http://www.angelfire.com/ak4/startrekfanfiction/index3.html Here's the diagrams of the Typhon-Class attached to the bottom of a Sovy. See the very bottom illustration.
At 1:17 of this video, you'll see the Enterprise-E deploy the Typhon-Class carrier/mobile outpost from its engineering hull after dropping from warp. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9W2cnN6mFi0
Common misconception of the Prometheus' capabilities. Ask yourself if the outcome would have been any different if it were, say, three smaller purpose built ships equipped with the same weapons, against the warbirds. Somebody asked about the Typhon a few pages back. Although you''d one post would have been sufficient as a reply.
Quite a cool design. Looks like a battle ship through and through. Makes me wish of a great cover with all NINE starships for the book after "Unworthy". :-)
I'm with Christopher: MVAM makes no sense. Wasteful of resources, doesn't seem to be a big advantage, and WAY too many problems it raises. If each piece of the ship is decently powerful on its own, then makes no sense to split, as when the ship is in once piece and SHARING all of its power, it's one far more powerful ship. Can say that phaser strips are hidden in between components, but would be far simpler to just put more strips on the outside of the single ship, and with the (apparently) 3 warp cores powering it, you'd have FAR more powerful phasers, shields, etc on the one super-ship. You also waste a LOT of space in this configuration that could be used for better things. You have to have 3 bridges (at least a main bridge for each section) and then each section would probably also need a backup 'battle' bridge in case their main bridge was damaged. 3 engine rooms, 3 sickbays. Does each section get a shuttle bay, or is that all on one ship? What happens if you lose THAT portion of the ship? Same with cargo and supplies, crew quarters, transporters, etc. What happens if the middle piece of the ship is destroyed? Can the top and bottom dock without the middle? the design, as shown, doesn't seem to line up real well from a vertical perspective (i.e. remove the middle section, and you still have to line up turbolift shafts that can go from top to bottom. As the ship is more long than tall, seems tough to do successfully). Entire concept just makes no sense. Looks 'kewl' on screen, but a carrier-style ship with a large shuttle bay, carrying a couple of "mini-Defiants" would make as much, if not more sense. If not carried inside, perhaps a top and bottom "piggyback" configuration... MVAM is a gimmick at best, and has FAR too many shortcomings for little to no benefit.
But then what about with Romulan and Klingon ships, during that period when the ship is cloaking, and the shields have dropped, but the cloak hasn't quite kicked in completely, and it is still possible to target them? I guess it all comes down to calculated risk, and whether or not the MVAM was deemed to outweigh the risks. I don't know, I don't think it would really end up working like that, for a few reasons. First, you can only pump so much power into any given system before you overload it and it burns out(i.e. the Enterprise-D's weapon from BoBW that went through the deflector. It was putting out so much power that it would burn out the dish in the process). Second, if you have 3 warp cores, and each warp core powers say 10 phasers each, you have a total of 3 warp cores powering 30 phasers separated into groups. Even if you connected all of them, you would still have 3 warp cores powering 30 phasers. The amount of power needed to power all 30 phasers would be the same regardless of whether or not the energy was pooled. And the total energy output of all 3 warp cores would be the same regardless of whether their energy was pooled. It seems like you are assuming that each piece is designed to run completely separate of each other for extended periods. MVAM seems to me to be no more than a glorified saucer separation. 3 pieces instead of two, and each has a warp drive instead of only one of them having it. The saucer of the Enterprise-D didn't have 3 sickbays. It had only one bridge per section as well, it didn't need each section to have it's own dedicated backup. And then what happens if the Enterprise-D loses one of it's section while separated? It doesn't seem all that different to me.
I think that's a much shorter period of vulnerability, and with fewer potentially problematical variables. Of course, intrinsically, the very idea of a cloaking device for a spaceship is even more ludicrous than a multipart ship could ever be. The latter is just overcomplicated; the former is a thermodynamic impossibility. Ships produce heat, and in space there's no way to dissipate that heat except by radiating it outward, which produces a detectable signature. A ship that could cloak all its energy would cook its own crew. If I could expunge cloaking devices from the Trekverse, I would. Yes, but that's exactly my point: That while a ship designed to function in both a unified and separated mode may be basically functional, the three partial ships won't be as functional or capable as three complete ships. If you need three ships, the simpler engineering solution (and the first rule of engineering is "Keep it simple, stupid") is to build three ships, rather than giving into the allure of flashy gimmicks and inventing some cutesy way to make one ship that splits into three pieces. The key difference is that in a saucer separation, the two parts aren't meant to function in tandem in a combat situation. The saucer is meant to be left behind somewhere safe while the battle hull -- only one ship -- goes into combat. The saucer isn't meant to be a functional starship on its own. Even so, it's not the design I would've gone with. I feel that if they wanted to have a largely civilian research vessel with independent combat capability, it would've been simpler just to send two ships out together. Two specialized ships are going to be more effective at their specialties than one general-purpose ship that can split into two semi-specialized halves. Might've been more dramatically interesting, too -- imagine a TNG with science-ship captain Picard and defense-ship captain Riker clashing over their different philosophies and approaches to a given crisis.
I've not got much to say on the values of MVAM, but when I read this Christopher, my only thought was "good thing you can't then"
Very true, that's something a few of us had talked about in one of the Trek Tech threads. We had a hard time explaining to someone that one ship cannot be the best at everything, and specialized ships will always be better at what they are made for than any random all-purpose ship... And in the case of the Prometheus... From what we saw, we don't really know for sure if it was a battle specialized ship or an all-purpose one... However, since it has all the extra hull and machinery along the separation planes, and it only has 16 decks, I'd hazard a guess that it was probably designed FOR the MVAM.
In the interests of fairness, I've just thought of one possible reason (other than flashiness for its own sake) why Starfleet designers might've thought a ship like the Prometheus was a good idea: to surprise the enemy by making them think it's just one ship and then springing three ships on them. But the obvious flaw in that strategy is that it only works once (unless you always manage to capture or destroy the enemy before they can send out a signal).
Hmm... perhaps somewhat related to that, if there's a way to mask Fleet ship signals so that you can't tell what you're up against, or make the Prommie look like something else (say an Intrepid or Akira) until forces have been committed, it might have a similar surprise effect tactically. So the Jem'Hadar, for example, detect three cruiser-sized Federation starships and commit a certain numbers of ships to destroy or defend them, only to have those three turn into nine once the engagement begins? Whereas if you had nine slightly smaller (Sabre or Defiant-class) ships on sensors from the outset, the Jem'Hadar/Romulans/Breen/etc. would be more likely to scramble an appropriately powerful force in response.
^^Like I said, it only works once. If the enemy knows that what looks like a single Federation ship might end up splitting into three, they're going to be prepared for that possibility. They're not going to be so stupid as to assume that what they see isn't an illusion, not after they've been fooled before.
Ehh... yeah, you're probably right. In that case, the threat of splitting technology could be used in a more strategic way to draw enemy forces away from the front lines by staging a cavalry raid... meh, but then those three normal ships would be toast and it's too complicated anyway. Ah well.
yeah, it really doesn't do anything that 2 defiant-class wouldn't do much better, but the MVAM thing just introduces too many problems for little to no gain...
The USS Galen is described as an 'Emergency Medical Ship', and the Doctor from Voyager is assigned as the Chief Medical Officer. Since this is a Medical ship, does anyone else reckon that the Doctor would also be the Captain?