Re:"The Hand of God" Revisited
(SPOILERS for [i]”Kobol’s Last Gleaming” [/i]included in this post!)
The plotholes the writers left themselves were large enough to send the Ragtag fleet through.
The labrat-in-a-maze-being-prodded hypothesis is interesting. I personally think the Cylons know about Earth, and are using the Ragtag Fleet as a Judas Goat. That however is only a sidebar to their main plan which I still find somewhat puzzling.
There is the incident where the whitesuited boomer clone III tries to kill Agathon(and is shot by Caprica Sharon) that makes me suspect that if the Biocylons are trying to labrat Helo, then not all of them have the WORD.
Now as to that Tylium?
Tigh mentions that the Cylons need Tylium as much as the Colonials do if not more.
He also states it is rare.
That means the Colonials have surveyed(at least in their space) for the fuel deposit sources.
Where the Colonials are now is beyond their Known Space. They had to survey for water earlier and fuel now.
The Cylons probably surveyed for fuel and garrisoned the deposits when they went into hiding(See the previous above post for my reasoning.).
The base stars probably have some form of gravidic engine or artificial gravity(The Colonials obviously have it or they would float aboard their ships.) What the base stars don’t have is a reaction drive that allows them free maneuvering independent of a local mass’ gravitational field.(That’s what I see on film.)
I can argue that tactical mobility for a base star is thus restricted.
As to their sublight travel between the Twelve Colonies?
Gravitational slingshot?
FTL radio may be possible, or the Cylons could use couriers as you suggest-BUT:
SPOILERS:
it is implicit in Lieutenant Gaeta’s analysis that those Cylon transponders are akin to a beacon network for the Cylons that allow them to in-jump on a pre-registered locator signal.
The Tylium asteroid base should have had one.
The Colonial Raptors based on the series’ backstory should have been able to jam the base’s transponder.
That is how I explain the lack of those long ranged Raider in-jumps into a rock cluttered environment or the out-jumps of couriers sent to bring help.
The Cylons couldn’t communicate with their navigational beacons to make precision jumps.
It also helps explain the strange Cylon ability to quickly out-calculate the Colonials when computing a jump[i](“33”)[/i] , why the Cylons lose track of the Ragtag Fleet when their bugged freighter goes bye bye, and the
MORE SPOILERS:
curious interaction between that Cylon Scout and either Galactica Boomer or some other Cylon plant aboard the [b]Galactica[/b] [i](“Tigh Me Up; Tigh me Down”[/i]-my favorite suspects are Ellen Tigh, Lieutenant Gaeta, or Billy Keikaya at the moment.). Those transponders simplify the Cylons’ navigation and communication problems immensely.
It(the transponders) is also a good argument for suggesting FTL communication-at least among the Cylons.
Something else bothers me.
The Ragtag Fleet made 200+ jumps in [i]”33”. [/i]
Those jumps were, from my observation of the story[i](“33”), [/i] were just planned to be far enough to escape local Cylon sublight patrols. That doesn’t mean light year increment jumps for the Ragtag Fleet. It makes a sort of sense as I would expect a major jump(like a twelve lightyear Raptor jump from “The Hand of God”) to be a major calculation for Lieutenant Gaeta(Who appears to be [b]Galactica’s[/b] gravigator?) that would take some hours to safely calculate.
If all you have is thirty three minutes then you micro-jump in gravitationally “flat” space to avoid running into planets and other navigational hazards.
I also suspect that the Ragtag Fleet is still relatively close to Caprica.(No more than a few parsecs out. If Kobol is two hundred years by STL slowboat.)
The biggest headache as far as story line goes is that FTL engined Raider. Unless the Ragtag fleet has doubled back on Caprica and is midway between Kobol and their old home then things at that point start to break down storywise.
Based on the slim information available I prefer the following hypothesis.
In the sixty days since the bombing of Caprica, Adama has led the fleet on an outbound spiral. He has resource surveyed and charted within the outer system reaches of the Caprican system or in the space between the system and its nearest neighbors.
The one time the [b]Galactica[/b] and the decoy freighters left the Ragtag Fleet, we were given an upper range limit(Tigh and Lee Adama) of twelve lightyears scouting radius by the Raptor hunting parties.
I submit that if the Raptor can jump twelve lightyears, then the Raider should have a similar range limit.(Fuel limit based on the Raider’s size.)
The larger base ships may have longer legs but I doubt it.
Jump capability may be mass related?
For these reasons I suggest that the “huge range” that some postulate for the Raider may be a misread.
If the battlestar is still within the twelve lightyear Raptor radius of Caprica, then Kara could easily one or multi-jump her way to that world.