Agro Ship

Agro Ship
Race:	Colonial
Type:	Civilian
FTL:
Propulsion:
Crew:
Capacity:
CO:	{{{co}}}
XO:	{{{xo}}}
Role:	Agricultural ship for growing foodstuffs
Weapons:	{{{weapons}}}
Armaments:	{{{arm}}}
Defenses:	{{{def}}}
Aircraft:	{{{aircraft}}}
Aviation facilities:	{{{facilities}}}
Fate:	Almost all destroyed by Cylons (TOS: "The Magnificent Warriors")
Emblem:	[[Image:{{{patch}}}|175px|Ship's patch]]
Other Images:	Gallery
Dimensions
Length:	{{{length}}}
Width:	{{{width}}}
Height:	{{{height}}}
Weight:	{{{weight}}}
Wingspan:	{{{wingspan}}}
Other:	{{{otherdi}}}
Game Information
Cost:	{{{construction}}}
Construction Time:	{{{construction}}}
Hull Size:	{{{hull size}}}
Hull:	{{{hull}}}
Mobility
FTL Cooldown:	{{{ftl cooldown}}} turns
Speed:	{{{speed}}} m/s
Turn Rate:	{{{turn rate}}}°/turn
Armor Sum
Armor Total:	{{{armor total}}}
Armor Left:	{{{armor left}}}
Armor Right:	{{{armor right}}}
Armor Front:	{{{armor front}}}
Armor Rear:	{{{armor rear}}}
Armor Top:	{{{armor top}}}
Armor Bottom:	{{{armor bottom}}}
Armament
DRADIS Range:	{{{dradis range}}} m
Processing Power:	{{{processing power}}}
Munition Slots:	{{{munitions}}}
Munition Cooldown Period:	{{{munition cooldown}}} turns
Squadron Slots:	{{{squadrons}}}
Squadron Size:	{{{squadron size}}}
Special Abilities:	{{{special abilities}}}
Additional Information

A bountiful crop aboard the Agro Ship ^{(TOS: "War of the Gods, Part I")}.

Agro Ship is the common classification for spacecraft capable of growing any edible agro foodstuffs needed in a convoy or Fleet for long periods of time. These crafts have translucent hull plates interconnected in a structural enforcement grid, which allow the plants to receive the necessary sunlight from a nearby star or some other stellar formation to achieve the state of photosynthesis. Artificial lighting is, apparently, also an important function of these agro ships. One of the crops grown aboard the agro ships is the tallon plant.

Agro ships are unarmed, but can withstand an assault for some period of time.

Galactica's Fleet has three such agro ships; two of which are destroyed by the Cylons and the third, the Agro Ship 9, experiences a hull breach via a destroyed airlock ^{(TOS: "The Magnificent Warriors")}.

Count Iblis also visits the Agro Ship 9 with Lieutenant Sheba during his time with the Fleet ^{(TOS: "War of the Gods")}.

Notes

Silent Running

• The agro ships are reuses of the spacecraft from Silent Running, a Universal/MCA movie that special effects guru John Dykstra worked on a few years prior to Battlestar Galactica.
• An interior shot of a Valley Forge bio-dome shows up just before the destruction of the agro ship. In the original cut of the episode, Bruce Durn as Freeman Lowell (and the planet Saturn) make their fleeting cameos due to the re-use of footage from Silent Running. Durn enters to the left of the frame briefly before the scene transitions to the ship's destruction by the Cylons. For the widescreen edit, Dern's fleeting cameo is cropped out.
• 
  Cameo of Bruce Dern as Freeman Lowell from Silent Running, as seen in the "full screen" blu-ray release ^{(TOS: "The Magnificent Warriors")}.
• 
  Crop of footage from Silent Running featuring the planet Saturn for the blu-ray "widescreen" formatted release, excluding Bruce Dern ^{(TOS: "The Magnificent Warriors")}.

Addenda

• The same shots of the agro ships destruction in "The Magnificent Warriors" were reused in the Galactica 1980 episode "Space Croppers." This continued Battlestar's tradition of reliance on and reuse of stock footage, a necessity due to the length of time special effects shots took to prepare for and produce in that television era, in combination with the hectic shooting schedule. As a side effect of this, a continuity error is created as, by the time the Fleet heads to Earth, they should have only one agro ship left.

• The Botanical Cruiser in the Re-imagined Series is an homage to this ship.

• According to Encyclopedia Galactica, a non-canonical piece of merchandise published in 1979:

Agro ships were created by Aeries and are capable of converting "artificial sunlight into raw foodstuffs at an average efficiency of eighty-four percent". Converting the food to "add variety and taste appeal" reduces the overall efficiency of food, such as hydronic mushies to sixty-two percent. Agro ships are capable of recycling and reprocessing nutrients and water.

To create the artificial sunlight, the ship gets its energy from the "reburning of solium wastes from the main drive engines of [ships in] the fleet". In addition, agro ships are equipped with foodstuffs that have been created to process the "solium light spectrum" efficiently and grow in the weightlessness of space.