Throughout the centuries that the Colonies have traveled the void since the end of the dark age, military warships have taken in many forms. From the frigates that fought in the asteroid belt between Leonis and Virgon, to the baseships that supported battlegroups far from home, to the war galleons that brought FTL back into the wars of man, to the battlestars that protected the skies of the colonies to their last days, and their people even beyond that point.
The fleets of the Colonies' final days were complex, with many classes foraged throughout the centuries in service alongside one another. From the glorious battlestars, to the often forgotten cutters, these are some simple districtions of each warship type of this era.
BATTLESTARS:
The powerful defenders of the Colonies during their final days, battlestars were first introduced as a concept in the days prior to the 1st Cylon War. An evolution to the already existing basestar concept, the battlestar was meant to be an all in one warship, capable of defending itself with powerful point defenses and a large air group, while still having firepower greater than almost any other warship. The battlestar dealt with the vulnerability of the older basestar in a battlespace with increasingly accurate FTL by combining the support and missile abilities of the basestar with the firepower and defenses of a proper direct combat warship.
Multiple Colonies had designs for battlestars under development or even deployed by the time of the 1st Cylon War, a race to produce the new warships leading to large amounts of espionage between enemies and cooperation in construction between allies. This rush, cooperation, and stealing led to early Colonial battlestars sharing many similarities even without the Colonial Navy building them. The battlestar would come to fill the fleets of the Colonial Navy throughout the war, becoming a symbol for the Colonies and a vital component of any formation in equal measures. This was further cemented by the massive amount of basestars stolen by the Cylons and their later lack of effectiveness due to losing their automated systems.
The Cylons didn't use battlestar style warships during the war, but they did use a few captured Colonial battlestars alongside a small number of vessels equipped similarly to battlestars. The Cylon produced vessels proved to be less than effective due to the design of Cylon vessels, mandated their advanced FTL technology, being difficult to armor (this is the reason the Colonial Navy decided against trying to develop FTL technology based on Cylon models both during and after the war).
During the war, the number of battlestars in operation during the 1st Cylon War was constantly in flux, new vessels being completed, older ones salvaged, and many lost in battle. The number in operation peaked a few months before the war's end, with 92 battlestars in operation. After the war, battlestar construction continued for 20 years without losing vessels to combat, leading to the battlestar fleet peaking at 180 vessels, some of the oldest battlestars being decommissioned to free up experienced crews. As fear of the Cylons decreased, and the economic burden of the fleet became apparent, a drawback in fleet number began. Over the next 20 years, 80 battlestars were decommissioned, scrapped or put into reserve, replaced with only 20 new vessels. These new ships were more advanced and required significantly less crew than their older counterparts, making them cheaper to operate. The Colonial government planned to, over 40 more years, pare down the battlestar fleet to 80 vessels, all of newer, more efficient designs. When the Colonies fell, the fleet consisted of 120 battlestars, mostly constructed after the war, with only a few dozen war-built battlestars remaining in the fleet.
The Cylons operated less than 10 battlestars at their peak, mostly captured Colonial vessels, with less than half a dozen Cylon built battlestars ever entering service. After the 1st Cylon War, all these vessels were scrapped, and the only time the Cylons would ever use battlestars afterwards was as salvaged support ships after the Fall of The Colonies.
The 2nd Cylon War saw the destruction of the vast majority of battlestars. Those that survived usually didn't last for long becoming high priority targets for the Cylons, with most getting entire Basestar Groups assigned to their destruction.
BASESTARS:
To understand the basestar, one must understand the limitations of early FTL. When FTL was first rediscovered, it was large and extremely bulky, impossible for smaller ships to equip. The ships equipped with FTL were massive for their time, each one an equally huge investment for the mega corporation or Colony to produce them, both due to the large size and the extreme expense of early FTL technology. These vessels, called galleons in honor of the FTL capable ship used to ferry humanity from Kobal to the Colonies, spent a significant amount of their mass on their FTL Drive, restricting the amount of cargo, or in the case of what would be known as war galleons, weaponry and armor they could carry. On the civilian side, this gave STL shiping an advantage in cost over FTL capable vessels, keeping it alive even to the end of the Colonies. On the military side, it left war galleons less capable of challenging STL only warships of similar size, leading to the defender gaining huge advantages in conflict. This changed when military forces started using galleons to ferry entire warships, connecting them to the galleons like cargo and pulling them through a jump. This was originally done with civilian galleons simply commandeered for military use, but as these vessels were targeted, the need for more protection became evident. These new vessels, different from both civilian and war galleons, were named basestars after the massive baseships used by STL caravans and pre-FTL military units as support vessels, and they provided the centerpieces of Colonial warfare for almost two centuries.
