Here is another battlestar for your roleplaying game’s fleet (and the one we’re using in our campaign) — Pleiades, a Minerva-class battlestar. She is an intermediate design, newer than Galactica and her sisters, and the iteration previous to the Mercury -class of Pegasus. Many were still in service at the time of the attacks, including the class prototype, Athena.
She is the flagship for Battlestar Group 55 (BSG-55) and was usually deployed with a pair of Cygnus-class gunstars, two Vanguard-class assaultstars, and a Demeter-class tender. Like Galactica, Pleiades must retract her landing pods for FTL jumps — her FTL sinks are spaced far and the displacement bubble generated is not large enough to handle the pods otherwise.
BATTLESTAR PLEIADES
SHIP DATA:
Class: Minerva Length: 4777.7′ Beam: 1742′ Draught: 841.5′ Decks: 30 Scale: Spacecraft Crew: 1500 standard, 10,000 max
ATTRIBUTES:
Agility: d4 Strength: d12+d4 Vitality: d6 Alertness: d8 Intelligence: d8 Willpower: d10
Life Points: 26 Armor: 6W, 4S Initiative: d4+d8 Speed: 5 [SL/JC]
TRAITS: Formidable Presence (d4), Viper Construction Facilities (d4)
SKILLS: Heavy Weapons d6, Mechanical Engineering d4, Perception d6, Pilot d4
ARMAMENT: Heavy Skirmish Range Point Defense System (d12W Planetary-scale ), 32 Capital-range Heavy Railguns (d12+d2W Spacecraft-scale), 22 Short Dradis-range Heavy Missile Systems (d12+d4W Spacecraft-Scale), 12 Long Dradis-Range Nuclear Missile Systems (d12+d8W Spacecraft-scale)
AUXILIARY VEHICLES: 110 (4 squadrons and 10 spare) Mk VII Vipers, 25 Raptors, 10 Marine Landing Shuttles, 3 standard shuttles, assorted work vehicles
Orthographics by tanj from scifi-meshes.com. See more of his spectacular work there.
20 May, 2011 at 03:34
First off don’t think I’m criticizing or anything, I’m wanting to bounce some ideas around I think this would be a good place to start. Second, if others have pointed this out, forgive me then.
I’ve been looking into ships of the Cylon War in trying to piece together as soon as I figure out combat. Besides the point! I’ve been looking a lot into the Columbia, Atlantia, Minerva, Leviathan, Terpsichore, and Olympia-class’ (as much as I want to use TOS BSs for training vessels)and I’ve compiled a list of battlestars to serve in the war.
I’ve seen that there are three types of the Minerva the Hesperides, Hyades, and the Pleiades (that you have).
I’ll start with the Pleiades; on examination of the flight pods I do find them to be very big in width. I trying wrap my mind around why the extra deck space with so few viper launch tubes? My conclusion the Pleiades-types have a very large airwing of Vipers maybe say 300 to have a more equal footing for one basestar and the extra decking is accommodate any combat landings of all the birds. However the only trade off for the large airwing is slow launch cycles.
Next the Hyades: (http://tan-j.blogzine.jp/web/BSG/battlestar_hyades.html) it’s a bit like the Pleiades except the top pods are smaller, but there are upside down viper launch tubes. If the same 300 airwing were to keep on the Hyades they would benefit faster launch times, but the vipers and other craft might pile up on the deck up the Hyades had to call for combat landings.
Then the true beast of the Cylon War; (http://tan-j.blogzine.jp/web/BSG/battlestar_hesperides.html) The Hesperides. I believe this would be the original envision of the Minerva, and attempt at the Colonials to put as many guns on a Battlestar hull as they could. This type has two landing bays, and two support bays under the the hangers. 160 Vipers might be a reasonable compliment during the war.
Finally, to point out there are subtle changes in the engine sections. The Pleiades has the greatest change of the other two, which I might conclude the Minerva-Plieades-class may built at a different shipyard, say Scorpio while the Hesperides and Hyades-types were built at maybe Caprica. Don’t want to put all your eggs in one basket.
I hope this proves to be inspirational and I hope to get in contact. Thanks.
20 May, 2011 at 04:44
Good ideas on the extra space for combat landings–perhaps to also take birds fom the escorts during a jump out to save confusion and time.
I like rhe idea of rhe different iterations being differnt shipyards.
Thanks for chiming in, Brock.