Next let’s take the 40 year old Galactica out of the equation and stick in a Mercury Class Battlestar such as the Pegasus. We will also use the Sovereign class for the Federation.

Now let’s look at the rolls of each ship, the sovereign class is an explorer vessel with combat capabilities, while the Battlestar is a Military capital battle ship/carrier.
The federation ship is only 685 meters in length, width 240 meters, height 88 meters, has 700 crew members and is armed with Phaser arrays, photon and quantum torpedoes. The Battlestar is 1,652 meters in length, width 678 meters, and the height 331 meters, the Battlestar has primary and point-defence kinetic energy weapons, Main prow rail gun battery, conventional missiles, nuclear warheads, Vipers (200), Raptors (20). The numbers to crew a Battlestar range from 3000-4000.

It is true that the sovereign has the technology advantage but we can’t forget about the physics involved.

The Mercury Class Battlestar has 30 twin linked hull mounted kinetic energy weapons and 4 prow rail guns and 300 point defence turrets. If we use the formula kinetic energy =1/2mv^2, the mass of a shell is 400Kg and we know they travel at 1/4 the speed of light so 74.9×10^6 m/s, so it comes out to 268 megatons per hull battery, each battery can reload in 5 seconds, while the Prow rail guns lob shells the size of a midsized car(1200Kg)that travel around 1/2 the speed of light, 3213 megatons per shell with the main rail gun battery.

The Sovergn class has 16 Phaser banks, each section of the ship has its own capacitor that can hold 1.76×10^18J and takes 5 seconds to drain at full power output by one Phaser and 1.67 seconds to charge to full power, so the energy output is 84 megatons per second. A standard Photon Torpedo would produce 64 megatons = 2.682×10^17J and the quantum torpedo would produce double the energy output 128 megatons, The figure from the Star Trek deep space nine technical manual is 25 isotones = to 64 megatons (remember it is a projectile traveling at about 1/4 the speed of light with a weight of 186.7 kg) = 5.23×10^17J = 124 megatons so the total value of a photon torpedo would be 189 megatons and a quantum torpedo would be 253 Megatons. With 1 megaton being equal to 4.19 x 10^15J

The Battlestar does not have any shields but the armour skin plating on this battle ship can take a lot of punishment. We see that a Mercury class Battlestar is able to withstand 8 minutes of constant bombardment from 3 Cylon Base Stars volleying hundreds of high yield missiles along with 5 nukes and over 2500 fighters and still takes only moderate damage, able to repair itself with in a few weeks. Later we see a Mercury class Battle Star engage 4 Base stars and last around 12 minutes before it committed a last stand and smashed into a Cylon Base Star but, from what we can see it could have lasted a few more minutes. The armour is a ‘whipple sheild’ armour design. This suspends a layer of armour some distance from the hull itself. The hull of the ship is also multi hulled with layers of gel in between, this reduces the effects of concussion on the hull.

Just because the Sovereign is small does not mean the shields are weak. Without the shields the ship does not have the mass to hold off a heavy salvo and would be ripped apart so the designers developed the best shields ever used by the federation. The shields can withstand approximately 25200 megatons before collapse. The hull is composed of Heavy Duranium/Tritanium double hull plus 10 cm Ablative armour.
the battle would start with the Battlestar launching all the vipers, the Colonial ship would try and get the best shot on the sleek fast sovereign from its main prow batteries, but the sovereign would be out of the way before they hit, one might have impacted causing minor damage to the shields. The federation ship would not have to worry about shields on the Battlestar and would launch every torpedo it could, the phasers would cut the hull, but due to its over all size it would not affect the outcome of the battle. The slower moving battle star would have a hard time manoeuvring to get a good lock on the fast ship, and the kinetic energy weapons travel just below the speed of light so it would be hard to hit the sovereign, but the kinetic energy weapons are so strong it would punch through the shields in a few volleys. The torpedoes from the sovereign would do major damage to the outer armour plating and since the federation ship is faster it could cripple the engines of the Battlestar but the core of the ship would not be damaged. The battle would end with the shields on the federation ship being ripped apart, the kinetic energy weapons would smash through the armour of the sovereign from top to bottom. I would give a moderate victory to the Battlestar because it would have taken some structural damage but would not be crippled.

