Headless Galaxy Classes?

[Timo]

The reasonable hypothesis is that the Galaxies seen during the Dominion War were fully equipped and constructed.

But supposedly not even the E-D was ever fully equipped or constructed when operating in TNG. A mere thousand people were rattling about in the nearly empty corridors, and even if every one of them had a room of their own for whatever work they were doing, the ship would feature unused spaces...

Probably ships sent to battle would have all or most of their combat systems installed, even if they lacked 90% of their research gear and 50% of their medical facilities. But even that isn't a given. Many a ship was sent to battle in WWII only partially armed, because having something out there was better than having nothing. And if you have a big ship with complete shields but only one-third the armament, you still present the enemy with a full target he has to cope with.

We were told, basically by Worf in "Heart of Glory", that the Galaxy fights better separated than joined. We were not told, however, that a separated Galaxy would fight better than an average combat starship. And we were soon shown that a ship shaped almost exactly like Galaxy, namely the Nebula, would fight just fine when not separated.

So was Worf wrong? Quite possibly. The separation feature wouldn't be there in order to make the battle section more badass: it would be there to send half the ship to safety while the other half fought. As said, this would mean compromises, and quite possibly the saucer would take away important features when leaving the battlefield. If there were no civilians to evacuate (as there would never be in a ship deliberately sent to battle - there could be civilians, but only of the sort that were supposed to see battle), then it might well make sense to retain those important features.

I for one would hate to go to battle without those big nasty phaser strips on the saucer. Or the two powerful-looking impulse engines.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Nick Ryder]

Well you could easily mount more phaser strips, just give the cobra head a bit more of a minisaucer to give it back the extra impulse engines and phasers. The saucer had no torps that I could see... so really its an impulse capable phaser embankment with the fraggin main bridge.

 

[Wingsley]

Well, the actual dialogue in the corridor between Worf and the renegade Klingons was that they asked about the Enterprise's ability to separate in times of battle, Worf replied "Yes. When relieved of its bulk, the Enterprise becomes an exceptional weapon".

I never took that to mean that a Galaxy-class starship was somehow crippled in her combat ability while unified. Rather, Worf's brag seemed to indicate that once you relieve the stardrive section of the "bulk" and amenities of the saucer, you're left with a more purely mission-focused ship. Not quite like the stripped-down "warship" pretense of Sisko's Defiant, but still a less bulky (and perhaps less vulnerable) cruiser.

 

[Christopher]

I fail to see the point in sending such a large ship into combat incomplete to begin with.

Because the complete ship was not intended for combat. It was a university village in space, a traveling research institute. That was the intention of TNG's developers -- that this was a science ship first and foremost. However, it was specifically designed so that a portion of the ship could separate and function as a "complete" battleship in and of itself, with warp power and a full complement of weapons and little in the way of crew quarters and research labs and rec rooms and holodecks and other nonmilitary things to slow it down.

I've long felt it would've made more sense if they'd had two separate ships, one a dedicated research vessel crewed largely by civilians and the other a military escort accompanying it for protection. But they were trying to be true to the flavor of TOS, which was about a lone ship exploring the unknown, so they combined the two in a single vessel.

 

[Timo]

To be sure, the TOS ship already had a lot of that "village in space" appeal: there were all these cute and unsoldiery researchers aboard, some so detached from the military aspects of the mission that they spent their days painting pictures of military leaders! There were communal spaces, facilities for children (even if only used in an emergency...), sometimes young people walking around in civvies.

It never made all that much sense that one'd jettison civilians or militarily nonessential personnel and gear when going to battle. The practice sounds two or three thousand years out of place: you don't leave your camp followers and families to the edge of the forest any more today when you charge the enemy army across the field, because the risk to them is considered too high. But perhaps the engineers wanted to try out the newest in separation and redocking technology, and needed an excuse? Or perhaps they did not have confidence in their ability to fly such a giant saucer through combat maneuvers, and only regained that confidence when designing the Nebula class?

Or then the families-at-forest-edge approach was considered better than nothing for a true deep space explorer that couldn't offload said families to a starbase or a planet before going to battle. The odds of anybody surviving in a clumsy, possibly sublight saucer against an enemy for whom the full agility of the battle section was needed would be slim - but better than nothing.

Whatever the rationale or excuse, it apparently didn't work out in the long term. Or wasn't applicable when the E-D or her sisters weren't doing real deep space missions.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Squiggy]

Maybe they realized that separating the thing was too damned expensive and after Enterprise they removed the feature.

 

[All Seeing Eye]

I always considered the phaser strips on Galaxy Class Saucer sections to be the most powerful weapons arrays in Starfleet.

The longer the strip the more it charges and the more powerful the punch it gives. having the Saucer sections in battle meant the Galaxy could cause more damage on enemy ships.

 

[Timo]

The longer the strip the more it charges and the more powerful the punch it gives.

The Tech Manual does suggest this, but it makes very little sense.

If longer strips are better, then Starfleet is riddled with traitors who have sabotaged every modern starship ever built, and with idiots who haven't noticed this. The E-D herself has several strips that are shorter than they need to be: for example, there are two short aft strips both above and below the stern. If longer indeed were better, then those two short strips should have been joined into one long strip, no buts or ifs. The E-E in turn has a saucertop armament comprising five strips; the Voyager of two. Joining those to a single strip would be a must if longer were better.

