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Cylon Tactics
The Cylons quickly establish the initiative and used overwhelming force in
both symmetric and asymmetric methods of operation to effect the total
devastation of the Twelve Colonies and to virtually succeed in annihilating
of the human race.
Sesha Abinell gathered information on Cylon modus operandi as part of her
ill-fated plan to exact revenge for her husband's death and expose military
cover-ups and collusion with the Cylons. Her computer monitor in details
several tactics of the Cylons from her point of view:
Sleep Deprivation
The Cylons are machines that do not require food or rest. Combined with the
work of Cylon agents that have infiltrated the members of the Fleet, the
Cylons can terrorize and force the Fleet to tax and drain their limited
resources. The Colonial military support is also eroded through exhaustion as
well as wear-and-tear. The driving tactic of ambushing the Fleet every 33
minutes for 5 consecutive days greatly limited Galactica's ability to repair
fighters as their hangar deck crews as well as command crews were pushed to
exhaustion and inefficiency.
The humanoid Cylons are mostly organic, and thus require food and rest by
definition; however, they do not require nearly as much as normal humans do,
as demonstrated by the Valerii Cylons.
Assault on Natural Resources
Cylon agents pose the most fundamental threat to the security of the Fleet
and to the remaining survivors of the Twelve Colonies. Because humanoid
Cylons are visually indistinguishable from true humans, they form an
asymmetric threat to the densely packed and defenseless civilian elements of
the Fleet. Destruction or control of the Fleet's limited resources such as
water supplies or tylium are of high importance.
Emotional Manipulation
Humanoid Cylons, be they "sleeper agents" such as Boomer "Valerii" or selfaware
persons such as the first Aaron Doral copy possess strong emotions that
are indiscernible from the emotions of a human. As agent copies are
archetypes of human personalities, each Humanoid Cylon is specialized to
affect the humans they contact in particular ways.
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Suicide Attacks
As the personality of a humanoid Cylon can be resurrected under the right
conditions, and as such Cylon agents may intentionally expose themselves to
destroy a Colonial resource. A second copy of Aaron Doral detonates himself
inside a corridor in Galactica, nearly killing its commanding officers.
Raiders may also use ramming as a tactic against a Raptor, Viper, or
battlestar.
After the destruction of the Resurrection Ship, the Cylons adjusted their
tactics from direct assaults to hit-and-run attacks, to avoid permanently
losing great numbers of Raiders (or humanoid copies aboard Cylon vessels) in
battle.
Cylon impregnation and reproduction
As per their God's commandments, the Cylons have used captured Colonial
refugees still alive in the remains of the Colonial cities in an attempt to
reproduce themselves with human hosts. In cases where a female human refuses
to cooperate, the Cylons attempt to artificially fertilize her eggs with
Humanoid Cylon genetic material. In cases where the woman collaborates, the
normal method of intercourse is tried. In other facilities, the Cylons
attempt to fertilize female Humanoid Cylons with the genetic material of
human males. To date, only one successful fertilization and birth of a Cylonhuman
hybrid has been accomplished, as part of an experiment where Lieutenant
Karl Agathon was set up to fall in love with an Eight whose true nature he
was unaware of. Such tactics are demoralizing to Colonials who believe
strongly that Cylons are purely machines; they may feel that such tactics are
a form of rape or perversity that is intolerable, as expressed by Kara Thrace
to Samuel Anders. Conversely, human Colonial officers on the Battlestar
Pegasus committed gang-rape of the Humanoid Cylon known as Gina.
Multiple models
There are twelve models of humanoid Cylons, each with a personality archetype
considered one of 12 human behaviors or traits. The number of copies of a
particular model are unknown, but believed to be very large, further
complicating Colonial identification of one model and their actions versus
another copy.
Sleeper agents within the Fleet
Sleeper agents are not aware of their true nature. A low-level personality
overrides the human personality as required to perform espionage or sabotage.
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Boomer "Valerii" is a sleeper agent that rebels against her suspected nature
but eventually succumbs to it when her sleeper personality directs her to
shoot Commander William Adama at point-blank range in an assassination
attempt. Currently, "Galactica-Valerii" is the only known sleeper agent.
Takeover by Brute Force
The symmetric threat posed by the Cylons resides chiefly in the large, wellsupplied,
technologically sophisticated and well-coordinated space-based
naval forces. These are comprised of space-superiority fighters, troop
carriers, large capital warships, associated support vessels, and a
Resurrection Ship, which is responsible for the recovery of killed Humanoid
Cylon and Raider personalities. An individual baseship appears to be less
than a match for a Mercury class battlestar in combat, but there are
presently far more of the former than the latter. It appears that while
baseships and battlestars are designed to be carrier/battleship hybrids,
baseships lean more towards a carrier as shown by their proportionately
larger fighter capacity, while battlestars are better at direct engagement
between capital ships. Normally if a baseship faces a battlestar with its
full fighter compliment, it poses a serious threat even to Mercury-class
battlestars. However, if a base ship's Raider wings are lured away (as in the
Battle of the Resurrection Ship) and it is then engaged directly by a
battlestar's primary gun batteries, the basestar would stand at a great
disadvantage.
The superiority of numbers of the Cylons, be it ships or troop units, leaves
the Colonial remnant with very limited defensive options and virtually no
offensive options should they encounter Cylon forces. Tactics seen include:
* Infantry Combat: The fast, heavily armored, and well-armed Cylon Centurion
has proven its lethality in multiple close engagements with armed Galactica
personnel. Small numbers of Centurions can pose a significant threat to the
entire crew.
* Precision Strike: The Cylons have demonstrated the capability to insert a
strike team onto an battlestar despite its defenses. During a boarding by
specially-armored Centurions, the Cylons would have gained access to Aft
Damage Control, probably captured Galactica and destroyed the rest of the
Fleet were it not for the knowledge of the commanding officer and his
experience and information from serving in the Cylon War.
* Electronic Countermeasures (ECM): The uncanny ability of Cylons to
compromise the security of networked computer systems has been welldocumented.
Raiders routiniously send signals to either open a backdoor in
Colonial fighters equipped with the CNP or attempt to crack a fighter's
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avionics or access a battlestar's computer network to infect it with a
debilitating virus.
* Mass invasion: The Cylon forces are so overwhelming to remaining Colonial
forces that the mere appearance of a single baseship is cause for immediate
retreat. While the Fleet (with Pegasus to aid) is able to stop a massive twobasestar
Cylon fleet that followed Galactica for a time, two battlestars were
far outmatched by the bulk of dozens of basestars that appear near New
Caprica to occupy the colonists who settle there.
