Damage Control

27 Sep 2016 by claytonbeese

After the Galactica takes a nuclear missile hit to its port launch bay, part of the CIC goes into Damage Control mode. Chief Tyrol and another officer take up a position next to a large board with a top-down schematic of the Galactica. The board has various lights in major sections of the ship representing various air-tight modules in the ship.

After the nuclear hit, the port launch bay is venting to space, bulkheads are collapsing in due to the damage, and there are uncontrolled fires. In those blocks, the lights blink red.

Colonel Tigh orders the red sections sealed off and vented to space. When Tigh turns his special damage control key in the “Master Vent” control, the lights disappear until the areas are sealed off again. When the fires go out and the master vents are closed, the lights return to a green state.

On the board then, the lights have three states:

Green: air-tight, healthy
Blinking Red: Fire
Off: Intentional Venting

There does not appear to be any indications of the following states:

Damage Control Teams in the area
Open to space/not air-tight

We also do not see how sections are chosen to be vented.

Why it works

The most effective pieces here are the red lights and the “vent” key. Chief Tyrol has a phone to talk to local officers managing the direct crisis, and can keep a basic overview of the problems on the ship (with fire being the most dangerous) with the light board. The “vent” key is likewise straightforward, and has a very clear “I’m about to do something dangerous” interaction.

What is confusing are the following items:

How does Chief Tyrol determine which phone/which officer he’s calling?
Who is the highest ranking officer in the area?
How does the crew determine which sections they’re going to vent?
How do they view more complex statuses besides “this section is on fire”?

As with other systems on the Galactica, the board could be improved with the use of more integrated systems like automatic sensors, display screens to cycle through local cameras, and tracking systems for damage control crew. Also as with other systems on the Galactica, these were deliberate omissions to prevent the Cylons from being able to control the Galactica.

One benefit of the simplified system is that it keeps Chief Tyrol thinking of the high-level problem instead of trying to micromanage his local damage control teams. With proper training, local teams with effective leadership and independent initiative are more effective than a large micro-managed organization. Chief Tyrol can focus on the goals he needs his teams to accomplish:

Putting out fires
Evacuating local crew
Protecting the ship from secondary explosions

…and allow his local teams to focus on the tactics of each major goal.

What it’s missing

A glaring omission here is the lack of further statuses. In the middle of a crisis, Chief Tyrol could easily lose track of individual teams on his ship. He knows the crews that are in the Port Hangar Bay, but we never hear about the other damage control teams and where they are. Small reminders or other status indicators would keep the Chief from needing to remember everything that was happening across the ship. Even a box of easily-grabbed sticky notes or a grease-pen board would help here and be very low-tech.

Possible indicators include:

Secondary lights in each section when a damage control crew was in the area
A third color indicator (less optimal, but would take up less space on the board)
A secondary board with local reports of damage crew location and progress
Radiation alarms
Extreme temperatures
Low oxygen states
High oxygen states (higher fire risk)
Structural damage

It is also possible that Colonel Tigh would have taken the local crews into consideration when making his decision if he could have seen where they were for himself on the board, instead of simply hearing Chief Tyrol’s protests about their existence. Reducing feedback loops can make decision making less error prone and faster, but can admittedly introduce single points of failure.

Colonel Tigh and Chief Tyrol are able to get control of the situation with the tools at hand, but minor upgrades could have lessened the stress of the situation and allowed both of them to think clearer before jumping to decisions. Better systems would have given them all the information they needed, but the Galactica’s purpose limited them for the benefit of the entire ship.

Captain’s Board

20 Sep 2016 by claytonbeese

The Captain’s Board is a double hexagon table at the very center of the CIC. This board serves as a combination of podium and status dashboard for the ship’s Captain. Often, the ship’s XO or other senior officers will move forward and use a grease pen or replacement transparency sheet to update information on the board.

For example, after jumping from their initial position to the fleet supply base in the nebula, Colonel Tigh replaces the map on the ‘left’ side of the board with a new map of the location that the Galactica had just jumped to. This implies that the Galactica has a cache of maps in the CIC of various parts of the galaxy, or can quickly print them on the fly.

After getting hit by a Cylon fighter’s nuclear missile, Tigh focuses on a central section of the board with a grease pen to mark the parts of the Galactica suffering damage or decompression. The center section of the board has a schematic, top-down view of the Galactica.

During the initial fighting, Lt. Gaeda is called forward to plot the location of Galactica’s combat squadrons on the board. This hand-drawn method is explicitly used, even when the Dradis system is shown to be functioning.

The transparency sheets are labeled with both a region and a sector: in this case, “Caprica Region, SECT OEL”. More text fills the bottom of the label: “Battlestar Galactica Starchart…”

Several panels of physical keys and low-resolution displays ring the board, but we never see any characters interacting with them. They do not appear to change during major events or during shifts in the ship status.

The best use of these small displays would be to access reference data with a quick search or wikipedia-style database. Given what we see in the show, it is likely that it was just intended as fuigetry.

Old School

Charts and maps are an old interface that has been well developed over the course of human history. Modern ships still use paper charts and maps to track their current location as a backup to GPS.

Given the Galactica’s mission to stay active even in the face of complete technological superiority of the opponent, a map-based backup to the Dradis makes sense in spite of the lack of detailed information it might need to provide. It is best as, and should be, a worst-case backup.

Here, the issue becomes the 3-dimensional space that the Galactica inhabits. The maps do an excellent job of showing relationships in a two dimensional plane, but don’t represent the ‘above’ and ‘below’ at all.