Over all the best combat ship would be the Mercury class Battlestar, but remember it is a warship where the Sovereign class is a Explorer vessel.

Although if Kirk was on the Enterprise, the battlestar would have no chance… because its Kirk! and he kicks ass!

But warp drive says it all. The faster ship (Enterprise) can commit to combat or evade combat. Period.

Enterrpise can use the transportor from warp and can transport Anti-matter (also done by TOS) into Galactica, and then let the container fail - which is how they defeated the cloud creature.

So, no contest. Doesn’t matter what weapons Galactica has, they never come to bear.

I really love BSG, but I have to recognice it’s not a fair match. So, what if we do a “crew” match?

1. Colonials found Earth, 23th century. The Federation gives Adama and his crew a ship.

2. Via “transdimentional-parallel universe-Stunned Writter” method, Kirk/Picard/Sisko/Janeway on command of a Colonial Battlestar.

What will happens?

want to see what happens when the Enterprise D goes up against lesser advanced tech?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conundrum_%28TNG_episode%29

ouch. Vipers would all be dead in seconds, even 50 of them. You seen how blisteringly fast phasers can fire against small targets?

But, *FAR* more importantly…

Let’s not forget something, the premise is the BSG is not a spaceship produced by a futuristic utopian society that has ultra advanced tech, it’s an old warship that only survived the cylon virus which took out all the more advanced battlestars because it is so primitive. the BSG is a stage for actors to play on, a stage for drama, unlike the Enterprise whose technology often steals the show (and dumbs down the plots).

And THAT is the end of this very flawed discussion.

Fact is, if you think BSG could beat/stand a chance against the enterprise then you clearly are not paying attention to either show!

Picard + Adama + a tub full of jelly.

1. solid objects do not go through shields. hell even particles can’t thats why you can’t use the transporter if shields are raised

2. the deflector is not a defensive shield it is used to protect the ship from debris that may be floating around in space when they are traveling at warp

3. shields stop projectiles torpedos this is seen on numerous occasion. and the force that they can withstand is great as seen in the episode of TNG with the dyson sphere when they used the shields of a damaged ship to wedge the doors open. furthermore photon torpedos which are projectile weapons can not pass through shields. thats why in star trek: generations the duras sisters had to get the shield frequency in order to reconfigure the torpedo so the let their torpedos pass so they could ultimately destroy the enterprise D. otherwise it would they would have just caused damage to the shield

4. nice try on the tommy gun reference however you forgot the that borg need time to adapt to weapons, thats why they were only ever able to get 2-3 shots from their phasers off before they adapted.

5. it has already been stated the the enterprise has taken direct hits unshielded from photon torpedos and not been destroyed. a nuke carries a payload substantially less then that of a torpedo. so once again they would not be able to do much damage.

6. even unshieled a rail gun could do little damage to the the enterprise because its hull is made of duranium. if torpedos traveling at near light speed and full a antimatter have trouble penetrating the hull a rail gun which in the most theoretical of scenarios can travel at a speed of mach 5 for 250 miles could would just bounce right off the hull

i love galactica but this is a very one sided battle due to the technological advancements of the star trek universe a simple runabout could lay waste to galactica. simple phaser fire and the torpedos could cause hull breaches and galactica does not have any kind of force field system to contain them.

Now, as long as my brain is holding up correctly, Galactica fires ballistic weapons. Ballistic weapons, all solid objects in fact, go through energy shields.

Remember Picard laying waste to the Borg with a tommy gun? That’s what good energy shields are against rail guns.

Jump in behind, nuke them in the butt, jump away. I could be wrong though, maybe.