Except that would kill Deks's point. Transformers, Voltron, Power Rangers, etc are all more powerful when they are one giant robot, and don't seperate into 3+ pieces that are just as powerful.
[Mumbling quietly] Please not another Prometheus debate... Please not another Prometheus debate... Please GOD not another Prometheus debate... [/Mumbling quietly]
^ Too late. ...T'Plana-Hath, Sarek, Kal-El... http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/T'Plana-Hath_(starship) http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/T'Plana-Hath_(matron)
Please learn to read properly. I said equally powerful in terms of firepower, not necessarily everything else. Besides, Transformers, Voltron, Power Rangers and whatnot are hardly part of Trek and cannot be taken into account. How do you expect to force more energy through the phaser array if it has an absolute maximum it can tolerate? You can't. Having 3 warp cores working in union will not increase the power output of phasers by say 3x because the array would essentially blow up. It delivers as much power as it can, and one warp core can do that just fine. Given the amount of Warp nacelles on the other hand present on the Prometheus, the cores when working in union can provide more power to create a more powerful/stable warp field which would likely also help the ship achieve high warp velocities (and it was mentioned it was designed to go faster than anything else in the fleet). Aside from the warp speed and possibly the shields lasting a bit longer in battle (which is debatable because the deflector emmitters have their own limits on how much weapons fire they can take and just how much of the energy pumped into them will provide an effective protection), having the ship being combined in battle when possibly outnumbered and approached from multiple vectors is hardly a solution I would opt for. Also ... when fully connected and if it's outmatched in combat, separation could prevent loss of the entire ship compared to just 1 or 2 sections ... the surviving one(s) still has the option of fleeing to safety. As I said, there are numerous valid arguments against the MVAM, but there are others that can just as well support it.
not sure mild flaming is the way to prove your point... speaking of ignoring what people have said... Seems pretty simple. If the phaser array can't take, or output any more power, you don't give it any more. You install an entire second array, independent of the first. One wired to one warp core, one wired to a different one. You can now take whatever the max power is, and use twice that much, because you've got two independent systems, arrays and all. So, looks like you can see above. max power is great, but 2 sets of arrays, power distribution, etc gets you twice as much. Also a great fail-over device for redundancy if a system goes down, or a core is damaged/ejected/random excuse here. Not sure it's just tied to nacelles, though. And the one on the saucer doesn't appear to pop up until seperated, so you've really only got 4 to deal with. Don't think we've seen anything anywhere on screen that more nacelles equals faster, have we? How fast was the Stargazer compared to other ships of the day? Having stonger shields, more power available to all systems (essentially rerouting max power to every system at once, with reserves), and having 2-3 sets of independent phaser arrays aren't benefits in battle? Splitting into 3 weaker pieces can't really help that too much, i'd think. More a matter of whether 1 strong punch is more effective than 3 stings, I guess. And if you're outnumbered 2 or 3 to 1, the stronger ship might not be a disadvantage. If it's more than that, splitting up will still result in you being outnumbered, so you should use the stronger engines and run instead. Otherwise, a couple ships are going to gang up and destroy the weaker components one at a time. That's certainly a consideration. Then again, if the ship is that much faster as one piece, and there's an opening for part of the ship to get away, the whole thing should make a break for it. aside from the warp-capable lifeboat scenario, I just don't see a strong argument here, and plenty of things that just argue for it being a cool gimmick, while being a huge waste of resources...
Please keep these sorts of comments to yourself. You can clarify misunderstandings/miscommunications without snide one-liners like this.
I picked up Children of the Storm today and while flipping to the back to see what the page count is, I found a fleet appendix with some new info. Newest details (spoilers? I don't think so): 1. The science vessels are something new: Merian Class. 2. The Achilles is Mulciber Class. 3. And the Demeter is Theophrastus Class. So three all new classes.
Clawhammer's still working on them. He posted a progress report here: http://www.trekbbs.com/showpost.php?p=4990937&postcount=17
I did see that (thanks for the link, btw), but since Planck showed as "ready" and there was a small photo in the avatar, that suggested to me that there was a larger rendering available...is there?
I found this one Mark's own blog, closed shot we've seen sofar I think: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_1oTNGkUkH...AB7A/yY1Gu9JOsfY/s1600/09072010005-771706.jpg And elsewhere on Mark's own blog, is this Merian class starship, which looks a lot like the Planck: http://www.ewe-squad.com/miranda2/merian13.jpg
Switched those images to links because they were both super huge and stretched the forum and also hot linked. ref: Board Image Policy Thanks
The poster who PM'd me with the appendix in the back of his book gave the following information...in addition to Voyager, there are USS Quirinal/NCC-82610 and USS Esquiline/NCC-82614 (both Vesta-class); USS Hawking/NCC-81897, USS Planck/NCC-81894 and USS Curie/NCC-81890 (all three Merian-class science vessels), USS Galen/NX-86350 (Galen-class experimental medical vessel), USS Achilles/NCC-77024 (Mulciber-class), and USS Demeter/NCC-79914 (Theophrastus-class). That's all I have.
Hmm... interesting class names. I'm guessing the Merian class is named for Maria Sibylla Merian, a naturalist who made significant contributions to entomology, and who has a research vessel named after her in real life. Galen, of course, was the famous Greek physician, a natural namesake for a medical ship. Mulciber is an alternative name for... hmm... the Roman deity Vulcan. I wonder if that's significant. And Theophrastus was a Greek philosopher, successor to Aristotle as the head of the Peripatetic school of philosophers.
Still, the point about non-Human-originated ship names is well-made. Not the first time it's come up, true, but it still holds. That aside...that Merian-class "sketch" looks good...