nBSG Force Add!

TheMuffinKing · Post by **TheMuffinKing** » 2006-10-31 10:58pm

Pretty simple: By an act of BudJehAllaodah, the U.S.S. Sulaco gets diverted from its mission to LV426. The Ship and all the Colonial Marines, including Bishop and Ripley get transported to Ragnar anchorage right as the Galactica drops in. By virtue of my laziness, the IFF and Comm codes are identical, identifying the Sulaco as a freindly ship. This causes the crew to awaken from cryo sleep and to cut it short, join the rag tag fleet in the search for Earth.

How can the Marines and Sulaco help? Will they be a boon or a burden?

Assume the Cylons can't hack the Sulaco unless they get an infiltrator or centurion to physically access the main computer.

Can Sulaco's guns "cut the mustard"?

Finally, but most important: Sulaco's Nav computer is offline and will only reactivate upon comparing star charts at Kobol (if they survive). No immediate Earth jump!

DesertFly · Post by **DesertFly** » 2006-10-31 11:28pm

What kind of armament does the Sulaco have? I don't seem to recall that being addressed in the movie at all. Also, I don't believe it would be nearly as valuable in a fight as, say, Pegasus; the impression I got from Aliens was more of a transport.

AK_Jedi · Post by **AK_Jedi** » 2006-11-01 12:00am

Unless the colonials can somehow retrofit a ftl drive to the sulaco, they would be left behind rather quickly, or simply transfered to another ship. All their explosive tipped bullets would be mighty helpful in fighting off cylon boarding parties though.

Zor · Post by **Zor** » 2006-11-01 12:34am

How powerful are the pulse rifles they have and how many marines and crew are aboard the ship? Galactica already has a decent sized complement of marines.

Zor

Alyeska · Post by **Alyeska** » 2006-11-01 01:45am

M41As fire a 10mm round that is equivilant to a high powered .30cal round. They have light AP qualities and then explode after having pierced armor or other material. This puts all their impact power directly on the target. Firing on lightly armored targets is likely to cause gaping flesh wounds just inside the armor while unarmored targets are going to have shreded internal organs. The range on the rifles isn't great by the nature of their design. Crude iron sights and the bullets don't have the size to have distance velocity.

Alyeska · Post by **Alyeska** » 2006-11-01 01:47am

If they couldn't make the Sulaco FTL capable, they would strip her. She has main guns of some sort that I highly suspect would be useful to the Colonials. Plenty of ship resources they could use. Additional support craft (minimum 2 Dropships). Some new style weapons that could potentialy be replicated. Additional combat experience.

Now, big stickler here. Bishop is going to freak the Colonials. An obvious machine. And when Ripley tells the Colonials about her experience with Androids, Bishop is going to be locked up.

Shroom Man 777 · Post by **Shroom Man 777** » 2006-11-01 01:55am

But they got independently targeting particle beam phalanx. Whoa! Fry half a city with this puppy. They got tactical smart missiles, phase-plasma pulse rifles, RPGs, they got sonic electronic ball breakers! They got nukes, knives, sharp sticks...

Dargos · Post by **Dargos** » 2006-11-01 02:17am

they have nukes...don't know how many..but the galactica only had...what..6 or so and one of those was given to Baltar and we all know what happened with that one.

DPDarkPrimus · Post by **DPDarkPrimus** » 2006-11-01 03:26am

General facts:
The USS Sulaco is a Conestoga class starship. It's over 385 meters in length and weighs in at roughly 78,000 metric tons.

Power and engines:
The fusion reactor has a maximum generating output of 3.6 Terawatts. For sublight thrust and maneuvers, it uses four Gates-Heidmann GF-240 rocket motor, powered directly by the fusion drive. Each engine can generate thrusts in excess of 35,100 metric tons, although running at maximum can only be sustained for short periods due to massive fuel consumption- usually the engines run at a fraction of the maximum. The Sulaco's hyperdrive can sustain a high crusing speed of 0.74 light years per sidereal day.