I could buy the idea that the total phaser power of a starship is dependent on total phaser length installed on her, regardless of the lengths of individual strips. Any and every arbitrary stretch of strip on the ship could then unleash this total power.

Something similar probably applies to the older ships that have point emitters, too. Two or three emitters firing at the same time don't provide more punch: they merely divide the total punch in two or three.

At least this is consistent with how phasers are fired in all the episodes and movies. Multiple beams are only used against multiple targets, save for exactly two exceptions in the entire history of the show: "Best of Both Worlds" (where the E-D fires three beams at the Borg) and "Sacrifice of Angels" (where a Galaxy fires two beams at a Galor). And even there, one might argue that the beams were intended to hit multiple targets, not to increase the power of a hit against a single point of enemy hull. Certainly the "BoBW" fire was divided, as there's no way the torps, the saucertop strip, and the pylon strips could fire at the same spot on the Borg Cube. And the Galor was hurt at two spots, too, even if the difference was on the order of mere meters.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[ncc-1017-e]

It always bugged me that the Galaxy-Class ships in the Dominion War battle fleets had saucers at all. The whole idea of the design was that in combat, the secondary hull would leave the saucer behind, both to protect the large civilian complement and to make the remaining vessel lighter, more maneuverable, and able to devote much more of its power to weapons and defense. I understand the real-life reasons why this was done, namely that the only miniature that could separate was too large and cumbersome; and I imagine wanting the ships to have a recognizable profile was a consideration as well. But in-universe, it seems inconsistent.

It seems to me that it certainly would've been feasible to build Galaxy-class battle sections without any saucers at all -- maybe a slightly modified version with no clamps in the "cobra head" section, making room for different features there. (The "Dwarf Galaxy" Class?) That could've been interesting to see as a digital model in later DS9. Indeed, I'm rather surprised that, to the best of my knowledge, it's never been explored as a possibility by fan designers.

This all sounds good except "to make the remaining vessel lighter." The ship is pretty much weightless in space right? I guess it could be effected by a large gravitational body like a planet or star!

 

[AnyStar]

This all sounds good except "to make the remaining vessel lighter." The ship is pretty much weightless in space right? I guess it could be effected by a large gravitational body like a planet or star!

dont confuse weight with mass. and also at the same time remember Newton's laws.

with the bulk of a ship that large it still requires great amounts of energy to both move it, and to stop its movement. just because the object is weightless, does not excuse it from acts of gravity. these acts just play out differently in a zero-g environment.

edit: go to the nova website and watch the recent episode on the Hubble repair. this is actually discussed in that episode.

 

[Dingle Fritz]

One would think in times of combat (dominion war) that there would be more SAUCERS floating around waiting for a replacement secondary hull.... Target the explodish engines and fuel storage not the big mostly empty saucer. Make the secondary hull explode... 50/50 odds the saucer gets away and is now mostly useless by itself.

 

[Forbin]

There aught to be a stickied thread explaining that objects still have mass in space. Weightless just means it isn't in a gravity field at the moment.

A Galaxy class still has 6 million tons of mass. The effects of it hitting you at speed are gonna be exactly the same as if it hit you in a gravity well.

 

[SeerSGB]

The only reason I could see for saucer-sep (aside from noncombat evac of the ship, combat separation with impulse only saucer always seemed short-sighted to me) would be colonization.

Load the saucer up with colonist. Warp out to a new colony world, go a control landing of the saucer, then use the saucer at the base of operations of the new colony; even planetary evac (assuming it could still lift off) if the fecal matter hit the fan. Battle-section stays around for system protection till a regularly assigned ship warps in; then the battle-section warps back for a new load of colonists.

 

[Wingsley]

^ Neat idea, but the Galaxy-class of starships was supposed to be the state of the art of her day. It would seem an unlikely class of starship to dedicate full-time to localized specific colonization missions.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

How many Galaxy-class ships did we see in the Dominion war? Maybe the ones that were there (the Galaxy and the Venture are the only ones I remember) were all built before the war. In which case they would of course have their saucers.

 

[Broccoli]

^ And probably a few nameless background ships during battle sequences.

Honestly, I hardly think TPTB dropped the ball with this. The producers kept the saucers attached because it makes the ship instantly recognizable to viewers and fans. Also the models they already had (computer generated and traditional) were with the saucers on. Making new models for a trivial detail wouldn't have been worth the cost.

 

[USS Triumphant]

(the Galaxy and the Venture are the only ones I remember)

Don't forget the Odyssey - the one that got blown up right at the start of the war, to demonstrate how badass Dominion ships were to the viewers.

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

Don't forget the Odyssey - the one that got blown up right at the start of the war, to demonstrate how badass Dominion ships were to the viewers.

Or to demonstrate how prone to destruction the Galaxy class was.

 

[Forbin]

Okay, I'm gonna hafta kitbash a combat saucer on a Galaxy class now.
It should be ready by, oh, this time next year.

 

[Christopher]

Like I said, I'd be interested in seeing a version of the Galaxy-class battle hull with no saucer at all, or rather with the cobra head modified to give it saucerish features instead of the docking clamps. If the original intent of Andrew Probert's design was a compound vessel, a saucer-shaped research vessel docked atop a combat-capable vessel, then what would we get if that combat-capable vessel had a variant designed to operate completely independently?