As FTL technology improved and FTL precision improved, making their security less tenable, basestars became more heavily armed and armored, eventually becoming full components of the battleline, if only behind the other warships, launching long range missiles and supporting fighters.
The importance of the basestar began to wane in the decades before the 1st Cylon War, as FTL technology improved to the point that ships could be equipped with it and not be insurmountably outmatched by an STL pier. Slowly, the basestar turned from a vital part of any fleet, into just another type of warship, one seeming increasingly vulnerable as FTL precision improved, making the idea of striking behind a fleet with another force and taking down their basestars not seem too absurd. While the basestar remained a vital part of all militaries, most were looking for a successor. This came in the form of the battlestar, though it was only fielded in the years directly prior to the 1st Cylon War.
When the Cylons revolted, they managed to take over a large number of basestars, turning them into the core of their navy. The Colonials retained a large amount of their basestars, and continued to use them during the war, but they were quite rapidly killed off, with no significant basestar force existing within the Colonial Navy by the war's halfway mark.
The Cylons retained the basestar as their main warship even with the introduction of the battlestar for a number of logistical, tactical, and strategic reasons.
The Cylons couldn't match the Colonials in industry, so they had to conserve their resources when they could. A basestar fighting at long range is less likely to sustain damage to its FTL than a battlestar at close range, meaning Cylon basestars could escape intact more often than a battlestar could, preserving them and the production they represent, which is significantly more than the missiles and Raiders lost, even over multiple battles. Additionally, production of warship grade armor is extremely expensive in resources and time, while often needing to be replaced after battle. By focusing on less armor intensive basestars, resources could be diverted elsewhere.
Basestars were also far more versatile than battlestars, being capable of fulfilling troop transport and support duties far better than a battlestar. This appealed to the Cylons as it allowed them to forgo some production of those vessel types and divert the resources elsewhere.
After the war the Cylons continued their use of the basestar, while the Colonials ceased their production at the war's beginning and never restarted it.
Prior to the 1st Cylon War, the combined number of basestars exceeded a hundred divided between the Colonies. During the war, the number in Colonial hands fell to dozens at best and eventually to nothing, while the Cylons consistently operated between 50 and 90 basestars throughout the war, only rarely reaching above or below that.
At the beginning of the 2nd Cylon War, 150 Cylon basestars were in operation, most of which were constructed in the years leading up to the war specifically for the conflict. Those basestars were the only warships of note within the Cylon Navy, the organic Cylons both not trusting the impaired Centurions to properly use warships without guidance, while also not wanting to station themselves or precious Hybrids on less powerful vessels. They were used as nuclear weapons platforms to devastate the Colonies.
The basestar struggled as a combatants after the Fall of The Colonies due to their aggressive design. The basestars created by the organic Cylons were almost entirely focused on two things, large amounts of missiles, and carrying Raiders to hunt down Colonial survivors. This left them vulnerable to attack from warships that got close, something that was inevitable due to the precision of FTL. Many basestars were heavily damaged or even destroyed by attackers that shouldn't have stood a chance due to the weak hull and lack of defenses on the basestar. It ended up proving equally devastating during the Cylon Civil War, where nasestars were destroyed rapidly by the missiles of their brethren, quickly turning the Cylon Navy on both sides into shadows of themselves.
CRUISERS:
The cruiser is an old ship type, predating all others in service by the time of the Fall. The first cruisers were introduced centuries before the 1st Cylon War, before even FTL was rediscovered, before even the expansion of Virgon and Leonis beyond their star, to fill in the gap left by the expanding size of frigates, the main warships of the day that were later renamed battleships, the namesake of the battlestars of a later era. Cruisers were used to patrol interplanetary space, protecting the ships and colonies of their owners. The first cruisers were insignificant compared to the battleships that fought the major battle of the time, but as those battleships continued to grow in size and cost, Leonis and Virgon became unwilling to risk them far from home, leading to all but the largest battles being fought by cruisers, and battleships being entirely abandoned as anything but orbital defense ships.
