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.