6th Flt. Flagship

Mercury-Class Battlestar Specifications

CLASS: Mercury
RACE: Colonial
TYPE: Military
FTL PROPULSION: At least 2 FTL drives, 8 x sublight engines, 6 individual engine pods (2 on main hull between engine pods), 40 x maneuvering engines (in 10 clusters of 4 apiece)
CREW: Maximum 4200, Standard 2800, Minimum 350
ROLE: Carrier/Battleship Hybrid
WEAPONS: 24x Heavy Batteries (8x forward, 8x dorsal, 8x ventral), 196x Light Twin-Turrets (across flight pods, port & starboard main hull, forward turrets), Decoy Drones, Hunter Class programmable missiles, Heavy Class D warheads, Tactical Nuclear Weapons, Fighters, Raptors
STATUS: Active
FIGHTERS: A maximum of 8 squadrons of 10 Fighters. 
RAPTORS: The number of Raptors available to Mercury-Class battlestars is assumed to have a maximum of thirty Raptors. 

OVERVIEW

Following the end of the Cylon War, the original battlestars remained in service as other battlestars were built. Their numbers steadily increased to a grand total of 120 ships in the Colonial Fleet. New models employed technologies, such as networked computers, which had been prohibited during the Cylon war.

A Mercury-class battlestar sports several features not found aboard Columbia Class vessels, like the Galactica, such as automated sliding doorways and basic computer recognition stations at vital areas. At the time of the fall of the Twelve Colonies, a Mercury-Class battlestar was a top-of-the-line vessel.

The physical appearance of the Mercury-Class is different than that of the original battlestar. The "neck" section is smaller, and the Mercury-class is equipped with eight sublight engine pods compared the older class  four. These are also more "boxy" in appearance than those of the original. The flight pods also appear to have two entrances each, above and below the mid-line. Combined with computer assisted landing, this gives the Mercury-class a faster rate of viper recovery than Columbia-class. Unlike the Columbia-Class, the Mercury-Class appears to have a full armor "skin".  In the Galactica's case,  this may have been deliberately removed prior to its scheduled decommissioning.

The gun batteries on the Mercury-class are arranged very differently from the Columbia-Class. Whereas on the Columbia-Class large guns are clustered along her top side, with secondary batteries concentrated along the flight pods, the guns of the Mercury-class are found all over the ship. The greatest concentration of large turrets are found along the side of the ship, within the valley created by the upper and lower halves of the hull, including the flight pods. Four are mounted on the underside of the upper hull on the ship's bow, below which sits four non-turreted large guns; these form the main forward batteries. Two more turrets are mounted on the front and back of each flight pod. The Mercury-class's secondary guns are distributed all over the ship and do not clearly emerge from the hull like the Columbia-Class.

In addition to having better armament and weapons than the Columbia-Class, the Mercury-Class battlestar has production facilities to build new Viper Mark VIIs from basic resources.

Unlike the Columbia-Class, which must retract her flight pods to execute a Jump, the Mercury-Class battlestar's flight pods are fixed in place and do not retract during a Jump. This suggests that a Mercury-Class battlestar's Jump system is more advanced than the older battlestar.

The shape of the Mercury-Class resembles the Original Series battlestar more than the Re-imagined Series' the Columbia-Class. Its engine pods number eight, compared to the Columbia-Class's six engine pods. The pods aboard the Mercury-Class battlestar appear more directly integrated with its rear section, and its flight pods share the original angular shape.

The visual effects artist of the re-imagined Pegasus, Jose A. Perez, has commented that, "The new design was somewhat of a cross between the look of the old class battlestars, and yet with elements of the new one. Aside from that, it has mostly hull plating (to absorb more damage), as opposed to the The Columbia-Class which has more ribbing."   Mr. Perez also commented that, "The harder edges [of the Pegasus] were intentional as well, to match the interior style of the sets more."

 

ARIES FIGHTER SPECS

 

Fighter Specs     Raptor Specs