I got the impression (possibly because of my earlier complaints of the Galactica having no defenses in part one except her fighters) that all of the bullets/ammunition they picked up at Ragnar were for the Galactica’s ship-mounted weapons. Remember, it’s only after all of these munitions are loaded aboard that the Galactica herself gets into the fight and unleashes an impressive amount of firepower from dozens of gun batteries.
The Vipers never seemed to run short of ammunition and seemed to be firing energy weapons all through both episodes in rapid-fire bursts. Viper weapons fire looked different from the Galactica’s artillery fire - could just be the effects guys adding variety, or it could represent different types of weapons. Maybe large explosive projectile weapons have a higher destructive yeild than energy weapons, but a much slower rate of fire, so fast-cycling energy weapons are the choice for fighters while projectile weapons are used for the big guns?
If you are defending Galactica against incoming missiles, couldn’t you just throw all sorts of solid junk out for them to run into at speed? I sem to recall that BBs sitting still in relation to an orbiting satellite would take it out. Just fire buckshot out there in huge clouds.
I believe the original ship was called the Valley Forge , in the movie silent running , with Bruce Dern and a bunch of robots that liked to cheat in poker by talking with each other in binary.
Anyways ,the ship got resurrected in the original galactica series and premiered in the episode The Magnificigent Warriors.
It would appear that at least a very good CGI version is around , if that was not the original model.
With the shipboard weapons that the galactica used at the end , the ball bearings seem kind of superflous, it looked like it did just well against all incoming missiles.
As a last ditch effort it might have worked if they had something to throw at it , which worked in Space Above and Beyond , but stuff like that needs to be prepackaged and ready to launch on a moments notice , and there was no garuntee that the leaker was not armored.
Shotgun style attacks work right now in space cause with the launch weight of the sats ,there is no such thing as armor, but in a universe where the weapons are launched in space ,from a space faring race , armor on the weapons as well as decent penaids would be the order of the day.