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Hey, I never noticed that before....

Every ship does everything. That's why we see Oberths in space battles and doing shady shit

Well, clearly the Oberth hull form can be set up to do just about anything you want it to - but can any given Oberth type do everything? Or are they all a set of specialists built on the same hull? The Grissom is clearly good at science, but evidently bad at combat. The Biko is being used for supply transport, with no evidence that she does anything else. The Cochrane is only ever seen as a personnel transport. (Yes, she reports heavy casualties in the Dominion War. That doesn't mean she was good at combat. It just means she got shot at. The Lusitania reported heavy casualties in 1917 and no-one is suggesting she was good at combat.) The Oberth herself was assigned to a Deep Space Exploration mission both when the Bozeman got caught in the time loop and during the events of TUC, officially 15 years later, suggesting that she is good at science and exploration. The Pegasus was a technology testbed, with nothing to say she ever did any other job. The Tsiolkovsky is only seen after doing science. The Vico is heavily modified for very specific science, so she was presumably doing something else before - but her tasking here is in line with the Pegasus and the many other science ships. The Yosemite is again doing science - though given the crew complement, may also have been testing technology.

In fact, the only time we see an Oberth do something that isn't either transport, science, or technology testing (arguably a variation on science) is the Bonestell, which gets destroyed at Wolf 359. But it's clearly established that Wolf 359 is a desperate last stand made up mostly of entirely unsuitable ships, so Bonestell being at that battle is not evidence that the ship was any good at combat. She was just close enough to die trying.

Obviously, much of this comes from the storytelling structure. Cochrane aside, we only ever see any of these ships doing a single mission. Who knows what they'd do next week? So there's no real evidence that Oberth-class ships are specialist ships that only perform one type of task. But there's equally no evidence they aren't. If you prefer a setting where every Federation ship is a multi-role generalist and the only real difference is "big ships are better at everything," go you! Still, my interpretation that most ships are specialists and only the relatively rare cruisers are maids of all work is an equally viable conclusion.
 
i don't know if this has been mentioned elsewhere, but I just watched The Doomsday Machine episode with the enhanced special effects. It's still a great episode, but I noticed when Matt Decker steals a shuttlecraft for his hail Mary attack, I noticed it was the Galileo shuttlecraft?
You'd thing the CG team that refurbished the episodes would have chosen another shuttlecraft name that wasn't being used in other episodes?

The CG team named the DDM shuttle Einstein, number 6. The only used the name Galileo when they were obligated by dialog (so there are still two Galileos as well as the Galileo II, which is the third one. At least).
 
In fact, the only time we see an Oberth do something that isn't either transport, science, or technology testing (arguably a variation on science) is the Bonestell, which gets destroyed at Wolf 359. But it's clearly established that Wolf 359 is a desperate last stand made up mostly of entirely unsuitable ships, so Bonestell being at that battle is not evidence that the ship was any good at combat. She was just close enough to die trying.

There was an Oberth in "First Contact" that participated in the battle with the Borg. It appears in most of the battle...
 
There was an Oberth in "First Contact" that participated in the battle with the Borg. It appears in most of the battle...

Is there? Interesting that Memory Alpha doesn't list that one... oh, my bad, I missed the "unnamed ships" link. Thanks for the backstop!

Well, that battle is less clearly a desperate last stand, so there's an argument for some Oberths being optimised for combat. Still - and again, this is a consequence of story structure - there's still nothing in any of the unnamed Oberths histories to say that they can all do everything, rather than being a specialist. At most this suggests that some Oberths have one specialty and other Oberths have a different specialty.

It is mildly more persuasive for the "all starships do everything" argument, but not conclusive.
 
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