One thing to keep in mind is that -- at least in the blueprint sets which have been made -- surprisingy little of a starship's interior space is filled with "ship stuff": fuel storage, the propulsion systems, weapons, etc. Most of the space is consumed with "people stuff": living quarters, recreation facilities and holodecks, etc. Given that, the idea of a ship having three sick bays, multiple holodecks and mess halls doesn't seem much if any more wasteful than regular ships' allocations of space. I think it's humorous if not silly that a Federation starship's main reactor is about the size of a household wood-burning stove.
That sort of argument only makes sense if people are equally likely to be found in all three sections. But if only one section is crewed, then there's no point in having sickbays in the other sections. Plus the one sickbay can be relatively small, since the crew is small, too. Two drone sections with big engines and big guns and virtually no hull volume, controlled by a third, crewed section with tiny engines and lots of hull volume, makes so much more sense. It gives the ship a true raison d'etre (to fly into combat without endangering UFP lives) that it wouldn't have if it were just three ordinary starships bolted together. And that's what we see in the episode. The three parts are handled perfectly fine by just four hijackers in a single room in a single section. There's no indication the ship had more crew than that even to begin with. That was for a test flight, of course, and routine operations might call for ten times the crew - but forty's still not much, and in fact would be very fitting for a single section, a starship of Defiant size. Timo Saloniemi
Agreed. While kewl, it doesn't make sense to have 3 ships dependent upon each other to come back together again as a single ship. Have 3 separate ships, use them in a coordinated effort (attack, etc.) and then let them go there merry way exploring, initating first contacts, etc.
It makes sense to have a class like Prometheus only if those individual parts are just that, parts of the ship, and not individual ships in their own right. If you are going to build 3 sickbays and 3 of everything, then it's stupid. I think Prometheus is meant to separate only in combat situations in order to achieve a tactical advantage of applying firepower from all sides on to a target and also to split the target's fire. As such, there is no need for triple-redundant systems, except for weapons, propulsion, and shields. If there are sickbays on 2 out of 3 sections, those would be small emergency ones. As for having stuff like lounges, holodeks, shuttle bays, cargo bays etc in each section, that's just ridiculous. I don't think Starfleet is that stupid. What's next, glue Galaxy, Sov, and Defiant together, and have them unglue once every 3 months for battle?
Ok, it does stand to reason that there would be one major facility such as sickbay, and should the sections separate, an emergency sickbay space and backup equipment stored somewhere (it wouldn't take very much space, relatively - after all, starships are not submarines, apparently, which - if you've ever been on one, you realize how valuable space is in a confined ship area; when crew are billeting in hammocks over torpedos, you get the idea). But it also stands to reason that whatever Voyager had, Prometheus has, in terms of facilities. So it would probably have a few labs, a few transporter rooms, cargo holds or stores; though it would definitely need more weapon storage space, which might account for the extra size compared with Voyager. The above posts all make a lot of sense. Timo reminded me of the episode Message in a Bottle, in which the "Code Blue" separated the ship in a short span of time, and the computer basically took over the attack. The ship was designed to be operated by a minimal crew, but of course, it should still manage a crew roughly the size of Voyager's - except if you compare the bridges, you see that Prometheus' bridge was not built for a lot of activity. The first officer doesn't even have a place to sit, for goodness' sake. (Always my concern in a job ) But it also stands to reason that if a Code Blue is called, hey, wherever you happen to be standing is where you are going. I don't think there was any deck evac process happening. I suppose the idea is, the ship sections should never get that far apart from each other in any long term capacity; just for attack scenarios. If they should find themselves separated, sucks for the lower decks for a while. It also stands to reason that any attack posture can be commanded from any of the bridges, while the computer handles the 3 sections' navigation. So my vote would be for convertible rooms for facilities like mess/rec and sickbay on the other sections; there's also no assumption all of these are on the primary cruiser. How many holodecks did Voyage have? I think it may have been mentioned in The Killing Game. Was it just the one? But I would imagine each section of a Prometheus class would have at least one transporter room/cargo transporter.
Nope, a basic tenet of combat is "concentration of fire" All you have done is make 3 weak targets out of one strong one. They will be picked off one at a time as the enemy ship burns each one down in turn. Yeah, just those 3 things are going to eat up alot of space that could have been better utilized on a single ship. Especially 3 sets of propulsion. If they had shown Prometheus deploying 2 obviously unmanned and way smaller pieces, you could rationalize it. But breaking a ship into 3 separate same size parts is just dumb.