In those situations, perhaps something like a large fish tank metaphor might work better, but wouldn’t allow for quick plotting of distance and measurements by hand. Instead, perhaps something more like the Pin Table from the 2000 X-Men movie that could be operated by hand:

It would provide a shake-resistant, physical, no-electricity needed 3-D map of the surrounding area. Markups could be easily accomplished with a sticky-note-like flag that could attach to the pins.

FTL – Engine Analysis

13 Sep 2016 by claytonbeese

The FTL Jump process on the Galactica has several safeguards, all appropriate for a ship of that size and an action of that danger (late in the series, we see that an inappropriate jump can cause major damage to nearby objects). Only senior officers can start the process, multiple teams all sign off on the calculations, and dedicated computers are used for potentially damaging computations.

Even the actual ‘jump’ requires a two stage process with an extremely secure key and button combination. It is doubtful that Lt. Gaeta’s key could be used on any other ship aside from the Galactica.

The process is so effective, and the crew is so well trained at it, that even after two decades of never actually using the FTL system, the Galactica is able to make a pinpoint jump under extreme duress (the beginning of human extinction).

Difficult Confirmation

The one apparent failure in this system is the confirmation process after the FTL jump. Lt. Gaeta has to run all the way across the CIC and personally check a small screen with less than obvious information.

Of the many problems with the nav’s confirmation screen, three stand out:

It is a 2d representation of 3d space, without any clear references to how information has been compacted
There are no ‘local zero’ showing the system’s plane or relative inclination of orbits
No labels on data

Even the most basic orbital navigation system has a bit more information about Apogee, Perigee, relative orbit, and a gimbal reading. Compare to this chart from the Kerbal Space Program:

(from http://blog.asgaard.co.uk/t/gaming and Kerbal Space Program)

The Galactica would need at least this much information to effectively confirm their location. For Lt. Gaeta, this isn’t a problem because of his extensive training and knowledge of the Galactica.

But the Galactica is a warship and would be expected to experience casualties during combat. Other navigation officers and crew may not be as experienced or have the same training as Lt. Gaeta. In a situation where he is incapacitated and it falls to a less experienced member of the crew, an effective visual display of location and vector is vital.

Simplicity isn’t always perfect

This is an example of where a bit more information in the right places can make an interface more legible and understandable. Some information here looks useless, but may be necessary for the Galactica’s navigation crew. With the extra information, this display could become useful for crew other than Lt. Gaeta.

FTL – Activation

6 Sep 2016 by claytonbeese

The Battlestar Galactica has at least two Faster-than-Light engines (which might be easier to think of as teleportation engines), activated during a complex sequence. The sequence involves:

An explicit, direct command from Commander Adama
Complex calculations on dedicated computers
Double-checking by a large portion of the CIC staff
and finally, a dedicated key and button to initiate the actual jump

Making an FTL jump is not a standard procedure for the Galactica, and it is implied that it has been decades since the ship carried out an actual jump. This is because of the danger in landing off-course, the difficulty in the calculations, and wear on what is likely a very expensive component. We see that many civilian ships do not have FTL capability.

The FTL engine allows the Galactica to instantly travel between one point in the star system, and another point in the star system. Dense books of pre-made calculations are kept in the Galactica’s CIC to enter into the ship’s FTL computers.

Multiple teams each begin separate calculations, using the Galactica’s FTL computers as giant calculators for their hand-written/typed equations. The teams then cross-check their answers against each other, using a senior officer (in this case, Lt. Gaeta) as the final confirmation.

Once all teams agree on an FTL jump coordinate, the information is plugged into a separate system to “spool up” the FTL drive.

Lt. Gaeta then pulls out a special key that fits into a dedicated slot in the FTL system in the CIC. The key has two cylindrical pins that each glow a distinct blue, and are each different lengths. The handle of the key has a matching shape on the console as well, so that the key can only fit in one way.

Once the key is inserted, Lt. Gaeta turns the key and announces that the FTL drive is active. Commander Adama then gives the order to jump, and Lt. Gaeta pushes a separate button (which has until now been inactive) that jumps the Galactica to the coordinates entered.

After the Galactica finishes its FTL Jump, Commander Adama asks for confirmation that they have arrived successfully at their destination. Lt. Gaeta runs across the CIC to a navigation console and checks the screen there for the ship’s location. From the information on that screen, Lt. Gaeta confirms that the Galactica has re-entered real space at exactly the place they were intended to be. (Or might report an error, but we never see this.)

The entire CIC lets out a breath of relief and begins clapping in celebration. Lt. Gaeta congratulates his navigation team for their work, and the CIC slowly resumes their task of running the ship. The CIC crew is clearly unnerved by the jump, and everyone is thankful when they arrive safely at their destination.

The Current Position Screen

This is the screen that Lt. Gaeta uses to confirm that they have successfully landed at their current target: geosynchronous orbit above their target body of mass. He does not visibly use any of the controls on the console. The screen autonomously zooms in on the ‘X’ marker, then displays a large, red, blinking triangle with “BSG 75” written above it (The Battlestar Galactica’s registry code). The red ‘X’ is written inside a large sphere, which appears to be the object the Galactica was attempting to jump to.

All of the lines on this graph describe arcs, and appear to be orbital paths. The Galactica is marked as being directly on one of these arcs. Dotted arcs connect many other objects on the screen to each other. These have no clear purpose or legend.

At the bottom center of the screen are the words “Waypoint Time”, “Waypoint Distance”, and “T.O.T.” Above those words is a small label: “Synthetic Gravity Field 74.56”. To the left of those words is an area of data that has been boxed off with the label “Optic Nav System Control.”

More text to the top left lists out information in a table format, but is unreadable to the viewer due to the resolution of the screens in the CIC. The two rows of data beside the labels do not have column headers or unit indicators.

Sci-fi interfaces

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Monthly Archives: September 2016