03-26-2009, 01:18 PM
Yeah I still think a spoiler block is warranted....
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Note I'm quoting just Hammerskjold but I'm referencing several other people. The quotes are just what fired off my thought lines, my response should not be assumed to be directed at Hammer.
The point that no one seems to bring up is New Caprica. Given the weather there was not so hot, but the city they had? It wasn't so great either, even before the Cylon occupation.
As others have mentioned, much of the tech they had was already broken. Things could have been salvaged, but it would have been a stop gap. 25K people (I think that was about all that was left likely even less, I know we were under 29K and hundreds more had died) can't build a huge infrastructure quickly. New Caprica was mostly a tent city and landed ships anyway and they were there for well over a year before the Cylons found them.
New Caprica also was a suck hole and they mentioned several times that people still didn't go back to the ships that much, even Tigh stayed on the craphole planet because it was better than the ships. They were already starting to forget about the ships and abandon some of the tech on New Caprica. Don't forget that all the survivors had already had a lesson in starting over on a planet.
If you take the tech with you, you have even less incentive to push forward. Any city that was built was doomed to decline for many years anyway, they had seen some of this. They had seen how easy a central population was to enslave by the Cylons and they had 2 Battlestars to defend them at that point. But they were undermanned, and not ready for the fight. Now they would have had a broken Battlestar and if they wanted to keep the base ship a bunch of Centurions they really weren't sure about, hanging around as well.
The rest of the fleet couldn't defend against an attack anyway. It's also very possible that even a powered down in orbit ship would be much easier for long range scanners to pick up than other signs of life on the planet. So instead of leaving that "hey come and get me!" sign up they got rid of it.
They also had no idea where they were. So even if they wanted to check out other planets and you have to ask why they would since Earth was obviously the best planet they had ever seen, even better than their home worlds as was hinted at by the "there is more life here than on the 13 colonies combined" comment, all the nav data would need to be recalculated.
Jumping to some other system, alone and unprotected when you know there were still other base ships out there, sure they didn't have resurrection and might be as willing to fight, but where is the fight that Colonial One could put up? Even with weapons from Galactica, which after the assault on the colony, had even less to offer in terms of weapons as they made it point to show several of the gun batteries being blown up, and you have to assume a lot of the remaining ammo was gone too.
People knew they were stuck on earth for the rest of the lives anyway if they wanted any kind of safety.
These are good questions, but even if they didn't give up the guns, how long would they really be an advantage? The marines could have force relocated them too go where they wanted them to go. You stick them in the middle of North America, along the Mississippi and don't give them a ship and you've cut them off from Europe, Asia and Africa. It would take them months to get to South America. Put them in Australia or a Pacific island and they are effectively cut off from everyone. So they can keep their guns and the marines can relocate them and they are not an issue anymore anyway.
Besides, making gunpowder and ammunition takes resources and a base infrastructure that simply weren't there. The higher tech the weapon the more precise the ammunition has to be. You get a charge wrong in an automatic and it jams up, and is a pain in the arse to use. Even stripping the ships doesn't mean you are going to have a lot of resource for that. As you mentioned, the ships were tillium powered, I'm assuming most of the rest of the tech assumed a tillium power source of some kind as well. We know that earth doesn't have any (since they tied it back to us and since we've never found tillium), since it can be scanned for so did the settlers. The old tech was going to run out of fuel or need conversion anyway. Did they even know about coal/oil/other fossil fuels and how to harness the power from them?
Remember we are dealing with mostly average joe's that just happened to be in space when the planets were wiped out. Roslin was, what, 46th in line for the presidency and there was no one else even close to her civilian rank with government experience.
Expansion would have happened regardless of splitting up or staying centralized. People would have left the city because history shows that humanity explores, and the colonials were not that different. Centralization also means that you are more likely to be wiped out by the Cylons if they come back since you have no defenses anyway. Even putting the guns and the ships on the rest of the fleet, as has been mentioned wouldn't have mattered.
Did he have a choice? Again, you take 25K random people from Earth, and drop them somewhere in North America, 150,000 years ago with say a battleship, an aircraft carrier, a few jet planes, a couple of cargo ships, some cars and trucks and helicopters and come back in 10 years and see if any of that stuff is running. Even with several nuclear reactors at their disposal from the ships that could give instant power sources you are going to regress and lots of people are just going to go off as settlers anyway.
The whole swap from civilized to agrarian isn't as hard as it seems. People who had lived only in cities and never farmed in their lives came from Europe and went to the wild untamed parts of America. Sure they had access to the manufactured goods of Europe and the east but they adapted.
