I think it is very likely from an in-universe viewpoint. Before the Cylon War, there hadn't been widespread fighting for almost 30 years. Combined with the existence of the massive ship graveyards, the Helios Beta empires exhausting themselves after decades of war with one another, and the rise of Helios Alpha powers, it would make sense for the Leonis and Virgon navies to be unable to maintain peak performance, leading most of their ships to be mothballed and the ones remaining to run with reduced armaments in a "peace time" refit. It could be even the case that the battlestar came about toward the end of the Imperial Wars from trying to combine the best traits of the Atlas carrier and the Heracles battleship in an effort to reduce operation costs. Any surviving Atlas carriers around by the time of the Cylon Rebellion were returned to active service, but no new ones would have been built since the same amount of resources could be used to build battlestars, and thus Atlases would have been given lower repair priority as the war dragged on until none were left.

I quite like the idea and it seems rather plausible to me. The visible lineage was definitely present in the design. And looking at the area of the weapons points for the medium dorsal guns gives the impression that there were plans to place a much larger turret there. Be it because of cost or need or even retrofitted down when it came time to fight the Cylon War so that heavier armament could be reserved for Battlestars.

Great idea, thru I bet that those holes are not Missile launch tubes. But VIPER LAUNCH Tubes.

@@alexcamacho1842 You thought it through more than I did!

@@hoojiwana Thank you, I may or may not have a slightly unhealthy obsession with BSG in general and it’s realism compared to other sci-fi franchises, so I’m always thinking about spaceships in terms of real world consequences of resources and design principles. It’s rare that I can actually focus my thoughts into something coherent, much less something like the videos you make; they give me a context to pull from the mess of random facts that is my mind so I struggle to come up with original backstories or headcanons until I have something to build upon, and then it just comes out like it did above. If more excellent BSG videos like this come out in the future, you’ll be sure to probably find me there.

Search " The Warmonger's Legacy " on YT. mini doc.

That’s like the Macross/II/SDF-1/SDF-2. It had two docked aircraft carriers amidships that then turned into its arms when it transformed.

They could be!

I didn't know that about that Valkyrie concept art, or the Minotaur thing (nice tip for a future video!) That concept art has an external flight deck running along the top of the craft, so I can see why they went away from that.

@@hoojiwana Yeah, I'm glad the final Valkyrie and Atlas look the way they do now.

That's the Manticore, Spacedock has a video on it you can check out.

@@hoojiwana Cool, I'll check back on Daniel's channel. Thanks.

@@hoojiwana I've been looking for the nemesis, ranger, talon, heracles, minotaur and revenant. Do have anything on those?

@@Hammerhead137 Not yet, my focus is almost entirely on producing content for Spacedock these days, not much time for this channel unfortunately.

@@hoojiwana I've been waiting 3 years for him to do a breakdown video on the Adamant and minotaur.

The best use of tha Atlas is to get as many of them as possible into a fleet with a single jupiter Battlestar and a Celestra. At the beginning of the round, you launch everything you have, turn in a way that the Jupiter can cover as much of the Atlases as possible with Flak and just Slaughter the enemy with your Viper IIs and Raptors/Assault Raptors. If the enemy tries to get close, you paint them with the Assault raptors and Unleash Hell with your Battlestar and your Atlases. You can Kill a Full Health Arachne in a Single round with concentrated fire.

@@macgruber6739 Thank you for that mate. I might give it a try

@@TheWtfnonamez Pro-tip: Just stack the atlases on top of each other. Their dorsal and ventral weaponry ist mostly worthless anyway.

From the game Battlestar Galactica Deadlock

Actually kinda does. While it does not give the vipers a boost like the launch tubes of later ships, like the Adament, it does allow you to launch them all off in a continueish wave instead of waiting for the cats to reset. Handy in certain situations. Raptors have to deal with that on all the ships short of the Mercury that has both Raptor only tubes and a dedicate launch area. As for landing, As the Atlas is turning away the craft can just fly over its back or belly, line up with the bay and just cut engines. Allowing the Atlas to basicallu gobble them up.

@@ericzaiz8358 When I said "that doesn't make sense" I was pointing out that it couldn't do return operations while launching aircraft at the same time. It would be a collision waiting to happen if they did both at the same time. It's even worse if a viper or raptor just decides to stop functioning or the engines unintentionally firing. They would have to clear the deck and area, handle the emergency, and then finally resume normal operations. If they made an opening at the back so it functions like Galactica's flight pod where the runway goes all the way through they could multi task. Or better yet, a separate return bay on the underside they could use to rearm or for emergency landings so they aren't clogging up the takeoff area during combat.

@@ericzaiz8358 In a bolter situation, any Viper or Raptor that can't stop for some reason will end up hitting the back of the ship.

Battlestar Galactica Deadlock. It's excellent if you're into turn based strategy.