That would only be true if you truly made 3 weak targets out of 1. But there is no way of knowing whether the ship is more powerful separated or not. I would imagine that it would have less shield power, but more firepower, and less speed, but more maneuverability, but that's just my speculation. Based on what we know about the ship, what concentration of force would mean in Prometheus's case is that you use all 3 smaller parts on one target (and don't split up your firepower on several enemy ships), which I wrote that you would, just attack from different angles. There are tons of tactical advantages to this. This would prevent the defending ship from reinforcing the shields that are facing the Prometheus. Also, the enemy ship could not perform evasive maneuvers effectively. Prometheus parts could easily maneuver around the enemy and disable the engines, bridge, etc or target that port shield that just collapsed and exposed the hull. Defensively, it could split the enemy firepower, so one section could dodge the enemy fire while the other two pound it unimpeded. The ship is supposed to be a warship; weapons, propulsion, and shields are supposed to eat up a lot of space. There is no need for a bunch of other stuff when you have minimal crew and a highly automated ship
Think about what you just said. 1/3rd of something is always going to be weaker in some way than the whole. As I said in my previous post, any half way smart captain is going to burn each one down in turn. There will be no division of firepower from the enemy ship. Think of it this way. What would be more efficient, a big car with a V6, or 3 small cars with 2 cylinder engines mounted together?
And while a half way smart captain concentrated fire on one section, what are the other two going to be doing? Any single ship that faces Prometheus is outmaneuvered, that's a huge advantage. I guess you're saying that photon and quantum torpedos from those two sections are only 1/3 as powerful as regular ones because the ship split up? And you're right about efficiency but we're not talking about efficiency, we're talking about a warship whose job is to destroy the opponent, efficiency be damned if you are blown to bits by the enemy!
One argument against two of the sections being remote drones is that those sections would have no damage control personel running around during battle making emergency repairs, you can't endlessly reroute things from the bridge. Also if the enemy ship(s) has decent ECM the command section could lose communications with the drones, three bridges eliminates that possibility.
I don't think a ship like Prometheus would be mass-produced. But the design has a few advantages. In 3 ships, you would have to build all the necessities like 3 sickbays, 3 sets of crew quarters, 3 sets of science labs, etc..When you have a Prometheus-like design, you can dispense with those as you can have 1 sickbay in one section, crew quarters on another, and a science lab on third. It's a better use of space. When it comes to doing some sort of special tactical mission, I would rather send Prometheus, then 3 small frigates. May be the damage control personnel are holograms? If they can have a doctor perform complex surgery, surely they can have a hologram "weld a pipe"
But you've just made the argument for fighters (or, at least, heavy armed shuttles) rather than entire ships. If all you're wanting is a warp-capable delivery platform with phasers and photons... isn't that the definition of a fighter? If I really just need to send down a lot of ordinance down someone's throat, a carrier makes more sense than sending a Magnaboss wannabe.
It could also be the definition of a Defiant-class "escort". Perhaps a more clever solution for Prometheus would've been a large cruiser with more than one place for Defiant-type escorts to "dock" or "hangar" themselves; these ships could then "launch" upon arrival at a remote destination after being hauled there at sustained high warp by the "mothership". (If you think about it, this would make sense for remote task force operations, whether they would be of a military or non-military nature; Defiant-class ships are not built with amenities to house a crew for a long-term deep space deployment, but they could handle limited excursions from a mothership, and the mothership could serve as a place for the rotation crew of the escort(s) to resupply, get repairs, get some R&R downtime in superior facilities, etc.) And a much smaller escort-type ship could be commanded by a much smaller crew(s) with rotations and officer billets being easier to fill, kinda like a larger, more involved version of a landing party/away team. And the escort-class vessel doesn't have to be a Defiant-type ship, either. The Federation could get into the business of designing mini-starships of the Defiant's size that could be science/survey vessels, transports, etc. So maybe the Prometheus design was just a test bed for a very different kind of technology and starship designing scheme that would combine high-speed, deep space cruisers with a new kind of embedded pseudo-warptug role for "bringing along a little something extra" to either a potential military hotspot or to a remote frontier.
Remember: the Prometheus Stardrive splits into two and the Saucer stays as one unit while seperating. @PhaserLightShow
C'mon, resurrecting a 6 1/2 year old thread for this? But, I'd say you're mistaken there, at least depending on what you consider part of the saucer. The Beta and Gamma sections take a pretty large slice out of the bottom of the saucer. There's some pictures from the ST Magazine about halfway down this page.