But none of the tech could really have been saved, it would have been salvaged and rare and precious. In 200 years when the population was potentially around a million (depends on how much interbreeding with the locals had happened) all the tech would have been pretty much gone anyway as there would have been no way to support it. You would have to assume that the tillium was all gone they would have no way to get to the fleet in orbit anyway, I can't see them having gas powered raptors for transport. Transportation would have been back at the horse and buggy anyway as the kids that were born on Earth even if you took them to the ships and taught them wouldn't be living in that world, they would be farming and hunting because that is what needed to be done to survive. The algae food processing couldn't sustain the larger population. Remember they mentioned that on New Caprica too, they had to start farming if the population increases were going to continue.
I'm sure that happened anyway. But there wasn't any ice cream as it was. Again don't forget New Caprica. That planet sucked and they were still happier there. They had the fleet, they didn't use it and I don't think that was unreasonable. These people wanted a home. They wanted a home badly. As mentioned Earth was a better planet than any of them had ever seen.
Now there are still holes in my argument, but there weren't too many other options. The fleet had been looking for a planet to live on for 4 years as it was and had found one craptastic place. But again the desire for an actual home and a chance to get away from the Cylons, could have also been used to railroad the agenda through. You don't give the people time to organize and you just do it and you could get a lot more to agree to it and when it's done you can't go back. I agree I don't see everyone buying it. I personally would have argued to keep some of the better quality ships (assuming they weren't a beacon of hey Cylons that still hate us we are over here) around and salvaged more of the tech but at that stage I could also see me being overruled as well.
I still agree that it's a weak point and it deserved more time and explanation, and could have played out differently, but I don't think the end results would have changed too much if you played it different, and if you played it different the whole impact of the cycle isn't as good.
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Note I'm quoting just Hammerskjold but I'm referencing several other people. The quotes are just what fired off my thought lines, my response should not be assumed to be directed at Hammer.
Quote: I've been thinking about this part for a while, and I'm still 49\51 split on it. The 150,000 year jump hangs on the whole 'let's not build cities right away' bit.
The point that no one seems to bring up is New Caprica. Given the weather there was not so hot, but the city they had? It wasn't so great either, even before the Cylon occupation.
As others have mentioned, much of the tech they had was already broken. Things could have been salvaged, but it would have been a stop gap. 25K people (I think that was about all that was left likely even less, I know we were under 29K and hundreds more had died) can't build a huge infrastructure quickly. New Caprica was mostly a tent city and landed ships anyway and they were there for well over a year before the Cylons found them.
New Caprica also was a suck hole and they mentioned several times that people still didn't go back to the ships that much, even Tigh stayed on the craphole planet because it was better than the ships. They were already starting to forget about the ships and abandon some of the tech on New Caprica. Don't forget that all the survivors had already had a lesson in starting over on a planet.
If you take the tech with you, you have even less incentive to push forward. Any city that was built was doomed to decline for many years anyway, they had seen some of this. They had seen how easy a central population was to enslave by the Cylons and they had 2 Battlestars to defend them at that point. But they were undermanned, and not ready for the fight. Now they would have had a broken Battlestar and if they wanted to keep the base ship a bunch of Centurions they really weren't sure about, hanging around as well.
The rest of the fleet couldn't defend against an attack anyway. It's also very possible that even a powered down in orbit ship would be much easier for long range scanners to pick up than other signs of life on the planet. So instead of leaving that "hey come and get me!" sign up they got rid of it.
They also had no idea where they were. So even if they wanted to check out other planets and you have to ask why they would since Earth was obviously the best planet they had ever seen, even better than their home worlds as was hinted at by the "there is more life here than on the 13 colonies combined" comment, all the nav data would need to be recalculated.
Jumping to some other system, alone and unprotected when you know there were still other base ships out there, sure they didn't have resurrection and might be as willing to fight, but where is the fight that Colonial One could put up? Even with weapons from Galactica, which after the assault on the colony, had even less to offer in terms of weapons as they made it point to show several of the gun batteries being blown up, and you have to assume a lot of the remaining ammo was gone too.
People knew they were stuck on earth for the rest of the lives anyway if they wanted any kind of safety.
Quote:- Baltar's cult. Did they give up their guns? They received an upgrade from just a bunch of pistols after the mutiny IIRC. ....
...How about the Sons of Ares, are they as amenable to the new arrangement? Maybe the remaining Colonial Marines can settle that.
