As cited on Sarna, the "Tintavel Massacre" killed roughly 300,000 people. That is a relatively very small number which is actually more consistent with limited ad-hoc use of tactical nuclear weapons (which in turn is consistent with the combatant forces being on the ground with each other) rather than indiscriminate strategic bombardment from air or space.
Battletech Battletech/Battlestar Galactica Crossover - Lucky 13th (the rewrite)
- Thread starter LordSunhawk
- Start date
As cited on Sarna, the "Tintavel Massacre" killed roughly 300,000 people. That is a relatively very small number which is actually more consistent with limited ad-hoc use of tactical nuclear weapons (which in turn is consistent with the combatant forces being on the ground with each other) rather than indiscriminate strategic bombardment from air or space.
Must...have...update!
Tintavel's death toll has varied in multiple sources, I've seen it as low as 30,000 to a high of 350,000, either from a single strike, or over the entire campaign (including all ancillary deaths from the campaign).
Aaron Fox
Well-known member
I wouldn't be surprised that it would be more, given that the various powers have been 'editing' history to fit their ends. The common descriptor of that event has been -last I've checked- 'nuked until the planet died'.
Chapter 11
Chapter 11
A week had passed, and with that week the elections. Roslin and Adama had agreed that releasing the news about the Hegemony would definitively swing the election, and if anything at all, no matter how minor, then went wrong Laura would be in an untenable position vis-a-vis the Quorum. So they’d officially stuck to no comment on the issue.
Of course, Rumor Control Central spread the news throughout the fleet anyways, regardless of official positions. Hearing some of the rumors caused Bill to struggle against facepalming, others made him want to laugh, and still others were so suspiciously accurate that he gave Roslin dirty looks for leaking them, which the President shrugged off with quite artful protestations of complete innocence.
Bill had been born at night. He’d not been born last night.
Regardless, the elections did, in fact, happen, with Baltar bleating loudly about the more lunatic rumors and shedding even more support than what little he had. Roslin won in a landslide.
And then, only then…
“... can now confirm that we have met descendents of Earth, in the form of the Terran Hegemony. Three of their warships are currently present, and negotiations have been ongoing. After much discussion, the Hegemony has invited us to travel to their nearest system, named New Circe, there to remain under their protection as our final status is resolved.”
Adama remained still and expressionless as Roslin made the official announcement to the Quorum. In fact, he let his mind wander a bit as she spoke.
The Hegemony had some strange gaps in their technology, it was true, but even if you left aside their incredible weaponry, they weren’t primitives. The coordinates they’d given for the jump to this New Circe, for example. It was over three times further than the Red Line for Colonial FTL drives, yet they were completely confused at the concept. On the other hand, when he’d said that it would take about two hours to complete the sequence of jumps they’d had the same expression he imagined he’d had on his own face when he’d first seen one of their energy weapons.
That was not even to mention the landmines. He was a very secular man, but even he’d been surprised and somewhat shocked to learn that the Hegemony didn’t worship the Gods, that indeed the majority of them were atheists, and those who weren’t were almost exclusively monotheists, with a small number worshipping gods that bore no resemblance at all to the Lords of Kobol.
Gods help them when the Sagitarrians and Geminians learned about that detail, which would be five minutes after the first interview with a Hegemony representative, he reckoned.
And that wasn’t the only obstacle, the fact that these people insisted that humanity came from Earth, not Kobol, claiming to have fossil records and archeological evidence that predated the time when it was known to all that the Colonies had fled Kobol. That would set off groundquakes throughout the religious communities as well. He could already hear the shrieks of outrage that the most fanatical Quorum members would emit at that news, if and when they heard it.
Worse, they said they had evidence, and they might be right. Which was giving him one hell of a headache just thinking about it. He wasn’t faithful, he still felt shaken. Just how bad would it be for those who were faithful?
He was so wrapped up in his thoughts that he almost missed his cue. Almost.
“The fleet will be reuniting at Galactica’s present location.” he said shortly. “Following that, we shall initiate a series of three jumps to bring us to New Circe. We will be met at New Circe by the local naval garrison and escorted to the planet, where arrangements are being made for us to disembark.”
His gaze swept the assembled Quorum members and reporters, cold and commanding. “This operation will commence in fifteen minutes. All ships are to secure for jump.” he allowed a trace of a smile to cross his lips. “That is all. Dismissed.”
He stepped back and turned to leave, ignoring the shouted questions.
---
Fifteen minutes later found him back in CIC, watching the various plots.
“Pegasus reports all ships are ready to jump.” he heard from the communications station, he simply nodded. His son knew what to do.
Moments later the ramshackle vessels of the rag tag fleet appeared, surrounding the predatory shark of Pegasus.
“Status report.” he barked.
“All ships reporting good jump, drives are green and starting recharge cycle. Coordinates are being transmitted now, Sir.”
