Ahem.
I was ninjaed, but I want to say this with my modhat on. One thing: you don't
have to say your battlestars are worth 300 points, even if Darkevilme used that number as an example. You can make them as strong or as weak as you please, although please consult with me before deciding on any ships of point value 1000 or higher. Now.
[puts on modhat]
The key thing to understand is that all combat effectiveness is measured in points. It doesn't matter
what a ship is, so much as it matters how many points it's worth. A 200-point replica of the starship
Enterprise beats a 100-point Imperial Star Destroyer clone, the basic versus debate premises of this website notwithstanding. It does not matter in the slightest how many megajoules your ships throw, or whether their hulls are made of steel, of biotech, or of reinforced unobtanium with force field backing. All that matters is the points.
Now.
Battlestar Galactica carries small fighters and shuttles that are potent in combat in their own right. But the ship herself is also effective in combat, and
Galactica's presence on the field makes her side more likely to win. Therefore, an SDNW5
Galactica would be a "hybrid carrier/battleship." It will have an intrinsic point value that remains even if all the small craft it carries are gone. And it will have onboard some contingent of small craft with a certain point value, which it can carry into battle.
The small craft may be sublight "fighters" or FTL "gunboats," your choice. They will have a point value per unit, which it's up to you to determine, although I prefer not to assign point values of less than 0.5 to gunboats. The total number of fighters onboard is
also up to you. I suggest deciding first "I want the ship to carry X points of small craft," then figuring out how many small craft you want and how many points they're worth from there.
In addition, of course,
Galactica is a big honking gun platform with its own missiles and direct-fire weapons. The battlestar is a powerful and dangerous enemy even without its fighters, so having one around in a fight adds points to your side and thus increases the odds of a favorable outcome.
So you will say "Galactica is worth X points, and carries Y points of fighters." In your starting naval budget, you would have to allocate X+Y points to Galactica. The
exact value of (X+Y) should be determined by how powerful and dangerous you want your battlestars to be, and how many of them you want and/or can afford. If you want battlestars to be relatively weak in the grand scheme of things, make them worth relatively fewer points. If you want them to be extremely dangerous and powerful, make them worth many points.
By way of advice, a combat force in the range of 400-500 points will be on roughly even terms with most nations' first-class battleships in single combat.
There.
[takes off modhat]
Incidentally, I anticipate that MKSheppard, our resident ruthless genocidal nukophile, will also be drawing inspiration from
Battlestar Galactica, which doesn't mean you can't do the same. Also incidentally, my own fleet carriers bear
uncanny resemblance to Cylon basestars, complete with swarms of AI drone fighters armed with nuclear tipped missiles, although the beam armament is different.