The cruiser was vital in the expansion of the two empires, serving as their main warships as they expanded into the other star systems within Cyrannus. Cruisers could not make the interstellar journey on their own, requiring support from massive baseships that supported them during their long journeys, which often continued along the same path, constantly orbiting the origin and destination systems in a rapid, artificial orbit without wasting fuel in slowing down and speeding back up.
The cruiser continued its role as the premier warship of the Colonies for centuries, until the rediscovery of FTL and the introduction of the war galleon. Even then, they were often still used for patrol and duties where the extremely expensive war galleon was overkill alongside remaining the premier defensive vessel. The introduction of the basestar brought the cruiser back into the spotlight, giving them the strategic mobility once restricted to war galleons without the expense of an FTL system.
The introduction of FTL to the cruiser gave them increased prominence, gaining more independence from their basestars. This prominence waned with the introduction of the battlestar, turning the cruiser from the largest direct combatant, to second line units increasingly being outmatched by battlestars. Nonetheless, cruisers continued to fight throughout the 1st Cylon War, with them making up a significant portion of the Colonial Navy due to their low production time compared to battlestars.
During the war, the Colonials began producing cruisers with designs similar to battlestars, having integrated fighter complements and decent point defenses. These vessels began to be called pocket battlestars during the early days of the war, a title that stuck. In fact, the Colonial started classifying such vessels as battlestars in order to bulk up battlestar numbers for propaganda and moral purposes, a practice that confuse their designations even after they were redesignated as cruisers again after the war, with calling such vessels battlestar continuing in a colloquial form continuing even after the Fall of The Colonies.
After the 1st Cylon War, the cruiser became a second line unit, focus being put on the battlestar, leading to the first 20 years after the war seeing no cruiser production, war-built vessels filling all needed roles. As fear of the Cylons waned, however, the cruiser came back into prominence, their lower cost compared to battlestars leading to less militant administrations favoring them, decreasing funding for battlestars in exchange for producing new cruisers. These new cruisers could fulfill most of the roles during peacetime as a battlestar, without the high cost of one.
The Cylons also used cruisers during the 1st Cylon War, but their high attrition rates led to the Cylons moving away from them as the war went on, instead focusing on more resource intensive, but overall more effective basestars, their longer build times outweighed by their lower attrition rates and greater effectiveness against battlestars. By the war's end, Cylon cruiser production ceased entirely, and did not continue under the biological Cylons.
During the 1st Cylon War, Colonial cruiser numbers peaked at over 360 with the Cylons operating up to 150 cruisers, many being captured Colonial vessels. After the war, Colonial cruiser numbers declined, reaching as low as 100 due to decommissioning of vessels, both for scrapping and being placed in reserve. However, cruiser numbers began to rise in the two decades prior to the Fall, leading to cruiser numbers rising to 180 by the Fall, over two third of which were newly built vessels.
Cruisers were hard hit by the CNP virus, the newer vessels all being designed around automated systems, making operating them without them very difficult. That, alongside the less extensive armor and flack defenses of cruisers led to them suffering horrendous losses during the first days of the 2nd Cylon War. After the Fall of The Colonies, however, they proved more effective. The distant patrols that many cruisers were sent on led to many cruisers staying out of the early fighting and many surviving cruisers were both designed and equipped for long independent operations, including manufacturing facilities in some newer vessels. The weak defenses of Cylon basestars also led to cruisers being able to damage them, making them a danger. Their larger numbers also made them harder to stamp out than the few remaining battlestars, tying up many Cylon resources.
CORVETTES:
The corvette came into being a few decades after the galleon as a reaction to advancing FTL technology. As newer FTL systems came into use, they allowed for smaller vessels to be equipped with FTL without sacrificing all of their capabilities. This led to the introduction of the corvette as an FTL capable raider and patrol ship. The mobility FTL provided gave the corvette significant advantages against cruisers, while their smaller design than galleons or basestars made them more economical.