“Very well. Signal the Hegemony vessels and advise them that we are about to begin.” he turned his head, looking over at the two Hegemony representatives who had joined him in CIC. “33 minutes, gentlemen, until our first jump.”
The surprised look on their face was still comforting.
AUTHOR NOTE - I know it's a very short chapter, but it is a needed transitional chapter. Next chapter will have their arrival at New Circe, the beginning of the disembarkation, and meeting a certain... well... you'll see.
A week had passed, and with that week the elections. Roslin and Adama had agreed that releasing the news about the Hegemony would definitively swing the election, and if anything at all, no matter how minor, then went wrong Laura would be in an untenable position vis-a-vis the Quorum. So they’d officially stuck to no comment on the issue.
Of course, Rumor Control Central spread the news throughout the fleet anyways, regardless of official positions. Hearing some of the rumors caused Bill to struggle against facepalming, others made him want to laugh, and still others were so suspiciously accurate that he gave Roslin dirty looks for leaking them, which the President shrugged off with quite artful protestations of complete innocence.
Bill had been born at night. He’d not been born last night.
Regardless, the elections did, in fact, happen, with Baltar bleating loudly about the more lunatic rumors and shedding even more support than what little he had. Roslin won in a landslide.
And then, only then…
“... can now confirm that we have met descendents of Earth, in the form of the Terran Hegemony. Three of their warships are currently present, and negotiations have been ongoing. After much discussion, the Hegemony has invited us to travel to their nearest system, named New Circe, there to remain under their protection as our final status is resolved.”
Adama remained still and expressionless as Roslin made the official announcement to the Quorum. In fact, he let his mind wander a bit as she spoke.
The Hegemony had some strange gaps in their technology, it was true, but even if you left aside their incredible weaponry, they weren’t primitives. The coordinates they’d given for the jump to this New Circe, for example. It was over three times further than the Red Line for Colonial FTL drives, yet they were completely confused at the concept. On the other hand, when he’d said that it would take about two hours to complete the sequence of jumps they’d had the same expression he imagined he’d had on his own face when he’d first seen one of their energy weapons.
That was not even to mention the landmines. He was a very secular man, but even he’d been surprised and somewhat shocked to learn that the Hegemony didn’t worship the Gods, that indeed the majority of them were atheists, and those who weren’t were almost exclusively monotheists, with a small number worshipping gods that bore no resemblance at all to the Lords of Kobol.
Gods help them when the Sagitarrians and Geminians learned about that detail, which would be five minutes after the first interview with a Hegemony representative, he reckoned.
And that wasn’t the only obstacle, the fact that these people insisted that humanity came from Earth, not Kobol, claiming to have fossil records and archeological evidence that predated the time when it was known to all that the Colonies had fled Kobol. That would set off groundquakes throughout the religious communities as well. He could already hear the shrieks of outrage that the most fanatical Quorum members would emit at that news, if and when they heard it.
Worse, they said they had evidence, and they might be right. Which was giving him one hell of a headache just thinking about it. He wasn’t faithful, he still felt shaken. Just how bad would it be for those who were faithful?
He was so wrapped up in his thoughts that he almost missed his cue. Almost.
“The fleet will be reuniting at Galactica’s present location.” he said shortly. “Following that, we shall initiate a series of three jumps to bring us to New Circe. We will be met at New Circe by the local naval garrison and escorted to the planet, where arrangements are being made for us to disembark.”
His gaze swept the assembled Quorum members and reporters, cold and commanding. “This operation will commence in fifteen minutes. All ships are to secure for jump.” he allowed a trace of a smile to cross his lips. “That is all. Dismissed.”
He stepped back and turned to leave, ignoring the shouted questions.
---
Fifteen minutes later found him back in CIC, watching the various plots.
“Pegasus reports all ships are ready to jump.” he heard from the communications station, he simply nodded. His son knew what to do.
Moments later the ramshackle vessels of the rag tag fleet appeared, surrounding the predatory shark of Pegasus.
“Status report.” he barked.
“All ships reporting good jump, drives are green and starting recharge cycle. Coordinates are being transmitted now, Sir.”
“Very well. Signal the Hegemony vessels and advise them that we are about to begin.” he turned his head, looking over at the two Hegemony representatives who had joined him in CIC. “33 minutes, gentlemen, until our first jump.”
The surprised look on their face was still comforting.
AUTHOR NOTE - I know it's a very short chapter, but it is a needed transitional chapter. Next chapter will have their arrival at New Circe, the beginning of the disembarkation, and meeting a certain... well... you'll see.
Doomsought
Well-known member
It is entirely possible that much of the shock wasn't purely due to the numbers of deaths, but rather the cascade failure and reversion of terraforming done on the planet, rendering it uninhabitable. I could see a variety of genetically engineered seed stocks and highly inbred animals brought in on space ships much more vulnerable to radiation than Earth life. combined with a nuclear winter and heavy metal contamination from several warships or jump ships getting de-orbitted, and you have a dead planet.
