The First Basestars

[Tinman]

These drawings were posted on a sci-fi shipbuilding forum I hang around on by MACROSSMARTIN along with their history and they were just too good not to pass on. I don't think Martin will mind.

Though the history is slanted more toward the Caprica/BSG2 story line - it is still a pretty good read.

Enjoy.

[Tinman]

ALPHA CLASS BASESTAR


BETA CLASS BASESTAR


Alpha and Beta class Baseships - Overview

Originally conceived as part of the Caprican plan to employ the then new Cylon force as an inter-colony 'police force' (a force firmly under the control of Caprica), the first Baseships were among the biggest FTL capable vehicles built up to that time.

Massing millions of tonnes, and each theoretically capable of transporting around 400,000 Centurions, plus Raiders, small craft and fighting vehicles, the Baseships represented a massive undertaking, reflecting the Caprican government's willingness to go to extremes to enforce its will on the rest of humanity.

Although slow to the point of being ponderous, the Baseships would be heavily armoured, well armed, and almost entirely crewed by completely expendable Cylons. A small command crew would ensure each ship remained under human control.

In fact, the Baseships had to be built surrounded by a veil of secrecy; they were a massive and flagrant breach of the Treaty of Pallas, by which the twelve colonies agreed to limit the sizes of their capital ships. Each Alpha class outmassed anything else flying by move than twice the tonnage!

Initiating the Baseship project with two prototypes (named Alpha and Beta), at the Delphi Yards, the Caprican military was happy to employ Cylon construction models almost exclusively in the building process; Cylons came with a guarantee to say nothing about the construction of the two illegal Baseships, and even better, they worked all day, every day, without pay.

However, due to delays caused by manufacturing difficulties with the new armour designed for the Baseships, both were completed for testing with only 15% of their plating in place.

The remarkable speed at which the two prototypes were built, tested, and deployed delighted the Caprican Admirals, and more Baseships were ordered.

Simply dubbed the Alpha and Beta classes, the Capricans intended to deploy eight of these giant carriers - four of each class - Alphas 1 to 4, and Betas 5 to 8.

Such plans were never to achieve fruition; just two weeks after Alpha 1 and Beta 5 joined the fleet, the Cylon Rebellion began.

Almost the first act of the Rebellion was the unplanned jumping of both Baseships out of the twelve colonies. To this day, where the Baseships went remains unknown. Their human command crews were powerless to prevent the Cylons from overriding their former masters, and stealing the Baseships. Of the humans on board Alpha and Beta, nothing was heard again.

Within weeks, Alpha and Beta had returned to the colonies - they were instrumental in the initial Cylon assaults upon Tauron, and the First Siege of Caprica.

But the real horror for the colonials was that Alpha and Beta now had siblings - no fewer than five additional vessels of each class were sighted inside colonial space before the war was a year old. Each was a near-identical duplicate of its progenitor, complete with unarmoured exposed ribbing, for the Cylons had yet to learn how to translate the lessons of war into naval architecture.

Nevertheless, the Alpha and Beta class Basestars proved to be deadly opponents throughout the early stages of the war. Only the deployment of improved Battlestars and Gunstars, along with superior human tactical flexibility, caused the Cylons to create bigger, more powerful Baseships.

Of the eighteen known ships of the Alpha class, seven were destroyed by colonial forces during the war. The remainder are unaccounted for. Twenty-three Beta class Baseships are known to have been built, of which eleven were destroyed. Again, the postwar fate of the rest is unknown.

[Tinman]

DELTA CLASS BASESTAR


Delta Class Baseship - Overview


The Delta class was the third of the original Caprican designs intended for their army of autonamons. The Deltas were intended to be employed as lighter, more nimble, attack-specialised vehicles.

To this end, each Delta was equipped with three huge landing craft (RIV-09 Testudos) each capable of deploying a full Cylon combat legion complete with all its armoured vehicles, organic artillery, and other support.

Over 110 other auxiliary craft, and a standard Raider Wing, completed the ship's carrier complement.

Deltas were built around the same reactor core and jump drive as that used on the Beta class. This massive power unit, combined with the Delta's much smaller mass, (about half that of the Beta,) provided the Deltas with excellent acceleration, and better control in low orbit.

Three cavernous hangars, built into the top of the superior saucer, housed the Testudos, alongside most of the other small craft embarked. Raiders launched through smaller bays in the inferior saucer, and were recovered the same way.

Deltas fairly bristled with kinetic firepower; no fewer than 21 heavy twin-weapon mounts covered the hull, while each Testudo hangar (which was built open to space) was covered by four quad-mounted rapid-firing systems.

However, one aspect of the Cylon-built Deltas continues to baffle historians and scientists; many of their Deltas possessed an addition never seen on the vast majority of their ships - a ring of 'living quarters' surrounding the central hub. Although complete with armoured windows, gravity plates and an oxygen/nitrogen atmosphere, no signs of habitation in these areas were ever unveiled in any wrecked Delta examined by the fleet.

Theories for these 'living quarters' abound, from wild speculation of a renegade human faction, secretly controlling the Cylons, to alien allies, to the idea that the Cylons could not completely abandon their servitudinal programing, and added accommodation for human prisoners. (Unlikely, given that - as the official history points out - Cylons never took prisoners alive.)

Three Deltas had been built and delivered to the Caprican fleet before the Cylon Rebellion. A fourth, still fitting out, was destroyed in dock during the revolt.

By the end of the war, no fewer than 33 Deltas had been separately identified by the Colonial Forces. 15 are known to have been destroyed, one most dramatically when it crashed - and exploded - into the planet Picon, leaving a crater over 3000 metres across.