Stealth charactaristics:
Hull panels made of radar absorbent material serve to reduce the radar cross section of the vessel to less than 10 m^2 from the forward aspect and 260 m^2 from abeam. Engine outlets have infrared supressors to disguaise the engine flare, while a cooling tower beneath the hull reduces the ship's infrared signature. Hull coatings are laser absorbent to reduce lidar reflection, while the over all color scheme is a dark 'battleship' grey to minimize the ship's albedo.

Main armament:
Eight XIM-28A Long Lance ASAT missles in the dorsal launch bay. The XIM-28A is a 5.6 m Anti-Satellite Missle powered by a two-stage solid-rocket booster. The warhead consists of a forged-fragment ring, fused to expode such that it creates a lethal cloud of penetrating fragments.

Secondary armament:
A pair of 800 MeV turboalternator powered Neutral Particle Beam weapons, firing into the starship's forward 'cone', each capable of disabling a target's electronics and instrumentation at ranges up to 100,000 km. Sufficient deuterium tanking exists for up to 230 seconds of firing.

Short range armament consists of a dorsal and ventral turrent, each mounting twin railgun launchers that fire kinetic ammunition at velocities over 12 km per second. Despite the high ROF, these weapons are less accurate than beam weapons against maneuvering starships or missles, and have a practical engagment range of less than 100 km. However, a single hit from a railgun round is capable of causing catastrophic damage to a space target. The railgun works by accelerating a charged plasma to high velocities and using it to propel a kinetic round at the target. They fire up to 30 rpm each and are fed from an autoloader. Common ammunition loads include alternating KPI and KCP rounds. KCP (Kinetic Core Penetrating) rounds mass 220 grams each and are composed of steel-sheathed tungsten. KCP rounds that hit their target punch strait through the ships hull, breaching every airtight compartment until they exit or come to rest and leaving a wake of secondary damage from hypersonic shockwaves and superheating in the pressurised areas. KPI (Kinetic Penetrating Incediary) mass 202 g each and are composed of tungsted capped plastic composites. They are designed to penetrate the pressure hull, vaporizing after impact into a directed plasma hot enough to ignite the very structure of the ship. In addition, they create a blast overpressure capable of blowing out several sections of the ship.

Point defenses:
Port and starboard laser turrets. These mount 80 mW free-electron laser capable of vaporising small targets such as railgun rounds, or disabling incoming missles and fighters at ranges up to 20 km. A central dispenser can deliver 60 orbital fragmentation mines for kinetic kills against low-orbiting spacecraft, while an aft bay is equipped to launch up to twenty decoy ballutes and two maneuvering decoy drones against incoming enemy spacecraft.

A main magazine forward of the shuttle launch bay stores the orbital bombardment ordance. The Sulaco carries 80 free-fall guided re-entry vehicles (RVs) capable of carrying a variety of warheads from bunker-busting kinetic penetrators to high explosive and nuclear, as well as decoys.

This armament, though light, is formidable enough to give the Conestogas a large degree of autonomy when operating far from a fleet or taskforce.

All info is from the Colonial Marines Technical Manual, naturally.

DPDarkPrimus · Post by **DPDarkPrimus** » 2006-11-01 03:28am

And since I can't edit my post to bold it...

The Sulaco does, in fact, have FTL capability.

Shroom Man 777 · Post by **Shroom Man 777** » 2006-11-01 03:37am

If those lasers can neutralize railgun rounds, then perhaps its a fair bet that they can neutralize Cylon missiles too.

DPDarkPrimus · Post by **DPDarkPrimus** » 2006-11-01 03:42am

The Sulaco's inability to put up a flak barrier like the Battlestars makes it much more vunerable to Raiders, but it absolutely slaughter Basestars.

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2006-11-01 03:44am

It has decoys too, and since Cylons don't know what 'recon' is, they will be useful.

Shroom Man 777 · Post by **Shroom Man 777** » 2006-11-01 03:56am

DPDarkPrimus wrote:The Sulaco's inability to put up a flak barrier like the Battlestars makes it much more vunerable to Raiders, but it absolutely slaughter Basestars.

Well, the obvious answer is to put it alongside Galactica.

DPDarkPrimus · Post by **DPDarkPrimus** » 2006-11-01 03:58am

Shroom Man 777 wrote:
DPDarkPrimus wrote:The Sulaco's inability to put up a flak barrier like the Battlestars makes it much more vunerable to Raiders, but it absolutely slaughter Basestars.
Well, the obvious answer is to put it alongside Galactica.

