In the early years of the First Cylon War, the grand majority of Cylon warship designs
were alterations on existing colonial blueprints, but when the Cylons finally began to develop
completely original vessels, they laid the groundwork for what would become the iconic
Cylon aesthetic, and no ship was more important to this process, than the Cerberus Battle
Carrier.
At a length of 1480 meters, and a breadth of 1010 meters, the Cerberus is one of the
largest vessels active during the first cylon war, dwarfing every colonial warship in service,
though still smaller than the massive Cylon Basestars.
As one of the earliest original Cylon designs, the frame of the Cerberus echoes the shape
and aesthetic that would eventually become the staple of the Cylon fleet.
The huge mass of the Cerberus is propelled by a cluster of relatively small sublight
drives, affording the vessel very limited speed and manoeuvrability, but given that
the carrier is most often deployed at a distance to support smaller warships, these limitations
a rarely a problem.
The Cerberus carries very few offensive weapons, sporting only a small number of heavy guns
on its dorsal and ventral hull, but the vessel boasts durable multi-layered armor plating,
capable of withstanding sustained fire from even the largest colonial gun batteries.
The Carrier’s three long, reinforced arms serve as the vessel’s flight decks, with
each housing a pair of magnetised launching rails, allowing a second inverted fighter
to be deployed simultaneously with every launch.
Beneath the mouth of each flight deck, underslung retrieval bays allow raiders to be repaired
and rearmed rapidly, and in emergency situations, these bays can be loaded with additional craft
to serve as supplementary flight decks.
A single Cerberus carries a standard complement of 120 strike craft, almost twice that of
the largest Colonial Battlestars, and it’s strike wings consist mostly of prototype and
Mark 1 Raiders.
The vessels also carry a number of Heavy Raiders for boarding attacks, as well as a contingent
of Wardriver Drones, an unmanned craft carrying no conventional weapons, that was designed
to serve as a portable electronic warfare suite.
The Cerberus is equipped with advanced communications and DRADIS systems, intended to help coordinate
its massive fighter wing, and in battle the carriers tend to remain at the edge of the
engagement zone, sortieing their attack wings to support smaller warships.
The Cerberus Carrier has gathered a fearful reputation among the men and women of the
colonial fleet, often being seen as a sign that the Cylons were advancing far beyond
the limits of Colonial engineering.
The Carriers are substantially larger than any Colonial warship and capable of co-ordinating
far more fighters than any colonial carrier, by the time the Battlestar Athena was launched,
only two Cerberus Carriers had ever been defeated in battle, and examination of their wreckage
revealed that all potentially valuable hardware had self-destructed, robbing the colonials
of any opportunity to reverse-engineer the advanced Cylon technology.
Serving as a powerful symbol of Cylon Engineering and military might, the Cerberus Carrier is
one of the most formidable foes the Colonial Fleet has ever faced, and across the course
of the first Cylon War, the massive vessels were responsible for numerous decisive cylon
victories.
Perhaps the only aspect of the Cerberus more impressive than Its battlefield record, is
the carrier’s enormous significance to the larger lineage of Cylon warships, representing
the first step toward the unique and imposing vessels that would eventually define
the Cylon Fleet.