The corvette would die out due to further improvements in FTL allowing cruisers to be economically equipped with FTL as standard, blurring the line between the two ship types. The Colonies discontinued production of corvettes, though some continued to use vessels under that name or redesignated as cruisers. The years prior to the 1st Cylon War would see the designation come back into service, not as a small capital ship like before, but as a swift scout, raider, and escort. The amount of money being funneled into the battlestar arms race led to there not being much money for cruiser production. While older cruisers were still in use, many minor postings needed FTL capable vessels and the limited cruiser fleet wasn't enough. This led to the revival of the corvette, a small, but FTL capable warship able to deal with almost any situation where a larger vessel is not involved.
The swift speed and expendability of the corvette also saw it come into the roles of fleet scout and raider, able to move in quickly, get information or destroy civilian ships, before escaping.
The 1st Cylon War saw the corvette take even more of the second line duties of cruisers, freeing up those vessels for the front line. Occasionally, corvettes would be used in major battles as harassing units or hunters, taking down damaged enemy ships that were trying to escape. While the Colonials didn't have many chances to use corvettes as raiders, the Cylons certainly did, using large numbers of the small warships to play havoc with Colonial logistics and commerce.
During the 1st Cylon War, the Colonial corvette fleet consisted of over 200 vessels, while the Cylon one contained 240.
After the 1st Cylon War, corvette production came almost entirely to an end, older vessels fulfilling all necessary positions while funds were diverted to battlestar construction. Interest in the corvette returned in the years prior to the 2nd Cylon War, their low cost proving tempting to the Colonial government. Several new corvettes were produced in a limited production run prior to the war, meant to test if a modern corvette would be of use to the fleet.
The Cylons abandoned the corvette after the war, advancements in FTL allowing both scouting and anti-commerce strikes to be done by Raiders instead, a far cheaper alternative. Some corvettes continued to see service in support roles as troop ships and space stations, but most were scrapped.
During the 2nd Cylon War, corvettes fared relatively well, being low priority for upgrading with the CNP, leading to many being unharmed by the Cylon virus. Additionally, they have the power to easily deal with a significant number of Raiders, but are numerous and insignificant enough to make hunting them down with basestars ineffective. This proved a double edged sword, while many corvettes survived, they did little damage to the Cylons, lacking the firepower to deal with basestars. Most corvettes fell at the hands of disrepair and resource shortages, not Cylon fire.
BRIGS:
The brig can find its origin in the brigantines used in the days prior to the rediscovery of FTL. The brigantine is a swift, large civilian ship designed to complete long voyages swiftly compared to other ships. This required that brigantines have large engines and high speeds, making them popular pirate ships and easily converted into warships when needed. Many Colonies used brigantines for secondary roles like fleet replenishment, troop transport, ground support, and even fleet escort, their civilian grade construction making them a relatively cheap solution compared to military-built ships.
The rediscovery of FTL was the deathnail for the brigantine, the galleon taking over its role as swift transport between the Colonies with its FTL capability. However, advances in technology allowed for smaller vessels than the galleon to be economically equipped with FTL capabilities, giving rise to the brig, named after its predecessor. The brig overtook the galleon as the primary FTL transport of the Colonies due to the logistics of offloading a ship. With FTL, the longest part of moving goods was no longer the actual travel time, but offloading them from the ship, something far easier with smaller ships.
Brigs had, for almost two centuries, served the majority of secondary military roles in navies alongside being a common large civilian ship type, with many ships being converted for military use when needed. During the 1st Cylon War, the straining Colonial economy was struggling to supply the needed number of warships to the Colonial Navy. This led to brigs being forced into combat service, escorting cruisers and battlestars into battle or patrolling less important areas of space to free up warships for use against the Cylons.
The brig began to lose its popularity as a transport after the war as FTL technology advanced. While its popularity was already waning in the years prior to the war, FTL advances reverse engineered from the Cylons dramatically dropped the minimum size of an effective FTL ship, causing the same reasoning that led to its replacement of the galleon affecting the brig. Brigs were still used in a multitude of none-transport roles such as mining, factory, agricultural, refining, and cruise ships, with some older transport brigs still in service by the Fall of The Colonies.
