Starship Enterprise vs. Battlestar Galactica

No contest... Enterprise is equipped with ray guns and energy shields, Galactica isn't. The Galactica from the old series might do a bit better, since it had laser cannons.

 

The chart seems off - first, it's the 1978 Galactica, and that could be construed to be several different sizes from that show. That one appears to put it about 600 meters, which I don't believe as correct. The best treatise I've seen on estimating the size put it around half again that size: http://ravensbranch.allen.com/galacticasize.html

The current BSG seems larger yet, with the battlestar wiki putting it at 1400 meters, though I don't believe that's canon.

I'd concur that a Constitution class ship would win in most imaginable scenarios, especially after the movie refit. For one thing it's faster in sublight and could control the range, where it's weapons and sensors greatly outrange that of the Galactica's.

About the only chance the Galactica would have is if it jumped in right on top of the Enterprise to nullify these advantages and could fire off a salvo of nukes. A dozen nukes with main battery fire might drop the shields, which would then allow the Vipers to come in and shoot up the relatively vulnerable ship.

Of course, the Enteprise could warp out rather quickly and reestablish the situation.

The only scenario I can give a chance to the Galactica is if it was on the offense and the Enterprise had to defend a fixed point in space, like a planet.

That being said, there's a lot the Galactica can do that the Enterprise can't - such as project power with its Vipers and Raptors in several places and transport personal and cargo in far vaster numbers. They'd have an advantage in one regard in that they are military men, not explorers, and would act as such in a conflict.

That being said, the Federation in the 23rd century tech is just too far ahead of the Colonies to make this an interesting fight.

 

Other than this being pointless geek bait, that comment was worth reading this thread.

 

^Well, I think he has a point. Trek tech may be shinier, but it's crazy fragile. The idea that the Galactica may simply be able to out-tough the Enterprise is worth consideirng.

 

How would you be able to "out tough" a ship which can beam your command crew directly into space? or just randomly teleport bits of vital circuits into space?

 

You'd have a point if we'd ever seen the crews of any of these starships be smart enough to use any of these tactics.

 

They can't use those tactics because the enemies they're facing have shields.

 

Sure. Except for the times the enemy hasn't has transporter-resistant shielding (ahem, Borg) and they still didn't do it.

 

The Borg don't have a command crew, nor do Borg vessels have a bridge, so you can't beam any command crew off of a Borg ship's bridge into space.

Not that it would matter much, even if you do manage to beam some drones into space. They'd survive. They'd be beamed back, no problem. You managed to severely hurt them with that technique, you'll get away it only once; after that, the Borg will either beam anything you beam onto them back off the moment it's done materializing, or they do something to stop you from beaming onto their ship.

 

And instead of using the transporter to beam critical parts of the cube out into space, like those distribution nodes that Worf and co shot with phasers in BoBW, they just sent people over to do it by hand. Yeah, that's tactical thinking.

 

Then they just blow it up from millions of miles away with photon Torpedoes - the BSG ship doesn't even get to say "red alert!"

Or they spent Wesley out in a shuttle craft to take some target practice

Or Geordi inverts the phase-dildotron and the BSG ship shakes to pieces - They don't bother get Picard out of his ready room as it's too minor a matter to bother him with.

 

Seeing as you first have to know those things exist, and then to know where they are, before you can beam them up, that's pretty much impossible.

But again; it won't matter much. The moment you use those tactics to truly hurt the Borg hard, the Borg will adapt and block your transporters; that's why you wait with such a tactic when the stakes are highest; because you get to use that tactic to devastating effect only once, and never again.

And THAT is strategic thinking.

 

The Galactica would destroy TOS Enterprise. The Enterprise was mainly made for exploration whereas the Galactica was made for war. Between the pounding from Galactica's guns and the assault from the vipers, Kirk and crew would be dead.

 

And then there's the fact that Adama is a seasoned badass killer. Kirk is a bitch.

 

Easy: The crew.

Starfleet officers, especially those onboard the Enterprise (any incarnation), would never do anything of the sort.

