Basestar

The basestar was the primary capital ship of the Cylons, an armored carrier and battleship hybrid that filled the same role for the Cylon fleet that the battlestar filled for the Colonial Fleet. The modern Type-D basestar, grown from hardened organic matter and operated by a living Hybrid, launched the Raiders that led the Fall of the Twelve Colonies and harried Galactica and its civilian convoy thereafter.

The Type-A basestar#

The Type-A basestar was the warship the Cylons used during the First Cylon War. It appeared as two flattened cones joined at the center, giving it a distinctive saucer-like profile, and its primary armament was multiple missile launchers dotted along the circular hull, with hangar bays located in the central hull at the end of its trenches.

Although the origins of the first basestars are unknown, it is reasonable to suppose they began as part of the Caprican Navy and the navies to which Caprica sold its Cylon creations in the years before the war and the Articles of Colonization. Once the war began, these ships took part in some of its most prominent battles, including the Siege of Tauron and Operation Raptor Talon. After the war they were decommissioned and replaced by the modern Type-D. Models of Type-A basestars were later displayed in the war museum aboard Galactica.

The Type-D basestar#

The Type-D basestar, also called the Modern Basestar or Baseship, was the primary capital ship the Cylons fielded at the time of the Fall of the Twelve Colonies and the Second Cylon War, filling the same armored carrier and battleship role as a battlestar. It was developed at some point after the First Cylon War and replaced the earlier ships of the same name. Unlike the Type-A or earlier Cylon technology, the Type-D was constructed from hardened organic matter and operated by an organic Cylon, a Hybrid, rather than a conventional crew.

Basestars saw heavy action in the Fall, toward which the Cylon military had been building for years. Though less armored than a battlestar, the use of the CNP exploit meant few if any basestars were lost in the offensive. A fleet of them continued to harass Galactica and the refugee convoy afterward, while much of the rest of the Cylon fleet was deployed elsewhere. In the months following the exodus from New Caprica, the Cylon Civil War broke out, with ships under the Number One, Four, and Five models fighting those crewed or commandeered by the Two, Six, and Eight models, destroying much of the fleet. After the destruction of the Colony it is uncertain how many basestars survived, the only known survivor being one crewed by Centurions liberated from slavery by the rebel models.

Design#

As with most Cylon technology after the First Cylon War, the basestar was organic in origin, so that damage could heal like a regenerating wound. Within its central section lay habitation for Humanoid Cylons and their Centurion servants, along with a computer room housing the Hybrid, the Cylon integrated into the ship's mainframe and effectively the personification of the vessel.

Above and below this central section were rotating sections, each extending three wings in a Y-shape, which served as the ship's hangar decks. Raiders were embedded within the wings to await launch, and the wings could be entered to reach the pressurized hangar deck. The inner parts of the ship left the organic elements exposed, so that during one Colonial mission to destroy a basestar with a nuclear bomb a Raptor had to land directly on the flesh.

While heavily armed, able to fire conventional, nuclear, and MIRV missiles, basestars were nowhere near as armored as their Colonial counterparts. Their regenerative ability, however, far outstripped the months of drydock a damaged battlestar required.