Many of the armed brigs used by the Colonial Navy were sold to civilians after the war, stripped of most of their weaponry. The brig was always a common pirate ship, but this sale led to the number of brigs in the hands of pirates skyrocketing, many of the sold vessels being obtained and rearmed by pirates. Some people in the Colonies, both conspiracy theorists and political opponents of the Colonial military, claim that the rise of pirate brigs was a purposeful result of the sale by the Navy, a reason to keep funding for the Navy high.
Thousands of civilian brigs operated across the Colonies as of their fall, with 120 in the service of the Colonial Armed Forces as support vessels. Their large size gave them more endurance, being big enough to be, while not self-sustaining, at least more capable of surviving on its own compared to smaller schooner and ketch. They also had enough speed and durability to escape the Cylons in many cases, and often carried at least minor armaments, usually defensive missiles.
DESTROYER:
A descendant of the gunboat, the destroyer was introduced during the 1st Cylon War as a low cost escort used to augment the point defenses of formation lacking battlestar support or escorting important vessels.
By the destroyer's introduction 6 years into the war, Colonial industry was already straining to provide armor for repairs and new construction, leading to destroyers being minimally armored or not at all. This left them highly vulnerable to attack, but the Colonials believed that, if the Cylons can spare missiles or Raiders to run through the flack gauntlet a destroyer provides, a formation is likely already doomed.
Alongside the conventional flack weapons of the destroyer, many vessels have heavy flack weapons that can serve dual purpose as anti ship weapons, though with minimal ability to penetrate capital ship armor.
The Colonial Navy operated up to 200 destroyers during the war, most attached to small flotillas of older vessels. The Cylons never introduced the destroyer, lacking the need. After the war, the destroyer fell out of favor, being a wartime measure unneeded during peacetime. Only a dozen destroyers continued operation outside of the reserve fleet, mostly a mixture of new test ships produced to test new technology and design concepts, and wartime vessels that are politically impractical to decommission due to their hero statuses from the war, but have not yet been turned into museums.
GUNBOATS:
A rather rare and old type of vessel, the gunboat is primarily a point defense escort for larger warships. The gunboat was originally developed as an escort ship for cruisers during the Imperial Wars, protecting them from missiles and fighters The small vessels, most not any larger than a passenger transport, never operate independently, their thin hulls and individually weak defenses making them vulnerable to even the smallest attackers.
Gunboats were first introduced in the time prior to FTL, prior even to common interstellar travel through slowboating. They were used as escort for frigates, being attached to their frigates during long range transit due to their limited fuel supplies and crew accommodations. This continued with the cruiser during the time of interstellar travel. The gunboat was removed from service several decades prior to the war, but came back during the conflict, being a cheap and quick to build escort for larger vessels. While they served well during the early days of the war, they were increasingly suffering high casualties, their thin hulls vulnerable to Raider attacks. Production continued throughout the war, but by the war's end they were not used in their original role. Insted, they gained a new lease on life through the Colonial Marine Corp, the gunboat proving particularly effective as fire support ships for marine units.
After the war, few gunboats were produced, all under the control of the Marine Fire Support Division, which controlled a total of 50 gunboats, a fraction of the up to 400 operated by the Colonial Navy during the war, most of those vessels being scrapped or transferred to the Marine Corp.
The lack of FTL on gunboats proved their doom, leading to almost all of them being destroyed during the Fall of The Colonies.
CUTTERS:
Not a true warship, but a policing vessel, cutters hold an important role in the safety of the Colonial spacer, acting as first responders to emergencies and fending off minor pirate attacks, or at least holding them off until a larger ship arrives.
The first cutters were orbital patrol vessels used over millennium ago in the orbits of the more advanced Colonies, used to deal with the more mundane dangers facing the Colonies, the ship engine damage, life support failure, anti-smuggling operations, all things necessary to deal with, but not needing a full warships.
The small size of early cutters led to them being only used in planetary orbits, not going beyond to the space between worlds, a domain ruled by long range warships even for mundane tasks. As ships increased in size, however, cutters followed them, eventually reaching the size that they could effectively patrol major spacelanes, sometimes for weeks at a time. Even then, cutters generally did not have FTL capabilities, being too small to accommodate the large systems, relegating them to local action. This changed in the time after the 1st Cylon War, advancing FTL technology allowing cutters, most smaller than a passenger transport, to have small and economical FTL Drives.
