BSG: The Ship That Killed the Twelve Colonies – The Cylon Basestar Breakdown
Deadly and graceful, the Basestar is a fearsome foe. It almost makes you forget it nearly wiped out humanity in a single blow.
The Cylon Basestar or Baseship as it was sometimes called, was an infamous sight throughout the Twelve Colonies. At the time of the Fall, these fell stars were the harbingers of the doom of humanity.
When the Basestars arrived on the scene, only luck and a bit of quick thinking kept a handful of scattered survivors alive. But where had these ships come from? The Cylons had vanished for a time, and when they came back with a vengeance, the new Basestars were their instruments.
Cylon Basestar Design
Following the first Cylon War, the Cylons retreated to lick their wounds and adapt their strategies. As with most technology developed after their confrontation with humanity, the Basestar, in spite of its appearance, is actually organic in origin.
These ships are constructed from hardened organic matter. A unique construction that meant hull damage could be repaired, like a wound would regenerate. All it took was time.
This meant that a single Basestar could attrit a much larger force with hit-and-run tactics. But it also meant that they were, by and large, not as heavily armored as humanity’s Battlestars. They had endurance but lacked immediate resilience.
Making up for that, a Basestar had size and armament. A typical Baseship measured 2082 meters in length, 1099 meters wide, and 285 meters high. And as many missile launchers as Cylonly possible were crammed into its frame, often in unexpected places owing to its organic design.
A single Cylon Baseship was estimated to carry a minimum of 168 missile launchers, though some had more. And making them even deadlier were the vast numbers of fighters they carried. Each Basestar carried a complement of 434 Raiders or Heavy Raiders, making them a deadly threat, especially when encountering more than one.
History
Little is known about the development of the newest Baseships. When the Cylons signed a sudden armistice after twelve years of brutal war, they vanished for forty years. During that time, the Cylons developed new organic technology. The Hybrids — humanoid cyborgs fused with a computer — were the first stages of this development.
It’s theorized that Basestars grew out of their creation. They were capable of being operated by a single Hybrid, rather than an extensive crew.
This fact was first discovered during the Fall of the Twelve Colonies, as Cylon fleets emerged from the shadows to launch devastating attacks on unprepared (and defenseless) colonies. In the immediate aftermath, a small fleet of Basestars was tasked with harassing the Battlestar Galactica, but their fleets were spread out, and Galactica was eventually able to escape.
Eventually, when the Cylon Civil War began, much of the Cylon fleet was destroyed. And after The Colony fell, without a homeworld, few, if any, Basestars remained operational.
All this has happened before, and all this will happen again