If we were able to pull maneuvers with two Battlestars, having them operate in a rotation around the Sulaco while it fires rails at Basestars in the firing windows.... now that's space porn at it's finest.

Post by **NecronLord** » 2006-11-01 04:01am

We don't know how fast the FTL drives are relative to one another. But yes, the Sulaco, as it is something of an AI itself - hell, it's even capable of fighting without a crew - should be quite proof against cylon hacking attempts. The Sulaco also has an engagement range that far outstrips what we've seen from the colonials and cylons, and if nothing else, its guns would be useful for attacking cylons before they could even see it.

Of course, as Sulaco is in fact, a robot herself, the Colonials would probably freak out. On the other hand, Sulaco should be able to determine where Earth is. And having an Earth warship would be a tremendous morale boost for the civillian fleet.

Post by **NecronLord** » 2006-11-01 04:28am

Humm. Actually, the CMTM has FTL speed. 0.74 Ly/day. I seem to recall the fleet being capable of 12 Ly jumps, and several of them per day, so it's quite a lot slower... Guess the Sulaco should be after a Colonial drive..

On the other hand, I'm not entirely sure how durable base stars are. The railguns might be insufficient to seriously hurt them. That said, if you can get through their armour, a KPI round might well be nasty, given that the inside of base stars appears to be made of organic materials... Overpressure and heat don't generally do good things to them.

Of course, if the NPB is capabe of burning the dradis off a base star, killing it gets a lot easier.

TheMuffinKing · Post by **TheMuffinKing** » 2006-11-01 09:00am

The Sulaco's particle beam weapons could wreak havock on Cylon basestars. It's similar in purpose to the SW Ion cannon.

On the issue of FTL, doesn' the colonial fleet have a jump capable drydock with them? Worse comes to worse, the Sulaco could be docked and ferried...

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2006-11-01 09:11pm

Dude, no. No it isn't. It's a particle beam: it can interfere with electronics and sensors by surface interaction. It's not a disable gun: at close range it punches holes in things. At long range, mess with sensors is all it can do.

TheMuffinKing · Post by **TheMuffinKing** » 2006-11-01 10:05pm

Here's the Wiki quote, for what thats worth...

Two forward-firing 800 MeV Neutral Particle Beam weapons, which can disable the electronics systems of enemy spacecraft out to a range of 100,000 km

It can disable electrical systems. I'd say that does more than interfere with sensors. Ok, I see that's not their express purpose, I conceed that.

I still think it would be a good weapon just for the one two punch.

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2006-11-01 10:07pm

From that quote, you think they mean 'disable ship like an ion cannon'? Dear me. It can be used to blind sensors by firing the beam at antennae. Damn useful, but not scifi rubbish.

TheMuffinKing · Post by **TheMuffinKing** » 2006-11-01 10:17pm

I figured disabling the electrical systems would be comparable in effect to disabling the ship. It's not the first time I've been wrong though. Eh (shrugs shoulders). It looks like I totally misunderstood the effectiveness of the "EMP" effect.

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2006-11-02 11:47am

The EMP effect would be small in vacuum, since there's no medium for the ionisation to be magnified (that's why you don't see lightning in space, other than in nebulae). They would definitely harm delicate instruments like sensors on the craft's external hard points, but to disable a whole ship, you'd likely burn a hole through the thing before you did that; which is pretty disabling in itself.

I never knew the Sulaco had FTL. I assumed they used highly efficient STL drives for interstellar travel and relied on cryo-sleep chambers, but if they have something that can cross light-years within a week, it's certainly an improvement. The massive railguns and missile batteries of the vessel couple with the marine armaments and AI automation would certainly make her a good companion for the Big G, especially after "Exodus Pt. 2".

Post by **NecronLord** » 2006-11-02 11:49am

Eh. It can be inferred in the film from Newt not having grown old - at least put on about four years - before the Marines arrive.

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2006-11-02 12:00pm

Yeah, but see, I'm not thinking straight. Blindingly obvious isn't obvious enough after a day's work to me.