The Colonial Navy did not use many cutters, only using a few of them for patrolling military locations where other groups would not be trusted. Most cutters were in the service of Colonial Guards and private groups. The largest user of cutters in Colonial Space was the Colonial Joint Patrol, a privately funded organization that was founded in a more dangerous time where Colonies wouldn't cooperate to ensure the safety of ships outside of their space. The CJP took it upon themselves to do so, using cutters and even small warships to ensure the safety of civilian ships across Colonial Space. The CJP fell from grace during the 1st Cylon War, most of its larger vessels and even a large number of its cutters taken by the Colonial Navy for the war effort. After the war, legislation stripped the organization of its right to own warships, leaving it with only its cutter force, which, while partially rebuilt, was still a shadow of what it once was.
Over two thousand cutters were in service across Colonial Sace at the start of the 2nd Cylon War, most in the Cyrannus System proper. Those without FTL, which was a significant amount, faced rather rapid destruction with few exceptions. Those with FTL fared little better than civilian ships, their minimal armaments providing protection against only a few Raiders, a swarm able to take them down quite easily.
FIGHTERS:
While massive warships from the heart of the Colonial Navy, the fighter serve as its backbone. Fighters have been in service since the introduction of aircraft, but their introduction into space combat came through aerospace strike fighters, stationed on a planet's surface and striking up into space in order to destroy warships with missiles. While this was a relatively effective defense in significant numbers, the real fame of the fighter comes through its use by the fleet as a defense against missiles and missile carriers. The fighter first came into this role during the final years prior to the introduction of FTL, when ship STL drive technology advanced to the point they could be economically downsized to a point they could be used in vessels smaller than aerospace fighters, which were closer to the size of small bombers during that time. From that point on, they were a vital component of any fleet.
Fighters ended up diverging into three main subtypes, escort fighters were small fighters with minimal range used for ship escort and occasionally strike missions, larger strike fighters were used more for patrol and strike missions, and the large aerospace fighters were used for planetary defense, though the last later fell out of favor in exchange for the strike fighter.
The 1st Cylon War saw the Colonial and Cylons each focus on one specific type of fighter, while neglecting the other. The Cylons favored the strike fighters due to it providing another avenue of long rage attack, something that worked well with the missile focused armaments of Cylon warships. Escort fighters lacked the range to be used for ant significant strike missions and the Cylons trusted their point defense guns and advanced missiles to deal with Colonial missiles and the rare fighter strike. The heavy ballistic armament of Colonial warships led to their fighters being mostly of the escort variety, as the additional firepower is unnecessary compared to the needed defense against the Cylon's many missiles. While the Colonials used strike fighters more than the Cylons used escort fighters, most were only deployed to defend the Colonies and some fixed installations.
During the 1st Cylon War, the Cylons took advantage of their non-organic nature and often deployed their fighters on ballistic trajectories across Colonial systems, lacing vast areas of space with aggressive fighter squadrons ready to pounce on a ship once they are close, making vast areas of Colonial Space practically uninhabitable for ships until the end of the war saw all these fighters withdrawn.
The Cylons added a significant recon capability to its fighters by equipping them with FTL drives of significant power, allowing them to search systems light years away from their motherships. This did however degrade their fighters' combat capabilities, the FTL system and frankly oversized fuel tank taking up significant space in mass in an already smaller craft compared to the Raiders of the first war.
The number of fighters used by both sides was incalculable, with minor skirmishes commonly seeing dozens or hundreds of fighters on each side, while major battles could have thousands of fighters on each side.
The fate of Colonial fighters generally depended on their location. While some survived long after the Colonies fell on ships like the Galactica and Pegasus, many more were lost on their airfields during the opening attack, or were destroyed in the fighting around the Colonies. Any surviving fighters that did not have a home base with repair, maintenance, and resupply facilities were taken out not by the Cylons, but by their own small size and limited independence, often abandoned by their pilots or taking them with them to the grave.