Adventwolf
Well-known member
Well with the fleet moving it is time to see who they meet. Just hope the stupid angels take a hike and the Nuke doesn't get blown up in orbit as that will piss off the Terrans. Also since the Lords of Kobol are a huge amount of gods and not just the greek ones it is likely that any gods the Terrans worship would be known. The Greek/Roman ones are just the most prominent ones not the only ones.
Adventwolf
Well-known member
Like everyone else "what the hell is up with these weirdos."
If I were the Hegemony in Exile, I'd want a closer look at Galactica and Pegasus. Their gravity plating would help with long endurance missions and their FTL completely changes the tactical and strategic paradigm.
Aaron Fox
Well-known member
Not really, given that in the show the Cylons had to take out the planet-based defense networks as well, lending credence to the possibility that the Colonies developed some sort of interdictor system that requires 1) a planet of sufficient size and 2) a large population and logistics base. If I were the THiE, I would sponsor a second and more through rescue mission to get nukes, blueprints, whatever tooling, and as many people, animals, and plants as possible. Basically, rescue as much of the Twelve Colonies as possible.
It should also be noted that during Battlestar Galactica: Deadlock, one mission had Galactica and her immediate task group jumping around tactically and with the number of jumps they've been doing to keep up with one of the IL models, they were risking a complete FTL failure (i.e. FTL drive goes completely kaput -or worse- from the sound of it) for the entire task group. This also doesn't include the Tylium they were burning in doing so (Cylon War FTL drives needed some time to reset so they don't need Tylium to function, with some of the nastier end-game fleets of the game, this means paying hundreds of Tylium units on a regular basis).
Not only that, but space-to-planetary jumps (and vice versa) are extremely risky to pull off. We've had at least one of the Raptors from the Caprica Rescue team become part of a mountain (at least from my recollection, mind you this is years ago) because their number-crunching wasn't good enough. Even Galactica cut it really fine with the 'Adama Maneuver' during the escape from New Caprica. If she was a wee bit slower with her number-crunching, then she would have gotten splat on New Caprica's surface.
I'm not sure what you're talking about in terms of interdiction. But this strategy to go back and rescue and salvage all that they can seems to be the way to go.
Tylium may not be actually needed to operate the FTL drive. Its a source of energy the Colonials draw from but aside from that doesn't have special properties to make their kind of jump drives possible. Or so I believe. Nukes would work better.
I still don't get why BattleTech ships cant recharge from the reactors....
Jumping closer to planets is recommended. Jumping in to one is not.
Aaron Fox
Well-known member
From what I've heard of the idea/theory, the interdiction field prevents the creation of the field that allows for the Kobolian FTL drive to function, be those going in or those going out. Essentially, it forces the enemy to take the long way to the planet (i.e. via STL) and thus allows you to set up your forces to blunt or even stop the enemy. Think of it as a 'no-FTL zone' and you'll get the idea.
If I had to hazard a guess, a mixture of shoddy capacitors and drive infrastructure (I wouldn't be surprised that most jumpships haven't seen an inside of a drydock in centuries), lack of what would be standard equipment that has now become specialist equipment to moderate the charging process, and the fact that K-F Fields were first discovered in a fusion reactor, which would lead to the idea that there is interference happening between the reactors and the K-F core.
Remember, with a KF Recharge Station you can shave your multi-week long charge time to a number of days you can count on a single hand depending on good the crew is. If I had my way, it is most probable -given the broken back nature of the setting- that there are specific technologies that were annihilated during the first two succession wars when their facilities got nuked repeatedly.
First, FIFY. Also, I wouldn't be surprised that is what they teach in Colonial FTL class.Jumping closer to planets is recommended. Jumping into the atmosphere of one is not.
Aaron Fox
Well-known member
Given that the KF drive is something of a finicky bitch even during the 'Golden Age' (a certain ship showing up centuries after it jumped because of a drive regulator unit failure for instance), I would put the 'safe' recharge rate at 24 hours, 18 if you want to push it and pay out the ass with KF maintenance costs. This is with a top-tier crew who always do their maintenance and the drive is in top condition mind you. Your average 'Golden Age' recharge rate would likely be 3 days.
Wait what? A ship arrived centuries after it jumped!? I've never heard of this.
it was a highly experimental 'super jump' KF drive IIRC
Aaron Fox
Well-known member
The Manassas had a 'slow jump' misjump thanks to a first misjump. The ad-hoc repairs that the crew did to the KF drive infrastructure had a flaw that caused the 'slow jump' misjump... which put them in de-facto suspended animation for 274 years... right into a Clan Smoke Jaguar invasion force. The entire incident was covered up and is actually part of an RPG adventure...