Which is where these discussions always fail. They only focus on the tech, not the people using it. Not only is the Galactica's crew more battle-hardened and tactically superior, but if they did get into a fight it would be one where they were fighting to protect and defend the last of their people. Whereas the Enterprise is typically commanded by diplomats and explorers.

That is the biggest thing worth considering.

 

That would be the 24th century, not the 23rd.

Kirk considered himself a soldier.

He once ordered General Order 24; the complete annihilation of every higher life form on a planet; reducing it to a smoking cinder; and ever city to a smoking crater.

Not that it matters. Not that it matters whether you consider it a warship or not. And no, the Galactica is NOT tactically superior. The Galactica barely rates as an insect compared to the Enterprise. The Galactica won't even be able to hit the Enterprise, let alone scratch the paint job. It's bullets are just artificial micro-meteorites, that'll simply be bent aside by the Enterprise's navigational shields. The missiles and vipers are too slow to even catch up to the Enterprise (or its shuttles for that matter), and even if god-forbid they're allowed to catch up; the missiles do nothing to the Enterprise shields, not even the nukes, the vipers will splash against the Enterprise shields like an insect on a windshield. The vipers weapons will have the exact same effect on both the Enterprise and its shuttles as the weapons from the Galactica: namely no effect at all, they won't even hit.

On top of that, the Enterprise can fight at FTL speeds, not to mention that its weapon range is so vast it would take the Galactica's weapons and vipers half an hour just to get there. By that time, the Galactica (and the entire Colonial battlestar fleet, as well as the Cylon fleet, both present and from the first war) would be floating rubble.

This is a fight that's an even bigger curbstomp than the Borg against Starfleet. At least Starfleet can hit and scratch the Borg. Battlestar fleet against Enterprise they can't.

 

Kirk is a bitch? LOL.

Oh, and that 'analysis' in the article is just ridiculous. Dradis beats FTL sensors? Wow, that's ignorant. Frighteningly ignorant.

 

Not sure that the Enterprise would be immune to nukes. In TOS we see the ship get hit by the blast radius of a nuke that goes off nearby, and that does a good amount of damage. We have no way of knowing the yield of that weapon.

In Tomorrow is Yesterday, a F-104 Starchaser armed with tactical nuclear missiles was considered a threat to the Enterprise, though admittedly that was without shield and on auxilliary power from it's time jump.

I think the likely explanation is that nukes are a credible threat, especially if the shields are down. It's just that phasers are very accurate and missiles aren't likely to get near a starship before they are destroyed by phaser fire.

Photon Torpedoes interestingly enough are never even shot at by ships in the history of Trek, even when the target ship didn't have useful shields, such as in Generations. I'd say Photon Torps can't be shot down by energy weapons employed in Trek, and certainly would ignore the flak barrages of BSG.

 

And a big list of totally obscure stuff from Sci.

 

Actually, they are fired on by phasers once. Voyager fires a torpedo that was rather useless against their pursuers shields, and then they fire their phaser at it, causing a much more massive and much nastier subspace reaction detonation that throws of their pursuers.

In other words: destroy a torpedo with a phaser or disruptor and you cause more damage to you than if you simply take the torpedo.

This also shows that torpedoes aren't simply a casket being fired (just like they could safely transport a person in on) it's shielded, at the very least having navigational shields so a stray fleck of rock doesn't detonate it prematurely - in other words, the Galactica's anti-missile batteries are every bit a s useless against photon torpedoes as they are against a starship. (Quite frankly; rather obvious as a torpedo looks like a ball of energy instead of an elongated object.)

(That's not to mention that torpedoes are so, so, so much faster than anything Galactica ever had to deal with in a weapon. The torpedo is about as fast as a phaser; being very near the speed of light. Simply put: the best thing the Galactica can hope for, is that the torpedo is so fast an not configure for a shieldless target that it'll go straight through the Galactica, coming out the other end, and only detonate once its long past it. (Not that that will change the ultimate outcome of the fight, but still...))