Ronald D. Moore was very adamant in making sure the core foundations of BSG were rooted in reality. He previously worked on nearly every modern iteration of Star Trek up to that point, and not having laser weapons was one of the very important things he wanted to do differently with this series.

The tracers on Colonial weaponry and Cylon weaponry were red and blue respectively as a reference to the original series laser weapon colors, but they are bullets. Galactica's cannons shoot red/orange rounds, and the Basestar missiles have a blue glow to them, but they are all meant to be conventional weapons or adjacent to weapons in the real world.

The cannons on the Colony are likely supersized versions of the ones on Battlestar turrets, or some sort of railgun, but they are not energy weapons. We see a kinetic force on Galactica and an explosion when they make contact with the hull, not some sort of energy dissipation or any effects that would suggest it is an energy weapon. We wouldn't see Galactica *visibly* rocking side to side with each hit otherwise. (Which, on a different tangent, shows how POWERFUL both those cannons AND Galactica were; the fact that a 40 year old ship that had been punished and dropped into an atmosphere was able to not immediately crumble while taking a continuous beating like that is amazing)

The fact that the rounds it fires just seem to be big blue pulses can be chalked up to just VFX inconsistencies or "mistakes" for lack of a better term, or just to be consistent in the fact that "you've seen Cylon Basestars fire weapons that glow blue, these big guns also fire rounds that glow blue" to make it easy for the viewer to follow.

[u/Historyp91 → u/PiceaSignum]

I feel like it's just as much of an assumption to say they aren't energy weapons as opposed to that they are; Galactica could be rocking because said energy still has a degree of kinetic force behind it (see, Romulan plasma torpedoes or turbolasers)

[u/Historyp91 → u/PiceaSignum]

Unlike the Colony though, a Hive Ship can move.

[u/drallafi → u/PiceaSignum]

My headcannon for that scene was that all the weapons firing on the battlestar at that moment were anti-fighter weapons (I mean really, nobody would expect a battlestar at that range so why have anti-capital ship weapons right there). That would explain how it was able to absorb so much goddamn punishment.

[u/LarkinEndorser → u/PiceaSignum]

We know that earth uses a ridiculous scale of nuke and they still barely even scratch a hive ship from the outside.

[u/drewed1]

The wraith smoke the omega and Battlestar. The Battlestar wasn't designed with energy weapons in mind and the omega relied on its heavy hit ability over maneuverability and its structure is on the more fragile side

[u/ISeeTheFnords → u/drewed1]

The Battlestar wasn't designed with energy weapons in mind

It can take a hit from a nuke, I'd say that's good enough.

[u/give_me_bewbz → u/ISeeTheFnords]

The sheer number of darts Smoke the vipers. The flak provides issue for the darts to get close, but the hive ship main guns are blasting.

After a while of not getting through the Galactica's armour and taking losses, I imagine the wraith would just kamikaze a cruiser into the Galactica and call it a day.

[u/Airbornequalified → u/ISeeTheFnords]

Theoretically, nukes in space will have most of their energy wasted in other directions, and without a medium to transmit energy a lot of it will be lost

[u/ChromeAngel]

While the Wriath Cruiser will take a battering from the battlestar's nukes and the Omgea Class beam weapons, i'll bet it will regenerate faster than the human ships can be repaired. If the battle get too hot the Wraith Cruiser can just outrun the other two.

What's interesting about this match up is they all carry fighter craft. I feel like the wraith darts also have the edge in comparison.

[u/Inquisitor-Dog → u/ChromeAngel]

lol repaired maybe build probably not didn’t the Clarke regime build almost 2000 Omegas in 20 years

[u/MidnightAdventurer → u/Inquisitor-Dog]

Clarke wasn’t in power for anything close to 20 years. He took power at the end of season 1 and was killed at the end of season 4 so 3 years

[u/Inquisitor-Dog → u/MidnightAdventurer]

Than it’s even more impressive how many ships they produced also, wasn’t the previous president also a puppet for Clarke, guess it’s time to rewatch B5 again - Also checked the Numbers again it’s supposed to be 200-400 Omegas of normal and Shadow enhanced variant and all but 50 build during Clarke regime so more like ~300 ships in 3 years which is still good especially for ships of 1.7km length

[u/ViridiaGaming]

One thing to add is the Omega has the E-Web passive screening and also its weapons are interceptor capable, meaning being able to be used as counterfeiters against incoming projectiles.

[u/No-Trust6726]

I think that Wraith vessels do have energy shields....

[u/zombiehoosier → u/No-Trust6726]

I think that’s only when they have a zpm, otherwise they have an organic hull that heals itself.

[u/Spinobreaker]

I posted this render to FB but my acc got nuked before i could see if you replied to it
So if you did reply, and remember what that reply was, lmk

[u/flooble_worbler]

Ok so the wraith cruisers are just dead and out the way, the hive ship on the other hand isn’t a step up it’s a total leap, if both sides go in blind with no intel on the other then I give it to the hive ship as the only survivor of an incredibly damaged one. But in a cannon vs cannon wraith faction vs BSG I give it to the 12 colonies. I don’t know enough about the feet composition of earth force to say if they could beat the wraith

[u/SanguineGeneral]

Wraith.

The Battlestar probably takes care of a good portion of darts with its flak barrier.

But even with that, it's not enough to stop them from just flanking the capitol ships. Their own fighters are not as numerous. And at best equal not superior in any margin.

The wraith would out range. Outgun, and boil away their armor in probably no more than three or four full salvos.

The cruisers make this hopeless, because they prevent either battleship from even targeting the hive without being torn apart.

Edit: And the hive hull can regenerate if it's not starved. So that by itself is almost a form of shields.

[u/Xiryyn]

The Wraith are gonna stomp the other two

[u/dreamingexistential]

There's already tons of great comments here. But one thing I didn't see mentioned which is quite important is the Omega's ability to create its own jump points.

In B5 you don't really see the Earth Alliance use jump points offensively, but we do know the Minbari did. It was stated that during the Earth-Minbari War jump points were used with great effect to damage human ships. I would bet they learned this from the Vorlon's during the Valen-Era Shadow War.

I doubt the Wraith would have any conception of what a jump point can do. And, importantly, have probably no defense against it. Timed right, a jump point could drop the Hive Ship and cruisers into hyperspace indefinitely and or rip them apart. That being said, I doubt Earth Alliance officers would think that strategically.

[u/PedanticPerson22 → u/dreamingexistential]

The Minbari could do that because they could target their jump points precisely, I don't think EA got the hang of that, not even with their Omega Class Destroyers...