These are good questions, but even if they didn't give up the guns, how long would they really be an advantage? The marines could have force relocated them too go where they wanted them to go. You stick them in the middle of North America, along the Mississippi and don't give them a ship and you've cut them off from Europe, Asia and Africa. It would take them months to get to South America. Put them in Australia or a Pacific island and they are effectively cut off from everyone. So they can keep their guns and the marines can relocate them and they are not an issue anymore anyway.
Besides, making gunpowder and ammunition takes resources and a base infrastructure that simply weren't there. The higher tech the weapon the more precise the ammunition has to be. You get a charge wrong in an automatic and it jams up, and is a pain in the arse to use. Even stripping the ships doesn't mean you are going to have a lot of resource for that. As you mentioned, the ships were tillium powered, I'm assuming most of the rest of the tech assumed a tillium power source of some kind as well. We know that earth doesn't have any (since they tied it back to us and since we've never found tillium), since it can be scanned for so did the settlers. The old tech was going to run out of fuel or need conversion anyway. Did they even know about coal/oil/other fossil fuels and how to harness the power from them?
Remember we are dealing with mostly average joe's that just happened to be in space when the planets were wiped out. Roslin was, what, 46th in line for the presidency and there was no one else even close to her civilian rank with government experience.
Expansion would have happened regardless of splitting up or staying centralized. People would have left the city because history shows that humanity explores, and the colonials were not that different. Centralization also means that you are more likely to be wiped out by the Cylons if they come back since you have no defenses anyway. Even putting the guns and the ships on the rest of the fleet, as has been mentioned wouldn't have mattered.
Quote:
- Did Lee fully understood the real risk of switching the Colonials into a hunter-gatherer\agrarian society, from a previously high tech one?
Did he have a choice? Again, you take 25K random people from Earth, and drop them somewhere in North America, 150,000 years ago with say a battleship, an aircraft carrier, a few jet planes, a couple of cargo ships, some cars and trucks and helicopters and come back in 10 years and see if any of that stuff is running. Even with several nuclear reactors at their disposal from the ships that could give instant power sources you are going to regress and lots of people are just going to go off as settlers anyway.
The whole swap from civilized to agrarian isn't as hard as it seems. People who had lived only in cities and never farmed in their lives came from Europe and went to the wild untamed parts of America. Sure they had access to the manufactured goods of Europe and the east but they adapted.
But none of the tech could really have been saved, it would have been salvaged and rare and precious. In 200 years when the population was potentially around a million (depends on how much interbreeding with the locals had happened) all the tech would have been pretty much gone anyway as there would have been no way to support it. You would have to assume that the tillium was all gone they would have no way to get to the fleet in orbit anyway, I can't see them having gas powered raptors for transport. Transportation would have been back at the horse and buggy anyway as the kids that were born on Earth even if you took them to the ships and taught them wouldn't be living in that world, they would be farming and hunting because that is what needed to be done to survive. The algae food processing couldn't sustain the larger population. Remember they mentioned that on New Caprica too, they had to start farming if the population increases were going to continue.
Quote: What happens when some folks are not as happy with Earth2, and starts saying dammit I miss Caprican ice cream. Where's my ice cream?! Some paradise this is...it's more like Hell! Why did we jettison the ships into the sun again?! Ungrateful and short-sighted yes, but all too human. Maybe this is why Lee chose to be alone for awhile, to hedge his bet when the complainin' starts.
I'm sure that happened anyway. But there wasn't any ice cream as it was. Again don't forget New Caprica. That planet sucked and they were still happier there. They had the fleet, they didn't use it and I don't think that was unreasonable. These people wanted a home. They wanted a home badly. As mentioned Earth was a better planet than any of them had ever seen.
Now there are still holes in my argument, but there weren't too many other options. The fleet had been looking for a planet to live on for 4 years as it was and had found one craptastic place. But again the desire for an actual home and a chance to get away from the Cylons, could have also been used to railroad the agenda through. You don't give the people time to organize and you just do it and you could get a lot more to agree to it and when it's done you can't go back. I agree I don't see everyone buying it. I personally would have argued to keep some of the better quality ships (assuming they weren't a beacon of hey Cylons that still hate us we are over here) around and salvaged more of the tech but at that stage I could also see me being overruled as well.
I still agree that it's a weak point and it deserved more time and explanation, and could have played out differently, but I don't think the end results would have changed too much if you played it different, and if you played it different the whole impact of the cycle isn't as good.
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It's all just zeroes and ones and duct tape in the end.
It's all just zeroes and ones and duct tape in the end.